Chapter 4 #2
“No,” Susanne said. “He was just about to when you arrived.”
She, Jennifer, and Lydia hunched forward, forearms on the table, eagerly awaiting the story.
It reminded Lincoln of Elena and her friends when they were younger, snuggled in sleeping bags on the living room floor.
They would beg him for a scary story, and he would plumb his research and cases for remembered bits and pieces he could assemble into a good scare.
Carter stretched an arm across the booth behind him and smirked, that same one from the first day of class. “Go ahead and tell them, honey.”
Cocky asshole. And it grated that that smirk was the answer to Lincoln’s dilemma. He knew exactly what to do. He righted himself and turned his attention half to Barry, half to the ladies. “I was his teacher.”
“Ooh,” Lydia said, as she pulled her thick gray hair back into a ponytail. “This is gonna be good.” Her hazel eyes twinkled with interest, the same shared by everyone around the table, including Barry.
“What’s a librarian got to teach a survival expert?” he asked.
Carter’s arm tensed behind Lincoln. “We didn’t tell you that.”
“Didn’t have to.” He waggled his accusing finger at Susanne and Jennifer this time. “They were giving Lydia the 4-1-1 before you arrived.”
Carter relaxed, and so did Lincoln, continuing with his story. “I taught information science classes on the side at one of the community colleges. Carter was a student there.”
“When I got out of the army,” Carter said, picking up where he’d left off, “I knew the field part of survival training. Knew I wanted to bring certain aspects of it to local law enforcement agencies and other interested parties who might benefit. But this one”—he dropped his arm off the top of the booth onto Lincoln’s shoulders and squeezed—“taught me some of the technical parts of running a business. How to create systems for finding and storing data, which also helps with client databases.”
“That was eight years ago.” If Lincoln sounded genuinely impressed, it was the truth. Scared a little too. Carter had effortlessly spun all that from his head.
“And you’ve been together that long?” Barry asked. “They told Lyd you were newlyweds. Long time to wait.”
“Oh, no,” Carter said. “We only recently reconnected.”
“I wouldn’t have married him eight years ago,” Lincoln said. “He was the worst student I’ve ever had.”
“Hey!”
“Loud, always interrupting, always had to be the center of attention.” None of that was a lie. “Hard to handle in a full class.”
“Which was why I had to be so loud. So you’d see me.”
“Oh, I saw you.” Lincoln cut his eyes to Carter and snagged on the earnest expression that had wiped away the agent’s usual smirk.
Wait. Did he actually mean that, or was this part of the performance?
It sure as fuck didn’t look like a lie, and Lincoln hadn’t been lying before either.
Was this Carter’s honest response? And what did it mean?
Heat flared in Lincoln’s chest and warmth crept up his neck again, on the way to searing his cheeks.
As acutely as he felt it, everyone else must have seen it too.
The swoony collective sigh from across the table confirmed as much. Cover sold, intentionally or not.
“How’d you reconnect?” Jennifer asked, a dreamy quality to her voice.
“Carter called me with a particular research question. Asked for a meet.”
“I’m glad you accepted.” Carter tore his gaze away, aiming it back across the table, and Lincoln’s mortification at having been caught staring, still, made him blush harder. “I heard him play his guitar about two months after that meet. Proposed on the spot.”
And the sighs got louder. But it was the bucket of ice water Lincoln needed to snap out of the land of impossibilities. Just in time too as Barry was back on the case.
“You gonna be doing some research here?” he asked. “I assume they’re not paying you to just stack books.”
“Yes, it’s a bit more than that,” Lincoln said with a chuckle. “I’m studying population migration in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Apex has some of the best-kept archives in the region.”
Barry’s stern face broke into a wide smile. “That’d be my brother Harry’s doing.” But then the grin dimmed. “He worked at the library before you. Passed last year.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Lincoln said, meaning it. Clearly, Barry had been proud of his brother and felt his loss.
“Thank you.” Apparently satisfied—or sufficiently mollified—for the time being, Barry extended his big paw to Lincoln. “You got any questions, just ask. I’ve got a list of Harry’s passwords somewhere, and I’ve been around these parts longer than most.”
“Thanks, Barry,” Carter said, returning the shake Barry offered him next.
Beneath the table, Carter’s knee knocked against Lincoln’s, and when Barry turned back toward the kitchen, Carter flashed him a victorious smile. They’d survived that speed bump, even managed to connect with a potentially valuable resource. But the victory was short-lived.
“You know,” Susanne said, “the church accompanist has taken ill.”
ABORT.
“So, Jennifer,” Lincoln said, “tell us how you and Susanne met?”
She grinned and looked fondly at her thankfully stymied wife. “It’s not as swoony as yours, but it’s still a pretty good story.”
Carter bumped his knee again, then lowered his face to Lincoln’s shoulder, pretending to drop a kiss there, but Lincoln felt the tremors of his laughter. Green eyes twinkled up at him and the mischief in them worried Lincoln. More than a little.