Chapter 5
Five
Carter waited until they were halfway across the snow-dusted quad, far enough away from the car that Lincoln wouldn’t bolt, before he brought up the thing his partner least wanted to hear. “You need to play at the church service.”
Lincoln rounded on him mid-step, teetering only slightly on the slick walkway. “Absolutely not.”
“Back there at the café, you changed the subject awfully fast.”
“Your point?” Lincoln snapped.
“I said it already. You need to play that service. From what I can tell, there are three main gathering places in Apex and other small towns like it. School, which we’ve got covered, the local watering hole, which we visited this morning, and . . .”
“Church,” Lincoln grumbled.
“Exactly. So, what’s the problem?”
“I’m an atheist,” Lincoln answered. “And extremely opposed politically and philosophically to organized religion.”
“And I’m a gay, very lapsed Jew who put on a sport coat and red tie every day for eighteen months and wooed a senator’s daughter so I could infiltrate her politician father’s inner circle.”
The look of disgust on Lincoln’s face was the same one Carter had had to hide that entire assignment. One of the worst of his career. The desert and all of its ghosts were better than that particular tour of duty.
“Accurate,” he said, then, hand at the small of Lincoln’s back, started them walking again.
“But I did it because I was an FBI agent investigating suspected abuse of collegiate athletes. And sure enough, at a fundraiser for her father and his rich white evangelical cronies, I walked in on the senator and two other men forcing themselves on a scholarship athlete.”
Lincoln gasped and missed a step. Carter wrapped a hand around the strap of his messenger bag to keep him upright. “That was you?” he said. “You broke that case?”
It was the biggest bust of Carter’s FBI career, one he was particularly proud of.
He was a foster kid; he knew what it felt like to be cornered without a choice.
Those scholarship athletes had been in a similar position, forced to suffer abuse or else lose their place on the team and a shot at a better future.
But Carter had asked that his involvement in the case be kept confidential.
He’d wanted the spotlight to remain on the victims, on the corruption that had led to the abuse, and on the assholes who were stripped of their political offices and jailed.
He’d also wanted to continue undercover work, which meant his face couldn’t be splashed all over the news.
“It was,” he said. “Now you’re facing a similar dilemma. Do you want to be the one who breaks this case? Who finally catches Dr. Fear? You said you’d do anything to bring Kirk’s kid home.”
Lincoln cursed and plowed a hand through his hair, leaving the blond-and-silver strands askew. “You don’t understand,” he said, voice plaintive. “I don’t—can’t—play in front of people.”
Ah, so this was a double whammy for Lincoln. Carter gentled his push, understanding better how big an ask this was. But there was so much else on the line too—two lives and possibly more. “Not even for Ruby Kirk?”
Lincoln released a heavy, resigned sigh. “I’ll consider it, though fair warning, I might burst into flames the second I step inside the building.”
“No might about me.” Laughter broke the tension that had wormed its way between them, and Carter aimed to chase it farther away. “You’re better at this undercover stuff than you think.”
“I was a terrible field agent.”
“I heard.”
Lincoln chuckled. “I see my reputation precedes me too.”
“Except fieldwork as an agent and fieldwork undercover are two very different things. We’re doing our job here but we’re also playing a role.”
Beside him, Lincoln missed another step, but he corrected before Carter had to catch him again. “Sorry, I’m not the best in winter weather. I haven’t worn these boots in three years. Last time—” He cut off his nervous ramble, about what Carter didn’t know, and waved a hand at him. “Sorry, go on.”
Carter struggled to remember what he was saying, the blush on the professor’s cheeks distracting.
The attractive color streaking over pale skin had damn near killed him back in the café.
Depending on how long this case lasted, it might kill him still.
Not a bad way to go. Cause of death: too hot for teacher.
“The role,” Lincoln prompted as he veered toward the library.
Carter gently tugged his elbow the opposite direction toward the surprise that had thankfully come together in time.
He picked up his undercover tutorial before Lincoln asked about the redirect.
“Sometimes a role is easier to slip into than talking to witnesses or questioning suspects. Professor Polk asking questions is very different from Agent Monroe asking them.”
Light brown eyes flickered to the side, considering him with something like gratitude and awe, a potent cocktail. “You’re good at this.”
“As I said.”
“Okay, question then. Where are we going? Because the library was back that way.” He jutted a thumb over his shoulder. “And if I recall the campus map correctly, this is a biology building.” He nudged an orange plastic post with his foot. “That’s apparently under construction.”
“You recall correctly. This is Parness Hall, biology department.” Carter followed the footpath around to the building’s side entrance. “It’s closed until summer while they finish remodeling the bottom two floors.”
“And the top two?”
Carter withdrew a key card from his pocket and waved it in front of the card reader. The lock audibly disengaged, and Carter pushed open the door for Lincoln. “After you, Professor.”
“You said last night we didn’t have after-hours access.”
“To the library.” He withdrew a second card and handed it to Lincoln. “Susanne brought these last night. They’re not keyed for the library, though.”
“I’m not a fan of surprises.”
“Trust me,” Carter said with a wink. “I think you’ll be a fan of this one.” He hoped so. Carter was eager to prove to Lincoln that he was good at more than just playing the cover.
Inside, they dodged stacks of plastic-covered construction supplies to reach the stairwell door.
The key card granted them access, and they climbed two flights to the third floor, emerging into a different world.
As Carter had hoped. No plastic tarps, no pallets of tools and equipment, no lingering construction dust. Just bright shiny floors, clean white walls, and empty labs waiting to be filled.
And a dark-haired man dressed in a three-piece suit, waiting outside a door halfway down the hallway.
“Chancellor McCullough?” Carter asked. He’d looked up the chancellor on Apex U’s website, and Carter was fairly certain this was him, but the Ryan McCullough in the profile photo on the website didn’t have the deep lines around his eyes or the thinning hair of Ryan McCullough in person.
“That’s me,” the chancellor said. “Are you—” He cut himself off, gaze shifting between Carter and Lincoln. “I spoke with someone . . . from DC.”
“That was me,” Carter said, dropping the Southern accent for the neutral, unaccented one he typically used for business calls, including the one he’d made to McCullough yesterday.
Carter reached into his pocket and withdrew his FBI credentials.
“Special Agent Carter Warren,” he said, holding the badge out to McCullough.
“And this is my partner, Agent Lincoln Monroe.”
Lincoln likewise handed over his badge, which the chancellor cursorily glanced at before passing both of them back.
“Sorry about that,” McCullough said. “I mean, of course you’re them. You’ve got the key card I sent over with Susanne. I put it in the usual welcome package for new faculty, hoping she wouldn’t . . . This is just—”
“Unusual,” Carter supplied.
“To say the least,” he said with a kind smile, and Carter thought perhaps he’d misjudged those deep grooves around the other man’s eyes. “And please, call me Ryan. I’m so sorry I missed the welcome party last night.”
Handshakes and pleasantries were exchanged, Carter doing most of the talking. Lincoln was relatively quiet, seemingly more interested in their surroundings. Part of the awkward agent bit? Or just the excited nerd?
Ryan picked up on it too and held out a ring of keys to Lincoln. “I’m guessing these are for you.”
Forehead wrinkled, Lincoln looked from Ryan, to the keys, to Carter. “I thought I was working at the library?”
“But it’s not just about the archives, is it?” Carter said.
With Lincoln frozen in some sort of shocked stasis, Carter accepted the keys from Ryan, opened the lab door, and gently pushed Lincoln inside.
Carter surveyed the room. Two long lab benches, desks at the far end along the windows, a principal investigator’s private office in one corner, and all the equipment Carter had requested.
A fume hood in one corner, and spread out on benches: microscopes, chromatographs, spectrometers, a DNA sequencer, and all the necessary peripherals, plus other crime lab basics such as powders, brushes, and tapes.
At the desks, two docking stations with keyboards, monitors, and mice awaited their laptops, and the office had been transformed into a temporary dark room, suitable for photo processing.
Carter tossed his coat on the closest stool. “Any questions about the setup requests?” he asked the chancellor.
Ryan shook his head. “Snagged the DNA sequencer from a genetics professor’s lab. He’s on sabbatical this semester. The rest will be perfect for the crystallography professor we’re wooing. He’s scheduled to visit later this month.”
A few feet in front of them, Lincoln rotated in place, taking in the space. “You remembered all this from class?”
The wonder in his eyes was intoxicating. So much so that Carter backtracked before he got drunk on it in Ryan’s presence. “Mostly, though I called your assistant a half dozen times to confirm.”