World of no. “Where’s Trina?”
Elena flicked her eyes at him, then to the phone. She tapped at the screen left-handed while her right one continued to manipulate the laptop mouse. “She’s almost here, and you forgot your toiletry kit.”
“Fuck!” He scurried back to the bathroom and grabbed it off the vanity. It wasn’t like he never traveled. Elena often had this or that sporting event, this or that quiz bowl competition, but he never needed more than a duffel and toothbrush for those trips. And they were always on the schedule, well in advance. He thrived on planning, not so much on uprooting his life. That was Gabby’s deal, not his.
“Do you even remember how to be a field agent?” Elena asked.
He returned her earlier scowl.
“What?” she said, a finger yanking at one of her red-dyed ringlet curls. “When’s the last time you were in the field?”
“Before you were born.” No sense hiding the truth; she knew that much. When Gabby’s maternity leave was over, then her local stint with State was up and she was transferred to The Hague, Lincoln had happily stayed home on dad duty. He had likewise happily traded in his awkward field duty years in which he’d fumbled at interviewing subjects, fumbled at partnerships, fumbled at the whole Special Agent gig, for the lecture hall, the lab, and a nice townhome in Dumfries with his daughter.
“What are you going to be doing?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
He made one last trip to his closet, removed his service weapon from the safe, and tucked it and two clips of ammunition into the gun case he broke out once a year when he had to carry his firearm into Quantico for his annual range recertification.
“When’s the last time you fired that thing?” Elena asked.
He laid the hard-sided case atop his suitcase and glanced up. He cut off his flippant “Range Day” answer at seeing the worry on his daughter’s face—lines creasing her light brown forehead, dark brows pinched over narrowed honey-colored eyes, her top teeth digging into her bottom lip. It wasn’t an expression he saw often there—he’d worked damn hard to make sure of that—and now he’d gone and put it there.
“Hey,” he said, gentling his voice as he crossed the room and knelt beside her. “I’ll be fine, and I’ll have a partner.” Who was surely better at all the field agent stuff than him. Hopefully his new partner would still have Lincoln’s back once Lincoln made clear he was the expert on all things genealogy. “It’s a little college town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. How much trouble can I get into?”
Despite her still serious expression, Elena began humming, and after a few notes, Lincoln recognized the theme song from Deliverance.
Hands over his face, he groaned dramatically. “Fuck me, where did I go so wrong?”
“Would you like a list?”
“Shut it.” He stood and ruffled her springy dyed coils. “Seriously, I’m going undercover as Apex U’s new librarian. The town is smaller than Chapel Hill. I can’t get into that much trouble, and I’ll have backup.”
“Who’s your partner?”
“Don’t know yet.” He hadn’t asked. Beverley had gotten drawn into jurisdictional infighting, and Lincoln had fled the battle, more concerned with how he was going to access all his Dr. Fear research from afar.
“You done there?” he said as he reached behind her to grab his Martin off the corner guitar stand. He couldn’t go more than a few days without playing a tune, and he didn’t want to resort to playing spoons.
“That’s the last one done,” Elena replied with a victorious click.
“Thanks, sweetie.” He gave her a sideways hug before hauling his guitar case out from under the bed and tucking the acoustic inside. “And I promise, I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe you’ll get a sexy partner . . . the two of you in the mountains . . . snowed in . . .”
“How many hours of Hallmark movies did you watch over Christmas break?”
He feared the answer and was saved from it by two sharp raps on the front door. Their visitor didn’t wait to be let in, using her key and throwing open the door with a booming, “Yo, Monroes!”
His sister Katrina at her loudest, and with impeccable timing in this instance.
Except Elena wasn’t ready to let him off the hook yet. “I want pictures.” She looked and sounded so much like her mother that Lincoln had to laugh.
He dropped a kiss on her crown. “I want pictures too when you win that tourney.”
She beamed up at him. “Count on it.”
Two
