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“Hi, this is Angel Crawford—”
“Oh! Thank you so much for returning my call so quickly.” She gave a warm chuckle. “The instant I left the message I realized how odd this might be, but I knew that calling back and saying never mind would be even creepier. However, I enjoyed talking with you yesterday, and since I ha
ve to be in town this afternoon, I was wondering if you’d like to grab coffee together?” She said it all in what felt like a nervous rush, which of course made me like her all the more.
“I’d love that,” I said and thought I heard a relieved breath on the other end. “I have class at one today, so would noon work?”
“That’s perfect. Is Dear John’s Café all right? It’s not far from the campus.”
“I know it well,” I said. “That totally works.”
“Excellent! I’ll see you then.”
I hung up, mood improved about a billion percent.
As I made the turn onto the road that led to the lab, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. A quick glance toward the passenger seat revealed nothing, though. Probably a trick of the light. The dappled sunlight cast shifting patterns, making it easy to think there was—
Something furry and rat-sized launched itself at my face. I reacted in the only possible way—shrieked, batted it frantically away, and slammed on the brakes. The instant the car stopped, I threw it into park then bailed out and didn’t stop running until I was a good twenty feet away. Only then did I turn and warily peer at the car. The driver’s door stood open, but I couldn’t see any sign of a rat or bat or whatever the hell had tried to attack me.
Jesus, Angel. You’ve gone up against trained mercenaries. And you’re acting like a weenie about a rodent?
Yeah, well, I’d yet to come across a mercenary who was weird and squirmy and jumped at my face out of nowhere.
I squared my shoulders and crept toward the open door. The Thing jumped onto the passenger seat, and I backpedaled—fast—in case it decided to lunge for my throat. But it remained motionless.
I eased closer. Not a murderous rat-bat at all, but a frog covered in hair and fuzz and dirt and god knows what else it had picked up from the floorboard of my car.
“Oh, you poor thing!” I scooped it up, wincing at all the stuff that clung to its skin. “You escaped the bucket only to spend the whole night in my car? I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.” I looked around for a ditch or some other froggy-friendly body of water, but it hadn’t rained in a while, and the ditches were all dry. And no way could I let the frog go by the side of the road.
“Well, Mr. Fluffy, how about I take you someplace I can clean you up?” I didn’t have anything in my car I could put him in, so I set him gently on the passenger seat. “But don’t jump at my face again, ’kay?”
The frog simply stared at me, which I took as a solemn promise to not cause any trouble.
A couple of minutes later, I pulled into the lab parking lot, scooped Mr. Fluffy up and headed inside. Once we were both cleared through security, I took the frog to the nearest procedure room and washed him off in the sink, then left him there while I hunted through cabinets for a suitable froggy container.
Pierce stepped in. “Angel, I need you to—” He startled as the frog let out a deep crooooooak—made even more impressive by the resonance of the metal sink. “What the hell?”
“That’s Mr. Fluffy,” I explained. “My biology prof is an ass and was going to have us kill our own frogs before we dissected them, so I rescued the frogs and set them all free. But this one must’ve escaped the bucket in my car, and I found him only a few minutes ago.”
He scoffed. “Mr. Fluffy? It’s a frog.”
I smiled sweetly. “Yeah, well, it’s kind of like how I sometimes think of you as Mr. Happy.”
A flicker of amusement passed over his face, but then he sobered and stepped close. “Have you ever knowingly passed information relative to the Tribe or operations in this lab to Saberton or other potentially hostile outsiders?”
An indignant reply sprang to my lips, but I held it back as his nostrils flared. He was scenting me. My outrage dissipated. Old zombies like Pierce and Dr. Nikas were walking lie detectors—better than any polygraph. Everyone was getting this treatment. It wasn’t personal.
“No,” I said.
A pause, a sniff, and then, “Are you aware of anyone else doing so?”
“No.”
“Where does your loyalty lie?”
This one was a little annoying. If he expected me to pledge my allegiance to the Tribe, he was going to be sorely disappointed. I folded my arms over my chest. “To the preservation and protection of all zombies.”
A low snort escaped him before he stepped back. He didn’t seem upset by my answer, though. “Once you’ve finished with your new pet, I need you in the north conference room. Meeting starts in five minutes.”
