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“You’rea tool.” Opening the car door, I slide in and wait for Fletch to follow and pass me the keys. “And a business card? Really?”
“What? If he’s innocent, he’ll call. If he’s not, we’ll know to come back this afternoon and try again.”
“Why? So you can continue your date with the wrinkly old woman?”
“Don’t call her wrinkly!” Faux offended, Fletch slaps the keys into my hand and reaches back to fix his seatbelt. “She doesn’t like you because you’re simply not very nice.”
“Uh-huh. And I bet all the women you’ve run through in the last year alone consider you extremely nice.”
He snorts. “As a matter of fact, they do. I’m a gentleman. You know that.”
“I know you’re a fuckin’ douchebag.” I start the car and slowly move back into traffic. “You’d fuck anyone with legs.”
“Well, now you’re just being ableist. I may have a thing for dancers legs, but womenwithoutlegs are beautiful too, ya know? They deserve love.”
I turn to him, questioning if it’s his sanity we’re missing, or mine, but all I manage is to shake my head and look back at the traffic. “Give me Anton’s address before I knock you the fuck out.”
Amused, he only checks his phone and the reports I already emailed him. “I don’t know what Delicious sees in you, Arch. She has the choice of either of us. Lord knows, I’ve offered.”
When I glance across at him, he literally bounces in his seat from muted laughter. “I just don’t get why she chooses you, when she could have me.”
“Probably because you’re an idiot. What’s the address?”
MINKA
“So, this is called a lab.”
I lead Mia through my building, making sure to avoid the freezers on level two, and the dead bodies on level nine. Since the chances of scarring a little girl with images she’ll never unsee inside this building are high, I keep us around the scientists, whose clothes, beneath their white lab coats, range every color of the rainbow.
Doctor Raquel is a woman in her early thirties who enjoys military boots and short skirts. Her hair is platinum-blonde, her eyes, an electric blue. And when she’s feeling frisky—which happens to be today, it seems—she wears sexy red lipstick that makes her entire face pop.
While she zooms around the lab like a bunny hopped up on cocaine, Mia’s eyes grow wide as saucers and watch on.
“Doctor Raquel works toxicology.” I continue with my pseudo tour, and considering I need answers on Melissa Boyd’s screening, I can still say I’m being productive while babysitting a preschooler. “To be a toxicologist,” I explain, “means to be a biologist who studies what happens when we cross chemical substances with living organisms.”
“I don’t…” Mia watches Raquel rush from one table to another. “What?”
Aubree sniggers on my right. “That sentence was way too long, with words way too big.” Looking down at Mia, she says, “Doctor Raquel gets to look at cool things under a microscope! She sees chemicals and stuff, but with super bionic eyes.”
“Yeah,” I drawl. “That was a much better explanation.”
“I’m doing my best!” she hisses.
Though Mia has held my hand every step of our tour so far, she tugs free now and wanders a little closer to a practically vibrating Raquel. I keep my eyes on her. My hands empty, in case I have to grab her. But this lab is as safe a place as any other, and though I promised to get the girl to daycare, we’re yet to leave the building.
“So, a random dude just… started watching her?”
Aubree has always been skilled at reading what’s on my mind.
“Well… no. Not exactly. He was checking us both out. Listening to our conversation.”
“And you didn’t call the guyswhy?”
“He wasn’t imposing,” I murmur. “Not really. It’s almost like he was people-watching. He happened to look down at Mia for a moment. He looked at me too. Then he overheard Mia mention Fletch on the TV. But he was clearly watching us closely enough to know Mia forgot her monkey. He ran outside with it, like, twenty seconds later.”
“You don’t know who he was?”
“No.” I watch on as Mia reaches up with slow hands and almost touches a tray of slides before Raquel rushes in and swoops them out of reach. “I’m good with faces, Aubree. I’ve always been good with faces, but this one felt…” I consider for a moment. “Off, I guess.”
