The music clicked off. “This is Bear. With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
The cultured reply left me briefly at a loss for words. “Er, it’s Angel.”
“Hey, Hank. I’ll have to get back to you on that Brockman rifle. I’m still waiting to hear from the company rep.”
“Um, I think you’re on the wrong line. This is Angel.”
“Nope, I’m not wrong. I’ll give you a call when something changes. Have yourself a good day now.” He hung up.
That was either the weirdest conversation in history, or he didn’t want whoever was with him to know it was me on the phone. I didn’t like the thought of that.
I hunted down Raul and got one of the listening device scanner things then left the lab. I was almost to Tucker Point Community College when my phone rang. Unknown number, which usually meant either a telemarketer or someone insisting they could fix my computer over the phone if I gave them my credit card number. I declined the call, but a few seconds later it rang again from the same number.
Hmm. Telemarketers and scam artists didn’t usually call right back. “Hello?”
“Angel. It’s Bear.”
“Dude. What was that all about when I called the store? And are you using a burner phone?”
“Yes, I am. There was an FBI agent here. Sorsha Aberdeen. Asking questions about you and Dante Rosario and your dad.”
“My dad! What was she asking?”
“Fishing around mostly. Like if I’d ever noticed anything unusual. I told her I hadn’t seen you or Dante since Mardi Gras, and I wouldn’t know your dad from Adam.”
“Well, shit.” I scowled. “I saw her out on Highway 51 yesterday arresting some guy. I wonder if there’s a connection.” I needed to tug some strings and find out why she had him stopped.
“Worth looking into,” Bear said. “What did you call about earlier?”
“To tell you to keep your people out of Mudsucker Swamp. Hell, stay clear of any place with alligators.”
“Yeah, Nick told me.”
“Oh. How much did he say?”
“That there are some screwed up gators who can make people sick. Like you. But mindless.”
I blew out my breath. “That about covers it.”
“You need any help dealing with it?”
“I might,” I said, grimacing. “I’ll let you know.”
“Do so. And be careful.”
• • •
I loved biology. Loved it. It was fascinating and cool and right up my alley.
The professor, not so much. Mr. Dingle seemed vitally interested in making sure everyone knew precisely how very smart he was and how fortunate we were to be in his class. Meanwhile, I was like, Dude, this isn’t Harvard. You’re teaching at a community college in bumfuck Louisiana.
It probably didn’t help my attitude that I worked every day in a real lab.
I plopped my backpack on the floor by a lab bench and parked myself on the stool. We’d already dissected formalin-preserved earthworms and grasshoppers, but during our last class, Mr. Dingle had said he was going to have a surprise for us on lab day. Gee wow. Yawn. I dissected people for a living. I doubted his surprise would thrill me.
Most of my classmates chatted or played with their cell phones. One woman at the back bench frantically flipped through notes. Isabella Romero, or something close to it. About my age. Raising a kid on her own.
The instant the clock ticked to the hour, Mr. Dingle strolled in—a gangly man with a wispy, mouse-brown combover. He placed a covered, clear plastic bin the size of a shoebox on the table. Inside, a live frog hunkered, looking lonely and pitiful.
He called the class to order and held up an instrument with a wooden handle and metal pointy end, like a mini ice pick. “This probe,” he said as if announcing an Oscar winner, “will be used as a pith tool.”
I sucked in a breath. “You’re going to kill that poor little frog?” I blurted, aghast.
His lips separated to show teeth in a godawful abortion of a smile. “First off, you will pith your frog. Second, if you double pith the frog exactly as I instruct, you will destroy the brain and spinal cord. The creature will be mindless and pain-free, but very much functionally alive. Third,” he said, before I could point out how much worse that was, “I’m not going to make you do anything.” His mouth widened. “However, anyone who does not follow the proper procedures—which happen to include pithing your frog—will simply receive a grade of zero for this lab.”
Groans and mutters rippled through the class.
A curly-headed guy I didn’t know raised his hand. “Are we all going to dissect that one frog?”
A whisper of existential ennui flashed over the professor’s face. “No, Mr. Jenkins,” he said through his teeth. “The rest of the frogs are in a tank in the supply room at the end of the hall. After I lecture, we will all walk down there, and I will—yes, Ms. Sanders?”
A girl nearly as scrawny as me lowered her hand. “Why do we have to learn about frog guts anyway? It’s sooooo stupid.”
“Comparative anatomy, Ms. Sanders,” he bit out. “Though I don’t expect you’ll take much away from the exercise.”
I hid a scowl. If the dude wasn’t such a tool, I might almost feel sorry for him having to deal with students who either didn’t appreciate or didn’t really want an education. But anything a bunch of newbie biology students could learn from a pithed frog could just as easily be learned from frogs pre-killed and nicely packed in formalin. And yeah, they’d end up dead either way, but there was no way this group would get the pithing right on the first try. And the gleam in Dingle’s eyes told me he wanted us to pith the fucking frogs ourselves because he was an asshole. Asssssshoooooole.
But mostly, I didn’t want to kill a frog. Sure, I’d killed humans—when they were trying to kill or hurt me or my friends. Even when it was “justified,” it still sucked. Besides, the frogs weren’t trying to kill me.
“Ms. Romero!” Dingle snapped.
Isabella fumbled her phone, and it crashed to the floor. “Yes, sir?”
“Some of us are trying to learn.” He whacked his workbench with the flat of his hand. The poor frog flinched. “Phone. Here. Now.”
“But my kid’s sick. I was just check—”
“Now, Romero.”
I fisted my hands to keep from flipping Dingle off as Isabella slunk to the front and deposited the phone. Dingle-the-Dick got off on embarrassing people. He’d tried that crap with me once, but this small-minded asshole couldn’t touch me. I’d been through hell and back.
After she returned to her seat, Dingle droned on about the differences and similarities between human and frog internal anatomy. I felt safe enough tuning out since I’d seen more human organs than this guy ever would. Much more important was the issue of the frogs. If anyone could liberate them, it was me.
My gaze went to the door. The science building had been built in the fifties and never been modernized—which meant there were still transoms for ventilation.
The plan came together in my head. I shot my hand up.
Dingle glared at me. “What is it, Ms. Crawford?”
“I need to use the restroom.”
“You should have taken care of that before class.”
“It’s a female problem!”
His eyes narrowed while I put on a desperate and horrified expression. But since I was undeniably female, he could hardly insist I was lying.
“Go.” As he snarled the word, I activated a dose of combat mod.
It slammed through me, charging every cell with hyper-potential. The hardest part was walking at a normal-hurry speed to the door while the modified and concentrated parasite stimulant coursed through my body. But the instant I closed the door behind me—and made sure there was no one in the hall—I used every fucking molecule of that mod.
I
sprinted to the end of the corridor, breaking every Olympic record for the next twenty years. At the supply room door, I jumped and caught the top of the jamb, then did a one-arm pullup and held myself there while I propped the transom open with my other hand. With the ease of breathing, I pulled myself up and through the transom, twisting in midair to land in a crouch. I was winning all the Olympic medals.
I’d been in here before, so I knew there were several five-gallon buckets in the corner. At super-speed, I grabbed one. Uncovered the tank. Scooped frogs and water. Placed the lid on loosely. Opened the window. Set the bucket against the wall outside. Closed and locked the window. All in the span of about fifteen seconds.
Getting out was simple—jump up, make sure the coast is clear, dive through, twist and land, another one-arm pullup to close the transom. Then sprint like hell back.
I stopped before the lab door and slowed my breathing, ran my hands over my hair to smooth any scraggly bits, then walked in nice and calm-like.
Dingle broke off mid-word and narrowed his eyes at me. My pulse quickened in response. Did I have frog goo on me somewhere? Had he heard me running?
“That didn’t take very long,” he said. “I thought you were having female troubles.”
“False alarm,” I said with a cheery shrug. “You know how it is. You feel a bit squishy, and you’re not sure if it’s just crotch sweat or—”
“I do not require an explanation,” he gritted out. Someone tittered, and his scowl deepened. “If we are quite finished learning about Angel Crawford’s reproductive system, perhaps we can commence the lab portion of this class. Everyone follow me.”
I summoned a placid expression and dutifully marched after him to the storage room. Dingle pulled a set of keys from a pocket, unlocked the deadbolt, and marched into the room. “You will enter one at a time and take an empty container from the shelf,” he announced. “I will place your frog in your container and then the next student . . .” He trailed off as he came into view of the tank and its distinct lack of frogs. “What the fuck.” He whirled, scanning the room as if hoping they’d taken up residence elsewhere. “This . . . this is impossible. I checked the tank right before class.” His mouth tightened. “Crawford! Did you do something to the frogs?”
I widened my eyes in shocked innocence, but the rest of the class leaped to my defense.
“She was only gone a minute,” Curly-headed Guy said.
“The door was locked,” another student pointed out.
Dingle slowly turned. “The transom. You could have climbed in over the transom!”
I scoffed. “Do you see how short I am?”
“She’s right, prof,” a guy said who was at least a foot taller than me. “And even if she could jump that high, she doesn’t have the muscle tone to haul herself up.”
“Um, thanks?”
Dingle moved to the window and checked the lock. I watched, tense. If he got close to the glass and looked down, he’d see the bucket.
But Dingle apparently decided the intruder would have a hard time locking the window behind him, and the bushes outside were deterrent enough. He stepped away from the window, subdued. Dejected, even. If he wasn’t such a flaming turdblossom, I wouldn’t have been forced to ruin his day.
“Very well,” he said, all trace of arrogance gone. “We shall return to the lab and,” he sighed, “do a virtual dissection online.”
As we filed toward the lab, Curly-headed Guy leaned close. “I don’t know how the hell you did it, but I owe you a beer.”
I masked a grin, but an instant later my breath caught. I’d forgotten all about the frog on the front table. I needed to find a way to save him, too. Knowing Dingle, he’d take his frustration out on the poor thing. Unfortunately, the only rescue plan I could think of involved liquid nitrogen and a tub of peanut butter. Not terribly feasible.
We shuffled into the room, and I cast a forlorn glance at the container on the front workbench.
The empty container. Still covered. Hot diggety damn, someone else in the class had risen to the challenge.
Dingle entered last then stopped dead as he registered the frog’s absence. His shoulders sagged.
“You have five minutes to go over your notes,” he muttered. “I . . . need a moment.”
He turned and slumped out of the room. I bit my lip against a laugh and sent silent thanks to the unknown hero who’d rescued the last little froggy.
Chapter 12
After the class finally let out, I dawdled outside the building, pretending to be on my phone as I made sure Dingle was indeed headed to his office in the next building over. I carefully checked my surroundings for possible witnesses, pausing as I caught sight of Isabella striding briskly toward the parking lot. When she reached the sidewalk, she stopped and set her bag down, then crouched and peeked into her lunch box. Apparently satisfied with what she saw, she closed it, stuffed it into her bag, and hurried off.
“Oh, Isabella, you sneaky little minx,” I murmured with a mixture of delight and admiration. If that wasn’t a frog in her lunch box, I’d eat my backpack.
With that particular mystery solved, I slipped behind the bushes and retrieved the bucket of frogs with—crossing fingers—no one the wiser. Getting them to my car was a bit more challenging, especially since the only available parking had been somewhere near the rings of Saturn. Halfway there I had to stop and secure the lid after nearly sloshing a frog out. But the gods must have been smiling upon me, because no one seemed to notice or care that I was lugging a heavy bucket across the parking lot. Arms aching, I eventually reached my car and jammed the bucket behind the passenger seat—securely enough, I hoped, that it wouldn’t tip over and turn my car into a traveling pond. Of course then I worried about them suffocating with the lid closed. After all, there were a lot of frogs in there.
I solved the problem by digging a pocket knife out of my console and cutting a fist-sized hole in the lid. There. Frogs could breathe, and sloshing water and frogs would still be contained.
Whistling “Rainbow Connection,” I got the hell out of there.
Though I’d never performed a heroic frog rescue before, I knew the very best place to give them their freedom. A few months ago, I’d picked up a body in Belle Maison Estates, about ten miles north of Tucker Point. On my way out of the subdivision, I got lost and ended up driving around the prettiest pond I’d ever seen. The frogs would love it. And with nearly an hour before I had to be at work, I might even have a bit of chillout me-time after I liberated the captives.
Belle Maison Estates was a gated community, but like darn near every other gated community I’d been to, the gates stood open during the day. Made me wonder what the point was. Did they think Bad People only came out at night? Plus, did they realize how laughingly easy it was to get in, even with the gates closed? All you had to do was follow another car in. I snickered as I sailed through the impressive, open, and pointless gates. Security theater. Make things look safer and more secure, without actually being so.
Other than the silliness with the gates, there was a lot to like about the place. I made my way down peaceful, winding roads, past lovely, large houses on lovely, large lots. Walking trails wound throughout the neighborhood, and there were trees everywhere. It was obvious you had to have a lot of money to live here, but it wasn’t obnoxious and in-your-face about it. Classy. Like a genteel Southern lady.
After several turns, I took a road that circled the pond and rejoined itself, like the eye of a needle. About a third of the way around, I parked in a space nestled in a grove of flowering trees, then unloaded the bucket, relieved to see that only a little water had splashed out.
I followed a path through the grove and to the water’s edge. The pond was sort of a squished oval shape, measuring about a hundred yards at its longest point. Wildflowers bloomed along the banks amidst reeds and cattails, turtles sunned themselves on a partially s
ubmerged log, and butterflies flitted everywhere. A shaded walking trail offered exercise with a lovely view, and every thirty or forty yards a wrought iron bench rested beneath mature oaks.
It was gorgeous. I seriously needed to get rich so I could live here.
A woman with sleek, salt-and-pepper hair caught up in a tidy bun strolled down the trail toward me. A shaggy, mixed-breed dog padded by her side, tongue lolling.
She waved. “Hello there!”
Crap. Suddenly the bucket felt very conspicuous. I hadn’t planned what to say if asked why I was dumping frogs in the pond. “Hiya!” I replied with a bright smile. “Nice day, huh?”
She approached and peered into my bucket. The big dog sat without command, ears perked.
“Parish project,” I blurted. “Um, repopulating local habitats.”
“I wasn’t aware local frogs were on the decline,” she said, accent smooth and midwestern. She tilted her head, amusement dancing in her eyes.
I scrambled to come up with my next line, but there was something disarming about this woman. “You know I’m lying through my teeth.”
She laughed. “You have a passel of Rana pipiens—all the same size, so probably raised in captivity—in a bucket stenciled TPCC, not St. Edwards Parish.”
“Oh. Crap.” I squinted at the frogs then at her. “Wait. You know what species of frog they are?”
“Only because it’s the most common one used in labs.” She chuckled. “And I have a PhD in conservation biology with a specialty in riparian environments.”
“Well, I could not be any more busted,” I said ruefully. “Our jerk of a professor wanted us to pith these guys.” I made a face. “It just didn’t seem right to let them be killed by a bunch of students who don’t give a rat’s ass about learning. And what does ‘riparian’ mean?”
“The area between land and a river, stream, or bayou,” she said without the slightest hint of condescension. “The banks, to put it simply.” Her smile warmed. “In other words, I completely support your rescue of these frogs. Besides, with all the new video tech, there’s no need for undergrads to work on live animals. Some states don’t allow it.” She grabbed the bucket handle with me. “We’d better be quick before someone from the homeowners association comes through. They’d raise a ruckus over your little relocation project.”