AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sure, if I can help.”
“Can you run up to the lab and check the safe? I had a backup prototype in there. I asked one of my partners to pick it up, but I don’t know if she left with it yet. And I can’t reach her.”
“Sure, I can check that out. Give me a few minutes I’ll get right back to you. This number good?”
Harrison said it was and disconnected. Three minutes later, his phone chimed, and he read the text aloud. “‘The safe in your research lab is open and empty. Sending photo.’”
The photo appeared. It showed the open safe in the wall of the inner lab. Then he frowned and looked closer. “What’s that on the door, near the keypad?” You could only glimpse the red smudge from a sharp angle.
Maria leaned in as Harrison expanded the image on his screen. Then he shook his head in frustration and quickly tapped-out another message.
Harrison: Show me the front of the safe door, please.
Ellipses appeared immediately. Seconds later, a new photo popped up. It was a clear shot of the safe’s ten-button keypad, with a smear of something red across its face.
“Holy Moses,” Maria whispered. “That looks like blood.”
Willow offered to drive them back to the ranch, but Maria said her van was parked at her mom’s and they could just walk over and get it. So she and Harry were walking side by side through downtown Quinn, and Maria was trying to see it through his eyes, as if it were the first time she’d been there.
The buildings were one- and two-story structures of brick and adobe. The lampposts were evenly spaced. Their green metal bases supported curlicue arms from which the lamps were suspended. The sidewalks bordering Main Street were cracked but functional. They strolled past the diner, the bakery, the jewelry store, the bank. There was only one of each.
“No Dunkin’, or Starbucks, or Burger King here, huh?”
“Not a one,” Maria said. “We don’t let ’em into town. Quinn Chamber of Commerce has some muscle, and Quinn County backs ’em up. Every business in town limits is privately owned. No chains allowed.”
“I like it.”
“I love it here. I never want to leave.”
They reached the end of the sidewalk and crossed a side street. The house where she’d grown up was a red adobe cottage with a matching building beside it, bigger than the house itself. They sat side by side amid lush green lawns. There was one vehicle in the driveway, her white Ford Transit Van. “Brand Monroe Veterinary Clinic” was painted on the side, the words forming a circle around the X logo of the Texas Brand, also featured on the arch over the ranch’s driveway.
She pointed and said, “Mom and Dad live right there, in the house. The clinic used to be next door, but Dad’s been slowlyconverting it back into a garage ever since mom bought a bigger space out on Bluebonnet Lane— another reason I want to live there. I’ll be able to walk to work.”
“In spite of all this insanity,” he said, “I’m kind of dying to see the place.”
“The clinic?”
“Bluebonnet Lane,” he said. “I noticed the book you were reading with the same name.”
She laughed. “How could I resist that title?”
“You couldn’t,” he said.
She liked the way he smiled down at her when he talked to her. Something stirred in her belly. Billy Bob’s smile had never stirred anything in her belly.
“Did the story live up to the title?” Harry asked.
“So far, so good,” she said. And she wasn’t talking about the book. There was something going on here. At least she thought there was.
“Romance, huh?”
She jumped a little, like he’d asked the question because he was reading her mind. But then she remembered they’d been talking about a book, so she nodded. “My favorite genre. In the best ones, there’s always big trouble, but a plucky female lead finds her way through it, falls in love in the process, then triumphs over every challenge and winds up with the sexy male lead pledgin’ his devotion. They’re upliftin’.”
“That explains their popularity.”
“I think so. What do you like to read?”
“Non-fiction. Mostly articles and papers by others working in renewable energy research.” He took a breath, and said, “I’m restless. I feel like I should be doing something, but there’s nothing I can do. It’s frustrating.”
