Page 48 of Ghosted in Arkadia
“About what?” Killian asks as he walks through the door.
“Who Kira was with yesterday.” James turns in Killian’s direction.
“Kira was at my house yesterday. Why?”
James looks back at me, a single eyebrow raised. I roll my eyes and scoff at the insinuation.
“Wait a minute.” Killian stops and looks at me for an extended moment. “You have makeup on.”
“That’s it. I’m never coming to work with makeup on ever again. You all act like you’ve never seen—"
“Woah,” Captain interjects, cutting me off. “Kira. Is, umm…” He looks between James and Killian, then back at me again. “You look good this morning.”
I beam a fake smile. “Thank you, Captain.” I give a pointed stare to James and Killian, “That, boys, is how you give a compliment.”
Captain nods like he’s surprised to have gotten the interaction correct before continuing on towards his office. I turn my attention to my tablet, ignoring James and Killian while hoping they decide to drop the subject of my painted face.
It was a stupid thing to do. I need to just keep pretending to be the old me for a little longer.
My tablet powers on, the battery is full, and I have access to more than enough files to keep me busy for the next week. There needs to be one that gives me something on Roman. I open the first document, and it nearly makes my eyes cross when I recognize the now familiar handwriting of the mad scientist.
This shit doesn’t even make sense.
Roman’s name pops out at me. Whether written by an insane god-complex ridden nutjob or not, this is the kind of information that could be the break in the case we need.
Do NOT allow Roman unsupervised interaction with juvenile T13 females. That line feels the most unsettling. It makes my skin crawl.
“What the fuck were you getting your hands in, Al?” I mutter, looking at the margins to see if there is a date or year written to give me a vague idea of when these “experiments” took place.
“Doing alright over there, princess?”
I flash my tablet screen in Killian’s direction. “Just more mad scientist ramblings.”
“That shit’s likely to make anyone’s head hurt.” Killian gives a slightly lopsided smirk before turning his attention back to his tablet.
“Hey,” I say, and Killian looks back at me. “Do you know anything about a lab? It looks like Roman’s mad scientist was experimenting on people. Maybe that’s our ticket to putting him behind bars.”
“Umm,” Killian’s brow furrows. He swipes through a few documents on his tablet. “I’ve seen it mentioned, but never with a location. There might be something in the blueprint folders, but I think most of those are with the techies. I can e-mail Zac and see if he’s come across anything.”
The name Zac sends off alarm bells. Fuck. I need to visit Vicky and have the DNA trail disappear, which also means another trip to Café Joe.
“Hey Killian, you wanna grab some coffee with me at lunch?”
“I’ve officially died and gone to heaven. There is no way coffee can be this good.” Killian groans, deeply inhaling the swirling mist rising from his cup. I expected him to order a black coffee, but he surprised me by getting salted caramel, without cream.
I beam a smile as I take a sip of my white-chocolate, praline, extra cream, extra whip. The shop is designed in pastel while the smooth aroma of caffeine and baked sweets wafts through the air. Vicky’s specialty sits between us, but Killian hasn’t asked who it’s for.
“So, you think you might have something on Roman, if we find this mad scientist’s lab?” Killian leans back, getting comfortable in the booth.
“I don’t know. I’m just saying I’m pretty sure Al was experimenting on something, and it sounded a lot like people. Roman’s name was on the document. If we figure out what was going on, Roman’s involvement might be enough to get him into the courtroom.”
“Al?”
I nod. “The mad scientist. A.L. That’s how he signs the pages. No dates as far as I’ve seen.”
“And I’m guessing he didn’t specifywhichRoman he was working with,” Killian says bringing up something I hadn’t thought of.
“He could be talking about Bill Roman’s father, Nigel.”
