Page 78 of The Alpha Experiment
Tony made a few more thoughtful sounds, and I heard clicking. “I’m on their website,” he said. “Hum. Well, that’s definitely—wow, they have a pretty big Buddha, huh? Nice. Gorgeous statue. Although—huh, isn’t Buddha usually portrayed with snailsonhis head? Is his head actually a giant snail here? Wild.”
“Right?” I’d done a little more research on my own after I got home from the interview. The statue had been lovingly handmade in a Buddhist temple in Tibet, created specially for the college. I’d even dug up a photo of a group of smiling monks standing around the newly-completed work of art right before it was shipped off to California. “They’re a trip. But they need a chemistry teacher, they’re very friendly, and they’re near enough to—” I swallowed hard, the word still feeling awkward on my tongue. “—my mate to make it a good choice for me.”
“Oh yeah, Mere said you got mated recently, congrats,” he said easily. “Makes sense. But honestly, Newton, I think we could make this work. If they have a lab space you can take over, and you’re willing to allocate your initial funding to equipment upgrades, there’s no reason why you can’t work there instead of at your current institution. I’ll have to have legal get in touch with someone at your new employer, to work out the details of who owns the upgrades and yadda yadda, but those are just logistics.”
Excitement fizzed in my chest and bubbled up, almost spilling over into an embarrassingly enthusiastic stream of words. I managed to keep it to, “Thanks so much, Tony. That sounds incredible. And there’s nothing I’d love more than to make it work.”
“Me too,” he said, sounding gratifyingly sincere. “And oh yeah! I’m sending the link to Mere, but I don’t know if you’ve seen the news today? That was another reason why I called you today specifically. There’s been a big shake-up at Initech. Some falsified data, not sure where they would’ve gotten that from, and a certain Dr. Greenwald’s been fired in disgrace.” His tone skirted the line between professionalism and hand-rubbing delight. My face split into a grin I couldn’t contain. “Half the board had to resign, one of their FDA approvals got pulled because Greenwald’d been the lead on the project and everything he’s done is now suspect. Their stock’s tanking as we speak.”
Oh, my fucking gods. I was already opening my laptop, ready to search for the article. And then print it out, frame it in gold, and maybe blow it up into a poster.
“You have no idea how sorry I am to hear that,” I said, my voice shaking with suppressed laughter.
Tony let his own laugh come out, cackling down the line in a way that made me think he might actually, literally be rubbing his hands together in glee. “Me too, me too, Newton. Always terrible to see my direct competition go belly-up. A real shame.”
When Tony finally stopped laughing, we managed to exchange a few more pleasantries and a promise to be in touch soon, and then hang up at last.
I set down my phone and focused on the laptop. I’d found the article while ending the call:Senior Initech Researcher Implicated in Falsified Drug Approval; Lives at Risk.
A little sensational, considering I had no idea if he’d falsified anything else before I sent him my data, but it had the gist of the story right. Greenwald wasn’t just fired. He might be facing prison time and fines larger than ten years’ worth of my salary, not to mention the fines Initech would end up paying.
I sat back on the couch, stunned, still grinning like a loon. I felt like my whole world had just been upended, shaken, and tossed back together. Like someone had taken hold of my life’s snowglobe and turned it upside down.
And the future looked bright from this new perspective. Years of work I loved, easy classes to teach full of stoned, snail-loving, church-going hippies, mellow colleagues—and going home every night to Colin. Living in a pack again, which I honestly kind of missed—with Colin.
Meanwhile, Greenwald would be in prison, or at best living on that bus bench Meredith had predicted for him.
Should I send him a thank-you note, or maybe some money for bail? After all, if it hadn’t been for him, Colin and I might never have managed to get our shit together.
Nah.
Suddenly, I leapt off the couch, unable to wait another goddamn minute. I’d need to be back here in three days to start the new semester, but Icouldn’twait.
I had to see Colin right away, even though he’d only left a few hours before.
I packed up a few of my things. Not a ton, since I wouldn’t be moving until the end of the spring semester. But I wanted to make a symbolic gesture, something to show that Colin’s space was about to become mine, too, and that we were going to build a life together. Stashing some of my clutter with some of his clutter on a shelf somewhere seemed like our level of maturity in making a commitment.
Anyway, it counted as starting to move in.
I grabbed stuff a little at random: some of my warm-weather clothes to go in the back of his closet, since I wouldn’t need those until I moved, a crate of old textbooks, and my full set of Stargate DVDs, since they had features not available on streaming and Colin had been begging me to loan them to him forever. We could watch them together.
In our house.
I was grinning like crazy again as I loaded up my car, and I got on the road half an hour after hanging up with Tony.
The trip itself took the usual two and a half hours, but I pulled into the long drive of the Kimball pack house at closer to the three-hour mark, since I’d stopped for coffee.
Not even true love could replace my caffeine addiction.
I’d driven a little faster to make up for it, though.
As I got close, the bite mark on my neck gave a throb, like the bond knew my mate was near.
And as I parked on the big swath of gravel in front of the pack house, Colin came out the front door, like he’d sensed me coming too.
I bounced out of the car like I was on springs, and Colin ran down off the porch. “Newt! What’s wrong? You didn’t call me, or—I could’ve come back! I only got home two hours ago.”
“Everything’s fine,” I said, and grabbed him, pulling him in for a kiss fierce and wet and desperate enough that it probably looked like we’d been separated for months, not most of a morning.
