CREEPERS Read Free Page B

needed to find work in the private sector. That was where the juiciest overseas research opportunities existed—the chance for real achievement and advancement. She was going bonkers at the museum, and besides, there was nothing divine to her about living in the City of Angels .
    As the midday sun hammered down, Laura let her eyes drift up to the horizon. Wall-to-wall silica out there. And hot enough to make glass . Her mind leapt right past the common term, sand , and spit out the scientific classification, silica She laughed and thought to herself, What a nerd .
    But she sure didn’t look like one.
    Laura reached up, pulled back her hair, then released it. A waterfall of thick chestnut locks spilled down around model-perfect cheekbones. She was tall and fit and had a swimmer’s body.
    Only she didn’t swim.
    Women that looked like her were born that way, the recipients of a genetic windfall. A bitter reality for the envious.
    Other women of course.
    Just another thing to overcome , was how Laura thought about her looks.
    Yes, it was nice to be attractive—but in her line of work, women that looked like her were usually married.
    To the CEO.
    They weren’t whip-smart botanists who dreamed of unlocking nature’s secrets, or maybe finding a cure for lymphoma in an undiscovered plant hidden in some remote rift valley.
    Her unpaid leave was about taking some personal time. About tying up loose ends. About mending fences. About forgiveness—making some family peace—or at least trying to.
    Family peace.
    What a concept.

Chapter 8

    The strange noise that issued from deep inside the Honda’s dashboard sounded like a death rattle. A moment later, an uneven thrashing sound filled the car. Metal on metal. Laura reached forward and thumped the top of the dash, trying to stop the mechanical arrhythmia.
    This had happened before.
    She thumped the dash again. The car’s cabin fell silent. The damn AC had just flatlined.
    In the middle of the desert!
    “Shit.”
    She rocked forward and pushed a button, clicking it in and out. Then she worked a lever, toggling it back and forth, trying to coax the thing back to life. It was useless. Shot. Alert the next of kin. The thing had gone legs up.
    “Great. Just great.” Why hadn’t just she spent the money and rented a car for the trip? Laura rolled her window down and was immediately blasted by the desert heat. It looked like she was going to have to revert to the old 2-70 air conditioning for the rest of the trip. Both windows down at seventy miles per hour .
    With air blasting in, she reached up and pulled her hair back, twisting it in a loose ponytail as the Civic dropped down a gentle rise and she found herself skirting along a straight section of road that paralleled the aqueduct.
    Laura slowed the car and took a deep breath. She could smell the water and thought she could detect the slightest hint of a cool breeze blowing off the aqueduct’s surface.
    As she leaned out for another breath, she was suddenly pasted across the face by a sheet of water that appeared out of nowhere. It crashed across the car’s hood and sent water racing up the windshield and over the roof.
    Shocked and momentarily unable to see, she groped the steering column, found the wipers, flicked them on—and, just as the road came back into view, she heard a man’s voice.
    “Hey, beautiful.”
    She whipped her head around—and there, not fifty feet away, a sunburned man on a water ski was smiling and waving at her!
    “Want to go skinny-dipping?”
    Laura laughed and smiled, then waved back. The water evaporating off the front of her top made her feel like the air conditioning was suddenly back on.
    “You don’t know how good that sounds,” she said, yelling out to him.
    The skier dropped a hand, pretending to unfasten his trunks.
    Laura laughed. Naughty boy . She shook her head—stepped on the gas—and sped away, leaving the boat and the skier behind. And then she thought, Besides, waterskiing