The Hatching (The Hatching #1)(9)

“You can tell me while we walk,” she said, brushing past them. “I’m going to stop and buy a salad on the way, and if what you guys have is interesting enough, I’ll buy lunch for you as well. If not, I swear to God, if you’re here because another moron thinks he’s found a poisonous spider in a crate of bananas, I’m making you play hot potato with a brown recluse.”

She hung her bag off her shoulder and braced herself for the heat she knew would be waiting for her outside the air-conditioned building. It was only five minutes from there to her lab, and she’d be making a stop at the café for her lunch, but it was going to leave her sweaty and red-faced. The Washington heat was not something she enjoyed, and it had come early this year.

“The brown recluse won’t bite unless—”

Melanie spun around and Patrick’s mouth snapped shut. She nodded. “That’s what I thought. Now what do you have for me?”

It was Julie who positioned herself at Melanie’s elbow, Patrick and Bark at her heels as they went down the steps and started crossing the quad. There were soft clouds sleeping above the campus buildings, but no real hope that rain would break the heat. Maybe she’d quit early tonight, crank up the air-conditioning in her apartment, get some takeout, and watch a bad romantic comedy or two by herself. Or maybe she’d have Bark over for a night of activities that required no talking from him. Deep down, though, she knew she wouldn’t leave the lab before she normally did. If she were the kind of woman who quit early, she’d probably still have a husband to go home to. That wasn’t entirely fair, she knew, since it wasn’t as if Manny had ever come home from the White House earlier than she came home from the lab. The difference was that when Manny was home with her, he was actually home with her, while when she was home with him, there was still a large part of her that was at the lab.

“You were right,” Julie said at last.

“Of course I was right,” Melanie said. “About what?”

She walked briskly, not bothering to look behind her to see if the boys were having trouble keeping up. She didn’t worry about Julie. The young woman might have no confidence, but she was maybe the hardest-working scientist Melanie had ever met, and even a pair of two-inch heels—modest for a night on the town, but deeply impractical for the lab—wasn’t going to keep Julie from staying with her faculty advisor.

“Nazca,” Julie said.

“Nazca?”

“Nazca,” Julie repeated, as if it were supposed to mean something to Melanie.

Melanie didn’t stop walking, but she did glance over at her. Another hundred meters and they’d be inside and cool again, at least for the two minutes it took her to buy herself lunch and have it bagged up so she could finish walking to the lab. “Nazca? What the f*ck are you talking about, Julie? Nazca? That’s what you’ve got for me? The three of you waiting outside my classroom like a bunch of freshman, waiting to pounce, and that’s what you’re giving me? That’s what can’t wait for me to get back to the lab? Nazca?” She picked up the pace.

“Nazca,” Julie said again. “As in Peru?”

Melanie stopped. “Is that a question or a statement?” She turned to glare at Bark, who didn’t seem to understand why he was being glared at but was smart enough to edge behind Patrick. She wanted to smack him. His habit of ending every sentence with a question had rubbed off on Julie. “Nazca. Peru,” Melanie said. She looked at her three graduate students and they stared back at her, slight smiles on their faces, as though they were waiting for praise. Melanie sighed. “Okay,” she said. “I give up. You’re talking about the Nazca Lines. So what? Can you please tell me what the f*ck you’re talking about so I can get myself a salad and head back to the lab?”

“Don’t you remember the Valentine’s Day party?” Bark asked. She couldn’t tell if his face was already red from the heat or if it flushed with the realization of what he was saying, but he almost tripped over himself to keep going. “You kept talking about Nazca? The lines? The spider?”

Patrick came to Bark’s rescue. “You said they were there for a reason. The markings on the ground. There are all kinds of markings. Lines and animals and stuff. I’d never heard of it before, but you weren’t really interested in the animals. You were talking about the spider marking. You said you can see the lines from airplanes, and they aren’t that deeply dug, but it would have taken a ton of work, and you were saying you thought the spider had to have been for a reason.”

Melanie didn’t remember talking to them about the Nazca Lines—though she had no real reason to doubt her students—but the truth was she’d been fascinated by them since the first time she heard of them. And going off on some theory or other sounded like something she would have done when she was drunk. Also, evidently, sleeping with a graduate student was also something she would have done when she was drunk. Which is why she didn’t drink very often.

She’d been to Peru only once, with Manny, in the death throes of their marriage, a last-chance vacation in the hope of gluing together the pieces of their broken relationship. Manny had suggested Hawaii, Costa Rica, Belize, pale beaches and private huts, but she had wanted to see the Nazca Lines for years, even if he didn’t. Really, if she was being honest, part of the reason she had insisted was simply because Manny hadn’t wanted to go to Peru.