“Are you talking to me?” Max rolled his eyes at Ava.
“Don’t let anything bad happen to my sister. She’s all I got.”
“I won’t.” Max joined her at the foot of the bed and curled his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. “She’s all I got, too.”
When Cody hung up, Ava jumped into Max’s arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. “He came through. I can’t believe it. He came through.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” He smoothed her hair back from her face. “It’s going to be dangerous.”
She wrinkled her nose. “How? I’ve been working in labs for the past ten years of my life. I know my way around a lab.”
“Adrian Bessler had your brother bugged. How do we know Tempest hasn’t done the same?”
“You said yourself, Tempest tracked us here from Arnoff’s computer. Tempest doesn’t know about Cody. He’s off their radar.”
“He was, but nothing remains a secret from Tempest for long.”
“Then we’d better get moving.” She wriggled out of his arms. “I’ve got a batch of T-101 antidote to cook up.”
“Before we start packing up—” he shook his tin of pills “—I’m going to pop one of these for what I hope is my last time.”
A half an hour later, they’d packed their bags and Ava stood at the door looking back into the room.
Max nudged her. “Are you ready?”
“I just want to remember where I spent one of the happiest nights of my life.”
He kissed her ear. “I’m going to give you plenty of those, Dr. Whitman.”
With the car packed up, they drove into town and parked in a public lot. Max hesitated before opening the door.
“What’s wrong?”
“Every time we come into this town, something bad happens.”
Before she opened her door, she blew him a kiss. “Our luck just changed.”
The crowds on the streets of Snow Haven were thicker at night than during the day, the restaurants bustling with people eagerly awaiting the first snowfall.
The Haven Brewery had a line out the door, and Max shouldered his way through, dragging her along in his wake.
They hung on the end of the bar, and Ava tapped the wrist of a waitress picking up a tray of drinks. “Is Dina here tonight?”
She pointed to a pretty blonde behind the bar, filling a pitcher of beer. “Dina! Customer over here wants to see you.”
Ava thanked the waitress, and when Dina finished topping off the pitcher, she wiped her hands on a bar towel and approached them.
“Let’s see, you want the Haven pale ale and you want the Haven IPA, right?” She winked.
Ava nodded, suppressing a smile. Cody couldn’t resist going all secret agent on them.
When Dina slid the beers toward them, she slipped a key beneath Ava’s mug.
Ava took a sip of beer through the foam, the malty taste filling her mouth. “This is good.”
Max eyed her over the rim of his mug. “Do you really think you should be tipsy in the lab?”
“It’s one beer.”
“One very big beer, and I’ve already seen how you handle your booze, and it ain’t pretty.”
She punched his rock-hard biceps and took another tiny sip of beer. Her ears perked up when she heard the man next to them mention the ice-skating rink.
She glanced at Max, but she could tell by the hard lines of his face that he was already focused on the conversation.
“Yeah, it was weird. The guy went down like a sack of potatoes. I guess he tripped or something, but he wasn’t getting up.”
Max sidled closer to the man and said, “I was there watching my daughter skate. We left when he was still down. What happened to him? Did he die?”
The man took a gulp of his beer and wiped the foam from his upper lip. “No, no, that was the other guy in the bus station bathroom. That guy dropped dead from a heart attack, I heard. This guy was okay.”
“Really?” Ava gripped the handle of her mug so hard, she half expected it to explode in her hand. “You mean he got up and skated away?”
“Nah, some guy, a family member I guess, came to his rescue and got him up.”
Max traced a bead of moisture on the outside of his glass. “The attendant was going to call 911. Did the ambulance take him away?”