“Maybe it wasn’t that he lacked the ability to form emotional bonds. He just hadn’t found the right people. You got a mess of scratches on the side of your neck. I’m gonna need more than a sterile wipe so no crying when I clean them off.”
“Promise.” Laura held back a laugh.
Gordon soaked gauze pads in alcohol. “So how do you think they found out where Luca and Nash were?”
A cold burn followed the path of the material from Laura’s face, neck, to her arms.
“Same way they found out where Dr. Dante was? I’m not sure. The Dekkers are resourceful. The problem is, I have no way of knowing if their plane is still where it landed.”
Gordon made a thinking sound. “You could ask Isaiah.”
“No I can’t.”
He gave her a look.
“Isaiah is too close to this. He’s already convinced the Dekkers are behind every nook and cranny of the Utah disaster. If he finds out the Dekkers might have a personal interest in Luca, he’ll do something stupid.”
“You know for sure he ain’t?”
“I can’t be sure of anything until I have all the facts.” Laura didn’t even think she’d scratched the surface. “It’s getting those facts that’s the problem.”
“Gonna be hard to get all of them if your Dr. Dante winds up cur kibble.”
Ed and Eddie perked their ears and looked at Gordon.
He grumbled. “I ain’t talking to you two.”
They both snorted. Ed scratched his neck, and Eddie licked Ed’s ear.
“And quit fidgeting. Neither one of you got fleas.”
They stopped, and if Laura hadn’t known better, she’d thought they looked pleased with themselves.
Gordon finished cleaning her wounds. “You got a way of finding out where the Dekkers went?”
“If the people involved in creating the curs have access to the same databases as me and see my activity but haven’t heard anything from Max, they might react. So no.”
“And you don’t know if they’re gonna show up with their big guns or big black dogs.”
Ed and Eddie jerked their attention to Gordon again, and he waved them off. “And folks like the Dekkers don’t file flight plans.”
“They didn’t even file one when they came across the Canadian border.”
Gordon heaved a dramatic sigh. “I guess I better dig out my old phone book and give Stanly a call. Now don’t squirm.”
“Squirm?”
“Yeah, you were always a squirmer.”
“I don’t think that’s even a word.”
“I used it in Scrabble.” He took a pair of tweezers from the first aid kit.
“Doesn’t mean—”
“I already had this argument with your daddy. If he can use some fucking made-up shit like snollygoster, then I can use squirmer.”
“Snollygoster is a word.”