Road Less Traveled Read Online Free

at anything, and Carter knew letting the burglar get away definitely counted as a loss in her book. He felt the same way. “If you hadn’t activated the sprinklers, the Thunderbird wouldn’t have hatched and we could have caught him. Or her.”
    â€œYou couldn’t see three feet in front of your face,” Fargo countered. “And it was getting worse instead of better. I was monitoring the readings outside. The containment field was still leaking. You’d have started feeling the effects in another thirty seconds, and you’d have been in no shape to catch anybody!”
    â€œHe’s right,” Allison agreed, though she seemed to do so grudgingly. “I know how those fields work, and what sort of gases they contain. You’d have experienced dizziness, nausea, drowsiness, and shortness of breath.” She frowned. “The ratios are carefully maintained, but when the field was torn open the valves must have gotten jammed open somehow. They were continuing to pump those chemicals into the room. You could have asphyxiated if you’d stayed. And then the gas would have spread into the hall and into the neighboring labs, then throughout the building.”
    â€œThere, you see!” Fargo puffed out his narrow chest. “I saved everyone at GD!”
    â€œYeah, by letting our burglar escape with a Thunderbird egg!” Jo snapped.
    Carter shook his head. Fargo had done the right thing, he realized. The gas had been the immediate threat, and not just to them. Fargo had taken care of that. It wasn’t really his fault that the solution had triggered the egg, and that in countering that problem, Carter had then let the burglar get away.
    But that was often the case around Fargo. He always meant well, and some of his solutions were brilliant, but they usually had unintentional side effects.
    â€œAt least nobody got hurt,” Carter reminded them. Jo arched an eyebrow at him, then pointedly glanced down at her blackened, smoking shirtfront. “Much.” He sighed and ran a hand over his short, wet hair. “Now we just need to figure out who the burglar is, catch him or her, and retrieve that remaining egg.”
    â€œWe also need to figure out how they got through the lab’s security and took apart the containment field, all without triggering any alarms,” Allison reminded. “I’m not real happy that someone can just waltz in and remove projects whenever they want. If they work for GD, they’re violating all kinds of regulations. And if they don’t, well, then we have a bigger problem.”
    Carter nodded. “Absolutely. We’ll start by—” He was interrupted by the ring of his smartphone. “Hang on a sec.” He pulled it from his pocket and raised the slim device to his ear. “Sheriff Carter.”
    Then he listened. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Really? No, I believe you. Yes, I’m sure you do. No, I’m not being condescending. I’ll look into it right away. Yes, absolutely.”
    He hung up and pocketed the device again. Allison, Fargo, and Jo were all watching him, waiting to hear what the call had been about.
    â€œYou’re not gonna believe this one,” he told them, then corrected himself. “Of course, you will. Why not? That was Mrs. Hendricks, over on Albany Court. She said there’s a cold front and she wants me to fix it.”
    Fargo laughed. “Wow, some people have an exaggerated faith in your abilities, Sheriff! They think you can change the weather?”
    â€œApparently so.” Carter frowned. “The thing is, Mrs. Hendricks says the temperature has dropped twenty-seven degrees in the past six minutes. It’s currently thirty-eight degrees in her house, and the heat isn’t helping one bit.”
    â€œThirty-eight degrees? It’s the middle of April,” Jo pointed out. “That shouldn’t be possible.”
    â€œI know,” Carter agreed.