do all those things he expected to already have done.
But was his mind reenergized enough to take control of the rest of his coworkers? It would likely drain him completely. What if he encountered some unforeseen trouble with these damn fairies that Eubryd was stalking? He wasn’t sure he should risk enthralling a whole group.
Then again, he might not have much of a choice. He needed to take charge of this situation before a team of frightened engineers and science geeks went rushing out to the mountain and started finding things he’d worked too damn hard to keep hidden. That would certainly cause troubles he was in no position to solve.
He’d just have to do what he could and hope it would be enough, at least for now. If he could keep everyone calm, perhaps he stood a chance of staying in command. It might help him buy a little time, too—time he could use for more interaction with Lianne. He hoped what had passed between them left her as hungry for more as it had left him. He’d need a full meal of her passion once this current confusion was under control.
* * *
Sure enough, Lianne had been only moments ahead of Dan Casper and Sid Blanchard when she left Nic behind in the guesthouse and let herself into the computer lab. She’d still been flipping on lights and turning on monitors when the two senior members of the team showed up, clothing hastily thrown on and grumpy from being pulled out of bed. If Nic had been here with her, things definitely would have been awkward. Sid was already looking at her funny when he came marching through the door, obviously wondering why she was fully dressed and in here so quickly at one o’clock in the morning. He probably thought she’d done something to trip the alarms.
Sid Blanchard never gave anyone the benefit of the doubt. She’d do well to remember that. She might allow herself to go back and screw the Russian like a woman gone wild, but she’d better be cool, calm, and completely sane on the job. The last thing she needed was for anyone to have reason to doubt her abilities here. She had one shot to get this thing done, and she wasn’t about to mess it up. She wasn’t even going to so much as look at Nic Vladik when he finally did show up in here tonight.
“What the hell is going on?” Sid demanded.
“What triggered that alarm?” Dan Casper asked.
She didn’t bother looking up as she scanned the multiple printouts and seismograms on various machines around the room. “Some sort of readings from one of our sensors on the mountain, it looks like.”
“Probably just another glitch,” Sid grumbled.
“We’ve never had an alarm from a glitch,” Lianne noted.
“Can you verify the readings?” Dan asked.
“How about if we shut off the damn alarm first?” Sid snapped.
“I can’t figure out how,” Lianne announced. “Either the control code is messed up, or it’s continually retriggering. Get in here and help me.”
They did. She wished she could believe it was because they respected her as the authority on-site now, or because she was compelling or commanding, but really she knew they just wanted the alarm to stop blaring every bit as much as she did. Her body was still not quite over the adrenaline surge from her time alone with Nic, so this grating, pulsating alarm was not helping. She needed to relax, to think straight and make sense of these readings.
Was it an earthquake? Right now she couldn’t quite tell. It seemed that what triggered the alarm was the reading from one piece of equipment—a single Remote Ground Sensor that should have been just one of several to detect the harmonic oscillation that set it off. She sat at a computer and typed in the locater number for that unit. A display popped up, showing a topographic map of the area where that specific RGS was located. She hunted down the locators of other sensors in that general area.
“Is that where the event triggered?” Dan asked, leaning over her shoulder to view the
But was his mind reenergized enough to take control of the rest of his coworkers? It would likely drain him completely. What if he encountered some unforeseen trouble with these damn fairies that Eubryd was stalking? He wasn’t sure he should risk enthralling a whole group.
Then again, he might not have much of a choice. He needed to take charge of this situation before a team of frightened engineers and science geeks went rushing out to the mountain and started finding things he’d worked too damn hard to keep hidden. That would certainly cause troubles he was in no position to solve.
He’d just have to do what he could and hope it would be enough, at least for now. If he could keep everyone calm, perhaps he stood a chance of staying in command. It might help him buy a little time, too—time he could use for more interaction with Lianne. He hoped what had passed between them left her as hungry for more as it had left him. He’d need a full meal of her passion once this current confusion was under control.
* * *
Sure enough, Lianne had been only moments ahead of Dan Casper and Sid Blanchard when she left Nic behind in the guesthouse and let herself into the computer lab. She’d still been flipping on lights and turning on monitors when the two senior members of the team showed up, clothing hastily thrown on and grumpy from being pulled out of bed. If Nic had been here with her, things definitely would have been awkward. Sid was already looking at her funny when he came marching through the door, obviously wondering why she was fully dressed and in here so quickly at one o’clock in the morning. He probably thought she’d done something to trip the alarms.
Sid Blanchard never gave anyone the benefit of the doubt. She’d do well to remember that. She might allow herself to go back and screw the Russian like a woman gone wild, but she’d better be cool, calm, and completely sane on the job. The last thing she needed was for anyone to have reason to doubt her abilities here. She had one shot to get this thing done, and she wasn’t about to mess it up. She wasn’t even going to so much as look at Nic Vladik when he finally did show up in here tonight.
“What the hell is going on?” Sid demanded.
“What triggered that alarm?” Dan Casper asked.
She didn’t bother looking up as she scanned the multiple printouts and seismograms on various machines around the room. “Some sort of readings from one of our sensors on the mountain, it looks like.”
“Probably just another glitch,” Sid grumbled.
“We’ve never had an alarm from a glitch,” Lianne noted.
“Can you verify the readings?” Dan asked.
“How about if we shut off the damn alarm first?” Sid snapped.
“I can’t figure out how,” Lianne announced. “Either the control code is messed up, or it’s continually retriggering. Get in here and help me.”
They did. She wished she could believe it was because they respected her as the authority on-site now, or because she was compelling or commanding, but really she knew they just wanted the alarm to stop blaring every bit as much as she did. Her body was still not quite over the adrenaline surge from her time alone with Nic, so this grating, pulsating alarm was not helping. She needed to relax, to think straight and make sense of these readings.
Was it an earthquake? Right now she couldn’t quite tell. It seemed that what triggered the alarm was the reading from one piece of equipment—a single Remote Ground Sensor that should have been just one of several to detect the harmonic oscillation that set it off. She sat at a computer and typed in the locater number for that unit. A display popped up, showing a topographic map of the area where that specific RGS was located. She hunted down the locators of other sensors in that general area.
“Is that where the event triggered?” Dan asked, leaning over her shoulder to view the
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