Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4) by Carolyn Crane

Author:Carolyn Crane [Crane, Carolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance
ISBN: 9780988313163
Published: 2015-05-17T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Hugo had an almost frightening amount of insight where she was concerned. She’d told him the truth: her existence had been constrained since the Friar Hovde case. She’d come to realize this out in this wild place, cut off from her entire world, like a crazy bit of espionage wrapped in a vacation from herself. She’d answered his questions with her own truth, more or less, but it made her wonder what Liza would say. Liza had stopped short of getting on that plane, but things had obviously gotten pretty bad. Would it have helped Liza if Zelda had stayed in her life and kept bailing her out? Conventional wisdom said no, that it only enabled Liza in her addiction. But sometimes, conventional wisdom sucked. Zelda had missed Liza so much; keeping tabs on her from afar made it almost worse. So many times, she wanted to pick up the phone and call her to see how she was doing and let her know she was there. Now and then, she’d hear about a job opportunity or a really good rehab program and she’d think about getting Liza away from that Miami crowd of hers, setting her up in a clean new life, but how many times had she tried that? But God, she missed her. The good things never seemed very good without Liza to drag her out for a celebration, and the bad things…she could’ve used a sister after the Friar Hovde thing. Whatever happened, she’d be sticking by Liza’s side.

She cut the stems, setting them gently onto the cart. Kids from the village came by with empty carts and took away the full carts. It was exhausting, repetitive work, but an exciting honor on a different level. These were the rare, storied Savinca verde. She loved their gnarled bottoms, their finely serrated leaf margins.

Those roots were wrong, though. A plant couldn’t survive with coated roots like that. The bushes were already being affected; she didn’t see it, but Hugo and the other farmers did, and they would know. Farmers were like field agents in that way—you always trusted the opinion of the guy on the ground.

The men had concluded it wasn’t Roundup, and she agreed. Had the CIA switched up the cocktail? But why spray here? These beautiful, legendary plants—the only ones on earth. Who would make a mistake like that?

As a forensic botanist, she’d never had anything to do with the spraying program or herbicides at all, really. Weeds were her friends. So was pollen and mold. As a forensic botanist, she asked the plants questions about crime scenes and listened to their answers. The herbicide guys were all about killing. They’d always struck her a bit like boys pulling the legs off spiders.

When Hugo was distracted with Julian, she knelt and dug into the soil, then scraped a bit of the waxy substance off the root and rubbed it between her fingers. What was it? She smelled it. It just didn’t seem natural. She wished she could analyze it.

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