The closest triangle point called over to the boy, “We were just playing.”
“Won’t happen again,” another added, crossing his heart without the decency to stop laughing.
The third boy slapped the heart-crosser on the back, and they doubled over with laughter.
Spiker willed the boy to keep his chin up and ignore the bullies, but that worked about as well as overlooking the problem. It was odd to see bullying from an adult’s perspective, especially when the nearby, responsible adults didn’t seem to notice. Spiker checked his phone but didn’t find anything that could hold his attention.
Cruel laughter erupted again. Spiker wondered if the eat-shit-and-die look that he used at work was too much for prepubescent jerks. But he couldn’t have caught their eye if he’d tried. The bullied kid had taken a swing and been knocked to the floor. His triangle of tormenters were closing in.
Spiker growled under his breath, waiting for a teacher or chaperone to step in. None did. He counted to five and decided, Fuck it.
“Excuse me.” He peeled a bully back by his red polo-shirt collar and stepped forward.
The smaller boy’s eyes widened, almost brimming with tears, pleading with Spiker to back away, silently screaming that Spiker would only make things worse. That would be true if anyone but Spiker had stepped in. Or, hell, maybe Spiker was wrong and too full of himself to know shit, and his arrogance would get this kid’s ass kicked later in the day. But not likely.
Spiker held his hand out to the boy.
A bully snickered. “Take it, baby—”
Spiker glared at the bully and killed the taunt, then he lifted his chin as if to say to the kid on the floor that everything would be okay. After too long a moment, he helped the kid to his feet. “Mind if I have a word?”
The boy didn’t say yes, but he didn’t turn away and yell something like “stranger danger.” Thank God. Vanka would kick his ass if he got arrested before she’d proven her point. Whatever it might be.
The bullies shuffled their feet, perhaps sensing they’d stumbled into a potential problem that might linger. Would Spiker find a chaperone? A teacher? Would they get detention? Or whatever else that might ruin their high? Ignoring them wasn’t what they expected, but it was what they needed. His attention stayed on the kid in front of him. “I just want a word.”
“Are you a chaperone?” His voice trembled.
“No.”
“A parent?’
Spiker snorted. “No.”
“Then why—”
He cleared his throat and took a knee in front of the kid. Eye to eye, Spiker explained, “I was the kid everyone picked on—”
The kid’s face turned scarlet, but embarrassment didn’t hide his disbelief. He turned away. Spiker caught his wrist, knowing a thousand reasons why he shouldn’t touch a kid he didn’t know. But he also had a thousand reasons to finish what needed to be said. What someone should have told him when he was too small and too smart for his own good.
He jerked his arm away, eyes wide, but he didn’t leave. “What do you want?”
“To tell you what I wish someone would’ve told me.”
Vanka hadn’t worn the right footwear for a museum hop. She leaned on the bathroom counter to relieve the stress on the balls of her feet. She didn’t dare take off the heels and stretch her toes; she might not get the damn—albeit cute—shoes back on without risk of a blister.
She straightened up and washed her hands. As the bubbles frothed, she inspected her reflection. What had she done? The Smithsonian trip wasn’t the source of her uncertainty. If anything, Spiker needed his world expanded. The real problem had been her invitation, almost an insistence, that he stay at her house.
A woman reached for the soap dispenser. Vanka sidestepped, pulled from her thoughts. She checked her hair and tried not to overthink her motives as she dried her hands on the way out of the lavatory.
The click-clack of her steps echoed on the marble floor until she entered the fray of stroller parking, group rendezvous points, and crowds ready to leave or start their visit. A headache strummed at the back of her neck. Why had she agreed to let Spiker join her at home?
Vanka caught sight of him, on his knee, in a deep conversation with a child, and she stopped as if a train conductor had pulled the emergency brake. Foot traffic skidded and split around her as though Vanka were a fork in the road.
Spiker’s deep, emotion-stained face and the wary-cum-hopeful gaze of the boy held her still. She waited until their conversation ended. Then, with his head held high, the boy walked toward the gathered students. Spiker stayed on one knee, watching, then dropped his head with a short shake and rose, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Someone jostled Vanka from behind and snapped her back into reality. She refocused on Spiker. He stood as though nothing had happened, near where they’d separated. His face remained blank, eyes focused on the mammoth elephant in the center of the rotunda.
Vanka approached, skirting between the large man who stood out in the crowd and the students who followed a tour guide toward Ocean Hall. As though he sensed her approach, Spiker glanced over, not betraying what had occurred over the last few minutes. His chiseled features retained their handsome, though disinterested, composure. The steadiness in his dark gaze stayed on her without offering a clue as to what had happened. Spiker was hiding something from her, and the unknown formed a knot under her sternum.
Then again, everyone had secrets—Vanka and Spiker even more so. Their lives were hidden in plain sight while their actions were covert. He likely had as many secrets as she did. That was why they worked for GSI, and so well together. They excelled at their jobs, which meant they were masterminds in hiding as well as finding the truth.
“What’s on the agenda, princess?”
She maintained a neutral expression while scrutinizing him for unspoken details. “Deep time.”
“Is that kind of like deep space?” he grinned. “I hate to break it to you, but it sounds like we’re at the wrong museum. Where are the rockets and moon men?”
She gestured to an exhibit entryway. Deep Time headlined a banner in a font as large and thick as his arm. Less in-your-face, but still very obvious, was an explanation of the multimillion-year framework that scientists believe Earth has existed. Whatever had just happened with the child, it was still a major distraction. “You’re not an idiot.”
Spiker chuckled in that way that always gained him ground with a female asset. It was a highly tuned mixture of aw-shucks-you-got-me and stealth. Vanka had always appreciated that tool in his toolbelt, up until the moment he’d just tried it on her. Ignoring his all-too-familiar charm, she guided them toward one of her favorite exhibits.
“Fossils,” Spiker announced as they crossed under the archway. “This has changed since I was a kid.”
“That’s called science,” she chided. “It changes.”
He shrugged. “But I think they covered the big stuff pretty firmly a few hundred years ago.”
“I can’t tell if you’re intentionally trying to get under my skin or if it’s something unintentional you do for fun.”
“Next you’re going to tell me an apple didn’t fall on Isaac Newton’s head.” He winked. “I’d bet they’d give you a name tag and clipboard if you asked nicely.”