Playing Doctor Read online

  She sighed. “And dating? Surely you have time to do that.”

  He grinned. “Not really, Mom,” he said. “I mean, I guess I do, but…”

  “You are not still running around trying to find that crazy treasure, are you?” She sounded aghast.

  He cleared his throat. “Well…”

  She started cursing in Indonesian. “People have gotten killed looking for that stupid thing!”

  He blinked, surprised. “Well, yeah. But they were going alone, and they weren’t careful…”

  “And you’re going with a group and being careful?”

  He grimaced. “I have gone out with groups,” he said slowly, edging around the truth. Of course, going out with the few groups he had joined had been a fiasco. He’d tried teaming up with a few people from the Curton Call threads who were in the area, but the few times he’d gone out, they’d either squabbled about where exactly they should look, or the “group” of Wastelanders was just a few tourist-types who wanted to go have an adventure but who quickly tired of searching.

  He’d gone out a few times on his own, carefully letting other people from work know where he’d be going. Still, it’d be better, safer, if he’d gone out with a partner.

  He’d love to go with Cressida, but that was proving to be problematic.

  “You’re not telling me everything,” his mother said, cutting through his bullshit like a laser. He didn’t know whether it was because she was a Mom or because she was an Indonesian Mom, but she seemed to have his number no matter what he tried to tell her. He took a deep breath.

  “I am interested in someone,” he said, surprising even himself. “I know her from the treasure hunting thing.”

  “Really?” Now his Mom perked up, sounding thrilled. “What is she like? Is she pretty? Is she nice? Does she like children?”

  “What?” He laughed at his mother’s barrage of questions. “Yes, she’s nice, and I don’t know if she likes children or not. As to whether she’s pretty…” He coughed. “I, um, actually haven’t seen her.”

  There was a long pause. Then a sigh. “I saw something like this on Unsolved Murders: Catfishing.”

  He barked out a laugh. “No, no, it’s not like that. She lives two states away, so it’s not like she’s going to kill me.”

  “So she’s not a real girl,” his mother said dismissively. “Not dating material, much less wife material.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but she’s one of my favorite people,” he said. “She makes me happy. I’d like to see her, sure, but she’s got some issues…”

  “Here it comes,” his mother muttered.

  “She’s agoraphobic. That means…”

  “I know what it means,” she interrupted. “So she doesn’t leave her house, and she lives two states away? And she’s interested in this crazy treasure hunt, too?”

  “Mama,” he said, his voice a touch sterner, “she’s a good person. And like I said, I don’t have time or the interest to date right now.”

  She made a huff, but thankfully backed off. “Well, you still work too hard,” she muttered.

  “I gotta go,” he said. “I’m going to text that girl, actually. We were supposed to hang out, but I haven’t heard from her and I’m a little worried.”

  “Why don’t you call her?” his mother asked.

  He chuckled. “I don’t know. Who calls anymore?”

  “Besides your mother?” his mother said, but there was a smile in her voice. “Girls like phone calls. You want to check on her, give her a call. Not the Google hanging out thing.”

  “Love you, mama,” he said, and then clicked off. Then he stared at the phone.

  He could call Cressida. Just because they’d only texted and messengered didn’t mean that he couldn’t. He just had a bad feeling, in his gut, when she hadn’t responded. She hadn’t missed a weekly chat in nearly a year.

  Oh, what the hell, he thought. And dialed her number, taking a deep breath.

  It took nearly two hours for Cressida to get her bearings back, and she counted herself lucky that it was that quick. The panic was still there, low grade, hovering like a brewing headache. And yeah, she was in the closet with her laptop, watching her favorite River Song clips on YouTube.

  What would River Song do? She asked herself. Well, River probably wouldn’t be hiding in a closet, eating cookies and watching YouTube, but Cressida was doing the best she could.

  “Don’t worry,” Hailey had told her through the closet door. “We’ll take care of it. Jake might be able to help us.”

  Cressida knew how much it cost Hailey to say that. Hailey loved Jake for who he was, not for the money he made in his successful acting career, and she hated asking him for anything. And Cressida hated that she couldn’t muster up the fortitude to say, “No, it’s fine, if we have to move, we have to move.” The idea of moving sent her into a complete tailspin. She couldn’t seem to think about anything else. She was supposed to be messaging Noah and the gang on the Dreamer boards, for example, and she never missed that.

  It might make you feel better, she told herself gently. She did that way too often – pulled away from stuff that was even vaguely social, interactions of any kind, because she thought it would make the situation worse. But when she eventually did venture back out of her self-imposed cave, she tended to find things were a little better. Not a ton of interaction, not for hours on end… she was still an introvert, after all. But she didn’t need to sequester herself away.

  She was an hour late, but Noah would probably wait for her. She could feel her cheeks heating with a blush. Even though she’d never met him, she considered Noah one of her best friends. He was certainly her best friend outside of her sisters. They texted all the time, messaged back and forth, and had messenger chat with a few fellow Wastelanders every week.

  She should’ve been checking in with him tonight, she thought, with a pang of guilt. And honestly, he would help her feel…

  Her phone started ringing, surprising her. Nobody who knew her called her – or at least, they rarely did. Sometimes Kyla wanted her opinion on something, or her friend Tessa would ask about something, but generally her interactions were either face to face in the store, or via text in one form or another.

  She glanced at the display.

  Noah.

  She felt her mouth go dry. Noah? They had a strictly text-only relationship. She’d never even thought about calling him. So why was he calling now?

  It had been such a roller coaster day. Surely he’d understand, maybe just leave a message…

  What would River Song do?

  She grimaced. Then, as if to make up for her closet-hiding, cookie-bingeing behavior, she hit “Answer.”

  “H-hello?”

  There was a pause, then a deep masculine voice responded: “Cressida?”

  “Yes. Is this Noah?”

  He chuckled. He had a great voice, she realized, just a little rough and deep and sexy-sounding. “Yeah, it’s me.”

  She laughed lightly in response, even as her heart thumped a little faster in her chest.

  “When you didn’t show up for the weekly chat, I thought maybe something was wrong,” he said. “And I know I probably should’ve just texted, but… I don’t know. My gut said it was different than usual, and I’ve got pretty good instincts. I hope that’s okay…?”

  He had amazing instincts. She blinked. “I… yeah. I was having a panic attack.” She bit her lip. She rarely said anything to anybody about them. But this is Noah, she thought. She’d told a few people on the boards about her agoraphobia, including Noah. Maybe she thought it would scare him away. So far, it hadn’t. If anything, he was more understanding than she had expected.

  “What happened?” he said, his voice low and sympathetic sounding.

  She let out a low breath, feeling like a shaken soda can. “Our landlord wants to sell the house we live in,” she said, all in a rush. “The market’s, um, really good or something, so he wants to take the money and run.�
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  “Ah, shit,” Noah said. “That completely sucks. I’m sorry.”

  She felt some of the pressure inside her release, just a fraction. He got it. He didn’t need it explained to him, how this was catastrophic for her. “If we had the money, we could buy it, but it’s going to be really expensive and we don’t exactly have cash for a down payment, or great credit. At least, I doubt we have enough to get a big enough loan to buy this place.”

  “It’s a really big house, huh?”

  “It’s a three-story Victorian,” she said, and from there words just sort of tumbled out of her mouth. “We run a store – sort of a bookstore/collectibles store – on the bottom level, and then we live in the top two floors.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “My sisters and me. We run the store. Well, my oldest sister has a job and goes to business school besides, but she keeps the books and does the marketing and that kind of thing. I do displays and keep track of inventory and bake cookies.”

  “Bake cookies?” He sounded gently amused, not in a laughing-at-you kind of way, more like a that’s-awesome manner. At least, it sounded that way to her.

  “You’d be amazed at how many more sales we make with baked goods greasing the wheels,” she said, leaning against the fat pillow she’d placed at her low back and putting her feet up on the opposite closet wall. “Some of the collectibles aren’t cheap. We’ve got great stuff – signed Mystics gear, Supernatural set stuff and scripts, and some truly outstanding costumes.”

  “You ever cosplayed?”

  She grinned. “Well, not outside the shop,” she admitted, “for pretty obvious reasons. But I do cosplay for some of our promotions.”

  “Who’d you dress up as? No, wait, don’t tell me,” Noah said. “You were River Song, right?”

  She laughed. “I was last year. But I’ve also dressed up as the tenth Doctor, and I dressed up as Ariel one year.”

  “Like the mermaid?” he asked. “Did not see that coming.”

  “I have red hair that I don’t really cut,” she said. “So it fit with the outfit. I’m going to be Merida from Brave for our Scottish Faire celebration.” She grimaced. “Depending on what happens with the store.”

  “I really am sorry,” he said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  She felt warmth in her chest. “No,” she admitted, although I’d wish you could. “It’s scary, not knowing what’s going to happen.” She felt her eyes water, and she brushed at the tears welling with the back of her hands. “Hell. Maybe I’ll find the treasure, huh? Then I could buy the house, and everything would be fantastic.”

  “It’s the dream,” he said, and it wasn’t patronizing, or wistful. He had his own reasons for wanting the treasure, and for them, yeah, it was an escape, it was an adventure…. But it was also a wish. A dream.

  The dream.

  He cleared his throat. “So… we were talking Mojave Desert.”

  “I’ve been going through the book again,” she said. “I re-read it for like the five hundredth time, and I think I picked up on something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Remember how Athena had a temple in the Wastelands where Myron found himself refreshed? And that’s how he’s able to later defeat the Terror?”

  “Because Athena’s temple restored him and healed his wounds and stuff?” Noah said immediately. She loved that he knew the book as well as she did. “It’s a turning point, but it’s not as major as, say, the Wasteland Wares trading or when Myron finds the laser blade at Arcenium.”

  “I think it’s more major than people give it credit for,” Cressida said, feeling herself getting sucked into the treasure hunt and slowly letting the anxiety go. “Athena is the goddess of wisdom in Greek mythology, right? And she was a mighty warrior who backed a lot of major players. The Wasteland Athena is where he heals, but it’s also where he gets the wisdom that he needs to figure out the…”

  “…the puzzle of the Wastelands,” Noah said, and she heard him groan. “Holy shit, how did I miss that?”

  “So I think that, to solve the puzzle of the Wastelands treasure, it’s not about the major battles or the end of the book,” she said, feeling excitement bubble up inside. It was rewarding to share the clue with someone who “got” it, like Noah. “It’s finding out the location of Athena’s temple.”

  “I’ll start looking up Athena locations in the Mojave,” he said quickly, then paused. “If that’s okay? I mean, if you don’t mind?”

  “Of course I don’t mind. I told you, didn’t I?” She smiled, even though she knew he wouldn’t see it. “I totally trust you, Noah. Besides, it’s not like I’m going to be going to find the treasure myself, right?”

  Another pause. “Maybe you could,” he said slowly. “You said you’d made some progress with the RV, right?”

  She’d told him about her experiments with Kyla’s RV. She sighed. “Maybe,” she said, and heard the doubt in her own voice. “I mean, I say that I’d love to find the treasure, and I can’t thank you enough for hanging with me and bouncing ideas with me and stuff. But honestly, the idea of me traipsing off through the desert looking for this?”

  He was quiet for a second. “I’ll help however I can,” he said, his voice low.

  She felt a little zing of attraction. Damn, the guy had a sexy voice. She’d been crushing on him pretty hard for the past year or so, at least, but she knew it was an internet crush – it wasn’t real. You had to be really careful, and her anxiety issues made her more careful than most. The chances of her seeing him were somewhere around the same odds as her finding the damned treasure.

  “Anyway, you don’t have to look up Athena stuff. I mean, you still can, but I think I’ve narrowed down where it is.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “Owl Canyon,” she said. “The owl was sacred to Athena, and the temple was in a canyon, remember?”

  “Hell yeah,” Noah crowed. “And Owl Canyon’s famous in the Mojave.”

  “It narrows down the field considerably,” she said, feeling proud of herself.

  “Are you going to put the clue up on Curton Call?”

  She bit her lip. “I don’t want to share it with the boards,” she said. “I feel like this one’s got some real juice…” And even though she didn’t think she’d be traveling, she hated the idea of someone else finding it. At least, someone who wasn’t Noah.

  “How about Curton himself? If you email him, he might confirm it.”

  It was true. Lots of Wastelanders emailed Curton directly – it was how California had gotten confirmed as the location of the treasure. If you were close, he’d post on the boards that someone had gotten closer – it was up to the individual to share what, exactly, the clue was. The person who had guessed California had posted it because he wanted to “share information”. Noah and she figured that the person had simply gotten stuck and couldn’t figure out where in California.

  So far, she and Noah had narrowed it to the Mojave, something they’d gotten confirmed and hadn’t shared, and now she had this. With everything else going on, it would crush her to find out she was wrong. “I don’t know,” she hedged. “I mean, it’s probably wrong. I’ll keep looking.”

  “You’re nervous, and that’s normal and perfectly okay,” Noah said. “But if we run it past Curton, and he answers – won’t you want to know that you’re on the right track?”

  Noah had a point. “Okay,” she finally conceded.

  “Hey,” he said, apparently realizing she was feeling low again, “wanna watch a movie together? I don’t have to work tomorrow.”

  She smiled. “I do, but I figured I’d be up late anyway,” she said. “So… watch a movie while on the phone together?”

  “Sure. Why not? It’ll be like Mystery Science Theater 3000. You pick something cheesy that we won’t mind talking over, and we’ll just poke fun and hang out.”

  “That sounds great,” she said, wishing for the millionth time that she could meet Noah… and simultaneously g
lad that she couldn’t, because right now, as someone she could just hear in her safety zone, he was absolutely perfect.

  They hung out and watched the original Transporter, which was nice and mindless. At two a.m., she finally called it. “I’ve got to get some sleep,” she said, around a yawn.

  There was a pause, then she could hear the sound of typing. “Holy shit, Cress. Holy shit.”

  “What? What’s wrong?” Adrenaline spiked through her system, dispelling the drowsiness.

  “Look on the board. The verified section.” His voice sounded almost reverent. “It’s a post from Henry Curton himself!”

  She quickly pulled up the board he was talking about and saw the “verified” post.

  Noah24610 and CressidaWho have submitted a guess that is closer than anybody’s posted in the past two years. In fact, if they get on it, they could have the treasure in a day, maybe two, depending on where they live.

  “What did you send him?” she almost shriek-whispered, trying not to wake her sisters.

  “I told him about your Athena temple theory and Owl Canyon!” he shot back. “Holy shit! We’re close! We’re really close!”

  No way was she sleeping now. One day away! Her guess was right, or close to it! Henry Curton himself said so! She’d felt so much despair after Mr. Williams’ visit. Now, she wanted to dance on the bed.

  Then, reality crashed down with a vengeance.

  I found the treasure, or I’m really, really close.

  Of course…. What the hell can I do about it?

  Chapter 2

  Noah woke up the next morning to the sound of pounding on his door. “Hold on,” he croaked, trying to get his bearings. After getting confirmation about Cressida’s clue, he’d spent the rest of the night searching for places that might fit Athena’s temple somewhere in Owl Canyon. He’d fallen asleep around six a.m., finally dropping out of exhaustion. He glanced at his clock. 10 o’clock in the morning.

  He pulled on pants, then rubbed a hand over his face blearily as he headed for the door and opened it. Who the hell was bothering him on his day off?