Page 62 of Reset

“Okay, there was snake meat and guinea pig in South America. Deep fried tarantula in Cambodia. Rocky Mountain oysters—”

“That doesn’t sound weird,” she interrupted.

“It’s what people in Denver call fried bull testicles.”

Ew, no! “The Scottish are right—you really can deep fry anything. That’s even worse than the spider.”

“Then there’s frogs’ legs, chicken feet, huhu grubs, and pan-fried crickets,” Ryan continued. “I once ate an out-of-date—by about six years—jar of mustard while I was laying low in an abandoned house. It was the only thing in the cupboard.” His stomach rumbled ferociously. “It knows we’re talking about food,” he said. He patted his belly lovingly.

Sarah shook her head at him. “You do know it doesn’t think for itself, right?”

“How little she knows,” he reassured his stomach. “So, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve eaten?”

“Haggis.” Sarah was totally out of her league when it came to Ryan and food. “And German blood sausage. I guess I’m not as adventurous as you.”

“Or you’re smarter,” Ryan said as he tugged at a lock of her hair. “This is really curly. Is that why you keep it tied back?”

Sarah sighed. “It’s neater, and people don’t touch it so much when it’s in a bun. Plus, nobody takes me seriously with this hair. They think I’m a grown-up version of Shirley Temple.” Which was also why her hair straighteners were her most prized possession.

“Shirley Temple was awesome.” Ryan sounded enthusiastic. “People only remember the child movie star, but she was an Ambassador for the US government, and a United Nations delegate, and an environmental activist. She even had a cocktail named after her.”

“A nice, safe, boring cocktail,” Sarah huffed.

“She had an IQ of one hundred fifty-five—that’s Mensa level.”

“And she sang On the Good Ship Lollipop,” Sarah reminded him bitterly.

Ryan burst out laughing in that deep, rumbling belly laugh of his. “Is it the good girl image that bothers you or just the curls?”

“Both. Probably. I think…”

He tugged another curl. “We can totally sort the good girl image. Say the word, and I’m happy to lead you over to the bad side.”

He’d already tempted her with that once; she wasn’t sure she’d cope a second time. “I’ll pass.”

“For now,” the devil said.

As they rounded yet another bend in the tunnel, they suddenly stepped into a large cavern. It was long and narrow, and the ceiling was low overhead. There were rows of built-up dirt mounds running the length of the room, and it looked like there were—

“Mushrooms!” Ryan ran past her, heading straight for the fungi.

He crouched beside a dirt mound. “There’s a lot of mold in here, but I think we might still find some edible ones.” He poked around before lifting a white button mushroom as though it were an Oscar statue. “Look, Stats, food.”

Honestly, she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him happier.

Cautiously, Sarah walked further into the room. “I’ve heard about this. People using old caverns and mines to grow mushrooms.”

Ryan nodded, already moving down the row to see how many more he could find. “There was a woman in Invertary, the town in Scotland where Benson Security was founded, who ran a mushroom farm in an old mine.” He glanced around. “Looks like this one was abandoned a while ago.”

“But—” Exhilaration rushed through Sarah. “They had to have a way to get the mushrooms out of here, right?”

Ryan was much too focused on the mushrooms to care about an exit. “Let’s eat first, then we’ll search for the exit.”

“Ryan, if we find the way out first, we can have a proper meal aboveground.”

“Oh. Okay.” With his harvest tucked into a pouch he’d made with the front of his shirt, he stepped over the mounds to join her. “Guess we just follow the walls until we find it.” His eyes were on the mushrooms, rather than the walls. And there was a tiny bit of drool in the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t you dare eat those without cleaning them,” Sarah told him. “If there are mushrooms down here, then there has to be a water source that they used to grow them. Clean first, eat later.”