The Chemist

CHAPTER 9

She decided to wake Daniel up. Once Batman came around – which he probably would in about fifteen minutes or so – the conversation was not going to be very genteel. She wanted a chance to explain – and apologize – before the shrieking and the death threats started.

She reset the protocols on the computer.

The chemical mixture in the air had long since dispersed, so she didn’t need the gas mask inside the tent anymore. She grabbed the other mask, then tucked both sets of straps through her belt, keeping them close.

She pulled Daniel’s IV first. She didn’t want him tethered to anything at all when he woke up. He’d had enough of that. His veins were still looking good. It was easy to inject the solution into the antecubital fossa of his other elbow. She sat on the edge of the table, lowered so that it nearly rested on the floor. She wrapped her arms around her knees and waited.

He came to slowly, blinking against the overhead lights. He raised one hand to shade his eyes, then awareness hit. He stared at his hand – free, bandaged – and then his eyes darted around the bright room.

“Alex?” he asked quietly.

“Right here.”

He turned toward her gingerly, moving his legs under the blanket, checking to see if he was still bound.

“What is happening now?” he asked cautiously, his eyes still struggling to focus.

“I believe you. And I’m very sorry for what I did to you.”

She watched him process that. Carefully, he raised himself up on one elbow, then clutched at the blanket, realizing again that he was naked. It was funny how nonmedical people reacted to that; physicians were fairly relaxed about nudity in general. She felt exactly the same about nudity as any other doctor, but he wouldn’t assume that. She should have put on her lab coat.

“You do believe me?” he asked.

“Yes. I know you’re not the person I thought you were. I was… misled.”

He sat up a little farther, moving warily, waiting for something to hurt. He should feel fine, though – just tired from the muscle spasms. And his upper thigh would be a little sore when the local wore off.

“I -” he started, and then froze. “What happened to your face?”

“It’s a long story. Can I say something before I get into it?”

His expression was full of concern. For her? No, that couldn’t be right.

“Okay,” he agreed hesitantly.

“Look, Daniel, what I told you before was true. I don’t like hurting people. I didn’t like hurting you. I only do that when I think the other option is much more horrible. I have never in my life done this before – hurt a totally innocent person. Never. Not every person I’ve been asked to interrogate was as depraved as the rest, but all of them were at least part of the plot. I’ve long since realized that my old bosses will stoop to almost anything, but I still can’t believe that they set me up to interrogate someone entirely guiltless.”

He thought about it for a few seconds.

“Are you asking me to forgive you?”

“No, I’m not asking for that. I would never ask for that. But I wanted you to know. I never would have hurt you if I hadn’t truly believed it would save lives. I am so sorry.”

“And what about the drug dealer? The virus?” he asked anxiously.

She frowned. “I’ve received some new information. Apparently, de la Fuentes was taken care of.”

“No one is going to die?”

“Not because of a weaponized virus spread by a drug czar, no.”

“So that’s good, right?”

She sighed. “Yeah, I guess that’s the silver lining of what happened here.”

“Now will you tell me what happened to your face? Did you have an accident?” Again with the concern.

“No. My injures are related to that new information I mentioned.” She wasn’t sure how to break it to him.

Sudden indignation. His shoulders tensed. “Somebody did that to you – on purpose? For hurting me?”

His mind certainly didn’t work like someone in her line of business. Things that would be obvious to anyone who had ever worked on any facet of a mission were totally foreign to him.

“Essentially,” she answered.

“Let me talk to him,” he insisted. “I believe you, too. I know you didn’t want to do it. You were trying to help.”

“That’s not really the issue. Um, Daniel, you know when I was showing you those pictures before and you recognized the person in them but you didn’t want to tell me who it was?”

His face closed up. He nodded.

“You can relax. I’m not asking you to confess anything; this isn’t a trick. I didn’t know you had a twin. They covered that up in the file so I wouldn’t -”

“No, but it wasn’t Kevin,” he interrupted. “That’s what I didn’t understand. It looked just like him, but it’s impossible. Kevin is dead. He died in prison last year. I don’t know who it could be unless we were actually triplets, and I think Mom might have noticed that…”

He trailed off, watching her expression change.

“What?” he asked.

“I’m not sure how to tell you this.”

“Tell me what?”

She hesitated for a moment, then stood up and walked around the table. His eyes tracked her, then he sat up, bunching the blanket carefully around his waist. She stopped and looked down. His eyes followed hers.

Kevin Beach’s face was turned toward the table where Daniel sat. It was curious how much more he looked like Daniel when he was unconscious, all the tension in his expression erased.

“Kevin,” Daniel whispered, face going white, then flushing bright red.

“Did you know your brother worked for the CIA?” she asked quietly.

He looked up, aghast. “No, no, he was in prison. He’d been dealing drugs.” He shook his head. “Things got bad after our parents died. Kev went off the deep end. He self-destructed. I mean, after West Point -”

“West Point?”

“Yes,” he said, face blank. Obviously the significance was lost on him. “Before the drugs, he was a different person. Graduated near the top of his class. He was accepted to Ranger school…” Daniel trailed off, assessing her frown.

Of course. Alex suppressed a sigh, upset with herself for not worrying more about the file’s gaps in information, for not taking the time to find a faraway library where she could have safely searched all Daniel’s family connections.

Daniel looked down at his brother again. “He’s not dead now, is he?”

“Just sleeping. He’ll wake up in a few minutes.”

Daniel’s brow furrowed. “What is he wearing?”

“Some kind of military armored suit, I guess. Not my specialty.”

“The CIA,” he whispered.

“Black ops, I would imagine. Your brother didn’t self-destruct, he just switched divisions. That’s why he was involved with the drug lord.”

His wide eyes turned sober. “He was helping the drug lord with the virus?” he whispered.

“No. Shutting him down, actually. We’re basically on the same side, though you wouldn’t know it to look at us.” She nudged his supine form with her toe.

Daniel’s head whipped back up to hers. “Did Kevin do that to your face?” Funny, but he sounded more upset about that than the idea that his brother was a murderous criminal.

“Yes, and I did this to him.” Another nudge.

“But he’s going to wake up?”

Alex nodded. She was a little conflicted about Batman waking up. It wasn’t going to be pretty. And Daniel was being so nice about everything, about her. That would probably change once his brother started talking.

He smiled just a little, staring at his brother’s exposed back. “So you won?”

She laughed. “Temporarily.”

“He’s a lot bigger than you are.”

“I would say I was smarter, but I made some pretty huge mistakes in my security here. I think I was just luckier this time.”

Daniel started to get to his feet, then paused. “Are my clothes around here anywhere?”

“Sorry, no. I thought there might be tracking devices in them. I had to cut them off you and ditch them.”

He blushed again, all the way down to that small spot on his chest. He cleared his throat. “Why would someone track me?”

“Well, at the time, I thought the drug lord might be monitoring you. Or that you were a trap, and my department would use you to track me. Which is a little bit closer to the truth, actually.”

He frowned. “I am so confused.”

She gave him the bullet-points version as succinctly as possible. While she was talking, he got to his feet, wrapping the blanket around his waist like an oversize towel, and started pacing back and forth in front of his brother’s body.

“They tried to kill you four times?” he asked when she was finished.

“Five now, I think,” she said, looking pointedly at Batman.

“I can’t believe Kevin is alive.” He sighed. He folded his long legs under the blanket and settled to the floor beside his brother’s head. “I can’t believe he lied to me. I can’t believe he let me think he was a criminal… I can’t believe he let me think he died… I can’t believe how many times I visited him – do you know how long it takes to drive from DC to Milwaukee?”

He stared in silence at his brother. She let him have a moment. She couldn’t imagine how she would feel if Barnaby walked back into her life without warning. How did you process something like that?

“When he wakes up,” Daniel murmured gently, “I’m going to punch him in the throat.”

Well, that was one way to process it.

“Why did you handcuff him?” Daniel wondered.

“Because as soon as he’s conscious, he’s going to try to kill me.”

Wide eyes again. “What?”

“It’s not hard to understand. All he knew when he came through the roof was that someone was hurting you. He let me live only because he wasn’t sure if you were really okay. For example, maybe I would have to give you an antidote or something. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t gotten the upper hand for a second, the minute you woke up, he would have shot me.”

She could see Daniel didn’t believe her. He shook his head, eyebrows pulling down, upset. A thatch of curls flopped onto his forehead, still a little damp with sweat. It was amazing how short a time had actually passed, but everything had changed. And she needed a new plan.

Was it safe to go back to her most recent home, the place she’d been living when Carston had contacted her? It would certainly be easiest. There was food there, and no one would have to see her face for as long as it took to look normal again. She didn’t think she’d compromised the house…

But then what? How much of her nest egg had she blown through for this stupid trap? How long would she be able to keep going on what she had?

Carston knew about her online presence, so it would be a risk to go looking for a real job on the Internet. The department didn’t have to know where she was to tie her hands.

Something touched her leg and she jumped. It was just Daniel’s hand.

“I didn’t mean to scare you, sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“You just look so worried. Don’t. I can talk to Kevin.”

She smiled humorlessly. “Thanks, but I’m not worrying about Lazarus at the moment.”

“You’re worried about your department.”

She turned away, walked to her computer, and rested her hand against the space bar. Hopefully it didn’t appear deliberate.

“Yeah,” she said without looking at him. “You could say that.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a short hitch in Kevin’s breathing before it evened out again. Good thing she’d moved away. She definitely didn’t want to be within reach now.

“Is there… I don’t know… is there anything I can do to help?” Daniel asked seriously.

She stared at him, surprised to feel actual tears pricking her eyes.

“I don’t think I deserve your help, Daniel.”

He made an exasperated noise in the back of his throat.

“And, really,” she continued, “you’ve got enough problems of your own.”

It was clear he hadn’t thought through the long-term implications of what had happened.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a target now, too. You’ve just learned a lot of things that you’re not supposed to know. If you go home, if you go back to your normal life, they’ll end it.”

“Not… go… back?”

He was totally stunned. Pity welled up inside her. Again she remembered how far away his kind of life was from hers. He probably thought he could fix everything by hiring a lawyer or writing to his congressman.

“But Alex, I have to go back. My team is in the championship tournament!”

She couldn’t help it. She started laughing, and the pricking tears turned into real drops. She saw his expression and waved her hand in apology.

“Sorry,” she said, gasping. “It’s not funny at all. I’m sorry. I think my painkillers are beginning to wear off.”

He got quickly to his feet. “Do you need something? Aspirin?”

“No, I’m good. I just have to come down from the high.”

He walked over and rested one hand lightly on her arm. She felt the sting, the bruising there just beginning to grow sensitive. It was going to be a very rough day.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “Can’t I get you something?”

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Oh. I guess I see your point.”

Finally, she thought. She’d been starting to worry that maybe the drug she’d used to kidnap him – Follow the Leader – had some permanent neurological effects they’d missed in the trials.

“Look,” she said. “After I have a little chat with Kevin, I’ll get my stuff together, and then I’ll give you the key so you can unlock your brother once I’m in my car.”

“But where will you go? What about your injuries?”

“You’re being nice again, Daniel.”

“Sorry.”

She laughed once more. The sound hitched on the end, like a sob.

“Seriously, though,” he said, “you don’t have to leave right away. You look like you could use some sleep and some medical attention.”

“Not on the agenda.” She eased herself into the desk chair, hoping he couldn’t see just how stiff and weary she felt.

“I wish we could talk some more, Alex. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. If you really mean it, that I can’t go back… I don’t even know how to begin to think about that.”

“I do mean it. And I’m sorry. But I think your brother can probably fill you in on the details. I imagine he’s better at hiding than I am.”

He looked at his brother – wearing half of a Batsuit – doubtfully. “You think?”

“Don’t you agree, Kevin?” she asked. She was fairly sure he’d been awake for at least a few minutes.

Daniel fell to his blanketed knees next to his brother. “Kev?”

Slowly, with a sigh, Kevin turned his head to look at his brother. “Hey, Danny.”

Daniel leaned in and embraced him awkwardly. Kevin patted Daniel’s arm with his free hand.

“Why, Kev, why?” Daniel asked, his voice muffled in Kevin’s hair.

“Trying to keep you safe, kid. Safe from people like that -” And he added several quite unflattering descriptions of her; she knew all the individual words, but the combinations were fairly unusual.

Daniel jerked away and cuffed Kevin’s head.

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Are you kidding me? That psychopath tortured you.”

“Not for very long. And she only did it because -”

“Are you defending that -” More creativity.

Daniel smacked him again. Not hard, but Kevin wasn’t in a mood to play. He grabbed Daniel’s hand and twisted it into an unpleasant position. He got his right knee pulled up under his body and tried to yank away from the table. The locked wheels whined against the floor as the metal slab shifted a few inches.

Her eyes widened. The table had to weigh at least four hundred pounds. She scooted her chair back.

Daniel wrestled with his free hand, trying to break his brother’s hold.

“I’ll gas you again if you don’t let go of him,” she promised Kevin. “The bad news is, the chemical I’m using does have a few negative side effects. It kills only a small percentage of your brain cells with each use, but it adds up over time.”

Kevin dropped Daniel’s hand, glared once at her, and then focused on his brother.

“Danny, listen to me,” he hissed. “You’re bigger than her. Get the keys and get me out of these -” Suddenly his face froze, went beet red, and the vessels in his forehead pulsed in time with his words. “Where is my dog?” he shouted at her. The table squealed another inch across the floor.

“Sleeping in the back room.” She had to work to keep her voice even. “It weighs less than you; the gas will take longer to wear off.”

Daniel was rubbing his wrist and looking confused. “Dog?”

“If he’s not one hundred percent -” Kevin threatened.

“Your dog will be fine. Now, I need to ask you a few questions.”

Daniel looked up at her, wild-eyed. “What?”

She glanced at him and shook her head. “Not like that. Just a normal exchange of information.” She turned back to Kevin. “Can we talk calmly for just a few minutes, please? Then I’ll get out of your hair.”

“In your dreams, psycho. We’ve got unfinished business.”

She raised her eyebrows over her blooming black eyes. “Can we talk for a few minutes before I put you into a medically induced coma, then?”

“Why would I do anything for you?”

“Because your brother’s safety is involved, and I can tell that’s something that matters to you.”

“You’re the one who pulled Danny into this -”

“That’s not entirely accurate. This is as much about you as it is about me, Kevin Beach.”

He glowered at her. “I already don’t like you, lady. You really don’t want to make that feeling stronger.”

“Relax, black ops. Hear me out.”

Daniel’s eyes were flashing back and forth like he was a spectator at a tennis match.

Kevin glared.

“The CIA thinks you’re dead?” she asked.

He grunted.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Yeah, that’s a yes, you -”

Daniel backhanded the top of Kevin’s head and then scooted out of the way as Kevin made a grab for him. Then Kevin refocused on her.

“And I’m going to keep it that way. I’m retired.”

She nodded, considering. She opened a blank document on her computer and typed a line of random medical terms.

“What are you typing?”

“Notes. Typing helps me think.” Actually, she was sure he would notice if she kept “accidentally” touching the computer to keep it awake, and she might need that trap again today.

“So what does it matter? I died. Danny shouldn’t be a target anymore.”

“I was a target?” Daniel asked.

Kevin propped himself up on his right elbow and leaned toward his brother. “I worked deep undercover, kid. Anyone who connected me to you would have used you as leverage. It’s one of the downsides of the job. That’s why I went through the whole prison charade. As long as on paper Kevin Beach was away, the bad guys wouldn’t know about you. I haven’t been Kevin in a long time.”

“But when I visited -”

“The Agency hooked me up with the warden. When you were on your way, if I could, I’d fly in and do the meeting. If I was unavailable -”

“That’s why you were in isolation. Or they said you were. Not for fighting.”

“Yep.”

“I can’t believe you lied to my face for so many years.”

“It was the only thing I could do to keep you safe.”

“What about maybe picking a different job?”

She broke in when the vessels in Kevin’s head started to swell again. “Um, could we put the reunion drama on hold for the moment? I think I’ve got it pieced together. Listen, please. And you’ll tell me if I’m wrong, I’m sure.”

Two nearly identical faces regarded her with nearly opposite expressions.

“Okay,” she continued. “So, Kevin, you faked your death – after the de la Fuentes job, right?” Kevin didn’t respond in any way, so she went on. “That was six months ago, you said. I can only conclude that the Agency was concerned about the lack of a body -”

“Oh, there was a body.”

“Then they were concerned about the inconsistencies with that body,” she snapped. “And they thought of a plan to draw you out, just in case.”

He frowned. He knew his former bosses, just like she knew hers.

“Daniel’s your weak spot – like you said, their leverage against you. They know this. They decide to take him, see what happens. But they know what you’re capable of, and no one wants to be the one left holding the bag if you do turn up alive.”

“But -” Kevin started to say. He stopped himself, probably realizing whatever argument he’d been about to make wouldn’t hold up.

“You’re a problem for the CIA. I’m a problem for my department. At the top, the people involved in both our former workplaces are pretty tight. So they offer me a deal: ‘Do a job for us, and we’ll call off the hunt.’ They must have had it worked out pretty solidly before they contacted me. Fixed the files, got ready to feed me the crisis story I can’t turn my back on. None of them make a move on me because they’ve already sacrificed three assets trying and they don’t want any more losses. They knew I’d come in prepared for anything like that. But, if you were really good, maybe I wouldn’t be prepared enough for you.”

Kevin’s face had changed while she was working it out. “And either way,” he concluded, “one problem gets solved.”

“It’s elaborate. Sounds more like your agency than mine, if I had to guess.”

“Yeah, it does sound like them, actually,” he agreed grudgingly.

“So they put us together like two scorpions in a jar and shake it up,” she said. “One way or another, they get a win on the books. Maybe, if they’re really, really lucky, we take each other out. Or at least weaken the winner. No chance of any losses on their side.”

And they had weakened her – reduced her assets and damaged her physically. A partial success for them.

“And it doesn’t bother them that my brother is also stuck in the jar,” he said furiously. “Only he’s an ant, not a scorpion. They just throw him into the mix, don’t even care that he’s completely defenseless.”

“Hey,” Daniel protested.

“No offense, Danny, but you’re about as dangerous as hand-knitted socks.”

Daniel opened his mouth to respond, but a loud whine from the bunk room interrupted. The whine was quickly followed by angry snarls and a few sharp barks, then a strident clawing at the wooden door.

She was glad she’d gone the extra mile in securing the wolf.

“He’s upset,” Kevin accused.

“The dog is fine. There’s a toilet back there, it won’t even get dehydrated.”

Kevin just raised his eyebrows, not as concerned about the animal as she would have expected. The clawing and snarling didn’t let up.

“You really brought a dog?” Daniel asked.

“More of a partner.” He looked at her. “Well, what now? Their plan failed.”

“Narrowly.”

He grinned. “We could go another round.”

“As much as I would dearly love to inject a few things into your system, I’d rather not give them the satisfaction.”

“Fair enough.”

The dog was scratching and growling in an unbroken stream through all of this. It was getting on her nerves.

“I do have a plan.”

Kevin rolled his eyes. “I bet you always have a plan, don’t you, shorty?”

She regarded him with flat eyes. “I can’t rely on muscle, so I rely on brains. It appears you have the opposite problem.”

He laughed derisively.

“Um, Kev,” Daniel interjected. “I’d like to point out that you are chained up on the floor.”

“Shut up, Danny.”

“Please, boys, if I could get one more second of your time?” She waited till they looked at her. “Here’s the plan: I write an e-mail to my ex-boss. I tell him I got the truth, the real truth, and both of you are out of the picture. I really don’t appreciate the manipulation. If he tries to contact me in any way again, I’m making a personal visit to his kitchen pantry.”

“You claim the win?” Kevin asked in a disbelieving voice. “Please!”

“Chained on the floor,” Daniel murmured under his breath.

“It’s a gift,” she snapped back. “You get to be dead again. No one is looking for either of you.”

Kevin’s cynical expression dissolved. For a second, the twin thing was a lot more evident.

The sound of the dog was like a howling wood chipper in the next room. She hadn’t really planned to stick around for her security deposit, but it clearly was not an option now.

“Why would you do that for us?” Kevin asked.

“I’m doing it for Daniel. I owe him. I should have been smarter. I shouldn’t have taken the bait.”

It was all so completely obvious now: How easily she’d slipped through their surveillance – because there hadn’t been any. How simple it had been to snatch Daniel – because no one was trying to stop her. The heavy-handed way they’d given her a deadline with plenty of time for her to act. It was embarrassing.

“Then what happens to you?” Daniel asked quietly. She almost had to read his lips over the noise of the dog.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

She had learned a few things from this exercise in gullibility, maybe things they didn’t want her to know.

There weren’t going to be any helicopters or elimination teams. Carston – the one name she could be absolutely certain of at this point – and whoever else wanted her dead had sent only the occasional lone assassin because that was all they had. Her enemies had been driven to this wild collaboration, and she knew it wasn’t because the department didn’t have the resources. It could only be because she wasn’t common knowledge. And Carston – and whoever his confederates were – couldn’t afford to have her become so.

She’d assumed, when she’d seen the obituary for Juliana Fortis and read about the cremation, that everyone involved was in on the scam. But what if it was just a few key people? What if Carston had promised his superiors that the job would be done and then was afraid to admit he’d missed on the first swat?

Or – revolutionary idea – what if most people at the department thought it was a lab accident? That she and Barnaby had mixed the wrong test tubes and punched out together? What if Carston’s superiors hadn’t wanted her dead? What if only those few key individuals had wanted that, and now they had to keep their attempts to finish the job under the radar? That would change everything.

It played. It fit with the facts.

It made her feel stronger.

The ones who had arranged her death had been afraid of what she knew, but they had never been afraid of her. Maybe it was time for that to change.

There was a sudden earsplitting noise – an explosive fragmenting of wood. And then the enraged snarling got a lot closer.