The Chemist

CHAPTER 19

He watched with a poker face as she stuck the Glock in its holster and retrieved the bolt cutters from the floor by Angel’s leg.

She’d considered bringing the welding iron. Fire could be more painful than almost anything else, and many people had related phobias. But Hector was a professional. She didn’t have the time to break him down with pain; his resistance would be too high. What would frighten him more than agony would be losing his physical edge. If he didn’t have a trigger finger, he couldn’t do his job. She’d start with something less vital to him, but he would be able to see the inevitable coming. If he could survive tonight, he would want to do it with functional hands. So he would have to talk to delay her.

Hector’s left hand was most convenient. As she fit the metal blades around his pinkie finger, he curled the rest into a fist and fought harder against the ties. She kept a tight hold on the handles, knowing what she would be thinking in his position – if he could get control of the cutters, he would have a chance to free himself. Sure enough, he tried to kick out with his left leg, despite the excruciating pain it must have caused him. She dodged the blow, moved a few feet higher, then refit the cutters to the base of his folded finger.

These were made for cutting through rebar, and she kept the blades sharp. It didn’t take too much muscle on her part to snap those blades together.

She watched his reaction. He thrashed against the ties ineffectually. His face turned dark red and the vessels pulsed in his forehead. He gasped and panted, but he didn’t scream.

“Sometimes people don’t think I’m serious,” she told him. “It’s good to get that misconception out of the way.”

Right now, Hector would be thinking about the amount of time that could pass before it was too late to reattach a finger. He could live without a pinkie, but he needed his hands, and he must know she wasn’t going to stop there.

She would emphasize her point.

She snagged the warm, bloody finger off the floor and backed to the bathroom, keeping her eyes on him as he writhed in his bonds; even the best zip ties weren’t foolproof. She made sure he was watching as she dropped the finger into the toilet and flushed. Now he knew that she wasn’t going to leave him options. Hopefully it would encourage him to give her what she wanted quickly.

“Hector,” she told him as he stared, gritting his teeth, fighting to control the pain. “Don’t be stupid. It’s not going to hurt you to tell me what I want to know. It is going to hurt you if you don’t. Your trigger fingers are next, then the rest of them. This is what I do, and I can keep it up for as long as I need to. Don’t you see? They sent you after the wrong people, Hector. They told you nothing about what you were up against. They just handed you to me. Why protect them?”

“You’re going after them next?” he grunted through his teeth.

“Of course.”

His eyes were full of venom and hatred. She’d seen the look before, but in the past, she’d viewed it from a much better protected position. If he somehow got his hands on her, if their roles were reversed, she would do what she had to in order to die immediately.

“I didn’t come for you,” he spit out unwillingly. “I was sent for a man. I was given a picture. I was told there would be a second man, but that the second would be easy. The first would be hard. I never saw that one.”

“When were you hired?”

“Last night.”

“Then you rounded up some extra help and came in today,” she guessed. “From where?”

“Miami.”

“How did you know where to come?”

“They gave me three addresses. This was the second try.”

“I guess I don’t need to ask what happened at the first place.”

His seething fury twisted into a ghoulish smile. “They were old. A man and a woman. They didn’t fit the description, but I was paid well. It doesn’t hurt to be thorough, and all it cost me was two bullets.”

She nodded. He could see nothing of her expression behind the gas mask, but she kept her features smooth out of habit.

“How far away was the other house?”

“Fifteen minutes south of the little town.”

“Where did the addresses come from?”

“No one told me that. I didn’t ask.”

She hefted the bolt cutters. “No guesses?”

“The other place was nothing like this. I saw nothing in common.”

It could be a lie, but it would make more sense for it to be the truth. Why would Carston or whoever was calling the shots at the Agency need to give the hit man more than this location?

She puzzled over it for a moment, trying to think of another avenue to explore. Her eyes never left his hands. What kinds of things might link Arnie’s home to random others? What similarity would generate a list of otherwise unconnected addresses?

With a sinking feeling, she thought of a possibility. One she did not like much.

“What kind of car was in the driveway of the first place?”

He seemed surprised by her question. “An old truck.”

“White?”

“With a black camper.”

Her jaw clenched.

So they’d gotten a very good look at Arnie’s truck – the one he’d said had two perfect matches around town. They must have gotten Daniel on camera or they wouldn’t be so certain of the make and model. Daniel would have had to drive down the main drag, passing the bank; that was probably how they’d done it. Why bother questioning the girl who called in about the missing teacher? Just take the CC camera footage from town and get something solid, then call the DMV. They didn’t get everything – if the plates had been clear, that couple across town wouldn’t be dead. But they knew Daniel was alive because Kevin wouldn’t have made that mistake. Also, even in a grainy black-and-white video, Daniel didn’t look exactly like Kevin if you knew what to look for.

She needed Arnie’s truck. She needed it badly. It was inconspicuous. They couldn’t exactly roll through town in the Batmobile and escape notice. Where was she going to get another vehicle out here?

She took a step back, feeling tired. She’d had a good resting place, but now the hunt was on again. It didn’t even matter that, most likely, the bad guys thought she was dead. Because they knew Daniel was alive.

Liability.

Hector’s right hand was busy. He was scratching at the zip tie with the tips of his fingers, almost dislocating his wrist in the process. It didn’t look like he was trying to break it or even get to the locking tab. What was he doing? She reached for the Glock; it would probably be safest to put a round through that hand -

A single, concussive shot exploded in the silence, much louder than she would have expected it to sound from outside the house. Daniel -

Her eyes had darted to the direction of the shot though she knew better. In the fourth of a second it took her to recall them while simultaneously ripping her Glock from the holster, Hector’s fingers found what they were searching for. He extracted a five-inch serrated blade from the cuff of his sleeve. It sawed across the taut zip tie with a twanging snap. The same motion turned into a cast. She fired into his central mass as the blade flew at her face. She tried to dodge while she kept shooting, ignoring the sudden pressure that wasn’t quite pain as it slashed across her jaw – wasn’t pain yet, but would be soon, when the drug wore off. She could feel the heat of the blood coating her neck as she continued firing into Hector’s chest until the clip was empty.

Hector lay still, his open eyes still pointed in her direction, but no longer focused.

Moving in swift, jerky bursts, she wiped down the Glock and threw it over the banister, wiped and holstered the cutters, and retrieved her shotgun from the end of the hall, trying to concentrate on what to do next. She didn’t know what was waiting for her outside. As she crept down the stairs, her fingers worked quickly to make sense of the new damage. The assassin’s blade had just missed her carotid artery, hitting the bottom corner of her jaw and slicing halfway through her earlobe. The loose piece dangled against her neck. Beautiful.

She fished the remains of her left earring from the damaged lobe – just the hook was left, with a few tiny fragments of thin glass still stuck in the twist of wire – then removed the right. She stowed them in a pocket on the tactical vest. It would be unwise to leave such evidence behind. Even something so small could tip her enemies off, give them a reason to believe she was alive.

On the ground floor, she spared a second to take one quick look at Arnie. His face was turned to the floor. She could see only what was left of the back of his head. It was obvious that he hadn’t suffered, but that was weak comfort.

She’d planned to gather evidence on her way out, but she wasn’t sure she had time for that now. The dogs were quiet – did that mean everything was okay?

Well, after the volley of shots upstairs, it wasn’t like anyone outside was unaware of her presence. She sidled over to the door and crouched beside it, lower, she thought, than anyone would aim to shoot through the drywall. She reached over and pulled the door open a crack. No one shot at her.

“Daniel?” she called loudly.

“Alex!” he shouted back – he sounded as relieved as she suddenly felt.

“You’re okay?” she checked.

“Yes. Are you?”

“I’m coming out. Don’t shoot.”

She walked through the front door with her hands raised above her head, just in case. Einstein popped off the floor beside Lola and was at her heels.

She dropped her arms and jogged toward the Humvee. It was lit only by the lamps shining through the front door and windows, but from this vantage it appeared to be totally unharmed by their intentional accident.

Daniel slid out of the front seat.

“The shot?” she asked, her voice quieter as she approached. The dogs around the Humvee seemed relaxed enough, but…

“The last man. He must have climbed the side of the house to get away from the dogs. He was trying to edge around to the roof of the porch.”

Daniel gestured with the rifle to a dark mass crumpled on the gravel close to the east corner of the house. She pushed the gas mask back on her forehead, carefully moving the straps on the left side over her ear without touching it. She adjusted her trajectory, edging closer to the broken figure. Einstein shadowed her. A large standard German shepherd was pacing not too far off, seeming uninterested in the body.

Einstein suddenly sped up and passed her. He sniffed the body a few times while she cautiously picked her way forward, and then he turned to her with his tail wagging.

“Is that the all clear?” she muttered.

He kept wagging.

She leaned in for a closer look. It didn’t take long to see all there was to see. Impressed, she turned and walked back to the Humvee. Daniel was standing beside the open driver-side door, looking unsure what to do. He still didn’t appear to be having any kind of shock reaction.

“Nice shot,” she said. One bullet, literally right between the eyes. It couldn’t have been more perfect.

“I wasn’t very far away.”

He stepped toward her, closing the distance, and his gloved hands wrapped tightly around the tops of her arms. Then he gasped and spun to the side, wheeling her around so that the light was no longer behind her.

“How much of this blood is yours?”

“Not much,” she said. “I’m good.”

“Your ear!”

“Yeah, that’s not going to help anything, is it? You handy with a needle and thread?”

His head jerked back in surprise. “What?”

“It’s not hard. I can talk you through it.”

“Um…”

“One thing first.” She shook out of his grasp and ran back up the porch stairs. Lola was still curled in the same spot. She raised her head and thumped her tail limply when she saw Alex.

“Hey, Lola, good girl. Let me take a look at you.”

Alex sat cross-legged in front of her. She stroked Lola’s side with one hand while searching for the wound with the other.

“Is she okay?” Daniel asked softly. He was on the other side of the porch banister, his elbows resting on the edge of the floorboards. He seemed unwilling to get any closer to the house. She didn’t blame him. Lola whimpered as Alex felt along her legs.

“She’s lost some blood. It looks like the bullet went through her back left leg. I can’t tell if it hit bone, but the bullet definitely passed through. She was lucky.”

He reached through the slats to rub Lola’s nose. “Poor girl.”

“The stuff in the back of the Humvee must be in total chaos. I’m going to hunt up the first-aid kit. Keep her calm, will you?”

“Sure.”

Einstein followed Alex back to the vehicle, just as he’d trailed her to the porch. It surprised her how the silent support buoyed her, made her feel safe despite all the evidence to the contrary.

She opened the back of the Humvee, and an impatient Khan almost knocked her down. She dodged out of his way just in time as he sprang over her. She imagined the cargo hold was tight for him, though she had plenty of space as she crawled inside.

Guns and ammo were strewn haphazardly, loose bullets rolling under her knees. There wasn’t time to organize. Her conversation with Hector had been cut short; she hadn’t been able to ask one last vital question. What happens when the job is done? Who was expecting a call, and when? At least there was the third house still waiting. Unless Hector had made a call between the first and second stops.

Had he called his manager, told him which address had been cleared and which he was heading to next? Was the manager waiting for another call? Would he have realized that the call was overdue?

She located the duffel that held her first-aid kit. There was nothing she could do now except move fast and make the right decisions. The only problem was she still didn’t know exactly what those right decisions were.

“Okay,” she huffed as she and Einstein arrived back at Lola’s side.

She knelt beside Lola’s legs and quickly realized it was too dark for her to see what she was doing.

“I need you to bring the Humvee around and give me some light,” she said.

Daniel lurched away from the porch, a massive shadow hulking beside him: Khan still on duty. She wondered how Khan and Einstein had decided to switch assignments. She pulled off her tactical gloves and replaced her bloody latex gloves with a fresh pair. She was just injecting Lola with a mild sedative when the brilliant lights of the Humvee came shooting through the banister slats. She adjusted her position so the glare was out of her face and on the wound. It looked like a clean through-and-through. She waited for Lola’s eyes to droop before she started cleaning the wound. Lola’s leg twitched a few times, but she didn’t cry out. Antiseptic, then ointment, then gauze, then a splint and more gauze. It should heal well, if she could keep Lola off it.

She blew out a sigh. What were they going to do about all these dogs?

“What’s next?” Daniel asked when she was done. He was on the ground beside the porch, rifle in hands, scanning the dark plains around them.

“Can you throw a couple of stitches in my ear while I’ve got the stuff out?”

He balked. “I won’t get it right.”

“It’ll be easy,” she assured him. “Haven’t you ever sewn on a button?”

“Not through human flesh,” he muttered, but he slung his rifle over his shoulder and started up the stairs as he spoke.

She lit a match from the kit and sterilized the needle. It wasn’t the highest standard of medical technique, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances. She waved the needle quickly back and forth to cool it, then poked the suture thread through the eye and knotted one end.

She held it out to him along with a fresh pair of gloves. He put the gloves on and then reached slowly for the needle. He didn’t seem to want to touch it. She tilted her head back and poured antiseptic across the wound, waiting for the scorching sting to run the course of the cut all the way to her ear. Then she angled her jaw toward him, making sure she was in the brightest beam of light.

“Probably just needs three little ones. Start at the back and pull through.”

“What about a local anesthetic?”

“I’ve got enough painkiller in me already,” she lied. She could feel the slash across her jaw like a brand. But she was out of Survive, and anything else she could use would incapacitate her at least partially. This wasn’t an emergency, it was only pain.

He knelt down beside her. He put his fingers gently under the edge of her chin.

“This was very close to your jugular!” He gasped, horrified.

“Yeah, he was good.”

His face was out of her sight, so she couldn’t interpret the little hitching sound in his breath.

“Do it, Daniel. We have to hurry.”

He sucked in a deep breath, and then she felt the needle pierce her earlobe. She was braced for it – she kept it off her face and didn’t let her hands clutch into fists; she’d learned to localize her reactions. She clenched the muscles in her abdomen, letting the pressure vent there.

“Good,” she said as soon as she was sure she could keep her voice even. “You’re doing great. Now just fit the pieces together, and stitch them in place.”

While she spoke, his fingers moved quickly through the task. She couldn’t feel the needle in the severed bottom portion of her earlobe, so she only had to deal with the pain when he perforated the top half. Just three little stabs. It wasn’t too bad after the first.

“Do I… tie a knot or something?” he asked.

“Yes, in the back, please.”

She could feel the pull of the thread tightening as he worked.

“It’s done.”

She looked up at him and smiled. It tugged at her slashed jaw. “Thank you. I would have had a hard time managing that on my own.”

He touched her cheek. “Here, let me bandage this for you.”

She held still while he covered the wound with ointment, then taped a strip of gauze to her cheek. He wrapped her ear front and back.

“Probably should have cleaned it first,” he muttered.

“It will do for now. Let’s put Lola in the Humvee.”

“I’ll get her.”

Daniel gently lifted the sleeping Lola into his arms. Her long front paws and ears dangled out from his arms and wiggled with every step he took. Alex felt a bubble of inappropriate humor rising in her chest, and swallowed against it. There was no time for hysteria. Daniel laid Lola in the space behind the passenger seat. There were only the two front seats in the Humvee. Kevin had removed the rest to leave room for cargo, she guessed.

“What now?” Daniel asked as he walked back to where she was still sitting on the porch. He was probably wondering why she wasn’t doing something proactive. He didn’t know she was procrastinating.

She took a deep breath and steadied her shoulders. “Give me the phone. It’s time to talk to your brother.”

“Should we be moving?”

“There’s one thing more I need to do, but I want to tell him first.”

“What?”

“We really ought to burn the house down.”

His eyes widened as he stared at her. Slowly, he pulled the phone from his vest pocket.

“I should make the call,” he said.

“He already hates me,” she countered.

“But this was my fault.”

“You weren’t the one who hired a team of hit men.”

He shook his head and pressed the button to power up the phone.

“Fine,” she muttered.

As she packed up her first-aid supplies, she watched Daniel from the corner of her eye. He pulled up the only number that had ever called, but before he could touch it, the phone rang again.

Daniel sucked in a deep breath, the same way he had before making the first pass on her ear. She imagined this conversation would be the harder of the tasks.

He hit the screen. She could hear Kevin shrieking so loudly that at first she thought the phone was on speaker mode.

“YOU DON’T HANG UP ON ME, YOU -”

“Kev, it’s me. Kev! It’s Danny!”

“WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?”

“It’s my fault, Kev. I was an idiot. I ruined everything. I’m so sorry!”

“WHAT ARE YOU BABBLING ABOUT?”

“Arnie’s dead, Kev. I’m so sorry. And some of the dogs, I’m not sure how many. It’s all my fault. I wish I could tell you how -”

“PUT THE POISON LADY ON THE PHONE!”

“This is on me, Kev. I messed up -”

Kevin’s voice was calmer when he interrupted now. “There’s no time for this, Danny. Give her the phone. I need someone who can talk sense.”

She stood up and reached for the phone. Daniel watched anxiously as she held it a few inches away from her ear.

“Are you secure?” Kevin asked.

Surprised by his businesslike detachment, she answered in the same tone. “For the moment, but we’ve got to move.”

“Have you torched the house?”

“I was just about to.”

“There’s kerosene in the closet under the stairs.”

“Thanks.”

“Call me when you’re on the road.”

He hung up.

Well, that had gone better than she’d hoped. She handed the phone back to Daniel. His expression was blank with surprise. The gas in the house would long since have dissipated, so she didn’t bother with the mask. Daniel followed her inside, but she made Einstein keep watch at the door.

“Get some clothes out of Kevin’s room,” she instructed. She could have sent him upstairs for the first set he’d borrowed, but that would take more time, and she didn’t know how he would react to the bodies. She could see his eyes cutting away to the sofa that obscured Arnie, and then back to her. They both had to keep it together. They still had a long night ahead of them if they were going to be alive tomorrow. “When you have enough for a few days, get to the kitchen and grab anything that’s nonperishable. Water, too, as much as we’ve got.”

He nodded and headed down the hall to Kevin’s room. She darted up the stairs.

“Do you want these guns?” he called up after her.

She dodged around the bodies, careful not to slip in the blood slick. “No, those’ve killed people. If we get caught, I don’t want to be linked to anything. Kevin’s guns will be clean.”

In her room, she stripped off her blood-spattered clothes and pulled on clean jeans and a T-shirt. She gathered up her sleeping bag, wrapping the rest of her clothes in it, then grabbed her lab kit in her open hand and kicked the bloody clothes into the hallway. She hurried back down the stairs and out to the car with her awkward load. While Daniel foraged in the kitchen, she located the kerosene. Kevin had three five-gallon gas cans stashed together. He could only have intended them for lighting up the house. She was glad that he was so prepared and businesslike. It meant his reaction – once Daniel was safe – was likely to be more pragmatic than violent. She hoped.

She started upstairs, making sure her clothes and the bodies were well saturated with the kerosene. The wooden floors wouldn’t need as much help. She splashed the baseboards in all three rooms, then trailed the rest down the stairs. She grabbed another can and hurried through the ground floor. It was the first time she’d seen the other bedrooms. They were both large and well appointed with luxurious attached baths. She was glad Arnie had had a comfortable life here. She wished she could have done something to spare him this. But even if she and Daniel had left the first day the missing-person trap had run on the news, Arnie would still have ended up like this. It was a depressing thought.

Daniel’s fingerprints were in the dogs’ outbuilding, but there was no way to fool Carston’s counterpart at the CIA into thinking Daniel – or Kevin – had died here, so it didn’t really matter. They would know Daniel was on the run. She didn’t want to torch the outbuilding and endanger the animals. It didn’t have a wide gravel skirt like the house did, which would hopefully prevent a wildfire. No doubt Kevin had laid the gravel for exactly this reason.

Daniel was waiting for her in front of the Humvee.

“Back this up,” she said, waving toward the Humvee. “See if you can get the dogs to move, too.”

He got to work. She had the pack of matches from her first-aid kit. She’d left a nice thick trail of kerosene down the middle of the porch steps, so it was easy to set that trail alight and then get out of the way before the blaze really got going. When she turned, the dogs were automatically backing away from the flames. That was good.

Alex opened the driver-side door and called for Einstein. He jumped over the seat in one bound and then positioned himself next to Lola. His ears were up and his tongue out. He still looked eager; Alex envied his energy and positivity.

Daniel was walking through the crowd of surviving animals, giving each one an emphatic “At ease.” She hoped that would help when the fire trucks started rolling up. The noise of the shootout wouldn’t have carried to any of the distant neighbors, but the orange light of the fire against the black night sky was another matter. They had to run now. She couldn’t think of anything else she could do for the dogs. It felt like failure – these animals had saved her and Daniel’s lives.

A rumble just behind her head startled Alex. She spun and found herself face to face with Khan. He was staring at her in what seemed like an impatient way, as if he were waiting for her to move. His nose pointed over her shoulder toward Einstein.

“Oh,” she said as she realized he was trying to get into the car. “Sorry, Khan, I need you to stay.”

She’d never seen an animal look so offended in her life. He didn’t move, just stared into her face as if demanding an explanation. She was the more surprised of the two of them when she suddenly threw her arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, big guy,” she whispered into his fur. “I wish I could take you with me. I owe you huge. Take care of the others for me. You’re in charge, okay?”

She leaned away, stroking the sides of his thick neck. He looked slightly mollified and took an unwilling step back.

“At ease,” she said quietly; she patted him once more, then turned to the Humvee. Daniel was already belted into the passenger’s seat.

“Are you all right?” Daniel asked quietly as she climbed in. It was obvious he wasn’t talking about physical injuries.

“Not really.” She laughed once, and there was an edge of the hysteria she was fighting in the sound. Khan was still watching as she pulled away from the house.

Once through the gate, she donned the goggles and turned the headlights off. It was safer to drive the Humvee across the open plains rather than stay on the only road that led to the ranch. Eventually, they reached another road – it was even paved. She ditched the goggles and put the headlights on as she turned northwest. She didn’t have a destination in mind, only distance. She needed to get as far away from Kevin’s ranch as possible before the sun rose.