The Chemist

CHAPTER 23

Alex did manage to get a little bit of sleep, maybe thirty minutes by the time the alarm sounded. Just enough that she was completely dragging as they set off. Daniel was more alert, so he took the first shift and she reclined the passenger seat as far back as it would go. The seats were much more comfortable, the suspension smoother, and it was easier to doze. The dogs seemed happy in the back, as if they appreciated the new ride, too.

She was herself again by the time they got to the dog-boarding facility north of Atlanta. It was after nine thirty; they were running a little behind, thanks to some construction delays on I-65.

Daniel stayed with the car as she carried Lola into the front office. It was a casual place, homey, with lots of fenced acres lining the road in. The dogs that ran alongside the car as they passed looked happy and healthy. Of course, Lola wouldn’t be running anywhere for a while.

The man behind the desk was all sympathy as Alex came in. He obviously had linked her to the reservation before she introduced herself as Ms. Wells. She followed patiently as he showed her the spacious kennel Lola would occupy and explained the visiting vet’s schedule. She thanked him and paid him for a month in advance, then gave Lola one last hug. As Kevin had promised, the man never commented on Lola’s injury in a specific way, and he didn’t mention Alex’s face. Twenty minutes later, she and Daniel were back on the road. Alex was glad it was her turn to drive. She needed something to concentrate on so she wouldn’t think about leaving Lola behind.

She thought Daniel would crash, but he was still bright-eyed and in a talkative mood. Or maybe he could see how she was trying to fight off the sadness and wanted to help. Knowing him, that was probably it.

“You know almost everything about me from that stupid file,” he complained. “But there’s so much I don’t know about you.”

“I’ve actually told you most of it. When my life wasn’t bizarre, it was pretty boring.”

“Tell me something embarrassing about you in high school.”

“Everything about me was embarrassing in high school. I was a huge nerd.”

“Sounds sexy.”

“Oh, really? My mother cut my hair at home and I had the most outrageous bangs the nineties had ever seen.”

“Please tell me there’s a picture.”

“You wish. When my mother died, I burned all the incriminating stuff.”

“Who was your first boyfriend?”

Alex laughed. “Roger Markowitz. He took me to senior prom. I had the most totally awesome puffy sleeves on my dress. Electric blue, naturally. Roger tried to slip me the tongue in the limo on the way to the ballroom, but he was so nervous that he threw up on me. I spent the whole dance in the ladies’ room trying to clean up. I broke up with him that night. One might describe it as an epic romance.”

“What a tearjerker!”

“I know. Romeo and Juliet had nothing on us.”

Daniel laughed. “Who was your first serious relationship?”

“Serious? Wow. Hmm, I don’t know if anyone would qualify besides Bradley. First year of med school at Columbia.”

“You went to Columbia med?” he asked.

“I was a very brainy nerd.”

“I’m impressed. Back to Bradley.”

“Do you want to hear something really and truly embarrassing?”

“Very much.”

“The reason I was first attracted to him…” She paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t admit this.”

“It’s too late to turn back. You have to tell me now.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay, fine. He looked like Egon. You know, from Ghostbusters? Just exactly like that, bouffant hair, round glasses, everything.”

Daniel worked to keep a straight face. “Irresistible.”

“You have no idea. So hot.”

“How long were you together?”

“Through that first summer. Then I won a scholarship in my second year. We both applied, and he thought he was a shoo-in. He didn’t take it well when I, as he put it, took it from him. He went in and demanded to see our scores. Something I noticed multiple times throughout my wild and crazy romantic period: lots of guys don’t like girls to be smarter than they are.”

“That must have really limited your dating pool.”

“Right down to zero.”

“Well, rest assured, I’ve never had a problem with a woman who is smarter than me. I wouldn’t want to limit my pool by that much. I think that kind of childishness usually goes away when men grow up.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it. I never dated anyone outside of school. I didn’t get to explore the adult stage of the human male. Well, till now.”

“Never?” he asked, shocked.

“I was recruited while I was still in school. I told you what it was like after that.”

“But… you must have met people outside of work. You got vacation time, didn’t you?”

She smiled. “Not very often. And it was hard for me to talk to people outside of the lab. Everything was classified. I was classified. I couldn’t be myself in any way or talk about any part of my real life with a person on the outside. It was too hard being some imaginary character. I preferred isolation. It embarrassed me to try to play a role. Ironic, isn’t it? Now I have a new name every other week.”

He put his hand on her knee. “I’m sorry. It sounds horrible.”

“Yeah. It frequently was. That’s why I’m so backward when it comes to interpersonal relations. But on the plus side, I got to do some really cutting-edge work with monoclonal antibodies – I’m talking about sci-fi stuff here, the kind of thing people don’t believe exists. And I had essentially no limits on my practical research. I got everything I wanted in the lab. My budget was amazing. I’m responsible for a larger chunk of the national debt than you know.”

He laughed.

“So was your ex-wife smarter than you are?” she asked.

He hesitated for a moment. “It doesn’t bother you to talk about her?”

“Why would it? You didn’t get jealous over the eternal flame I will always carry for Roger Markowitz.”

“Good point. Well, Lainey was very bright in her own way. Not book-smart, but clever, shrewd. When we met, she was so… vivid. She wasn’t like other women I’d dated, easygoing girls who were content with easygoing me. Lainey always wanted more – from every aspect of life. She was a little… contrary. In the beginning, I thought she just had very firm opinions and wasn’t afraid to disagree. I loved that about her. But then, over time… well, she wasn’t really opinionated, she just loved the drama. She would argue if you told her the sun rises in the east. It was always exciting, at least.”

“Ah, so you’re an adrenaline junkie. This all starts to make sense now.”

“What makes sense?”

“Your attraction to me.”

He stared at her, blinking owlishly the way he did when he was surprised.

“Admit it,” she teased. “You’re just in this for the thrill of the near-death experiences.”

“Hmm, I hadn’t considered that.”

“Maybe we should forget this gig in DC after all. If I eliminate my hunters and life gets all safe and boring, you’ll be out the door, won’t you?” She sighed theatrically.

She couldn’t tell if he was serious or playing along when he answered, “I was never fond of this plan to begin with. Maybe it is smarter to run.”

“On the other hand, if I do a bad job in DC, it’s going to get a lot more dangerous. You’ll love that.”

He gave her a bleak stare.

“Was that over the line?” she asked.

“A little too close to home.”

“Sorry.”

He sighed. “Your theory is incorrect, though, I’m afraid. See, I got over my love of drama early on. It was still exciting, but so is drowning in quicksand, I’d imagine. Exciting is not the same thing as enjoyable.”

“But you didn’t leave.”

Daniel stared at his hand – curled tensely around her thigh now – as he answered. “No. I thought… well, this makes me sound like a first-class sucker. I thought I could fix her. She had a lot of issues from her past, and I let those issues be the excuse when she did things to hurt me. I never blamed her; I always blamed her history. Cliff – that’s the man she left me for; what a fantastic name to be left for, don’t you think? – Cliff wasn’t her first fling. I found out about the others later.” He glanced up at her suddenly. “Was that all in the file?”

“No.”

He stared out the windshield. “I knew I should give up. I knew I wasn’t holding on to anything real. The Lainey I loved was just a construct in my head. But I was stubborn. Stupidly so. Sometimes you cling to a mistake simply because it took so long to make.”

“It sounds miserable.”

He looked over and smiled at her weakly. “Yes, it was. But the hardest part was just admitting none of it had ever been real. It’s humiliating, you know, to be duped. So my pride was hurt worse than anything else.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And I’m sorry, too. My stories are so much less entertaining than yours. Tell me about another boyfriend.”

“I have a question first.”

He stiffened a little bit. “Go ahead.”

“That story you told the hooker, Kate, what was that about?”

“Huh?” His eyebrows pulled together in confusion.

“The one who was supposed to plant your tracker. Kevin said you told her your divorce wasn’t final. But he also said this conversation happened two years after you split. You didn’t contest the divorce, it went through in months. So why did you say that?”

Daniel laughed. “Thank you, seriously, from the very bottom of my heart, for not voicing that question in front of Kevin.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Yes, the divorce was ancient history by then. But this girl… girls like that did not wander into the dive bar where I used to hang out. And if one happened to, I would not have been the guy she approached.”

“What was she like?”

“If memory serves, she was stunning. And predatory. And oddly… frightening. I never believed for an instant that she was really attracted to me. I could sense there was an agenda, and I didn’t want to fall for it. I was a little sensitive, at that point, to the idea of being duped again. But of course I didn’t want to be rude, so I went with the politest refusal I could think of.”

Alex chuckled. “You’re right. Never, ever tell Kevin that you were afraid of the stunning hooker.”

“Can you imagine?” He laughed with her. “Your turn. Another boyfriend.”

“I’m running out… Let’s see, I dated a guy named Felix for a couple of weeks in undergrad.”

“And what extinguished the flames of your passion?”

“You have to understand, the only place I ever met boys was in a lab.”

“Go on.”

“Well, Felix worked with animals. Rats, mostly. He kept a lot of them in his apartment. There was a… smell problem.”

Daniel threw his head back and howled with laughter. The sound of it was infectious. She couldn’t help chortling along with him. It was not as out of control as that first afternoon in Kevin’s secret lair, but it was close. All the stress seemed to drain out of her body, and she felt more relaxed than she would have thought possible in light of where she was headed.

Eventually, Daniel fell asleep, midsentence, as he described his fifth-grade crush. He’d been fighting his droopy eyelids for a while, and she suspected again that he’d been trying to keep her mind off the negatives.

It was relaxing to have him sleeping peacefully next to her. Einstein was snoring on the backseat, a nice counterpoint to the even sound of Daniel’s breathing. She knew she should be thinking of a variety of plans, ways to get to Carston without exposing herself too greatly, but she just wanted to enjoy the moment. Peace was going to be a limited commodity in her near future. If this was the last moment that she got to be entirely content, then she wanted to experience it fully.

She was in a rare state of calm when she woke Daniel a few hours later, as they were entering the outskirts of DC. The last time she’d pulled into this city, she’d been furious and terrified. She probably had even more reason to feel that way today, but she was still enjoying the time she had left alone with Daniel, and she wasn’t going to let that go before she had to.

Daniel read the directions to her as she got closer to their target. As she’d originally thought, this was a nice neighborhood, and it was only getting nicer. Wasn’t that like Kevin, to hide somewhere so incongruous? She circled the building with the matching address twice, doubting whether this could be the place.

“I’d better call him.”

Daniel handed her the phone. She hit Redial, and it rang once.

“You’re late,” Kevin answered. “What’s wrong now?”

“Traffic. Nothing. I think we’re outside, but… this place doesn’t look right.”

“Why?”

“We’re hiding out in a fancy art deco high-rise?”

“Yeah. A friend of mine is letting us crash. There’s parking under the building. Go to the fourth level down, I’ll meet you.” He disconnected.

She handed the phone back to Daniel. “Just once, I want to hang up on him first.”

“You did the very first time he called, remember? Fairly spectacularly.”

“Oh, right. That does make me feel better.”

All the tension came back as they rounded the corner into the parking garage, and the daylight disappeared. She drove in a claustrophobic downward spiral until she reached the right level, and then saw Kevin standing impatiently beside an empty space marked RESIDENTS ONLY. He waved her into it.

She braced herself as she opened the door, expecting a few snide comments about her face or disparaging observations about Daniel’s screwups, but Kevin said only, “Don’t mind the cameras, I took them offline this morning,” and then opened the back of the SUV to let Einstein out.

There was a real reunion with Einstein, who threw Kevin to the ground and attempted to lick the skin off his face. Trying to pretend that she wasn’t the slightest bit jealous of Einstein’s affection for his man, Alex ignored them both until she and Daniel were loaded up with as much as they could carry.

“Um, which way?” she asked.

Kevin got up with a sigh. “Follow me.”

To his credit, he did grab the remaining duffel bags as they went to the elevator.

“Do I need a hat?” Alex asked. “Is there a lobby? I’m not exactly ready for my close-up.”

“No worries, Ollie, this goes straight to the apartment. By the way, bro, nice beard. It’s a good look on you. In that you don’t look like you as much anymore.”

“Um, thanks?”

“About this friend…” Alex began.

Kevin sighed again. “They can’t all be Arnies. Sorry, shorty, this might get rough.”

“You don’t trust him?”

The elevator opened into a plush hallway… or was it an anteroom? There was only one door in the space.

“I’ve paid her through next week, so I trust her about that far.”

The hair on the back of Alex’s neck stood up. Daniel had gotten her more used to human interaction, but she knew she still had some pretty severe people issues. As they walked the length of the short hall, she struggled with the duffel in her right hand, trying to free some fingers so she could pull a syringe from her belt. Just as she caught hold of the one she wanted, Daniel touched her wrist. She glanced up, and he was giving her a look that seemed to imply she was overreacting. Frowning, she slid the syringe back into place. It wouldn’t take long to draw it if the need arose anyway.

Kevin had a key to the single door. He took a deep breath as he pushed it open.

At first Alex wasn’t sure they hadn’t stumbled into the lobby after all, because she’d never been inside an apartment with a wide marble staircase up to another story. The place was lavish, sleek and modern, and lined with floor-to-ceiling windows that immediately had her feeling exposed. Through the glass, the sun was just beginning to droop toward the DC skyline. There didn’t seem to be any other apartments close enough to look into this one, but a telescope would make it possible. Or a rifle sight.

“No,” a hard – but somehow still velvety – voice announced from behind them.

Alex whirled. The apartment stretched back the other way, too, wrapping around the front door and the hallway beyond. On one side was a huge white kitchen; on the other a dining room with seating for ten, with more window-walls framing each. Leaning against the marble kitchen island was the most exquisite human being Alex had ever seen in real life.

The woman looked exactly like the facetious description Alex had conjured up to describe Kevin’s improbable mental image of the Oleander. She had honey-blond hair, thick and long, that stood out from her head in full waves like a Disney cartoon’s. Sapphire-blue doe eyes, full red lips turned up at the corners, and a straight, narrow nose, all set with flawless symmetry in an oval face with prominent cheekbones. Swan neck over elegant collarbones. Of course, the generous hourglass figure with a tiny waist and legs that seemed longer than Alex’s entire body. The woman was wearing only a short, black kimono and an irritated expression.

“It’s temporary,” Kevin said in a conciliatory voice. “Obviously, I’ll pay you the same for each of them. Three times what we originally agreed on.”

The surreally perfect woman raised one eyebrow and looked pointedly at Einstein. His tail was wagging furiously. He stared up at the blonde with the proverbial puppy-dog eyes.

“Four times,” Kevin promised. He dropped the bags he was carrying. “You like dogs.”

“Kate?” Daniel asked suddenly, surprised recognition saturating his tone.

The woman’s face dimpled into a toothpaste-commercial-quality smile.

“Hi, Danny,” she purred. “I almost didn’t know you with all that scruff. Well, that does make me feel better. You left a nasty welt on my ego, but at least you didn’t forget me.”

“It’s, er, nice to see you again,” Daniel stammered, flummoxed by her greeting.

The blonde’s eyes cut to Kevin. “Okay, he can stay.”

“It’s just a few nights,” Kevin said. “I need the little one, too.”

“You know I don’t like women in my space,” she said in a flat voice, flicking her eyes to Alex, then back to Kevin.

“Oh, that’s okay, Ollie’s not a real girl,” Kevin assured her.

Daniel dropped his bags and took half a step forward before Alex hooked the back of his shirt with her one free finger.

“Not now,” she muttered.

Kate – or whatever her real name was – shrugged gracefully away from the island and glided toward them. She looked down her nose at Alex; easy to do, as she was a good six inches taller.

“So what happened to your face? Your boyfriend tune you up?”

Daniel stiffened. Alex wasn’t sure what this was – maybe some kind of territorial thing? It was only a guess; Alex didn’t have a lot of experience with other women. In the distant past, she’d suffered through a couple of immature roommates, liked a few other lady science geeks, and made small talk with the rare female underling who didn’t flee her presence. Mostly she’d worked with men, and she didn’t know all the rules for double-X-chromosome interactions. At a loss, she went with the truth, though she probably should have waited to see what Kevin had told the woman.

“Um, no, it was a Mafia assassin.” Alex worked her jaw, feeling the bandage pull against her skin. “Oh, and the older stuff was just Kevin trying to kill me.”

“If I’d actually been trying to kill you, you’d be dead,” Kevin grumbled.

Alex rolled her eyes.

“What, you want to go another round?” Kevin demanded. “Anytime, sweetheart.”

“The next time I put you down,” Alex promised, “it will be permanently.”

Kevin laughed – not derisively, like she expected, but with genuine delight. “See what I mean, Val?”

The woman looked like she was trying not to smile. “Okay, you’ve piqued my interest. But I have only the one extra room.”

“Ollie’s good at roughing it.”

“Whatever,” the woman said. Apparently it was an agreement. “Get all that mess out of my living room.”

She skimmed close by Daniel as she passed them. Without a backward glance, she headed upstairs. The kimono was very short, and both brothers watched her climb with partially open mouths.

“You turned her down?” Alex muttered under her breath.

Kevin heard her and laughed again. “Let’s move this stuff before she kicks us all out.”

The extra bedroom was bigger than Alex’s entire DC apartment had been. And it wasn’t as if she’d been living in a dive; her place was what real estate agents described as a luxury apartment. This place, though, was several degrees beyond mere luxury. Kevin had seemed on the level when he said the woman was a hooker, but Alex hadn’t had any idea that profession could pay so well.

Kevin stacked the duffels against one wall.

“Ollie, you’ve still got that cot, right? There’s a huge walk-in closet off the bathroom. Check it out and see if it will work for you. You could set up on one of those couches out there, but it might be best to keep you out of Val’s line of sight as much as possible.”

“Of course Alex will sleep in the bed,” Daniel said.

Kevin’s eyebrows pulled together skeptically. “Really? You’re going to get all chivalrous about Ollie?”

“It’s like you never even met our mother.”

“Relax,” Alex said as Kevin bridled. “We’ll work it out.”

“Fine,” Kevin said.

“Should I have been more careful with my words out there?” Alex asked Kevin. “You said she’s not trustworthy.”

Kevin shook his head. “No, you’re fine. Val might kick us all onto the street when she’s tired of us, but she won’t sell us out. I’ve bought her time and her discretion. What happens with Val stays with Val. She has a reputation to protect.”

“Okay,” Alex agreed, though she wasn’t sure she entirely understood Val’s policies.

He moved to the door, then paused with his hand on the knob. “There’s plenty of food in the fridge if you’re hungry, or we can order something in.”

“Thanks,” Alex said. “I’ll sort my stuff out first.”

“Yes,” Daniel said. “Let us get situated.”

Kevin hesitated one more second, then stepped back into the room. “Uh, Danny, I just wanted to say… it’s good to see you. I’m glad you’re safe.”

Like before, as he was leaving the ranch, Kevin looked like he wouldn’t be opposed to a hug. Daniel stood awkwardly, his body language full of ambivalence.

“Yes, well, thanks to Alex,” Daniel said. “And I’m glad you’re not dead like she thought you were.”

Kevin barked a laugh. “Yeah, me, too. And thanks again, poison woman. I owe you one.”

He exited on another laugh, leaving the door cracked behind him.

Daniel gave Alex a long stare, then went to the door and quietly shut it all the way. He turned back to her, and there was clearly an argument about to begin. She shook her head and motioned him to follow her farther into the guest suite.

For a second, the bathroom made her forget why she’d come this way. A swimming pool-size tub was set into the floor, surrounded by marble and a faintly blue tile wall that shimmered like a pale sea. A showerhead the diameter of a truck tire was suspended from the ceiling over it.

“What is this place?” Alex gasped.

Daniel shut the door behind them. “Kate – or rather Val – is apparently quite successful.”

“Do you think she’s really a prostitute, or was that just Kevin trying to make the story better?”

“I didn’t come in here to talk about Val.”

She turned to face him, her lips twisting sideways into a pucker.

“Alex, I don’t like lying to him.”

“Who’s lied?”

“Acting, then. Pretending that we’re nothing to each other.”

She huffed a sigh. “I’m just not ready to deal with the inevitable fallout. I have enough stress.”

“We’re going to have to tell him eventually. Why not get it over with?”

He saw her expression change as she weighed the options.

“You still don’t believe we have an eventually, do you?” he accused.

“Well… there is a good possibility either he or I will be dead within the next week, so why rock the boat?”

Daniel abruptly pulled her into a rough hug that was somehow more reproachful than comforting.

“Don’t say that. I can’t stand to hear you talk that way.”

“Sorry,” she said into his shirt.

“We can run away. Tonight. We’ll hide. You know how.”

“Can we at least wait till we’ve slept and eaten?” she asked plaintively.

He laughed unwillingly at her tone. “I suppose I could allow that much.”

She relaxed into him for a moment, wishing again that running were the right option. It sounded so much easier, restful almost.

“Let’s just walk out there hand in hand,” Daniel suggested, “and then make out on the sofa for a bit.”

“First, eating and sleeping. I am not dealing with the aftermath of some grand reveal until I’m sure I’ve considered all the possible forms the backlash might take and whether I need to be armed – or, rather, how armed I need to be. I can’t even think straight right now.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll give you tonight, because I know how exhausted you are. But we’re revisiting this discussion in the morning, and I intend to be quite inflexible.”

“Will Kevin be in here too?” she wondered. “The woman said there was only one extra room. That won’t make discussing anything very easy.”

“I doubt it.” She could hear the eye roll in his voice and she pulled away to look at his face. He didn’t let her go, but he dropped his arms to rest more casually around her waist.

“Oh, do you think she meant this was the only empty extra room?”

“No, I think he’s staying with her.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Really? She didn’t seem to like him very much.”

“The women in his life never do.”

She was still unconvinced. “But… she could do so much better.”

Daniel laughed. “I won’t argue with that.”