The Chemist Part 10

He stared in that direction, and she imagined he was eyeing the switches warily.

"Look, anything that can kill you is going to kill me first," she pointed out.

He grunted and then leaned away and punched the power b.u.t.ton.

The lights flared overhead.

Suddenly the tent looked less threatening. With all the medical equipment, it could have been a medic's tent in a war zone. Except for the torture implements on the tray, of course. She saw his face orient toward them now.

"Props," she explained.

She felt the glare again. He whipped a look back at Daniel, naked and clearly intact on the table. His focus swung back to her.

"What's the flas.h.i.+ng light?" he demanded, gesturing to the little black box with the keypad.

"It's telling me the door is unarmed," she lied evenly. In fact, the box wasn't hooked up to anything. It was just a nice red herring to distract from the real trap.

He nodded, accepting that, then leaned over to look at her computer. There were no open doc.u.ments, no files on the desktop. Her background was just a pale geometric design, little white squares on a faintly darker gray field.

"Where are the keys?" He jerked his head toward Daniel.

"Taped to the bottom of the desk."

He seemed to be eyeing her again through the mask.

She willed herself to look calm and compliant. Take it off, take it off, take it off, she prayed silently.

He kicked her chair over.

She held her neck tight as her left arm and thigh smashed into the ground with bruising force. She was just able to keep her head from hitting the concrete again. She wasn't sure if she was already concussed, and she really needed her brain working right.

He grabbed the back of the chair and yanked her upright. In his right hand he held the keys.

"That wasn't necessary," she said.

"Einstein, control."

Growling in her face, more drool on her chest.

Batman turned away and quickly unlocked Daniel's shackles.

"What's in the IV?"

"Saline in the top one, nutrients in the lower."

"Really." Sarcastic. "What happens if I pull the tubing out?"

"He'll need a drink when he wakes up. But don't use the water bottles on the left side of the minifridge outside the tent. Those are poisoned."

He turned, pulling the mask off his head so he could glare at her more effectively, yanking the sweaty watch cap off at the same time.

Yessssssssss!

She kept the relief off her face as he dropped the mask on the floor.

"You've changed your tactics," he noted sourly, running his free hand through his short, damp hair. "Or are the ones on the right really the poisoned bottles?"

She looked up at him calmly. "I thought you were someone else."

And then she really looked at him.

She didn't have the resources to keep her face from reacting now. All the theories spun around again, and a bunch of things fell into place.

He smirked, realizing what she was seeing.

So many clues she'd missed.

The pictures that were Daniel but at the same time weren't.

The holes in the file on Daniel's history, the missing photos.

Time, dates, birth dates -the easiest small changes to make if you wanted to hide something.

Daniel's strange reluctance to believe what he was seeing when he looked at the spy images.

His struggles with loyalty.

Those long, long fingers.

"Other Daniel," she whispered.

The smirk vanished. "Huh?"

She blew out a breath and rolled her eyes-she couldn't help it. It was all too much like one of her mom's ridiculous soap operas. She remembered the frustration of every holiday she and her mother had spent together, the afternoons lost to the incredibly slow-moving, implausible dramas. No one was ever really dead; everyone came back. And then there were the twins. Always with the twins.

Batman actually didn't look that much like Daniel, as far as identical twins went. Daniel's features were refined, his aspect gentle. Batman was all hard angles and tightly gripped expressions. His hazel eyes seemed darker, maybe just because his brows were pulled down, putting them in shadow. His hair had the same color and curl but was cropped close, the way she would expect in an agent. Judging from his thicker neck, she would guess Batman had the gym musculature to Daniel's sports build. Not immensely bulky or he wouldn't have been able to pa.s.s for his brother in the pictures. Just harder, more defined.

"Kevin Beach," she said in a flat voice. "You're alive."

He sat on the edge of her desk. As her eyes followed him, she didn't let them rest for even a second on her computer's clock right by his elbow.

"Who were you expecting?"

"There were a few options. All of whom would want both me and your brother dead." She shook her head. "I can't believe I fell for this."

"For what?"

"Daniel's never even met de la Fuentes, has he? It was always you."

His face, which had begun to relax, was suddenly guarded again. "What?"

She nodded to the photographs scattered on the floor. He seemed to notice them for the first time. He leaned over to examine one, then bent down to grab it. Then the one underneath, and the next. He crumpled them in his fist.

"Where did you get these?"

"Compliments of a small department working for the American government-entirely off the books. I used to be in their employ. They asked me to freelance."

His face contorted in outrage. "This is highly cla.s.sified!"

"You wouldn't believe my clearance level."

Back in her face, he grabbed the front of her T-s.h.i.+rt and lifted her and the chair a few inches off the ground. "Who are you?"

She kept herself calm. "I'll tell you everything I know. I got played and I'm about as happy about it as you."

He set her down. She wanted to count in her head, mark the time, but she was afraid he would notice her distraction. He stood over her, arms folded.

"What's your name?"

She spoke as slowly as she thought she could get away with. "It used to be Dr. Juliana Fortis, but there's a death certificate with that name now." She watched his face to see if any of this information meant something to him; it didn't, as far as she could tell. "I operated under the direction of the department-it doesn't have another name. It doesn't exist officially. They worked with the CIA and some other black ops programs. Interrogation specialists."

He sat back down on the edge of the desk.

"Three years ago, someone decided to dissolve the department's two key a.s.sets. Namely, me and my mentor, Dr. Joseph Barnaby." Still no recognition. "I don't know why, although we had access to incredibly sensitive information, and I'm guessing something we knew was the motive. They murdered Dr. Barnaby and tried to murder me. I've been running ever since. They've found me four times. Three times they tried to have me a.s.sa.s.sinated. The last time, they apologized."

His eyes were narrowed, evaluating.

"They told me they had a problem, and they needed me. They gave me a stack of files on the de la Fuentes situation and named your brother as his collaborator. They said that in three weeks Daniel would be spreading the supervirus across the American Southwest. They told me I had three days to find out where the virus was and how to stop de la Fuentes from implementing his plan."

He was shaking his head now.

"They told you that much?" he asked in disbelief.

"Counterterrorism was always the main component of my job. I know where all the warheads and the dirty bombs are buried."

He pursed his lips, making a decision. "Well, since you already know the details, I guess it's not a huge breach of policy for me to tell you that I shut down the de la Fuentes situation six months ago. De la Fuentes's death is not common knowledge. What's left of the cartel is keeping this quiet so they don't appear vulnerable to the compet.i.tion."

She was surprised at the relief she felt. The weight of knowing that so many people were doomed to painful execution had been heavier than she'd realized.

"Yes," she breathed. "That makes sense."

The department wasn't that cold-blooded, apparently. They'd used a nightmare catastrophe to motivate her, but they weren't messing around with civilians still in danger.

"And the Serpent?"

He looked at her blankly.

"Sorry, department nickname. The domestic terrorists?"

"My a.s.sociates bagged two of the three ringleaders and took out the entire southern chapter. No survivors."

She smiled tightly.

"You're an interrogator," he said in a suddenly icy voice. "A torturer."

She lifted her chin. "Yes."

"And you tortured my brother for information he didn't have."

"Yes. The very initial phases, at least."

He backhanded her. Her head snapped to the side; the chair bobbled, and he shoved it down with one foot.

"You're going to pay for that," he promised.

She worked her jaw for a second to see if anything was broken. When she was satisfied that nothing was seriously compromised, she responded. "I'm not positive," she said, "but I think that's why they did this to him. Why they fed me this whole elaborate story."

Through his teeth. "What reason?"

"They haven't had the greatest success in killing me. I guess they thought you would get the job done."

He clenched his jaw.

"What I don't understand, though," she continued, "is why they didn't just ask you to do it. Or order you, I suppose. Unless... you're no longer with the CIA?" she guessed.

The gun had been the giveaway. From her research, she was pretty certain that the HDS was the gun most commonly carried by CIA agents.

"If you didn't know about me, how do you know where I work?" he demanded.

About halfway through his question, she saw the bright white rectangle in her peripheral vision go black. Trying to be inconspicuous, she sucked in the deepest breath through her nose she could manage.

"Answer me," he growled, raising his hand again.

She just stared at him, not breathing.

He hesitated, brow furrowed, then his eyes went wide. He dove for the mask on the floor.

He was out before he hit the ground.

Another thump-the dog collapsed into a puddle of fur beside her chair.

Under testing circ.u.mstances, she'd once held her breath for one minute and forty-two seconds, but she'd never been able to repeat the feat. Usually she ran out of air at about one fifteen, still way above average-lung capacity had become a priority in her life. This time, of course, she hadn't been able to hyperventilate beforehand. But she wouldn't need a full minute.

She hopped her chair over to Batman's inert form and pushed herself forward, bracing her knees against his back. With her hands secured in front of her, it was easy... ish. Kevin Beach had left Daniel's gas mask on the floor; she hooked it with one finger and then tilted the chair back until all four legs were on the ground. She leaned her face as close to her hands as she could and slipped the mask over her head, pressing the rubber rim tight to her face to create a seal. She blew out her air in a big whoosh, clearing the chamber, and then took a hesitant breath.

If some of the chemical had lingered, she figured she still would have been okay. She'd built up a decent resistance and would not have been out as long as the others. But it was especially nice to have such a big head start.

She scooted to the desk and rubbed the zip tie around her wrists against the edge of the scalpel on her props tray. It popped quickly against the pressure she was generating. It was easy work to slice the rest of the ties, and then she was free.