The Chemist Part 15

Kevin c.o.c.ked his head. He clearly didn't get it. She did, just before Daniel said the words out loud.

"What if the scorpions joined forces?"

She pursed her lips, then relaxed them when that pulled at the split.

Kevin groaned. "Stop messing around, Danny."

"I'm serious. They'd never expect that. And then we're twice as safe, because we've got both dangerous creatures on the same team."

"Not happening."

She walked closer to him. "It's a clever idea, Daniel, but I think some of the personnel issues might be too big to overcome."

"Kev's not so bad. You'll get used to him."

"I'm not bad?" Kevin snorted, peering through his sights.

Daniel looked straight at her. "You're thinking about going back, aren't you? What you said about visiting the pantry."

Insightful for a civilian.

"I'm considering it."

Kevin was giving them his full attention now. "Counterstrike?"

"It might work," she said. "There's a pattern... and after looking at it, I think that maybe not so many people know about me. That's why they're going to such lengths to have a fifty-fifty chance at taking me out. I think I'm a secret, so if I can get rid of the people in on that secret... well, then n.o.body's looking for me anymore."

"Does that hold true for me?" Kevin wanted to know. "If they're relying on this to get to me, do you think I might be a secret, too?"

"It's logical."

"How will you know who's in on it?"

"If I could be in DC when I send my little note to Carston, I could watch to see who he goes running to. If it's really a secret, they won't be able to do it in the office."

"They'll know you're close-the IP will give you away."

"Maybe we could work together in a limited way. One of you could send the e-mail for me from a distance."

"What's your experience in surveillance?" Kevin demanded abruptly.

"Er... I've had a lot of practice in the last few years-"

"Do you have any formal training?"

"I'm a scientist, not a field agent."

He nodded. "I'll do it."

She shook her head. "You're dead again, remember? You and Daniel get to disappear now. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

"That's a stupid saying. If the Trojans had looked in the horse's mouth, they might have won that war."

"Forget the saying. I'm trying to make things up to Daniel."

Daniel was quietly watching the back-and-forth again.

"Look, Oleander, I have had training. A lot. No one is going to catch me watching and I will see more than you will. I have a place to stash Daniel where he'll be totally safe, so that's not an issue. And if you're right, and this Carston guy goes running to his coconspirators, he'll show me who in the Agency thought this up. I'll see who put Danny in danger to get to me. Then I can clean up my problem and you can clean up yours."

She thought it through, trying to be objective. It was hard to keep her dislike for Daniel's brother from coloring her a.n.a.lysis. That dislike wasn't fair. Wouldn't she have felt the same way as Kevin if it were her sibling shackled to a table? Done the same things, insofar as she was capable?

But she still really wished she could inject him with something agonizing, just once.

"First of all, don't call me Oleander," she said.

He smirked.

"Second, I see what you're saying. But how do we coordinate? I've got to go under for a while." She pointed to her face.

"You owe her for that," Daniel said. "If you have a safe place for me, maybe she should go there, too. At least until her injuries have healed."

"I don't owe her anything-except maybe another punch in the face," Kevin growled. Daniel bridled and took a step toward his brother; Kevin held up his hands in an I surrender motion and sighed. "But we're going to want to move quick, so that might be the easiest arrangement. Besides, then she can give us a ride. The plane's a loss-I had to bail out on the way down. I had us hiking out of here."

Daniel opened his eyes wide in disbelief. Kevin laughed at his expression, then turned to her with a smile. He looked at the dog, then back to her, and his smile got bigger. "I think I might enjoy having you at the ranch, Oleander."

She gritted her teeth. If Kevin had a safe house, that would solve a lot of her problems. And she could spike his food with a violent laxative before she left.

"Her name is Alex," Daniel corrected. "I mean, I know it's not, but that's what she goes by." He looked at her. "Alex is okay, right?"

"It's as good as any other name. I'll stick with it for now." She looked at Kevin. "You and the dog are in the back."

CHAPTER 11.

Once upon a time, when she was a young girl named Juliana, Alex used to fantasize about family road trips.

She and her mother had always flown on the few vacations they took-if duty visits to ancient grandparents in Little Rock actually qualified as vacations. Her mother, Judy, didn't like to drive long distances; it made her nervous. Judy had often said that far more people were killed in car accidents than in plane crashes, though she was a white-knuckle flyer, too. Juliana had grown up unfazed by the dangers a.s.sociated with travel, or germs, or rodents, or tight s.p.a.ces, or any of the many other things that upset Judy. By default, she had to be the levelheaded one.

Like most only children, Juliana thought siblings would be the cure to the loneliness of her long afternoons doing homework at the kitchen table while she waited for Judy to get home from the dentist's office she managed. Juliana looked forward to college and dormitories and roommates as a dream of companions.h.i.+p. Except, when she got there, she found that her life of relative solitude and adult responsibility had rendered her unsuited to cohabitation with normal eighteen-year-olds. So the sibling fantasy took a beating, and by her junior year she had her own small studio apartment.

The fantasy about a big, warm family road trip, however, had survived. Until today.

To be fair, she would probably have been in a better mood if her entire body hadn't felt like one huge, throbbing bruise. Also, she had instigated the first argument, though quite unintentionally.

When she drove across the county line, she'd rolled the window down and tossed out the small tracker she'd removed from Daniel's leg. She hadn't wanted to carry it with her for long, just in case, but she also didn't want to leave it right in the middle of her last base of operations. She thought she'd removed most of the evidence, but one could never be sure. Whenever she could muddy the trail, she took the time to do so.

In the rearview mirror, she saw Kevin sit forward.

He'd been able to retrieve a backpack he'd thrown from the plane when he jumped; now he and Daniel looked fairly normal in jeans and long-sleeved T-s.h.i.+rts-one black, one gray-and Kevin had two new handguns.

"What was that?" Kevin asked.

"Daniel's tracker."

"What?" Kevin and Daniel said together.

They spoke over each other.

"I did have a tracker?" Daniel asked.

"What did you do that for?" Kevin demanded.

The dog looked up at Kevin's tone but then seemed to decide everything was fine and stuck his face out the window again.

She turned to Daniel first, looking up at him from under the ball cap that was supposed to be keeping her mangled face in shadow. "How did you think your brother found you?"

"He tracked me? But... where was it?"

"Sore spot on your inner right thigh. Keep the incision clean, try not to let it get infected."

"Do you know what a pain it was to get that in place?" Kevin grumbled.

"If you can track it, so can someone else. I didn't want to take chances with our position."

Daniel turned around in the pa.s.senger seat to stare at his brother. "How did you... How could I not know about this?"

"Do you remember, about two years after the tramp left you, a hot leggy blonde at that bar you go to when you're depressed, what's it called..."

"Lou's. How do you even know about that? I never told you... wait, did you have me followed?"

"I was worried about you after the tramp-"

"Her name is Lainey."

"Whatever. I never liked her for you."

"When did you ever like a girl for me? As far as I can recall, you only ever liked girls who wanted you. You took it as an insult if someone preferred me."

"The point is, you weren't yourself. But having you followed was unrelated to the-"

"Who followed me?"

"It was just for a few months."

"Who?"

"Some buddies of mine-not in the Agency. A few cops I had a relations.h.i.+p with, a PI for a little while."

"What were they looking for?"

"Just making sure you were okay, that you weren't going to jump off a bridge or anything."

"I can't believe you. Of all the-wait a minute. The blonde? You mean that girl, what was her name, Kate? The one who bought me a drink and... she was a spy?"

She saw Kevin grinning in the rearview mirror.

"No, she was actually a hooker. Kate isn't her real name."

"Apparently no one on the entire planet besides me uses his or her real name. I am living in a world of lies. I don't even know Alex's given name."

"Juliana," she said at the same time Kevin did. They cast irritated looks at each other.

"He knew?" Daniel asked her, offended.

"It came up while you were unconscious. It's the name I was given at birth, but it's really not me anymore. It doesn't mean much to me. I'm Alex for now."

Daniel frowned, not entirely mollified.

"Anyway," Kevin went on in the tone of someone who was telling a joke he really enjoyed, "the blonde was supposed to get you back to your place, but you told her that your divorce wasn't finalized yet and it didn't feel right." Kevin laughed raucously. "I couldn't believe it when I heard. But it was so you. I don't even know why I was surprised."

"Hilarious. But I don't see how that little exchange got a tracking device into my leg."

"It didn't. I just really like that story. Anyway, that's what was such a pain. The hooker was easy to set up. And if you'd taken her home, having the tracker placed would have been enjoyable for you, at least. Getting you into your GP's office was a lot more work. But eventually I got a temp in the front office to call you in for checkup. When you got there, you saw one of the new partners. A guy you'd never seen before."

Daniel's mouth popped open in disbelief. "He told me I had a tumor!"

"A benign tumor. Which he took out right there in the office with a local anesthetic and immediately a.s.sured you was nothing. He didn't even charge you. Don't make it into a bigger thing than it was."

"Are you serious? How could you-" Daniel was shouting at full volume now. "How do you justify these things to yourself? All these years you've been manipulating me! Treating me like some laboratory animal who exists for your own amus.e.m.e.nt!"

"Hardly, Danny. I've been putting myself out trying to keep you safe. The Agency wanted me to play dead from the very start, but I couldn't do that to you, not after Mom and Dad. So I made a lot of promises and spent all my free weekends flying to Milwaukee to be a criminal."

Daniel's voice was calmer when he answered. "I drove. And was all that really necessary?"

"Ask the poison girl. These kinds of jobs aren't for family people."

Daniel looked at her. "Is that true?"

"Yes. They like to recruit orphans-preferably only children. Like your brother told you before, relations.h.i.+ps give the bad guys leverage."

His tone mellowed further. "Are you an orphan?"