The Chemist Part 48

AS ALEX WATCHED Carston's housekeeper walk through the automatic doors into the huge supermarket, she took a few slow, deep breaths, trying to center herself. She examined her face in the visor mirror and was rea.s.sured by the illusion Val had created. Alex was sandy blond today, quite believably so. Her makeup appeared understated, despite all the coverage. Alex was happy to see that her nose was settling into its new shape, probably permanently. Every little bit helped.

A few other shoppers parked and entered, and Alex knew it was time to move. One more deep breath. This wasn't that hard. Just a normal shopping trip for now.

Inside, the market was busy. It was a diverse group of patrons, and Alex was sure she wouldn't stick out. She was suddenly reminded of Daniel's catastrophic shopping spree in Childress, and she was surprised to find herself smiling. She blamed her reaction on nerves.

Despite the traffic, it wasn't hard to find the woman she was looking for. The housekeeper was wearing a bright yellow cotton wrap dress, and the color stood out. Rather than follow her through the store, Alex worked the opposite pattern and crossed paths with her every other aisle. It put Alex in the woman's sight line more often but seemed more natural, less creepy. The woman-who appeared to be about fifty from close up, in good shape and fairly attractive-paid Alex no attention. Meanwhile Alex filled her cart with random items that seemed innocuous-milk, bread, toothpaste-and then added the few items that mattered.

Carston liked these small bottles of organic orange juice. They must expire quickly, because the housekeeper bought a few every trip but never stocked up. Alex grabbed three-the same number as in the housekeeper's cart-and put them in the front child seat of her own.

She wheeled over to an empty aisle-no one was looking for birthday cards or office supplies this morning-and then uncapped the small syringe in her pocket. It was a very slender needle, and it left almost no mark behind when she pushed it through the plastic of the orange juice bottle, just under the screw-off cap. She kept her body turned toward the cards, as if she were looking for the perfect sentimental phrase. When she was done, she grabbed a glittery congratulations card in hot pink and put it in the cart. Maybe she'd give it to Kevin when he finished his mission. It was the kind of glitter that would stick to someone for days.

She and Barnaby had called this drug simply Heart Attack, because that's what it caused. Sometimes after the interrogation was over, the department needed to dispose of a subject in a way that looked natural. After about three hours, Heart Attack broke down into a metabolite that was nearly impossible to trace. A man of Carston's age, in his physical condition, and factoring in the high-stress job-well, Alex greatly doubted that anyone would look too carefully at the cause of death, at least in the very beginning. Sure, if he were twenty-five and ran marathons, it might look more suspicious.

Alex moved to the bakery next, because it was near the cas.h.i.+ers and had an un.o.bstructed view of the shoppers waiting to pay. It took about ten minutes as she pretended to dither between a baguette or ciabatta rolls, but then the housekeeper appeared from aisle 19 and got into the checkout line. Alex threw the baguette in her cart and joined the next line over.

This was the tricky part. She'd have to stay pretty close to the woman as they left the store. Alex's inconspicuous black sedan was parked right next to the minivan. As the woman was loading her groceries, Alex was going to trip with her arms full of bags and fall into the minivan's b.u.mper. It shouldn't be too hard to leave her juice in the back of the car. Hopefully snagging the woman's juice bottles would be possible, but if not, she a.s.sumed the housekeeper would load them all into the fridge, even if she didn't have the right number.

Alex eyed the conveyor belt next to hers, double-checking that the juice was there. She spotted what she was looking for and glanced quickly away.

As her own purchases slid across the scanner, her brows furrowed. Something was off. Something wasn't matching the mental picture. She glanced back at the other conveyor belt, trying to pin it down.

The bagger was packing a box of Lucky Charms. The housekeeper had never bought that kind of cereal for Carston, as far as Alex had been able to see. Carston was a creature of habit, and he ate the same fiber-heavy cereal every morning. Sugary marshmallows with plastic prizes were not his MO.

Another quick peek, head down. The usual coffee beans, the low-fat creamer, the quart of skim milk, but there was also a half a gallon of whole milk and a box of Nilla Wafers.

"Paper or plastic, miss? Miss?"

Alex quickly refocused, pulled her wallet open, and grabbed three twenties. "Paper, please," she said. The housekeeper always got paper.

Her mind was turning over and over as she waited for her change.

Maybe the housekeeper got groceries for herself while she was shopping for Carston. But if she got her own milk, she'd have to carry it inside and put it in Carston's fridge until she was done for the day, so it wouldn't spoil in the heat. And she'd never done that in the past.

Was Carston expecting guests?

Alex's heart pounded uncomfortably as she followed the woman through the automatic front doors, her two bags both gripped in her left hand.

She needed Carston to be the one who enjoyed that bottle of OJ. But what if a friend grabbed it instead? A friend who was twenty-five and a marathoner? It would be obvious what she had attempted. Carston would change his habits, beef up his security. And he would know it was Alex, without a doubt. That she was alive, and nearby.

The hunt would begin again, closer than ever.

Should she go with the odds? The juice was Carston's thing. Probably he wouldn't offer it to someone else. But what if?

As her mind raced through the possibilities, a small piece of meaningless information-or so she'd categorized it-popped into her head and suggested a new prospect.

The zoo. The daughter had kept going on and on about the zoo. And all the calls, every day, some of them hours long. What if Erin Carston-Boyd wasn't always in such close touch with her father? What if Alex, in her hurry to get to the important calls, had fast-forwarded through vital information-like a pending visit from his daughter and granddaughter? The DC zoo was famous. Exactly the kind of place you'd take your out-of-town granddaughter. Just like Lucky Charms was exactly the kind of cereal an indulgent grandpa would have on hand for her breakfast.

Alex sighed, quietly but deeply.

She couldn't risk poisoning the child.

Now what? The coffee beans? But Erin would drink coffee, too. Maybe another kind of toxin, something that looked like salmonella?

She couldn't wait until the family went back where they belonged. Deavers and Pace would be dead by then-if they weren't already-and Carston would be on high alert. This was her one chance to stay ahead of the panicked reaction. There would be six bottles of juice, only one poisoned... odds were Carston would drink it... it was unlikely the child would be hurt...

Ugh, she groaned mentally, and slowed her pace. She knew she wasn't going to do it. And she couldn't go back to his favorite sidewalk cafe and add an extra ingredient to his chicken parm; he'd surely given up that habit once she'd contacted him there. She'd be stuck with something really obvious and dangerous now, like borrowing Daniel's rifle and shooting Carston through his kitchen window. Her chances of getting caught-and killed-would be much, much higher than she'd planned.

Kevin was going to be disgusted with her. Only one person on her list, and she'd already blown it. She couldn't resent that reaction; she was disgusted with herself, too.

As though he could read her mind, just then Kevin called. She felt the vibration in her pocket, then pulled the phone out and read the number. She hit Answer and put it to her ear, but didn't say anything. She was still too close to the housekeeper, and she didn't want the woman to hear her voice and turn, getting another, closer look at the blond woman shadowing her. Perhaps the housekeeper was still the way in. Alex couldn't afford to be noticed.

Alex waited for Kevin to start in on her, irrationally sure he had somehow sensed that she was failing; Way to drop the ball, Oleander, in the half shout that was his normal volume.

Kevin said nothing. She pulled the phone back to look at the screen. Had they been disconnected? Had he dialed her by accident?

The call was live. The seconds counted upward in the bottom corner of the screen.

Alex almost said, Kevin?

Four years of paranoia stopped her tongue.

She pressed the phone to her ear and listened intently. There was no ambient sound of a car or movement. No wind. No animal sounds, no human sounds.

Goose b.u.mps erupted on the backs of her arms, raised the hair on her neck. She'd walked past her car, and now she had to keep going. Her eyes darted around while she kept her head still; she focused on a dumpster in the back corner of the lot. Her pace quickened. She was too close to the center of her enemy's power. If they were tracing this call, it would not take them long to get here. She wanted to run, wanted it badly, but she kept herself to a quick, purposeful walk.

Still no sound from the other end of the line. The cold, heavy hollow in the pit of her stomach grew larger.

Kevin wasn't going to suddenly start speaking to her, she knew that. Still, she hesitated for one more second. Once she did what she knew she had to do now, it was over. Her only connection to Kevin was severed.

She hung up. The numbers at the bottom of the screen told her the call had lasted for only seventeen seconds. It felt like much more time had pa.s.sed.

She walked around the side of the dumpster, where she wasn't visible from the parking lot. She couldn't see anyone, which hopefully meant no one could see her.

She set the groceries on the ground.

In the lining of her purse, she had a small lock-picking kit. She'd never had to use it for its real purpose, but it came in handy now and then when she worked with some of her smaller reflux rings and adapters. She pulled the thinnest probe, then used it to pop the SIM card tray out from her phone. Both card and tray went into her bag.

Using the hem of her T-s.h.i.+rt, she carefully wiped the phone down, handling it only through the fabric. The tether of the s.h.i.+rt's length made it hard to get the phone through the side hatch on the dumpster; it was too high up. She had to toss the phone when she couldn't reach far enough, but she got it through in one try.

Alex grabbed the paper bags, spun back around, and walked quickly to her car. The minivan was just exiting the lot. She couldn't tell if the housekeeper had noticed her side trip. She took the longest strides she was capable of as she hurried back.

The phone was gone, but she could almost see the seconds still ticking away in the corner of the screen. There were two possibilities now, and one of those possibilities gave her a very tight deadline indeed.

CHAPTER 27.

Alex, he just pocket-dialed you," Daniel argued.

"Danny's right," Val agreed. "You're overreacting. It's nothing."

Alex shook her head, feeling the pull in her jaw as her teeth clenched. "We need to move," she said flatly.

"Because the bad guys might be torturing Kevin for information as we speak," Val recapped. She used the patient, humoring voice people used with very young children and the elderly.

Alex's answer was cold and hard. "It won't be a joke if they come for you, Val. I can promise you that."

"Look, Alex, your own plan had just failed," Val reminded her. "You were already upset. Kevin called you and didn't say anything. That is all that happened. I think it's a little bit of a leap to a.s.sume it was more than an accident."

"It's what they do," Alex said in a slow, even voice. Even before Barnaby had gotten her the appropriate cla.s.sified reading material, she'd seen some of this in action. "The subject has a phone with one number on it. You call that number and see what kind of information you can get from it. You track the signal you've just created. You find the person on the other end."

"Well, there's nothing to find, though, right?" Daniel asked encouragingly. "You tossed the phone. It can't lead them to anything more than a parking lot that's not connected to us."

"The phone is a dead end," she agreed. "But if they have Kevin..."

Doubt rippled across Daniel's face. Val still wore a patronizing expression.

"Do you think they would have killed him?" Daniel asked in a voice that was almost a whisper.

"That's the best-case scenario," she said bluntly. She didn't know how to sugarcoat it or say it in a gentler way. "If he's dead, they can't hurt him anymore. And we're safe. If he's alive..." She took a deep breath and refocused. "Like I said, we need to move."

Val was unconvinced. "You really think he'd sell Danny out?"

"Look, Val, I would never question your understanding on anything remotely feminine. That's your world. This is mine. I am not exaggerating when I say that everyone breaks. It doesn't matter how strong Kevin is or how much he loves his brother. It may take a while, but he will tell them where we are. And for his sake, I hope it doesn't take that long."

It would, though, and she knew it. Rocky as her relations.h.i.+p with Kevin had always been, she had learned to trust him, to know him. He would buy her the time she needed to get Daniel and Val somewhere safe. Partly because he did love his brother, and partly because of his pride. He'd never give Deavers what he wanted easily. Kevin would make them work for every word they pried out of him.

She was glad it wasn't her job to break Kevin. She was sure he would be the hardest case she'd ever faced. If anyone could do it-actually take his secrets to the grave with him-that person might be Kevin Beach. Maybe he would have broken her perfect record.

For a second, she could see it vividly-Kevin restrained on the state-of-the-art table in the old lab, herself standing over him. How would she have worked the case? If things had panned out just slightly differently-if her Pakistani subject had never murmured the name Wade Pace-the scenario she pictured could have been her reality.

She shook the image away and looked up at Daniel and Val. Alex could see that her tension-her intensity and dark certainty-were finally getting to Daniel, at least.

"If they did get Kevin... what do you think would happen to Einstein?" Val asked, still skeptical, but her lapis eyes were abnormally vulnerable.

Alex winced. Why had she learned to care so much about an animal on top of everything else? What a stupid thing to do.

"We don't have time to figure everything out right now," she said. "Do you have a place to go, Val? A place Kevin wouldn't know about?"

"I've got a million places." Val's face hardened. Her perfect features suddenly looked like they belonged to a beautiful doll, cold and empty. "You?"

"Our options are a little more limited, but I'll figure something out. Pack up the things you want to save-it won't be safe to come back here. Can I keep the wig?"

Val nodded.

"Thanks. Do you have another car besides the one we've been using?" Kevin had taken the McKinleys' SUV when he and Einstein had set off just after midnight.

"I've got a couple here. That one isn't mine. Kevin was driving it when he got here."

Val pivoted slowly, gracefully, and then sauntered to the stairs. Alex couldn't tell if she was going to pack or headed up to catch a nap. Val didn't believe her.

Alex's mind was racing in a hundred different directions. They'd have to get a new car quickly and dump the one Kevin knew about. There were so many details she had to think through, and she had to do it fast.

Alex turned and hurried back to the guest room. She had to pack, too.

And think. She hadn't planned for this. She should have.

Daniel followed her down the hallway. "Tell me what I need to do," he said as they walked through the door.

"Can you get everything back into the duffel bags? I... I need to think for a few minutes. We can't afford any mistakes today. Just let me concentrate, okay?"

"Of course."

Alex lay down on the bed, then crossed both arms over her face. Daniel worked quietly in the corner; the noise wasn't distracting. She tried to think through all the moves they had available to them, everything Kevin didn't know.

There wasn't much. She couldn't even go back for Lola-Kevin had picked the boarding facility.

She took another centering breath and put that thought away. There was no time for sadness now.

It would be small motels for a while. Cash only. Luckily she had plenty of Kevin's drug money. They'd be able to keep their heads down.

Of course, Carston would expect that. Her face and Daniel's would end up on a police flyer e-mailed to all the potential stops for a thousand miles. Since they'd already rolled the Daniel story, maybe they'd cast her as his captive. It would be hard to sell the other version, given Alex's and Daniel's relative sizes.

They could camp out of whatever car they found, as they'd done before. The scrutiny would be intense. Once Carston's people located Kevin's vehicle, they'd trace every used car sold, every want ad, every stolen car for a hundred miles in any direction. Any description that fit the scenario would go onto a list, and if a cop reported that vehicle, Carston's people wouldn't be far behind.

Maybe it was time to go back to Chicago. Maybe Joey Giancardi wouldn't kill her immediately. Maybe he'd be willing to trade some kind of indentured servitude for two sets of facial reconstruction. Or maybe he'd get one whiff of her desperation and know there was good money to be made in selling her back to the people who wanted her.

She had ident.i.ties that Kevin knew nothing about, but Daniel didn't. The doc.u.ments she'd grabbed from Kevin's mobile Batcave wouldn't be safe.

Unless Daniel acted fast enough.

She uncovered her face and sat up.

"Do you think you've grasped the basic principles of hide-and-seek?"

Daniel turned with two clear bags of ammo in his hands. "Maybe the very most basic of the basics."

Alex nodded. "You're smart, though. You speak Spanish pretty well, right?"

"I can get by. You want to go to Mexico?"

"I wish I could. Mexico probably isn't totally safe for your face since you've been there so many times, but there are a lot of good hiding places in South America. It's cheap, too, so you won't run out of money for a while. You won't blend in, but there are lots of expats..."