The Chemist Part 11

First things first. She reset the screen saver on her computer to come on after fifteen minutes of inactivity.

She couldn't lift Batman, sprawled facedown on the floor beside his brother, but his arms and legs were close enough to Daniel's that she could use the restraints that had been around Daniel's left wrist and left ankle to secure Kevin's. He'd thrown the key carelessly on the table by Daniel's side; she pocketed it.

She didn't resecure Daniel. Maybe it was a mistake, but she'd already done so much to him, it just felt unfair. And underneath it all, she wasn't afraid of him. Another potential mistake.

She stripped Batman of his guns and removed the cartridges and firing pins from the rifle and the HDS. She put the safety on the SIG Sauer and tucked it into the back of her belt. She liked it-it looked more serious than her PPK. She went out to the barn stalls to find her PPK and then shoved it in beside the SIG Sauer. She was more familiar with her own. Better to keep it handy, too.

She found her shoes, stashed the other guns, and then grabbed the movers' straps on her way back into the tent. The dog was too heavy to move easily, so she wrapped the straps around it and hauled it back to the bunk room. At first she simply closed the door and walked away-dogs didn't have opposable thumbs. A moment later, though, she changed her mind. The dog's name was Einstein; who knew what it was capable of? She looked for something to drag in front of the door. Most of the heavy machinery was bolted down. After a few seconds of thought, she walked around to the silver sedan. It just fit between the tent and the stalls. She pulled it right up to the bunk-room door, wedged the front b.u.mper tight against the wood, and then put it in park. She threw the parking brake on for good measure.

She closed the barn door and rearmed it. A quick look outside told her that it was almost dawn.

Back to Other Daniel. The Batsuit was a ch.o.r.e to remove. The fabric between the Kevlar panels was thick and ribbed with fine cables, almost like gristle. She snapped two blades on it before finally quitting at his waist. She settled for peeling back the top half and patting down his legs, which didn't have as much Kevlar to disguise them. She found a knife holstered in the small of his back and one shoved into each boot. She pulled his socks off. He was missing the pinkie toe on his left foot, but he had no other weapons that she could find. Not that he'd need any if he got his hands on her again. His whole body was roped with lean, hard bands of muscle. His back was a mess of scars-some from bullets, some blades, and one bad burn-with one more telling scar under the edge of his hairline. He'd removed his tracker, too. Definitely no longer with the CIA. A defector? A double agent?

But how had he found his brother?

She remembered the droning of the noisy prop plane, the booming thud of the improvised crash landing-someone in a hurry, she'd thought. Someone for whom time was the biggest problem.

She turned to look at Daniel; it seemed another examination was in order. She'd done a more thorough job going over his back, so she looked closely now at his stomach, groin, and thighs. Something she should have done before, but she'd misread the situation badly.

It was the idea of time-the hurried way Batman had arrived and attacked-that pointed her toward what she was looking for. An ordinary tracker would indicate only where the subject was, and Daniel wasn't really that far from home, not far enough to cause his dead brother to panic and run in guns blazing. So this tracker must monitor something more than just location, and it would have to be placed in the right spot.

She wanted to kick herself when she saw it-the little red tail of a scar sticking out from the edge of the tape she had used to secure the catheter tube against his leg. She pulled the tape now-always better to do that when the subject was still under anyway-and then removed the catheter. He'd be getting up soon.

The scar was tiny, with nothing raised under the skin. She figured the device must be more deeply implanted, next to the femoral artery, no doubt. When his blood pressure had gone crazy with the first round of interrogation, or maybe even from his fear when he'd first woken up, it must have tipped off his brother. And whoever else was monitoring him. The tracker would have to come out.

She had enough time before he woke up, so she got her first-aid kit. After snapping on some gloves, she numbed the site and sterilized the scalpel-good thing she hadn't broken all of them on the Batsuit. She scrubbed the skin with iodine, then made a quick, neat incision on top of the old one, though a bit longer. She didn't have forceps or tweezers, so she just poked around carefully with one finger on the inside and one on the outside. When she found the device-a little capsule about the size of a throat lozenge-she was able to pressure it out fairly easily.

She cleaned up the site and then superglued the edges together.

After that, she treated the raw skin on his wrists and ankles, cleaning and bandaging everything. Finally, she put the blanket over him and got him the pillow.

The capsule she left to cool on the steel table. To anyone watching the tracker on a monitor, it would appear that Daniel Beach had just died. She had a feeling that his death wouldn't bother anyone in the department. She had a better sense of the other side's plan now, and she was pretty sure it wasn't all about her.

She exited the tent to attend to her own face, first wiping off the blood and then trying to determine the extent of the damage. The lip was swollen, and the tear needed a st.i.tch; she applied a drop of superglue. Her cheek was missing a few layers of skin and she was going to have a matched set of very p.r.o.nounced black eyes. Her nose was swollen and crooked, so she took advantage of her current painless state to push it back into shape as well as she could.

The pain would return fairly soon, though she'd given herself the maximum dose of the drug she'd privately named Survive. It wasn't meant to work long term; it was just for making it through an attack like the one she'd just endured. Kind of like the adrenaline her body naturally generated, just much more powerful, and with some opiates to block the pain. Survive wasn't on the books; her list of duties had not included creating anti -torture concoctions, but she'd thought it might be something she'd need someday, and she'd been right. This wasn't the first time she'd used it-she'd overreacted to those earlier a.s.sa.s.sination attempts-but it was the first time she'd actually suffered through a decent beating with Survive in her system. She was pleased with its performance.

She didn't have anything to stabilize her nose with, so she would have to try to be more careful with her face for a while. Luckily she was a back sleeper.

The face was going to be a problem. A big problem. She couldn't exactly walk into a grocery store right now and escape notice.

When she had done everything she could think of to do, she lay on the cot for ten minutes, just gathering her strength-or what was left of it. The drug still made her feel strong, but she knew she'd sustained some damage. There would be repercussions to deal with. She needed time to rest and heal-time no one was going to give her.

CHAPTER 9.

She decided to wake Daniel up. Once Batman came around-which he probably would in about fifteen minutes or so-the conversation was not going to be very genteel. She wanted a chance to explain-and apologize-before the shrieking and the death threats started.

She reset the protocols on the computer.

The chemical mixture in the air had long since dispersed, so she didn't need the gas mask inside the tent anymore. She grabbed the other mask, then tucked both sets of straps through her belt, keeping them close.

She pulled Daniel's IV first. She didn't want him tethered to anything at all when he woke up. He'd had enough of that. His veins were still looking good. It was easy to inject the solution into the antecubital fossa of his other elbow. She sat on the edge of the table, lowered so that it nearly rested on the floor. She wrapped her arms around her knees and waited.

He came to slowly, blinking against the overhead lights. He raised one hand to shade his eyes, then awareness. .h.i.t. He stared at his hand-free, bandaged-and then his eyes darted around the bright room.

"Alex?" he asked quietly.

"Right here."

He turned toward her gingerly, moving his legs under the blanket, checking to see if he was still bound.

"What is happening now?" he asked cautiously, his eyes still struggling to focus.

"I believe you. And I'm very sorry for what I did to you."

She watched him process that. Carefully, he raised himself up on one elbow, then clutched at the blanket, realizing again that he was naked. It was funny how nonmedical people reacted to that; physicians were fairly relaxed about nudity in general. She felt exactly the same about nudity as any other doctor, but he wouldn't a.s.sume that. She should have put on her lab coat.

"You do believe me?" he asked.

"Yes. I know you're not the person I thought you were. I was... misled."

He sat up a little farther, moving warily, waiting for something to hurt. He should feel fine, though-just tired from the muscle spasms. And his upper thigh would be a little sore when the local wore off.

"I-" he started, and then froze. "What happened to your face?"

"It's a long story. Can I say something before I get into it?"

His expression was full of concern. For her? No, that couldn't be right.

"Okay," he agreed hesitantly.

"Look, Daniel, what I told you before was true. I don't like hurting people. I didn't like hurting you. I only do that when I think the other option is much more horrible. I have never in my life done this before-hurt a totally innocent person. Never. Not every person I've been asked to interrogate was as depraved as the rest, but all of them were at least part of the plot. I've long since realized that my old bosses will stoop to almost anything, but I still can't believe that they set me up to interrogate someone entirely guiltless."

He thought about it for a few seconds.

"Are you asking me to forgive you?"

"No, I'm not asking for that. I would never ask for that. But I wanted you to know. I never would have hurt you if I hadn't truly believed it would save lives. I am so sorry."

"And what about the drug dealer? The virus?" he asked anxiously.

She frowned. "I've received some new information. Apparently, de la Fuentes was taken care of."

"No one is going to die?"

"Not because of a weaponized virus spread by a drug czar, no."

"So that's good, right?"

She sighed. "Yeah, I guess that's the silver lining of what happened here."

"Now will you tell me what happened to your face? Did you have an accident?" Again with the concern.

"No. My injures are related to that new information I mentioned." She wasn't sure how to break it to him.

Sudden indignation. His shoulders tensed. "Somebody did that to you-on purpose? For hurting me?"

His mind certainly didn't work like someone in her line of business. Things that would be obvious to anyone who had ever worked on any facet of a mission were totally foreign to him.

"Essentially," she answered.

"Let me talk to him," he insisted. "I believe you, too. I know you didn't want to do it. You were trying to help."

"That's not really the issue. Um, Daniel, you know when I was showing you those pictures before and you recognized the person in them but you didn't want to tell me who it was?"

His face closed up. He nodded.

"You can relax. I'm not asking you to confess anything; this isn't a trick. I didn't know you had a twin. They covered that up in the file so I wouldn't-"

"No, but it wasn't Kevin," he interrupted. "That's what I didn't understand. It looked just like him, but it's impossible. Kevin is dead. He died in prison last year. I don't know who it could be unless we were actually triplets, and I think Mom might have noticed that..."

He trailed off, watching her expression change.

"What?" he asked.

"I'm not sure how to tell you this."

"Tell me what?"

She hesitated for a moment, then stood up and walked around the table. His eyes tracked her, then he sat up, bunching the blanket carefully around his waist. She stopped and looked down. His eyes followed hers.

Kevin Beach's face was turned toward the table where Daniel sat. It was curious how much more he looked like Daniel when he was unconscious, all the tension in his expression erased.

"Kevin," Daniel whispered, face going white, then flus.h.i.+ng bright red.

"Did you know your brother worked for the CIA?" she asked quietly.

He looked up, aghast. "No, no, he was in prison. He'd been dealing drugs." He shook his head. "Things got bad after our parents died. Kev went off the deep end. He self-destructed. I mean, after West Point-"

"West Point?"

"Yes," he said, face blank. Obviously the significance was lost on him. "Before the drugs, he was a different person. Graduated near the top of his cla.s.s. He was accepted to Ranger school..." Daniel trailed off, a.s.sessing her frown.

Of course. Alex suppressed a sigh, upset with herself for not worrying more about the file's gaps in information, for not taking the time to find a faraway library where she could have safely searched all Daniel's family connections.

Daniel looked down at his brother again. "He's not dead now, is he?"

"Just sleeping. He'll wake up in a few minutes."

Daniel's brow furrowed. "What is he wearing?"

"Some kind of military armored suit, I guess. Not my specialty."

"The CIA," he whispered.

"Black ops, I would imagine. Your brother didn't self-destruct, he just switched divisions. That's why he was involved with the drug lord."

His wide eyes turned sober. "He was helping the drug lord with the virus?" he whispered.

"No. Shutting him down, actually. We're basically on the same side, though you wouldn't know it to look at us." She nudged his supine form with her toe.

Daniel's head whipped back up to hers. "Did Kevin do that to your face?" Funny, but he sounded more upset about that than the idea that his brother was a murderous criminal.

"Yes, and I did this to him." Another nudge.

"But he's going to wake up?"

Alex nodded. She was a little conflicted about Batman waking up. It wasn't going to be pretty. And Daniel was being so nice about everything, about her. That would probably change once his brother started talking.

He smiled just a little, staring at his brother's exposed back. "So you won?"

She laughed. "Temporarily."

"He's a lot bigger than you are."

"I would say I was smarter, but I made some pretty huge mistakes in my security here. I think I was just luckier this time."

Daniel started to get to his feet, then paused. "Are my clothes around here anywhere?"

"Sorry, no. I thought there might be tracking devices in them. I had to cut them off you and ditch them."

He blushed again, all the way down to that small spot on his chest. He cleared his throat. "Why would someone track me?"

"Well, at the time, I thought the drug lord might be monitoring you. Or that you were a trap, and my department would use you to track me. Which is a little bit closer to the truth, actually."

He frowned. "I am so confused."

She gave him the bullet-points version as succinctly as possible. While she was talking, he got to his feet, wrapping the blanket around his waist like an oversize towel, and started pacing back and forth in front of his brother's body.

"They tried to kill you four times?" he asked when she was finished.