The Chemist

“Sleep,” he repeated.

“You’re right, you’re right,” she grumbled, flopping back against the rumpled sleeping bag. She really was bone-weary.

“Here.” He handed her his T-shirt.

“Where’s mine?”

“In pieces. Sorry.”

It was already too warm and stuffy inside the Humvee. She tossed his shirt aside and grinned remorsefully, feeling the glue pull. “For people with quite limited resources, we are not being very careful with our things.”

He must have noticed the lack of air circulation as well. He leaned over and opened the back hatch again. “Like I said – we’re overwrought.”

He lay down next to her, and she curled into his chest, wondering if it would really be possible to sleep with him half naked beside her. She closed her eyes, trying to will herself into unconsciousness. His arms wrapped around her, tentatively at first and then, after a few seconds, more securely, almost like he was testing his resolve.

If she’d been any less tired, she might have made the test harder for him. But despite her heightened awareness of his body and all the little volts of electricity that sparked where her nerve endings met his bare skin, she quickly drifted. As she surrendered to oblivion, one strange word circled through her head.

Mine, her brain insisted as her thoughts faded to black. Mine.

When Alex woke, the sun was still bright in the west, and the sleeping bag underneath her was damp with sweat. The shadows had shifted, and a shaft of light was hitting her full in the face, albeit through the tinted window. She blinked sleepily for a minute, waiting for her brain to wake up.

Then she came to with a jolt as she realized she was alone. She sat up too quickly, making her head ache and spin. The back hatch of the Humvee was still open, and the warm, humid air sat heavily on her skin. Daniel was nowhere in sight. Neither was his T-shirt, so she had to swiftly and silently dig into her things to find something to wear before she could look for him. It was stupid, but if she was about to run into another team of assassins, she didn’t want to do it in no more than a worn tan bra. She threw on her thin, oversize gray sweater because it was the first thing her fingers touched, not because it was weather-appropriate. She pulled the PPK out of her bag and tucked it into the small of her back. As she was climbing out the open hatch, she heard the crinkle of paper under her knee.

It was the receipt she’d written the e-mail address on. Underneath that was another neatly printed note.

Taking Einstein for a walk. Back soon.

She shoved the note in her pocket. Still moving quietly, she climbed out of the Humvee. Lola was sprawled out in a patch of shade beside the water and food Daniel had left. Her tail started thumping against the grass when she saw Alex.

Well, at least with Lola there, Alex knew that there was no one else around. Alex gulped down some water, wiped the sweat from her face with the sleeves of the sweater, then shoved them up as high as they could go.

“I don’t even know which direction they went,” she complained to Lola, scratching her ears. “And you’re in no shape to track them down, are you, girl? Though I bet you could pretty fast if you were on your feet.”

Lola licked her hand.

Alex was very hungry. She explored the small stash of food Daniel had brought and settled for a bag of pretzels. She would definitely need to replenish their stores tonight, but she so hated leaving a trail. Of course, there were hundreds of possible routes they could have taken to any number of destinations. But if someone were persistent enough and had a little luck on his side, he might be able to put together a pattern. She was out of carefully prepared traps and well-thought-out plans, let alone Batcaves. Her assets were money, guns, ammo, grenades, knives, a variety of venoms and chemical incapacitators, an assault vehicle, and one brilliant attack dog. Her physical liabilities included that same attention-demanding assault vehicle, one lame dog, her own somewhat lame body, one conspicuous face, one face off a wanted poster – more or less – and a lack of food, shelter, and options. Her emotional liabilities were even worse. She couldn’t believe how much trouble she’d brought on herself in such a limited time. Part of her wanted nothing more than to rewind, to go back to her cozy little bathtub, her unbroken face, and her safety nets. To choose differently in that distant library and delete the e-mail.

But if she could turn back the clock, would she? Was that life of daily terror and loneliness really such a better option? She’d been safer, yes, but still hunted. In so many ways, wasn’t her new, more endangered life a fuller existence?

She was sitting next to Lola, slowly stroking her back, when she heard Daniel’s voice approaching. After the first shock of alarm, she didn’t panic that he was talking to someone else. There was a special edge in his voice that appeared only when he was speaking with Kevin.

Einstein arrived first. He ran excitedly to Alex and touched his wet nose to her hand. He exchanged a snuffly greeting with Lola, then went to get a drink.

Daniel walked into view, striding quickly down the center of the unkempt dirt road. He had the bulletproof hat on. Beneath it, his brows were furrowed. He held the phone half an inch from his ear.

“I’m back now,” he was saying. “I’ll see if she’s awake… No, I will not wake her if she’s still sleeping.”

Alex got to her feet, brushing debris from her backside and stretching. The movement caught Daniel’s eye, and his expression shifted from annoyance to a slow, wide smile. Though she was a little exasperated, she couldn’t help grinning back.