“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…”
Daniel hesitated for a second, then carefully placed the ammo in one of the duffels. He came to stand next to her.
“Alex, you’re using a lot of second-person pronouns there. Are you… talking about us splitting up right now?”
“You’ll be safer outside the country, Daniel. If you laid low in a quiet little place somewhere in Uruguay, they might never find —”
“Then why can’t we go together? Is it because they’ll be looking for a couple… if… if Kevin talks?”
She hunched her shoulders; it was half a shrug, half a defensive motion. “It’s because I don’t have a passport.”
“You don’t think they’ll be waiting for Daniel Beach to try to board a plane?”
“You won’t be Daniel Beach. I’ve got a couple of Kevin’s ID sets. It will be a long while till they get around to asking him about false identities, if they ever do. You’ll have plenty of time to catch a flight to Chile tonight.”
His expression was suddenly hard, almost angry. He looked like Kevin, and she was surprised at how sad that made her.
“So I just save myself, then? Leave you behind?”
Another almost-shrug. “Like you said, they’ll be looking for a couple. I’ll slip through the holes in the net.”
“They’ll be looking for you, Alex. I won’t —”
“Okay, okay,” she interrupted. “Let me think some more. I’ll come up with something.”
Daniel locked eyes with her for a long second. Slowly, his expression softened until he looked like himself again. Finally, his shoulders slumped and his eyes closed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry this didn’t work. I’m sorry that Kevin…”
“I keep hoping he’ll walk through the door,” Daniel admitted, opening his eyes and staring down. “But I can feel it in my gut – that’s not going to happen.”
“I know. I wish I were wrong.”
His eyes flashed up to hers. “If our positions were reversed, he’d do something. He’d find a way. But there’s nothing I can do. I’m not Kevin.”
“Kevin would be in the same position we are. He wouldn’t know where they were keeping you. If he did, he’d still be impossibly outgunned. There wouldn’t be anything he could do.”
Daniel shook his head and sank down onto the bed. “Somehow, none of that would have stopped him.”
Alex sighed. Daniel was probably right. Kevin would have some secret informant, or another camera angle, or a way to hack into Deavers’s system. He wouldn’t give up and run. But Alex wasn’t Kevin, either. She couldn’t even poison Carston while he was still oblivious. He wasn’t anymore, she was sure of that.
“Let me think,” she repeated. “I’ll try to figure a way out.”
Daniel nodded. “But together, Alex. We leave together. We stay together.”
“Even if that puts both of us at risk?”
“Even then.”
Alex threw herself back onto the bed, hiding her face again with her arms.
If there had been some perfect escape for them, she would have tried it earlier. The whole reason she was here in the first place was that the escape option had failed. Now the attack option had failed. It didn’t leave her feeling very optimistic.
It was funny how you didn’t realize how much you had to lose until it was gone. Yes, she knew she was in deep with Daniel; she’d embraced that disadvantage. But who would have thought she would miss Kevin? How had he become her friend? Not even a friend, because you chose your friends. More like family – the brother you tried to avoid at family gatherings. She’d never had anything like that, but this must be what it felt like, the pain of losing something you’d never wanted but had come to count on anyway. Kevin’s arrogant self-assurance had made her feel almost safe in a way she hadn’t for years. His team was the winning team. His invulnerability was the safety net.
Or used to be.
And the dog. She couldn’t even think about the dog or she’d be incapacitated. She wouldn’t be able to make her brain work toward any kind of solution.
Again, the image of Kevin on her table flashed across the black insides of her eyelids. If only she could know that he was already dead, that would be something. If she could believe he wasn’t in agony right now. Surely he was smart enough to have had a way out. Or was he so certain of himself that failure was never part of the plan?
She thought she knew enough about Deavers from his moves up to this point to be sure he wouldn’t waste an opportunity if there were any way to find an edge in it.
She honestly wished the situation were reversed. If she’d been the one caught, she would have been able to take a quick, painless exit, leaving Deavers and Carston no information about the others. Whatever Kevin had done wrong, however he had failed, he was still the one best qualified to keep Daniel alive. And Val, too, for that matter. Val would have the easiest escape in the short term, but neither Carston nor Deavers seemed like the type to give up on a witness.