The Chemist

“Your man is unable to control himself. I want him removed from this room,” she said severely.

An electronic crackle sounded through the room. She glanced up for the speaker but couldn’t find it.

“Continue,” Deavers’s disembodied voice commanded. “He will be escorted out if there is any more misconduct.”

She frowned at her own reflection, then turned to lean over Kevin.

“I need a name,” she insisted.

“Carston,” he breathed.

No!

Nerves already frayed and strained, she had to fight back the urge to slap him. But of course Kevin had no way of knowing how she’d gotten here.

She heard a commotion in the observation room and hurried on in a louder voice. “I find that very hard to believe, Mr. Beach, as Mr. Carston is the reason I am here with you. He wouldn’t send me in if he wanted to avoid the truth. He knows what I’m capable of.”

Kevin shot her one disgusted look under half-lowered lids, then groaned again. “That’s the name my contact gave me. I can only tell you what he told me.”

Nice save, she thought sarcastically.

The commotion hadn’t ended with either her pronouncement or Kevin’s. She could hear raised voices and some movement. Lindauer was distracted, too, staring at the glass.

She tried again, pulling a new syringe and slipping a small device from beneath it into her pocket. “Forgive me for thinking that was all a bit too easy —”

“No, wait,” Kevin huffed, pitching his voice a little louder. “Deavers sent the guy; he knows who I’m talking about.”

Well, maybe that would muddy the water a bit. Get both names on the table.

It wasn’t stopping whatever was happening in the observation room, though. She had to make a move. The one good thing about the unanticipated situation on the other side of the glass was that they obviously weren’t watching her very carefully. Time was up.

“Mr. Lindauer,” she called sharply without looking in his direction. In the mirror, she could see that he was preoccupied with the other room as well. His head whipped around to her.

“I’m worried these ankle restraints are a little too tight. I need his circulation performing optimally. Do you have the key?”

Kevin could guess what this was about. His muscles tensed in readiness. Lindauer hurried to the foot of the table. One voice was raised above the others in the observation room, shouting.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lindauer complained, his eyes on Kevin’s ankles and mangled feet. “These aren’t cutting off his circulation. It wouldn’t be safe to have them any looser. You don’t know what kind of man you’re dealing with.”

She stepped close to him, speaking softly so that he would have to lean in toward her. Inside her pocket, she pressed her thumb against the tiny flash capacitor of the electromagnetic-pulse emitter.

“I know exactly what kind of man I’m dealing with,” she murmured.

She switched on the capacitor with her left hand and stabbed the syringe into Lindauer’s arm with her right.

The light overhead flickered and popped; the shattered bulbs tinkled against the Plexiglas face of the fixture. Luckily the pulse didn’t blow out the Plexiglas or it would have been bad for Kevin’s exposed skin. The room went black.

The pulse wasn’t strong enough to reach the other room. Muted light shone through the mirror, and she could see dark figures moving on the other side of the glass, but she couldn’t tell who was who or what was happening.

Lindauer managed only half a scream before he was convulsing on the floor. She could hear Kevin moving, too, though those sounds were much quieter and more purposeful than Lindauer’s thrashing.

She knew precisely where her toolbox was in the dark. She whirled and fell to her knees next to it, yanked the second-to-last drawer open, emptied the tray of syringes to the floor, and felt for the hidden compartment beneath.

“Ollie?” Kevin breathed. She could hear he was off the table now, near the IV pole.

She grabbed the first two guns she touched and lurched toward the sound of his voice. She collided with his chest, and his arms came up to keep her from falling backward. She shoved the guns against his stomach just as two shots rang out in the other room. There was no shatter of glass – they weren’t shooting into the interrogation room. A third, and then a fourth shot.

“Danny’s in there,” she hissed as he yanked the guns out of her hands.

She fell back to her knees as he spun away and slid into the toolbox. She grabbed the other two guns, the familiar shape of her own PPK and another she didn’t recognize by touch. She’d given Kevin her SIG Sauer by accident.

It didn’t matter. She’d accomplished the main objectives of her strategy: free Kevin and get a loaded gun into his hands. Now she was primarily backup. She just had to hope that the star performer was in good enough shape to do what she needed him to do. If that sadist Lindauer had injured him too greatly… well, then they were all dead.

Lindauer had gotten his. He was probably still alive, but not for much longer. He wouldn’t enjoy what was left of his life at all.

A full second hadn’t passed when another shot echoed deafeningly through the small concrete room, and this time there was the muffled crunch of buckling safety glass.

Cracks of yellow light spider-webbed through the window as four shots responded back in quick succession. The answering shots didn’t change the splintered pattern of light; again, they weren’t aimed into the interrogation room. They were still shooting at each other inside the observation room.