The Chemist

They can’t be here yet, she reasoned with herself through the panic, her eyes already sweeping the library for men with shoulders too broad for their dark suits, for military haircuts, for anyone moving toward her position. She could see her car through the plate-glass window, and it looked like no one had tampered with it, but she hadn’t exactly been keeping watch, had she?

So they’d found her again. But they had no way of knowing where she would decide to check her mail. She was religiously random about that choice.

Just now, an alarm had gone off in a tidy gray office, or maybe several offices, maybe even with flashing red lights. Of course there would be a priority command set up to trace this IP address. Bodies were about to be mobilized. But even if they used helicopters – and they had that capability – she had a few minutes. Enough to see what Carston wanted.

The subject line was Tired of running?

Bastard.

She clicked it open. The message wasn’t long.

Policy has changed. We need you. Would an unofficial apology help? Can we meet? I wouldn’t ask, but lives are on the line. Many, many lives.

She’d always liked Carston. He seemed more human than a lot of the other dark suits the department employed. Some of them – especially the ones in uniform – were downright scary. Which was probably a hypocritical thought, considering the line of work she used to be in.

So of course it was Carston they’d had make contact. They knew she was lonely and frightened, and they’d sent an old friend to make her feel all warm and fuzzy. Common sense, and she probably would have seen through the ploy without help, but it didn’t hurt that the same ploy had been used once in a novel she’d stolen.

She allowed herself one deep breath and thirty seconds of concentrated thought. The focus was supposed to be her next move – getting out of this library, this town, this state, as soon as possible – and whether that was enough. Was her current identity still safe, or was it time to relocate again?

However, that focus was derailed by the insidious idea of Carston’s offer.

What if…

What if this really was a way to get them to leave her alone? What if her certainty that this was a trap was born from paranoia and reading too much spy fiction?

If the job was important enough, maybe they would give her back her life in exchange.

Unlikely.

Still, there was no point in pretending that Carston’s e-mail had gone astray.

She replied the way she figured they were hoping she would, though she’d formed only the barest outline of a plan.

Tired of a lot of things, Carston. Where we first met, one week from today, noon. If I see anyone with you, I’m gone, yada yada yada, I’m sure you know the drill. Don’t be stupid.

She was on her feet and walking in the same moment, a rolling lope she’d perfected, despite her short legs, that looked a lot more casual than it was. She was counting off the seconds in her head, estimating how long it would take a helicopter to cover the distance between DC and this location. Of course, they could alert locals, but that wasn’t usually their style.

Not their usual style at all, and yet… she had an unfounded but still pressingly uncomfortable feeling that they might be getting tired of their usual style. It hadn’t yielded the results they were looking for, and these were not patient people. They were used to getting what they wanted exactly when they wanted it. And they’d been wanting her dead for three years.

This e-mail was certainly a policy change. If it was a trap.

She had to assume it was. That viewpoint, that way of framing her world, was the reason she was still breathing in and out. But there was a small part of her brain that had already begun to foolishly hope.

It was a small-stakes game she was playing, she knew that. Just one life. Just her life.

And this life she’d preserved against such overpowering odds was only that and nothing more: life. The very barest of the basics. One heart beating, one set of lungs expanding and contracting.

She was alive, yes, and she had fought hard to stay that way, but during her darker nights she’d sometimes wondered what exactly she was fighting for. Was the quality of life she maintained worth all this effort? Wouldn’t it be relaxing to close her eyes and not have to open them again? Wasn’t an empty black nothing slightly more palatable than the relentless terror and constant effort?

Only one thing had kept her from answering Yes and taking one of the peaceful and painless exits readily available to her, and that was an overdeveloped competitive drive. It had served her well in medical school, and now it kept her breathing. She wasn’t going to let them win. There was no way she would give them such an easy resolution to their problem. They would probably get her in the end, but they were going to have to work for it, damn them, and they would bleed for it, too.

She was in the car now and six blocks from the closest freeway entrance. There was a dark ball cap over her short hair, wide-framed men’s sunglasses covering most of her face, and a bulky sweatshirt disguising her slender figure. To a casual observer, she would look a lot like a teenage boy.

The people who wanted her dead had already lost some blood and she found herself suddenly smiling as she drove, remembering. It was odd how comfortable she was with killing people these days, how satisfying she found it. She had become bloodthirsty, which was ironic, all things considered. She’d spent six years under their tutelage, and in all that time they hadn’t come close to breaking her down, to turning her into someone who enjoyed her work. But three years on the run from them had changed a lot of things.