The Chemist

Well, she also didn’t really have anyone to call.

“Thanks,” Daniel said. He still had one arm around her, though now, with him sitting and her standing, it was at her waist. He stared up at her dizzily and then added, “I like your face.”

“Oh. Um, thank you.”

“I like it a lot.”

The woman sitting next to Daniel looked over at Alex and examined her face. Great.

The woman seemed unimpressed.

Daniel leaned his forehead against her hip and closed his eyes. The proximity was disconcerting on a few different levels, but also oddly comforting. It had been a long time since any human being had touched her with affection, even if this affection had come out of a test tube. Regardless, she couldn’t let him fall asleep yet.

“What do you teach, Daniel?”

He angled his face up, his cheek still resting on her hip.

“Mostly English. That’s my favorite.”

“Really? I was horrible at all the humanities. I liked science best.”

He made a face. “Science!”

She heard the woman beside him mutter, “Drunk,” to her other neighbor.

“Shouldn’t have told you I was a teacher.” He sighed heavily.

“Why not?”

“Women don’t like that. Randall says, ‘Never volunteer the information.’” The way he said the words made it clear he was quoting this Randall verbatim.

“But teaching is a noble profession. Educating the future doctors and scientists of the world.”

He looked up at her sadly. “There’s no money in it.”

“Not every woman is so mercenary. Randall is dating the wrong type.”

“My wife liked money. Ex-wife.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He sighed again and closed his eyes. “It broke my heart.”

Another twinge of pity. Of sadness. He would never say these things, she knew, if he weren’t high on her Ecstasy–truth serum hybrid. He was speaking more clearly now; the drug wasn’t wearing off, his mind was just adapting to working around it.

She patted his cheek and made her voice cheery. “If she was that easily bought, she probably isn’t worth crying over.”

His eyes opened again. They were a very gentle hazel, an even mix of green and soft gray. She tried to picture them intense – fitting under the baseball cap of the self-assured man meeting with de la Fuentes in the photos – and failed.

She didn’t know what she would do if he actually had dissociative identity disorder. She’d never worked with that before.

“You’re right,” he said. “I know you are. I need to see her for what she really was, not what I imagined she was.”

“Exactly. We build up these ideas of people, create the one we want to be with, and then try to keep the real person inside the false mold. It doesn’t always work out well.”

Gibberish. She had no idea what she was saying. She’d been in one semiserious relationship in her whole life, and it hadn’t lasted long. School had been prioritized before the guy, just like work had been prioritized before everything else for six years. Like how she now prioritized breathing over everything else. She had a problem with obsessiveness.

“Alex?”

“Yes?”

“Am I dying?”

She smiled reassuringly. “No. If I thought you were dying, I would have called an ambulance. You’ll be fine. I just want to double-check.”

“Okay. Will I have to have blood taken?”

“Maybe.”

He sighed. “Needles make me nervous.”

“It will be fine.”

She didn’t like that this bothered her – lying to him. But there was something about his simple trust, the way he seemed to ascribe the best motives to everything she did… She had to snap out of it.

“Thank you, Alex. Really.”

“Just doing my job.” Not a lie.

“Do you think you’ll call me?” he asked hopefully.

“Daniel, we’re definitely going to spend an evening together,” she promised. If he hadn’t been drugged, he would have heard the edge in her voice and seen the ice in her eyes.

CHAPTER 5

T

he rest went almost too smoothly… did that mean something? Her paranoia level was already so high, it was hard to say if this new worry elevated it or not.

He got into the cab at the Rosslyn station without protest. She knew how he felt – she and Barnaby had tried out most of the nonlethal preparations to have some concrete experience with what they could do. This one was like dreaming a pleasant dream, where problems and worries were for someone else to figure out, and all one needed was a hand to hold and a nudge in the right direction. In their notes they’d nicknamed it Follow the Leader, though it had a more impressive name on the official reports.

It was a relaxing trip, and if it weren’t for the fact that she desperately needed her inhibitions, even back then, she might have indulged again.

She got him talking about the volleyball team he coached – he’d asked if he’d be back at school in time for practice – and he spent the entire cab ride telling her about the girls until she felt she knew all their names and their strengths on the court by heart. The cabbie paid no attention, humming along to some song too low for her to make out.

Daniel seemed mostly oblivious to the travel, but at a particularly long red light, he looked up and frowned.