The Chemist

While she waited through the slow seconds, her mind raced through more analysis.

This wasn’t a big operation coming for her. No way any extraction team or elimination team worth its salt would announce its arrival with a noisy plane. There were better ways, quieter ways. And if it was a big, SWAT-style team sent after her without any briefing, just busting their way in by sheer might, they would have come in a copter. The plane had sounded very small – a three-seater at most, but probably two-.

If a lone assassin was coming for her again, as had always been the case in the past, she didn’t know what this guy thought he was doing. Why would he give himself away? The noisy plane was the move of someone who was lacking resources and in a very big hurry, someone to whom time was much more important than stealth.

Who was it? Not de la Fuentes.

First of all, a small prop plane didn’t seem like a drug lord’s MO. She imagined that with de la Fuentes, there would be a fleet of black SUVs and a bunch of thugs with machine guns.

Second, she had a gut feeling about this one.

No, she wasn’t a lie detector. Good liars, professional liars, could fool anyone, human or machine. Her job had never been about guessing the truth from the subject’s shifty eyes or tangled contradictions. Her job was breaking down the subject until there was nothing left but compliant flesh and one story. She wasn’t the best because she could separate the truth from the lie; she was the best because she had a natural affinity for the capabilities of the human body and was a genius with a beaker. She knew exactly what a body could handle and exactly how to push it to that point.

So gut feelings were not her forte, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d really felt something like this.

She believed Daniel was telling the truth. That’s why this exercise with Daniel had bothered her so much – because he wasn’t lying. It wasn’t going to be de la Fuentes coming after him. No one was coming after Daniel, because he wasn’t anything more than what he said he was – an English teacher, a history teacher, a volleyball coach. Whoever was coming was coming for her.

Why now? Had the department been tracking her all day and only just discovered her? Were they trying to save Daniel’s life, having realized too late that he wasn’t the guy?

No way. They would have known that before they set her up. They had access to too much information to be fooled in this. The file wasn’t entirely make-believe, but it was manipulated. They had wanted her to get the wrong person.

For a moment she felt a wave of nausea. She’d tortured an innocent man. She put that away quickly. Time for regret later, if she didn’t die now.

The columns reversed again. Elaborate trap, not real crisis. Though she did believe the situation with de la Fuentes was genuine, she no longer believed it was quite so urgent as she’d been told. Time was the easiest small change to make to a file; the tight deadline was a distortion. Low stakes again – just her own life to save. And Daniel’s, too, if she could.

She tried to shake the thought – it felt almost like an omen – that her stakes had somehow doubled. She didn’t need the extra burden.

Maybe someone else – that brilliant and unsuspecting kid who had taken her place at the department – was working on the real terrorist now. Maybe they didn’t think she still had the ability to get what they wanted. But why bring her in at all, then? Maybe the terrorist was dead, and they wanted a fall guy. Maybe they’d discovered this doppelgänger weeks ago and held him in reserve. Get the Chemist to make somebody confess to something, and tie a bow on a bad situation?

That wouldn’t explain the visitor, though.

It had to be near five in the morning. Maybe it was just a farmer who liked to start the day early and knew the area so well that he didn’t mind flying without radar through a bunch of tall trees in the pitch-black night and then enjoyed a good crash landing for the adrenaline kick…

She could hear Daniel’s breath rasp through the gas mask’s filter. She wondered if she had done the right thing putting him under. He was just so… exposed. Helpless. The department had already exhibited exactly how much concern they had for Daniel Beach’s well-being. And she’d left him trussed and defenseless in the middle of the room, a fish in a barrel, a sitting duck. She owed him better than that. But her first reaction had been to neutralize him. It wouldn’t have been safe to free him, she knew. Of course he would have attacked her, tried to exact revenge. If it came to brute strength, he’d have the advantage. And she didn’t want to have to poison him or shoot him. At least this way, his death wouldn’t be on her hands.

She still felt guilty, his vulnerable presence in the darkness worrying at the edges of her mind like sandpaper against cotton, pulling threads of concentration away from her.

Too late for second thoughts.

She heard the faint sound of movement outside. The barn was surrounded by bushes with stiff, rustling leaves. Someone was in them now, looking into the windows. What if he just let loose with an Uzi through the side of the barn? He obviously wasn’t worried about noise.

Should she lower the table, get Daniel down in case the tent was sprayed with bullets? She had oiled the accordion base well, but she wasn’t positive it wouldn’t squeak.

She scuttled over to the table and cranked it lower as fast as she could. It did make some low, bass groans, but she didn’t think they would carry outside the barn, especially through the foam barrier. She scooted back to her corner and listened again.