The Chemist Part 19

She nodded with false gravity. "You could be right."

He smiled, then was serious again. "Did anyone burn candles for you?"

"There wasn't really anyone left to care. If Barnaby had been the one to survive, he might have lit a candle for me. I did a few times for him, in cathedrals. I'm not Catholic, but I couldn't figure out another place where I could do it inconspicuously. I know Barnaby's not around to care, but I needed something. Closure, mourning, whatever."

A pause. "Did you love him?"

"Yes. Aside from my work-and you've seen how warm and cuddly that was-he was all I had."

Daniel nodded. "Well, I don't feel like laughing anymore."

"We probably needed the release. Now we can get back to our regularly scheduled depression."

"Sounds lovely."

"Hey, Moe and Curly," Kevin called from outside the barn. "Are you ready to get back to work, or do you want to giggle like schoolgirls a little while longer?"

"Um, giggle, I guess?" Daniel called back.

She couldn't help it-she snickered.

Daniel put his hand gently over her bruised mouth. "None of that, now. We'd better go see what work there is to do."

CHAPTER 13.

Kevin kept a firing range set up behind the barn, facing the river. Alex eyed it suspiciously, but she had to concede that random gunshots were probably less likely to arouse attention in rural Texas than anywhere else in the world.

"When's the last time you picked up a gun?" he asked Daniel.

"Hmm... with Dad, I guess."

"Seriously?" Kevin heaved a sigh. "Well, I suppose all we can do is hope you remember something."

He'd brought out an array of weapons and laid them on a hay bale. Other hay bales, each stacked to a man's height and wearing printed black silhouettes, were arranged at varying distances from their position. Some were so far off she could barely make them out.

"We could start with the handguns, but what I'd like is to try you on some rifles. The best way to stay safe is to be shooting from very, very far away. I'd rather keep you out of the close-up stuff if I can."

"These don't look like any rifles I've ever used," Daniel said.

"They're snipers. This one"-he patted the McMillan he wore slung across his back-"has the record for the longest distance kill at over one mile."

Daniel's eyes widened in disbelief. "How do you even know who you want to kill from that far away?"

"Spotters, but don't worry about that. You don't need to learn that kind of distance. I just want you to be able to sit in a perch and pick people off if it comes to that."

"I don't know if I could actually shoot a person."

It was Kevin's turn to look disbelieving. "You'd better figure that out. Because if you don't shoot, the person coming sure as h.e.l.l won't hesitate to take advantage."

Daniel seemed about to argue, but Kevin waved the mini-conflict away. "Look, let's just see if you can remember how to shoot a gun."

After Kevin reviewed the basics, it was evident that Daniel did remember plenty. He took to the rifle with much more instinctive ease than Alex had ever felt with firearms. He was clearly a natural, while she never had been.

After enough rounds were fired for her to get over the fear of all the noise, she lifted the SIG Sauer.

"Hey, do you mind if I try this out on the closer targets?"

"Sure," Kevin said, not looking up from his brother's sight line. "Join the party."

The SIG was heavier than her PPK and had a more substantial kick, but in a way that felt good. Powerful. It took her a few rounds to get used to the sight, but then she was about as accurate with it as she was with her own gun. She thought that with time, she would get better. Maybe she'd be able to get in some consistent practice while she was here. It wasn't the kind of thing she usually got to indulge in.

When Kevin put an end to the shooting instruction, the sun was almost all the way down. It colored all the yellow gra.s.s deep red, as if it were actually touching down on the horizon and setting all the dried brush ablaze.

Reluctantly, she put the SIG away with the other guns. It wasn't as if she didn't know the code. She might do some stocking up when Kevin's party was over.

"Well, Danny, it's good to see you've still got it... and that my talent isn't just a fluke. Mom and Dad pa.s.sed us some solid genes," Kevin said when they were heading back to the house.

"For target practice. I still don't think I could do what you do."

Kevin snorted. "Things change when someone is trying to kill you."

Daniel looked out his side window, clearly unconvinced.

"Okay." Kevin sighed. "Think of it this way. Imagine someone you want to protect-Mom, for example-is standing behind you. Some new recruits need to visualize in order to get themselves in the right frame of mind."

"That doesn't really fit with shooting from a sniper's perch," Daniel pointed out.

"Then picture Mom getting stuffed into the trunk of a car by the guy in your crosshairs. Use your imagination."

Daniel was done. "Fine, fine."

She could tell he still wasn't persuaded, but she had to agree with Kevin on this one topic. When someone came for you, your survival instincts kicked in. In a him-or-you situation, you always chose yourself. Daniel wouldn't know how that felt until the hunters caught up with him. She hoped he'd never have to learn the feeling.

Well, Kevin would do what he could, and so would she. Maybe together they could make the world a safer place for Daniel Beach.

Back at the ranch, the tour continued. Kevin took them to a sleek modern outbuilding, invisible from the front of the house and full of dogs.

Each animal had a climate-controlled stall and access to its own private outdoor run. Kevin explained the exercise schedule to Daniel, which dogs were already spoken for and which were ready to be listed, training him for his future life at the ranch, she a.s.sumed. Daniel seemed to love it, petting all the dogs and learning their names. The dogs adored the attention-and asked for it; she wished she could turn down the volume of the barks and whines. The dogs who ran loose were apparently graduates of the program; these followed Kevin on the rounds.

Alex suspected Kevin had let her tag along just to make her uncomfortable. The horse-size spotted one-a Great Dane, she learned-was constantly on her heels, and she was sure the dog hadn't decided to do that on his own. Kevin must have given some unseen command. She could feel the giant's breath on the nape of her neck, and guessed there were probably flecks of saliva on the back of her shirt. The hound dog was tailing her, too, but she thought he might have chosen the a.s.signment for himself. He was still milking those sad eyes every time Alex glanced at him. The other graduates circled Daniel and Kevin, except for Einstein, who stuck close to Kevin only and seemed to take troop inspections very seriously.

They pa.s.sed stalls with German shepherds, Dobermans, Rottweilers, and several other working-group dogs she didn't know names for. Alex kept to the middle of the long pathway between kennels and didn't touch anything. Always best to minimize the number of fingerprints for wiping down later.

There were two small hound puppies sharing a stall, and Kevin mentioned to Daniel that they were Lola's offspring, gesturing to the bloodhound tailing Alex.

"Oh, Lola, huh? Sorry," Alex murmured, too low for the men to hear. "I shouldn't have a.s.sumed."

Lola appeared to know she was being addressed. She stared up at Alex hopefully, and her tail pounded against Alex's leg. Alex leaned down quickly to pat her on the head.

Kevin made a disgusted sound and she straightened up to see him staring at her.

"Lola likes everyone," Kevin said to Daniel. "Great nose, poor taste. I'm trying to breed out the lack of discrimination while keeping the olfactory genius."

Daniel shook his head. "Enough already."

"I'm not kidding. I expect better instincts from these animals."

Alex squatted to scrub her fingers along Lola's sides like she'd seen Daniel do, knowing it would drive Kevin crazy. Lola immediately rolled over, offering her belly. Abruptly, the giant dog lay down on Alex's other side, and she was nearly positive he was also looking hopeful. She carefully patted his shoulder with one hand, and he didn't bite it off. His tail beat the ground twice. She took that as encouragement and scratched behind his ears.

"C'mon, Khan, not you, too!"

Both Alex and the Great Dane ignored him. She twisted down so that she was sitting cross-legged with both dogs in view and her back to the brothers. If she was going to be surrounded by furry killing machines, she might as well have a few of them on her side.

Lola licked the back of her hand. It was disgusting, but also kind of sweet.

"Looks like Alex has a fan," Daniel said.

"Whatever. Over here is where we keep the chow. Arnie picks it up every other week in Lawton. We've got most of what we need for..."

The rest of what Kevin said was lost in the yips and grumbles of the dogs left behind.

She stroked the dogs for a few minutes more, not sure how they would take it when she quit. Finally, she rose cautiously to her feet. Both Lola and Khan were quickly on all fours and seemed totally happy to follow her as she walked back to the house. They escorted her right to the door and then made themselves comfortable on the porch.

"Good girl, good boy," she said as she went inside.

Kevin had probably meant to intimidate her, but she liked the way it felt as if the dogs were actually looking out for her, rather than keeping an eye on her. She supposed it was what they were trained for. It was a comfortable feeling. If she had a different lifestyle, it might be nice to add a dog. Except she didn't know where she would get a dog-size gas mask.

Arnie was on the couch in the great room, parked in front of a flat-screen TV that was mounted on the opposite wall. He had a microwave dinner in his lap to which he was a.s.siduously applying himself; he didn't react to her entrance.

The smell of the food-macaroni and Salisbury steak-had her mouth watering. Not a four-star meal, but she was really hungry.

"Um, do you mind if I help myself to some food?" she asked.

Arnie grunted without looking away from the baseball game. She hoped it was an affirmative, because she was already en route to the fridge.

The refrigerator-an impressive, double-wide stainless-steel affair-was crushingly bare. Condiments, a few sports drinks, and a supersize jar of pickles. It also needed to be cleaned. She checked the freezer drawer and there found pay dirt: it was stuffed full of dinners like the one Arnie was eating. She heated a cheese pizza in the microwave and ate it on a bar stool scooted up to the island. Arnie seemed completely oblivious to her presence the entire time.

If you had to add another person into the equation, Arnie wasn't half bad, really.

She heard the men coming back, so she headed upstairs. They'd all been forced into close quarters on the ride here, but now that there were rooms to retire to, it was possible to give one another some s.p.a.ce. She knew Daniel and his brother had a lot to sort through, and there was no reason she needed to hear any of it.

There wasn't a ton to do in her storage room. She refilled her little acid syringes, though she couldn't think of a scenario where she would need them here. She could have worked on harvesting the kernels out of her peach pits, but she'd left them in the barn. It wasn't worth taking the chance to try to connect to the Internet, just in case she was going to be here for a while, and she didn't have any reading material. There was one project she'd been thinking about, but part of her violently rejected the idea of writing any of it down. Though national security hadn't exactly been her friend for a while, she still wasn't going to put the public in danger. Writing her memoirs was not an option.

But she needed to think it all through in an organized way. Maybe if she just wrote some key words to help her remember?

She was sure of one fact: Something she'd overheard in the six years she'd worked with Dr. Barnaby had been the reason for the lab attack and for every a.s.sa.s.sination attempt that had followed. If she could pinpoint the information involved, she would have a much better idea of who was behind the murder agenda.

The problem was that she'd heard a lot of things, and all of it was insanely sensitive.

She started to make a list. She created a code, designating the biggest issues, the nuclear ones, as A1 through A4. Four big bombs that had been controlled during her tenure. Those were the most serious projects she'd worked on. It would have to have been something of the gravest nature to merit destroying her section.

She hoped. If it was some petty whim by a cheating admiral who thought he might have been mentioned in an investigation, she had no chance of ever figuring it out.

T1 through T49 were all the non-nuclear terrorist actions she could remember. There were minor plans-ones that hadn't come to much-that were slipping through her memory, she knew. The major plans, T1 through T17, ranged from biological attacks to economic destabilization to importing suicide bombers.

She was trying to come up with a system to help her keep all of the different actions separate (the first letter of the city of origin plus the first letter of the target city? Would that differentiate the events enough? Would she forget the meaning of her notations? But listing the full place-names was too much information to commit to writing) when she heard Kevin calling for her.

"Hey, Oleander! Where are you hiding?"

She snapped her computer shut and walked to the top of the stairs.

"Did you need something?"

He came around the corner and looked up at her. Both of them held their position, keeping the length of the stairs between them.

"Just a heads-up. I'm taking off. I left a phone with Daniel. I'll call when I'm ready for you to send the e-mail."

"Prepaid disposable?"

"This ain't my first rodeo, sister."

"Well, good luck, I guess."

"Don't turn my house into some death lab while I'm gone."

Too late. She suppressed a grin. "I'll try to rein myself in."

"This is probably it. I'd say it was a pleasure..."

She smiled. "But we've always been so honest with each other. Why start lying now?"

He smiled in return, then was suddenly serious. "You'll keep an eye on him?"

She was slightly taken aback by the request. That Kevin would entrust his brother to her this way. And even more shocked by her own response.

"Of course," she promised immediately. It was disturbing to realize how sincere her answer was, and how involuntary. Of course she would keep Daniel safe to the best of her ability. It wasn't even a question. She remembered again the strange feeling that had first surfaced in the dark of her torture tent-her premonition that the stakes had doubled from one life to two.

Part of her wondered when she would be free from this feeling of responsibility. Maybe this was always how someone felt after interrogating an innocent person. Or maybe it only happened when that person was as... what was the right word? Honest? Virtuous? Wholesome? Someone as good as Daniel.

He grunted, then turned his back and headed toward the main room of the house. She couldn't see him anymore, but she could still hear him.