The Chemist Part 24

"I don't know how to respond to that."

His eyes narrowed for a moment, considering. She wished he would take a step back so that she could think more clearly. Then he seemed to brace himself, squaring his shoulders for some kind of blow.

"Might as well get everything out in the open. Answer this instead: What's the very worst thing you see when you look at me?"

The honest answer popped out before she could think it through. "A liability."

She saw how harshly the word landed. Now he gave her the s.p.a.ce she'd just wished for, and she regretted it. Why was the room so cold?

He nodded to himself as he backed away.

"That's fair, that's completely fair. I'm an idiot, clearly. I can't forget I've put you in danger. Also, the fact that-"

"No!" She took a hesitant step toward him, anxious to be clear. "That's not what I meant."

"You don't have to be kind. I know I'm useless in all this." He gestured vaguely toward the door, toward the world outside that was trying to kill them both.

"You're not. Being a normal person is not a bad thing. You'll learn all the rest. I was talking about... leverage." She couldn't help herself-his expression was just so openly devastated. She took another step toward him and grabbed one of his big, warm hands with both of her little icy ones. It made her feel better when the word leverage replaced the pain in his eyes with confusion. She hurried to explain. "You remember what Kevin and I were saying about leverage? About how you're the leverage the Agency needed to get him to expose himself?"

"Yes, that makes me feel so much better than useless."

"Let me finish." She took a deep breath. "They've never had anything on me. Barnaby was my only family. I didn't have some sister with a couple of kids and a house in the suburbs that the department could threaten to blow up. There was no one I cared about. Lonely, yes, but I was also free. It was only myself I had to keep alive."

She watched him think through the words, trying to sort out her meaning. She fumbled for a concrete example.

"See, if... if they had you," she explained slowly, "if they grabbed you somehow... I would have to come after you." It was so true it frightened her. She didn't understand why it was true, but that didn't change the fact.

His eyes widened and seemed to freeze that way.

"And they'd win, you know," she said apologetically. "They'd kill us both. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't have to try. See?" She shrugged. "Liability."

He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. He paced to the sink, then back to stand right in front of her.

"Why would you come after me? Guilt?"

"Some," she admitted.

"But it wasn't you who involved me, not really. They didn't choose me because of you."

"I know-that's why I said some. Maybe thirty-three percent."

He smiled a tiny bit, like she'd said something funny. "And the other sixty-seven percent?"

"Another thirty-three percent... justice? That's not the right word. But someone like you... you deserve more than this. You're a better person than any of them. It's not right that someone like you should have to be a part of this world. It's an evil waste."

She hadn't meant to be quite so vehement. She could tell she'd only confused him again. He didn't realize how unusual he was. He didn't belong down here in the filth of the trenches. Something about him was just... pure.

"And the last thirty-four?" he asked after a moment of thought.

"I don't know." She groaned.

She didn't know why or how he had become a central figure in her life. She didn't know why she automatically a.s.sumed he would be there in the future when that made no sense at all. She didn't know why, when his brother had asked her to keep an eye on him, her answer had been so earnest and so... compulsory.

Daniel was waiting for more. She spread her hands helplessly. She didn't know what else to say.

He smiled a little. "Well, liability doesn't seem such an awful word as it did before."

"It does to me."

"You know if they came for you, I would do what I could to stand in their way. So you're a liability for me, too."

"I wouldn't want you to do that."

"Because we'd both end up dead."

"Yes, we would! If they come for me, you run."

He laughed. "Agree to disagree."

"Daniel-"

"Let me tell you what else I see when I look at you."

Her shoulders hunched automatically. "Tell me the worst thing you see."

He sighed, then reached out to gently lay his fingertips along her cheekbone. "These bruises. They break my heart. But, in a really twisted and wrong way, I'm sort of grateful for them. How shameful is that?"

"Grateful?"

"Well, if my idiot bully of a brother hadn't beaten you up, you would have disappeared, and I would have had no way to ever find you again. Because of your injuries, you needed our help. You stayed with me."

His expression when he said the last four words was very unsettling. Or maybe it was his fingers lingering on her skin.

"Now can I tell you what else I see?"

She stared at him warily.

"I see a woman who is more... real than any other woman I've ever met. You make every other person I've known seem insubstantial, somehow incomplete. Like shadows and illusions. I loved my wife, or rather-as you so insightfully pointed out while I was high-I loved my idea of who she was. I truly did. But she was never as there to me as you are. I've never been drawn to someone the way I am to you, and I have been from the very first moment I met you. It's like the difference between... between reading about gravity and then falling for the first time."

They stared at each other for what felt like hours but could have been minutes or even seconds. His hand, at first just touching her cheekbone with the very tips of his fingers, slowly relaxed down until his palm was cradling her jaw. His thumb brushed across her lower lip with a pressure so light, she wasn't totally sure she hadn't imagined it.

"This is entirely irrational on every level," she whispered.

"Don't kill me, please?"

She might have nodded.

He put his other hand on her face-so softly that despite her bruises there was no hint of pain. It was just live current, like the way a plasma globe must feel from the inside.

She started to remind herself, as his lips pressed gently against hers, that she was not thirteen years old and this was not her first kiss, so really... then his hands moved into her hair and held her mouth more firmly against his, his lips opened, and she couldn't even finish the thought. She couldn't think how the words were supposed to string together.

She gasped-just a tiny puff of breath-and he pulled his face an inch back, still holding her head secure in his long hands.

"Did I hurt you?"

She couldn't remember how to say Just keep kissing me, so instead she stretched up on her tiptoes to throw her arms around his neck and pull him closer. He was not unwilling to comply.

He must have felt the drag in her arms, or his back was protesting the considerable difference in their heights; he grabbed her waist and swung her up onto the island counter, never breaking the contact between their lips. Reflexively, her legs wrapped around his hips at the same time that his arms pulled tight around her torso, so their bodies were warmly fused together. Her fingers twisted themselves into his hair, and she was finally able to admit to herself that she had always been attracted to these unruly curls, that she'd secretly enjoyed running her fingers through them while he was unconscious in a way that was totally unprofessional.

There was something honest and so Daniel about the kiss, as if his personality-along with his scent and taste-was a part of the electricity humming back and forth between them. She started to understand what he'd been saying before, about how she was real to him. He was something new to her, an entirely new experience. It was like her first kiss, because no kiss had ever been so vivid, so much stronger than her own a.n.a.lytical mind. She didn't have to think.

It felt amazing not to think.

Everything was just kissing Daniel, like there had never been another purpose for breathing in and out.

He kissed her throat, her temple, the top of her head. He cradled her face against his neck and sighed.

"It feels like I've been waiting a century to do that. It's like time has lost all continuity. Every second with you outweighs days of life before I met you."

"This shouldn't be so easy." Once he'd stopped kissing her, she could think again. She wished she didn't have to.

He tilted her chin up. "What do you mean?"

"Shouldn't there be some... awkwardness? Noses b.u.mping, all that. I mean, it's been a while for me, but that's how I remember it."

He kissed her nose. "Normally, yes. But this hasn't been a normal thing in any facet."

"I don't understand how this could happen. The odds are astronomically against it. You were just the random bait they put in a trap for me. And then, coincidentally, you just happen to be exactly..." She didn't know how to finish.

"Exactly what I want," he said, and he leaned in to kiss her again. He pulled back too soon. "I'll admit," he continued, "it's not a bet I would have taken."

"Your chances at winning the lottery would be better."

"Do you believe in fate?"

"Of course not."

He laughed at her scornful tone. "I guess karma is out, too, then?"

"Neither of those things is real."

"Can you prove that?"

"Well, not conclusively, no. But no one can prove they are real, either."

"Then you'll just have to accept that this is the world's most unlikely coincidence. I, however, think there is some balance in the universe. We've both been treated unfairly. Maybe this is our balance."

"It's irrational-"

He cut her off, his lips making her forget instantly what she had been about to say. He kissed along the skin of her cheekbone till he got to her ear.

"Rationality is overrated," he whispered.

Then his mouth was moving with hers again, and she couldn't help but agree. This was better than logic.

"You're not off the hook for Indochine," he murmured.

"Huh?"

"The movie. I endangered our lives to acquire it, the least you can do is-"

This time, she didn't let him finish.

"Tomorrow," he said when they came up for air.

"Tomorrow," she agreed.

CHAPTER 16.

Alex woke up the next day feeling both full of antic.i.p.ation and also very, very stupid.

Honestly, it was like she couldn't complete a solid paragraph of thought without going back to some piece of Daniel's face, or the texture of his hands, or the way his breath felt against her throat. And of course, that was where the feeling of antic.i.p.ation was coming from.

But there were so many practical matters that simply had to be considered. Last night, or rather this morning, by the time he'd kissed her good night for the hundredth time at the top of the stairs, she'd been too exhausted to think through any of it. She'd barely had the energy to arm her defenses and slip on her gas mask before she pa.s.sed out.

It was probably a good thing; she'd been too addled then to grasp exactly what madness she'd just embarked on. Even now, it was hard to focus on anything but the fact that Daniel was probably awake somewhere. She was impatient to see him again, and yet also a little frightened. What if the crazy swell of emotion that had felt so natural and irresistible last night had evaporated? What if they were suddenly strangers again, with nothing to say?

That might be easier than if the feeling continued.

Today or tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, Kevin was going to call- Ugh, Kevin. She could just imagine his reaction to recent developments.

She shook her head. That was irrelevant. Because today or tomorrow, Kevin was going to call and then she would send the e-mail that would make the rats scurry. Kevin would compile a list of names. He would go after his rats, and if she didn't act simultaneously, her rats would go to ground once they realized the danger. So she would have to leave Daniel here and embark on her retaliatory strike, knowing full well that there was a good chance she wouldn't be coming back. How would she explain that? How long did she have? Two days, at most? What truly hideous timing.

It didn't feel right to go into the day antic.i.p.ating all the hours together with Daniel. It was dishonest. He'd heard the plan, but she was positive he hadn't thought it through enough to realize what it meant. So soon, she'd be leaving him here alone. Their time would be much better spent training him in the art of hiding. Some more shooting-range practice wouldn't hurt, either.

The feeling of antic.i.p.ation turned to a sinking dread as her thoughts wound to a conclusion. Her behavior last night had been irresponsible. If she'd had any idea of what Daniel was thinking, she might have been able to work all this through before it had gotten out of hand. She might have been able to keep the appropriate distance between them. But she'd been taken completely by surprise.

Trying to understand a normal person was not her forte. Though, truly, someone who found the real Alex attractive was not a normal person at all.

She heard barking outside-it sounded like the dogs were coming back from the barn. She wondered if it was still morning or already afternoon.