The Chemist Part 3

She was in a different car than she'd started out with that morning. Before checking into the motel, she'd returned the rental in Baltimore, then taken a cab to York, Pennsylvania. The cabbie dropped her a few minutes' walk from the house where a man surnamed Stubbins was selling his three-year-old Tercel, as advertised on Craigslist. She'd paid cash and used the name Cory Howard, then driven to Philly in her new ride. It was a trail that could be followed, but it would be very hard to do.

She drove several miles away from her motel, then chose a little dive that seemed to be doing brisk business. That was desirable for two reasons. One, she would be less memorable in a crowd. Two, the food was probably edible.

The dining area was packed, so she ate at the small bar. The wall behind the bar was mirrored; she could watch the door and front windows without turning around. It was a good perch. She had a greasy burger, onion rings, and a chocolate malt. All were delicious. While she ate, she turned off her brain. She'd gotten pretty good at that over the last nine years; she could compartmentalize almost anything. And while she focused on the food and watched the people around her, the headache subsided to a dull throb. Over the course of the meal, the Motrin finally won and the pain dissolved completely. She ordered a piece of pie for dessert-pecan-though she was completely stuffed and could only pick at it. She was stalling. Once the meal was over, she'd have to make a decision.

The headache was waiting for her in the car, as she'd known it would be, though it was not as sharp as before. She drove randomly down the quiet residential streets, where anyone following her would be obvious. The little suburb was dark and empty. After a few minutes she wandered closer toward the city.

There were still two columns of possibilities in her head.

The first column, that Carston had been lying in order to lure her to her death, was beginning to seem more and more unlikely. Still, she had to stay alert. This whole story could be fiction. All the evidence and coordinating departments and separate a.n.a.lysts with their differing writing styles and the photographs from around the world-it could be a very detailed, elaborate setup. Not a foolproof one, either, since they had no way of knowing she wouldn't just walk away from it.

But why would Carston have all this info prepared if he'd hoped to get her to a prearranged meeting? They could have killed her easily there without all this window dressing. A ream of blank paper was all you would need if you expected your mark's brains to be on the pavement before she could open the briefcase. How quickly could this kind of thing be thrown together? She'd given him no time to manufacture it on the spot with her early arrival. Who was Daniel Beach in this scenario? One of their own? Or an unsuspecting civilian Photoshopped into the exotic scenes? They had to know she would be able to verify some of this information.

They'd offered her a plan of action in the final file. In five days' time, with or without her, they would pick him up during his regular Sat.u.r.day-morning run. No one would miss him until school began again Monday. If anyone did happen to look for him, it might appear that he'd taken a little holiday. If she agreed to help, she would have two days to get the information they needed, then she would be free to go. They hoped she would consent to keep in some form of contact. An emergency e-mail address, a social network site, the cla.s.sifieds even.

If she didn't agree to the job, they would do their best without her. But trying to leave the informant physically unmarked would be slow... too slow. Failure was hard to contemplate.

She almost salivated at the thought of all the goodies waiting for her back at the lab. Things she could never get her hands on out here in the real world. Her DNA sequencer and polymerase chain reactor. The already fabricated antibodies she could stuff her pockets with if the invitation was on the up-and-up. Of course, if Carston was for real, she wouldn't need to steal those things anymore.

She tried to imagine sleeping in a bed again. Not carrying a pharmacy's worth of toxins on her body at all times. Using the same name every day. Making contact with other human beings in a way that left n.o.body dead.

Don't count on it, she told herself. Don't let it go to your head and impair your judgment. Don't let hope make you stupid.

As pleasant as some of her imaginings were, she hit a wall when she tried to visualize the steps she would need to take to make them happen. It was impossible to see herself walking back through the shiny steel doors into the place where Barnaby had died screaming. Her mind totally refused to construct the image.

The lives of a million people were a heavy weight, but still an abstract idea in many ways. She didn't feel like anything could push her hard enough to get her through those doors.

She would have to go around them, so to speak.

Only five days.

She had so much work to do.

CHAPTER 4.

This operation was murdering her nest egg.

That thought kept circling in the back of her brain. If she lived through the next week, and nothing changed in regard to her working relationship with the department, she was going to have serious financial issues. It wasn't cheap changing lives on a triannual basis.

Just acquiring disposable funds in the first place had been a major procedure. She'd had money-the salary had certainly been a factor in her choice to do the job in the beginning, and earlier than that, she'd inherited a decent insurance payout when her mother had died. But when you work for powerful paranoids who probably note it in your file when you switch toothpaste brands, you can't just withdraw all your money and put it in a shoe box under the bed. If they weren't planning to do anything to you before, you might have just given them a motive. If they were, you just made them decide to accelerate their plans. You could try withdrawing all your money on the way out of town, but that limited your ability to pay for any advance preparations.

Like so much of it had been, it was Barnaby's scheme. He'd kept her in the dark about the details to protect the friend or friends who helped him set it up.

In the cafeteria located a few floors up from the lab, she and Barnaby had let themselves be heard talking about a promising investment situation. Well, Barnaby had called it promising and worked to convince her of it. There was nothing remarkable about the conversation; various versions of it were probably taking place by watercoolers in several normal offices at the same moment. She played being convinced, and Barnaby loudly promised to set it up. She wired money to an investment firm-or a company that sounded very like an investment firm. A few days later, that money was deposited-minus a 5 percent "commission" to compensate those friends for their time and risk-in a bank in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the name of Fredericka n.o.ble. She received notification of this new account in an unmarked envelope placed in a copy of Extranodal Lymphomas at the county library. An Oklahoma driver's license for Fredericka n.o.ble, with her own picture on it, was also in the envelope.

She didn't know where Barnaby's drop was. She didn't know what his new name was going to be. She'd wanted them to leave together-the vast aloneness of running was already part of her nightmares then-but he had thought that unwise. They'd both be safer separated.

More investments, more little envelopes. A few more accounts were created for Freddie, but there were also accounts and IDs for Ellis Grant in California and Shea Marlow in Oregon. All three ident.i.ties were strong creations that would hold up under scrutiny. Freddie had been blown the first time the department found her, but this only made her more careful. Ellis and Shea were still safe. They were her prized possessions and she used them carefully and sparingly so as not to contaminate them by any a.s.sociation with Dr. Juliana Fortis.

She'd also started buying jewelry-the good stuff, and the smaller the better. Canary diamonds that looked to her eyes like nothing more than yellow sapphires but that cost ten times as much as their clear counterparts. Thick gold chains; heavy solid-gold pendants. Several loose gems she pretended to be planning to set. She knew all along that she would never get back half of what she paid, but jewelry could be carried easily and later converted to cash under the radar.

From a pay phone, Freddie n.o.ble rented a small cabin just outside Tulsa, using a new credit card that would be paid from the Tulsa bank account. The cabin came with a sweet older landlord who sounded happy to bring in the boxes she mailed there-boxes full of the many things she would need when she walked away from her life as Juliana Fortis, everything from towels and pillows to her unset jewels to reflux condensers and boiling flasks-and collected his rent without commenting on her absence. She left a veiled hint here and there that she was planning to leave a bad relationship; it was enough for the landlord. She ordered supplies from library computers, giving an e-mail address she never accessed on her laptop at home.

She did everything she could to be ready, and then she waited for Barnaby to give the signal. In the end, he did let her know that it was time to run, but not the way they'd planned it.

That money, so carefully h.o.a.rded for so long, was now flowing through her fingers like she was some ent.i.tled trust-fund brat. One big spree in hopes of gaining her unlikely freedom, she promised herself. She had a few tricks for making real money, but they were dangerous, involving risks she could ill afford but would have no choice but to take.

People needed medical professionals who would break the rules. Some just wanted a doctor who knew how to oversee the administration of a treatment that was not approved by the FDA, something they'd picked up in Russia or Brazil. And some people needed bullets removed but didn't want it done in a hospital, where the police would be notified.

She'd maintained a floating presence on the web. A few clients had contacted her at her last e-mail address, which was now defunct. She'd have to get back on the boards that knew her and try to get in touch with some contacts without leaving any new trails. It would be hard; if the department had found the e-mails, they probably knew about the rest. At least her clients understood. Much of the work she did for them ranged from quasi-legal to totally criminal, and they would not be surprised by occasional disappearances and new names.

Of course, working on the dark side of the law added other dangers to her already overloaded plate. Like the midlevel Mafia boss who found her services very convenient and thought she should set herself up permanently in Illinois. She'd tried to explain her carefully composed cover story to Joey Giancardi without compromising herself-after all, if there was money to be made by the sale of information, the Mob wasn't exactly known for its loyalty to outsiders-but he was insistent, to put it mildly. He a.s.sured her that with his protection, she would never be vulnerable. In the end, she'd had to destroy that ident.i.ty, a fairly well-developed life as Charlie Peterson, and run. Possibly there were members of the Family looking for her, too, now. It wasn't something she lost sleep over. When it came to manpower and resources, the Mob couldn't touch the American government.

And maybe the Mob didn't have time to waste on her anyway. There were lots of doctors in the world, all of them human and most of them corruptible. Now, if he'd known her real specialty, Joey G would have put up more of a fight to keep her.

At least Joey G had been good for changing her jewels into cash. And the crash course in trauma medicine couldn't hurt. Another perk of working in the underground: no one got too upset about your low batting average. Death was expected, and malpractice insurance wasn't necessary.

Whenever she thought of Joey G, she also remembered Carlo Aggi. Not a friend, not really, but something close. He'd been her contact, the most constant presence in her life then. Though he was stereotypically thuggish in appearance, he'd always been sweet to her-treated her like a kid sister. So it had hurt more than the others when she hadn't been able to do anything for Carlo. A bullet had lodged in his left ventricle. It was too late for Carlo long before they'd brought his body to her, but Joey G had still been hopeful; Charlie had done good work for him in the past. He was philosophical when Charlie had p.r.o.nounced Carlo dead on arrival. Carlo was the best. Well, you win some, you lose some. And then a shrug.

She didn't like to think about Carlo.

She would have preferred a few more weeks to think about other things-to fine-tune her scheme, consider her vulnerabilities, get the physical preparations perfect-but Carston's plan gave her a deadline. She'd had to divide her limited time between surveillance and organizing a works.p.a.ce, so neither had been perfectly done.

It was likely that they'd be watching her in case she tried to make a move without them. After her early visit to Carston, they would be antic.i.p.ating it. But what choice did she have? Report for work as expected?

She'd seen enough to bet that Daniel would follow the same pattern today as he had the past three. Something about his almost identical outfits-similar jeans, b.u.t.ton-down shirt, casual sport coat, all featuring only minor differences in hues-made her suspect that he was a creature of habit in his public life. After school, he would stay past the final bell to talk to students and work on his lesson plan for the next day. Then, with several folders and his laptop in a backpack over his left shoulder, he would head out, waving to the secretary as he pa.s.sed. He would walk six blocks and get on the subway at Congress Heights around six, just as the commuting mayhem was at its worst. He had a straight shot up the Green Line to Columbia Heights, where his tiny studio apartment was located. Once there, he would eat a frozen dinner and grade papers. He went to bed around ten, never turning the TV on as far as she'd seen. It was harder to follow what happened in the morning-he had rattan shades that were basically translucent when lit from inside, but opaque in the morning sun. He hit the street at five for a morning run, returned an hour later, then left again after another thirty minutes, headed for the subway station three blocks away, longish curly hair still wet from his shower.

Two mornings ago, she'd followed his exercise route as best she could from a safe distance. He held a strong, fast pace-obviously an experienced runner. As she watched, she found herself wishing that she had more time to run. She didn't love running the way others seemed to-she always felt so exposed on the side of a road, no car to escape in-but it was important. She was never going to be stronger than the person they sent after her. With her short legs, she wouldn't be faster, either, and there was no martial art she could learn that would give her an advantage over a professional killer. But endurance-that could save her life. If her tricks could get her past the crisis moment, she had to be able to keep going longer than the killer could keep chasing. What a way to die-winded, muscles quitting, crippled by her own lack of preparation. She didn't want to go out that way. So she ran as often as she could and did the exercises she could manage inside her small homes. She promised herself that when this operation was over, she would find a good place to jog-one with plenty of escape routes and hidey-holes.

But his running route-like the apartment and the school-was too obvious a place to make her move. The easiest way to do this would be to grab him off the street as he was finishing his run, worn out and unfocused, but the bad guys would know this too. They would be prepared for her. The same was true for the walking portion of his journey to school. So it had to be the Metro. They would know the Metro was another possible option, but they couldn't cover every line, every stop, while also watching each leg of his commute.

There were cameras everywhere, but there was only so much she could do about that. When it was over, her enemies would have a million clear shots of what her face looked like now, three years later. Not much change, in her opinion, but they would still, no doubt, update her file. That was all they would be able to do, though. Her former position with the department had given her enough familiarity with the mechanics of s.n.a.t.c.hing a target off the street to know that the difficulties were a lot greater than the average espionage TV series would lead one to believe. The purpose of the Metro cameras was to help catch a suspect after the crime. There was no way they'd have the resources and manpower to act on the coverage in real time. So all the cameras could tell them was where she had been, not where she would be, and without that information, the footage was useless. All the usual discoveries the tapes could help with-who she was, where she'd gotten her information, what her motive was-were things they already knew.

In any case, she couldn't think of a less risky option.

Today her name was Jesse. She went with a professional look-her black suit with the V-neck black tee underneath and of course the leather belt. She had another, more realistic wig; this one chin-length and lighter, a mousy blond-brown color. She held this back with a simple black headband and added gla.s.ses with thin metal rims that didn't make it look like she was hiding but still subtly disguised the shape of her cheekbones and forehead. Her face was symmetrical with small features; nothing stood out. She knew that as a general rule, people overlooked her. But she also knew she wasn't so generic-looking that someone specifically searching would fail to recognize her. She would keep her head down whenever she could.

She brought a briefcase rather than her tote; the wooden details from her shoulder strap snapped into place on the handle of the briefcase. It was lined with metal, heavy even when empty, and could easily be used as a bludgeon if necessary. The locket, the rings, but not the earrings. She would have to do a bit of manhandling, and the earrings wouldn't be safe. The shoe knives, the scalpel blades, the ChapStick, the various sprays... almost full armor. Today it didn't make her feel more confident. This part of the plan was far outside her comfort zone. Kidnapping wasn't something she'd ever imagined needing to do. In the past three years, she hadn't thought of a scenario that didn't boil down to either kill or escape.

Jesse yawned as she drove through the dark streets. She'd not been getting enough sleep, nor was sleep going to figure largely in the next few days. She had a few substances that would keep her awake, but the crash could be delayed for only seventy-two hours at most. She would need to be hidden very well when that crash came. She hoped it wouldn't be necessary to use them.

There were plenty of s.p.a.ces available in the economy parking lot at Ronald Reagan. She pulled into one near the shuttle bus stop, where most people would want to park, and waited for the bus to arrive. She knew this airport better than any other. She felt a long-missing sense of comfort kick in-the comfort of familiar surroundings. Two other pa.s.sengers showed up before the shuttle, both of them with luggage and tired faces. They ignored her. She rode the bus to terminal three, then doubled back on the pedestrian bridge to the Metro stop. This route took her about fifteen minutes at a brisk walk. Nice thing about airports-everyone walked fast.

She'd debated wearing boots with wedge heels, going for a different height, but then decided she would be walking-and possibly running, if things went badly-too much today. She wore the dark flats that were half sneaker.

As she joined the crowd heading down to the Metro platform, she tried to keep her face hidden as much as possible from the ceiling cameras. Using her peripheral vision, she searched for a likely group to join. Jesse was sure that the watchers would be looking for a lone woman. A larger group-any group-was a better disguise than makeup or a wig.

There were several cl.u.s.ters of people heading to the tracks with her as the first wave of rush hour began to crowd the escalators. She chose a trio, two men and one woman, all in dark business suits and carrying briefcases. The woman had shiny blond hair and was a good nine inches taller than Jesse in her high-heeled, pointy-toed pumps. Jesse edged her way around a few other parties until she was somewhat hidden between the woman and the wall behind them. Any eyes examining the new quartet would naturally be drawn to the tall blonde. Unless those eyes were specifically looking for Juliana Fortis.

Jesse's quartet moved purposefully through the crowd, claiming a spot near the edge of the platform to wait. None of the others in the group seemed aware of the small woman moving in tandem with them. There were too many close-packed bodies for her proximity to be noticeable.

The train raced into view, whipping past and then jerking to an abrupt stop. Jesse's group hesitated, looking for a less crowded car. She contemplated abandoning them, but the blonde was impatient, too, and she forced her way into the negative s.p.a.ce of the third car they considered. Jesse pushed in close behind the woman she'd been following, her body pressed against both the blonde and another, larger woman behind her. She would be all but invisible between them, uncomfortable as the position might be.

They rode the Yellow Line up to the Chinatown station. There she left the trio and joined a new couple, two women who could have been secretaries or librarians in their b.u.t.toned-up blouses and cat-framed eyegla.s.ses. They rode the Green Line together up to the Shaw-Howard station, Jesse's head c.o.c.ked in the direction of the shorter brunette, pretending to be absorbed in a story about last weekend's wedding reception that hadn't included an open bar, of all the nerve. Mid-story, she left the secretaries on the train and melted into the crowd exiting the Metro. She did a quick U-turn through the densely packed ladies' room and then joined the crowd heading down to the tracks for the next train. Timing would be everything now. She wouldn't be able to hide inside the herd.

The shrill wail of the approaching train had Jesse's heart bouncing up into her throat. She braced herself; it felt like she was a sprinter crouched at the blocks, waiting for the gun to fire. Then she shuddered at the metaphor in her head-it was only too possible that a gun was actually about to fire, but this one would have real bullets and wouldn't be aimed at the sky.

The train shrieked to a stop, and she was on the move.

Jesse power-walked down the line of cars, elbowing through the flow of pa.s.sengers as the doors whooshed open. Scanning as fast as she could, she searched for the tall frame with the floppy hair. There were so many bodies ducking past her, blocking her view. She tried to put a mental X through every head that didn't match. Was she moving too quickly? Not quickly enough? The train was leaving by the time she got to the last car, and she couldn't be positive he wasn't on it, but she didn't think he was. By her calculations of his last two arrivals, he was most likely on the next train. She bit her lip as the doors closed. If she'd blown this one, she'd have to try again on his next trip. She didn't want to have to do that. The closer the time got to Carston's plan being put into action, the more dangerous this would be.

Rather than linger in plain sight, she continued briskly toward the exit.

She did another circuit through the restroom, wasting a little time pretending to check the makeup she wasn't wearing. After counting to ninety in her head, she rejoined the stream of commuters on their way to the tracks.

It was even more crowded now. Jesse chose a spot close to a group of suited men at the far end of the platform and tried to blend in with the black fabric of their jackets. The men were talking about stocks and trades, things that seemed so far from Jesse's life that they might as well have been science fiction. The next train was announced and she got ready to walk and scan again. She stepped around the traders and examined the first car as it came to a stop.

Moving fast, Jesse's eyes ran through the next car. Woman, woman, old man, too short, too fat, too dark, no hair, woman, woman, kid, blond... The next car- It was like he was helping her, like he was on her side. He was right beside the window, looking out, standing tall, with the wavy hair very much in evidence.

Jesse gave the rest of the occupants a quick once-over as she walked toward the open doors. Many business types-any one of them could have been hired by the department. But there were no obvious tells, no extra-wide shoulders that didn't quite fit into normal-size suit coats, no earpieces, no bulges under the jackets, no eye contact between riders. No one wore sungla.s.ses.

This is the part, she thought to herself, where they try to bag us both and haul us back to the lab. Unless this is a setup, in which case Daniel and his innocent curly hair will be one of them. He might be the one to shoot me. Or stab me. Or they'll try to get me off the train to shoot me somewhere in private. Or they'll knock me out and throw me on the tracks.

But if the story is all true, they'll want us both alive. They'll probably try something similar to what I'm about to do to Daniel. Then they'll cart me off to the lab and my odds of ever walking out again are... less than encouraging.

A thousand other bad endings raced through her head as the doors closed behind them. She walked quickly to stand beside Daniel, sharing the same pole for balance, her fingers close below his paler, much longer fingers. Her heart felt like someone was squeezing it in a tight fist; it got more painful in direct proportion to her proximity to the target. He didn't seem to notice her, still staring out the window with a faraway look, a look that didn't change as they pulled into the darkness of the tunnel and he could see only reflections from inside the car. n.o.body in the car made any move toward them.

She couldn't see any of the other guy in Daniel Beach, the one she'd seen pictures of in Mexico and Egypt, the one who hid his hair and moved with aggressive a.s.surance. The abstracted man next to her could have been an Old World poet. He must be an incredible actor... or was it possible that he was legitimately psychotic, suffering from dissociative ident.i.ty disorder? She didn't know what to do with that.

Jesse tensed as they neared the Chinatown stop. The train lurched into the station, and she had to grip the pole tighter to keep from swinging into Daniel Beach.

Three people, two suits and one skirt, exited the train, but none of them looked at Jesse. They all hurried past, moving like they were late for work. Two more men got into the car. One caught Jesse's attention-a big man, built like a professional athlete, wearing a hoodie and sweatpants. He had both hands in the front pouch of the hoodie, and unless his hands were the size of shoe boxes, he was carrying something in them. He didn't look at Jesse as he pa.s.sed her, just went to the back corner of the car and grabbed an overhead strap. She kept him in the corner of her eye in the reflection, but he didn't seem interested in either herself or the target.

Daniel Beach hadn't moved. He was so absorbed in his distant thoughts that she found herself relaxing beside him, as if he were the one person on the train she didn't have to guard against. Which was foolish. Even if this wasn't a trap, even if he was exactly who she'd been told he was, this man was still planning to become a ma.s.s murderer in the very near future.

The athlete pulled a boxy pair of headphones out of his sweatshirt's big pocket and covered his ears with them. The cord led back down to the pocket. Probably to his phone, but maybe not.

She decided to make the next stop a test.

As the doors opened, she bent down as if to fix the nonexistent cuff on her pants, then straightened suddenly and took a step toward the door.

No one reacted. The athlete in the headphones had his eyes closed. People got on, people got off, but no one looked at her, and n.o.body moved to block her exit or suddenly brought up a hand with a jacket awkwardly draped over it.

If her enemies knew what she was doing, they were letting her do it her way.

Did that mean it was real or that they just wanted her to believe it was for now? Trying to think around their circles made her head hurt. She grabbed the pole again as the train started moving.

"Not your stop?"

She looked up, and Daniel Beach was smiling down at her-the perfectly sweet, guileless smile that belonged to the school's most popular teacher, to the Habitat for Humanity crusader.

"Um, no." She blinked, her thoughts scrambling. What would a normal commuter say? "I, uh, just forgot where I was for a minute. The stations all start to blur together."

"Hold on. The weekend is only eight or nine hours away."

He smiled again, a kind smile. She was more than uncomfortable with the idea of socializing with her subject, but there was a strange-possibly counterfeit-normality about Daniel that made it easier for her to a.s.sume the role she needed to play: Friendly commuter. Ordinary person.

She snorted a dark little laugh at his observation. Her workweek was just beginning. "That would be exciting if I got weekends off."

He laughed and then sighed. "That's tough. Law?"

"Medicine."

"Even worse. Do they ever let you out for good behavior?"

"Very rarely. It's okay. I'm not much for wild parties anyway."

"I'm too old for them myself," he admitted. "A fact I usually remember around ten o'clock every night."

She smiled politely as he laughed, and tried to keep her eyes from looking crazed. It felt both creepy and dangerous to be fraternizing with her next job. She never had any interactions with her subjects beforehand. She couldn't afford to look at him as a person. She would have to see only the monster-the potential million dead-so she could remain impa.s.sive.

"Though I do enjoy the occasional quiet dinner out," he was saying.

"Mm," she murmured distractedly. It sounded like an agreement, she realized.

"Hi," he said. "My name is Daniel."

In her surprise, she forgot what her name was supposed to be. He held out his hand and she shook it, tremendously aware of the weight of her poisoned ring.

"Hi, Daniel."

"Hi..." He raised his eyebrows.

"Um, Alex." Whoops, that was a few names back. Oh, well.

"Nice to meet you, Alex. Look, I never do this-ever. But... well, why not? Can I give you my number? Maybe we could have that quiet dinner sometime?"

She stared at him in blank shock. He was. .h.i.tting on her. A man was. .h.i.tting on her. No, not a man. A soon-to-be ma.s.s murderer working for a psychotic drug czar.

Or an agent trying to distract her?