The Chemist

Alex chuckled. “You’re right. Never, ever tell Kevin that you were afraid of the stunning hooker.”

“Can you imagine?” He laughed with her. “Your turn. Another boyfriend.”

“I’m running out… Let’s see, I dated a guy named Felix for a couple of weeks in undergrad.”

“And what extinguished the flames of your passion?”

“You have to understand, the only place I ever met boys was in a lab.”

“Go on.”

“Well, Felix worked with animals. Rats, mostly. He kept a lot of them in his apartment. There was a… smell problem.”

Daniel threw his head back and howled with laughter. The sound of it was infectious. She couldn’t help chortling along with him. It was not as out of control as that first afternoon in Kevin’s secret lair, but it was close. All the stress seemed to drain out of her body, and she felt more relaxed than she would have thought possible in light of where she was headed.

Eventually, Daniel fell asleep, midsentence, as he described his fifth-grade crush. He’d been fighting his droopy eyelids for a while, and she suspected again that he’d been trying to keep her mind off the negatives.

It was relaxing to have him sleeping peacefully next to her. Einstein was snoring on the backseat, a nice counterpoint to the even sound of Daniel’s breathing. She knew she should be thinking of a variety of plans, ways to get to Carston without exposing herself too greatly, but she just wanted to enjoy the moment. Peace was going to be a limited commodity in her near future. If this was the last moment that she got to be entirely content, then she wanted to experience it fully.

She was in a rare state of calm when she woke Daniel a few hours later, as they were entering the outskirts of DC. The last time she’d pulled into this city, she’d been furious and terrified. She probably had even more reason to feel that way today, but she was still enjoying the time she had left alone with Daniel, and she wasn’t going to let that go before she had to.

Daniel read the directions to her as she got closer to their target. As she’d originally thought, this was a nice neighborhood, and it was only getting nicer. Wasn’t that like Kevin, to hide somewhere so incongruous? She circled the building with the matching address twice, doubting whether this could be the place.

“I’d better call him.”

Daniel handed her the phone. She hit Redial, and it rang once.

“You’re late,” Kevin answered. “What’s wrong now?”

“Traffic. Nothing. I think we’re outside, but… this place doesn’t look right.”

“Why?”

“We’re hiding out in a fancy art deco high-rise?”

“Yeah. A friend of mine is letting us crash. There’s parking under the building. Go to the fourth level down, I’ll meet you.” He disconnected.

She handed the phone back to Daniel. “Just once, I want to hang up on him first.”

“You did the very first time he called, remember? Fairly spectacularly.”

“Oh, right. That does make me feel better.”

All the tension came back as they rounded the corner into the parking garage, and the daylight disappeared. She drove in a claustrophobic downward spiral until she reached the right level, and then saw Kevin standing impatiently beside an empty space marked RESIDENTS ONLY. He waved her into it.

She braced herself as she opened the door, expecting a few snide comments about her face or disparaging observations about Daniel’s screwups, but Kevin said only, “Don’t mind the cameras, I took them offline this morning,” and then opened the back of the SUV to let Einstein out.

There was a real reunion with Einstein, who threw Kevin to the ground and attempted to lick the skin off his face. Trying to pretend that she wasn’t the slightest bit jealous of Einstein’s affection for his man, Alex ignored them both until she and Daniel were loaded up with as much as they could carry.

“Um, which way?” she asked.

Kevin got up with a sigh. “Follow me.”

To his credit, he did grab the remaining duffel bags as they went to the elevator.

“Do I need a hat?” Alex asked. “Is there a lobby? I’m not exactly ready for my close-up.”

“No worries, Ollie, this goes straight to the apartment. By the way, bro, nice beard. It’s a good look on you. In that you don’t look like you as much anymore.”

“Um, thanks?”

“About this friend…” Alex began.

Kevin sighed again. “They can’t all be Arnies. Sorry, shorty, this might get rough.”

“You don’t trust him?”

The elevator opened into a plush hallway… or was it an anteroom? There was only one door in the space.

“I’ve paid her through next week, so I trust her about that far.”

The hair on the back of Alex’s neck stood up. Daniel had gotten her more used to human interaction, but she knew she still had some pretty severe people issues. As they walked the length of the short hall, she struggled with the duffel in her right hand, trying to free some fingers so she could pull a syringe from her belt. Just as she caught hold of the one she wanted, Daniel touched her wrist. She glanced up, and he was giving her a look that seemed to imply she was overreacting. Frowning, she slid the syringe back into place. It wouldn’t take long to draw it if the need arose anyway.

Kevin had a key to the single door. He took a deep breath as he pushed it open.