The Chemist

“Don’t quit on me now, Oleander,” Kevin growled. “You’re stronger than that. I know you can do this.”

“But there’s nothing more I can do,” she choked out. “I’ve done everything. It’s not enough.”

“He’s going to make it.”

“He needs a level-one trauma center, Kevin. He needs a thoracic surgeon and an operating suite. I can’t clean his wounds or put in a chest tube in the backseat of a damn Bimmer!”

Kevin was silent.

Tears streamed down Alex’s cheeks, but she didn’t feel grief yet. Just rage – at the injustice, at the limitations of their situation, at herself for this ultimate failure.

“If we dropped him off at an ER —” She sobbed.

“We’d be handing him over to the bad guys. They’ll be looking at the hospitals.”

“He’s going to die,” she whispered.

“Better that than he end up in a room like the one you just busted me out of.”

“Didn’t we just kill the bad guys?”

“Pace is still in charge, Ollie, till he slaps the right patch on, and given the current stress level, he might just start smoking again. If he doesn’t die… even without his partners, he has no shortage of muscle at his command. The hospital is out.”

She bowed her head, defeated.

The seconds ticked by. She marked them by the faint, steady pulse in Daniel’s neck. She should probably be driving. She didn’t know how Kevin was still going, but he didn’t even seem fazed by his ordeal, not slowed in the slightest by his myriad of wounds. He was a machine. At least Daniel shared the same iron constitution… But finding any excuse for hope right now was kind of stupid.

“If…” Kevin began thoughtfully.

“Yes?”

“If I could get you to an operating space… if I could get you the things you needed… Could you fill in for the thoracic surgeon?”

“It’s not my specialty, but… I could probably handle the basics.” She shook her head. “Kev, how could we get a suite up and running? If we were in Chicago, sure, I might know a guy, but —”

Kevin laughed once – more of a bark, really.

“Ollie, I’ve got an idea.”

Alex had no sense of what time it was. Maybe three a.m., maybe four. She was ragged with exhaustion, but also wired and jittery. The hand that held her seventh Styrofoam cup of coffee was trembling so badly that the surface of the liquid looked like a miniature storm at sea. Well, that was okay. She didn’t need steady hands anymore.

Joey Giancardi. She never would have thought she could feel so much warmth toward her old Mafia handler, but tonight she blessed his name. If she hadn’t done what amounted to an intensive trauma course with the Mob, she never would have been able to pull Daniel through. Each thug and gangster she’d repaired had given her just that much more experience, all of it adding up until she could play both EMT and surgeon tonight. Maybe she should send Joey a thank-you card.

She ran her quivering free hand through her hair and suddenly found herself wishing she were a smoker, like Pace. Smokers always seemed so serene with a cigarette in hand. She needed something to bring her down, to slow her agitated heart, but the only physical comfort she could find was the cup of strong black sludge she held, and that wasn’t exactly helping her relax.

Dr. Volkstaff was snoring on a battered couch squeezed between two large storage cabinets against the back wall of his workspace. He’d been surprisingly capable – despite his age and specialty. They’d had to cobble together much of what they’d needed in his operating theater, but he was inventive and familiar with his tools, and she was inspired by desperation. Together, they’d made a potent team. They’d even done a decent job of patching together a makeshift Heimlich valve that appeared to be working perfectly. The gentle beeping of Daniel’s heart monitor was the most soothing sound she’d ever heard. Not that it could do anything about the caffeinated overstimulation of her nervous system. Unthinkingly, she took another gulp of coffee.

Daniel’s color was good, his breathing even. He did share all of Kevin’s physical characteristics, it seemed; he was engineered to survive. Dr. Volkstaff said he’d never seen a smoother procedure, and he’d dealt with plenty of lung injuries in his time, though usually puncture wounds. It was possible that Daniel would be walking out of here tomorrow.

She carefully set her cup on the counter and then gripped her shaking hands into fists as she walked slowly back to the stool by Daniel’s bed and sat. It was actually two operating beds bungeed together. Nothing here had been near long enough for Daniel.

After a second, she leaned her head against the thin, plastic-covered cushion and closed her eyes.

She thought about what they had accomplished tonight, what she had almost traded Daniel’s life for.

Deavers and Carston were dead. There might not be another person alive – besides Wade Pace – who knew she existed. And his hours were numbered. Hopefully.

Kevin was snoring on the floor, an old dog bed under his head for a pillow. She’d given him the largest dose of painkillers that was safe, and Volkstaff had cleaned his wounds once Daniel was in the clear. Sleep was the best thing for Kevin now.

By this time, Val should have dropped Livvy at the urgent-care center – chosen for its lack of exterior cameras – with Alex’s grammatically unsound, tearstained apology note. She wondered how seriously the police would continue their search for the kidnapper. Livvy was unharmed, with no memory of her time away from Erin. The DC police would surely have little time to track down a frenzied mother who’d thought the little girl looked exactly like an older version of her own child, stolen two years ago by an estranged father. There had to be several missing-children cases that would match the loose information she’d given them. It would keep the authorities focused in the wrong direction. Maybe they’d tie Livvy’s kidnapping to the death of her grandfather on the same day, but probably they wouldn’t. There was an entirely separate cornucopia of motives to sift through for Carston’s violent death. It would look like nothing more than a horrible coincidence.