The Chemist

Like most only children, Juliana thought siblings would be the cure to the loneliness of her long afternoons doing homework at the kitchen table while she waited for Judy to get home from the dentist’s office she managed. Juliana looked forward to college and dormitories and roommates as a dream of companionship. Except, when she got there, she found that her life of relative solitude and adult responsibility had rendered her unsuited to cohabitation with normal eighteen-year-olds. So the sibling fantasy took a beating, and by her junior year she had her own small studio apartment.

The fantasy about a big, warm family road trip, however, had survived. Until today.

To be fair, she would probably have been in a better mood if her entire body hadn’t felt like one huge, throbbing bruise. Also, she had instigated the first argument, though quite unintentionally.

When she drove across the county line, she’d rolled the window down and tossed out the small tracker she’d removed from Daniel’s leg. She hadn’t wanted to carry it with her for long, just in case, but she also didn’t want to leave it right in the middle of her last base of operations. She thought she’d removed most of the evidence, but one could never be sure. Whenever she could muddy the trail, she took the time to do so.

In the rearview mirror, she saw Kevin sit forward.

He’d been able to retrieve a backpack he’d thrown from the plane when he jumped; now he and Daniel looked fairly normal in jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts – one black, one gray – and Kevin had two new handguns.

“What was that?” Kevin asked.

“Daniel’s tracker.”

“What?” Kevin and Daniel said together.

They spoke over each other.

“I did have a tracker?” Daniel asked.

“What did you do that for?” Kevin demanded.

The dog looked up at Kevin’s tone but then seemed to decide everything was fine and stuck his face out the window again.

She turned to Daniel first, looking up at him from under the ball cap that was supposed to be keeping her mangled face in shadow. “How did you think your brother found you?”

“He tracked me? But… where was it?”

“Sore spot on your inner right thigh. Keep the incision clean, try not to let it get infected.”

“Do you know what a pain it was to get that in place?” Kevin grumbled.

“If you can track it, so can someone else. I didn’t want to take chances with our position.”

Daniel turned around in the passenger seat to stare at his brother. “How did you… How could I not know about this?”

“Do you remember, about two years after the tramp left you, a hot leggy blonde at that bar you go to when you’re depressed, what’s it called…”

“Lou’s. How do you even know about that? I never told you… wait, did you have me followed?”

“I was worried about you after the tramp —”

“Her name is Lainey.”

“Whatever. I never liked her for you.”

“When did you ever like a girl for me? As far as I can recall, you only ever liked girls who wanted you. You took it as an insult if someone preferred me.”

“The point is, you weren’t yourself. But having you followed was unrelated to the —”

“Who followed me?”

“It was just for a few months.”

“Who?”

“Some buddies of mine – not in the Agency. A few cops I had a relationship with, a PI for a little while.”

“What were they looking for?”

“Just making sure you were okay, that you weren’t going to jump off a bridge or anything.”

“I can’t believe you. Of all the – wait a minute. The blonde? You mean that girl, what was her name, Kate? The one who bought me a drink and… she was a spy?”

She saw Kevin grinning in the rearview mirror.

“No, she was actually a hooker. Kate isn’t her real name.”

“Apparently no one on the entire planet besides me uses his or her real name. I am living in a world of lies. I don’t even know Alex’s given name.”

“Juliana,” she said at the same time Kevin did. They cast irritated looks at each other.

“He knew?” Daniel asked her, offended.

“It came up while you were unconscious. It’s the name I was given at birth, but it’s really not me anymore. It doesn’t mean much to me. I’m Alex for now.”

Daniel frowned, not entirely mollified.

“Anyway,” Kevin went on in the tone of someone who was telling a joke he really enjoyed, “the blonde was supposed to get you back to your place, but you told her that your divorce wasn’t finalized yet and it didn’t feel right.” Kevin laughed raucously. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard. But it was so you. I don’t even know why I was surprised.”

“Hilarious. But I don’t see how that little exchange got a tracking device into my leg.”

“It didn’t. I just really like that story. Anyway, that’s what was such a pain. The hooker was easy to set up. And if you’d taken her home, having the tracker placed would have been enjoyable for you, at least. Getting you into your GP’s office was a lot more work. But eventually I got a temp in the front office to call you in for checkup. When you got there, you saw one of the new partners. A guy you’d never seen before.”

Daniel’s mouth popped open in disbelief. “He told me I had a tumor!”