It would never have shaken out this way without Daniel’s interference. He’d been a ploy for them, just a pawn moved into peril to lure the more critical players into the center of the board. They never would have guessed that he’d be a catalyst for change.
She planned to hold true to her side of the bargain – she would take the role of victor (though that was really the losing role) and let Daniel and Kevin be dead. Dead again, in Kevin’s case. But oh, how she wished that she could be the one to die. Wouldn’t it be easy for the department to believe that someone like Kevin Beach – who’d toppled a cartel – had succeeded where they had failed? Wouldn’t it make sense for them to stop looking then? What would it be like to disappear, but this time with no one searching for her?
She sighed. Fantasies only made it harder; there was no point indulging in them. The men were both pretty well under, she was sure, so she dug into her bag and pulled out the pressurized canister she’d selected earlier. She had only the two gas masks, so nothing deadly tonight, just the airborne sleeping agent she’d had hooked up to her computer yesterday. It was enough. It would let her control the outcome if someone discovered them.
After she’d strung the leads – only a double line; she wouldn’t have to arm or disarm from outside the room tonight – she settled back into her chair. She glanced at the twins. Both were deep, peaceful sleepers. She wondered if that was a healthy habit for a spy. Maybe Kevin actually trusted her – enough to sound the alarm at the very least, and maybe even to deal with a problem without killing them all. She and the brothers were strange bedfellows indeed.
How odd it was, watching over them. It felt wrong, and she’d expected that. But it also felt good, satisfying some need she’d never known was there, and that she hadn’t expected.
She spent some time thinking about her analysis of the situation, searching for flaws in her theory, but the more she looked at it, the more it made sense. Even the woeful lack of evolution in her would-be-assassins – by the third try, someone should have been aware of her system and changed the approach – made sense in this light. There had never been any operation, just expendable individuals sent after her with little or no briefing. She thought through every conjecture two or three times and felt more confident than ever that she finally understood the ones hunting her.
And then she was bored.
What she wanted to do was log on to the website of Columbia University’s pathology program and read the latest doctoral dissertations, but it wasn’t safe to do that while the department was actively trying to locate her, which she was certain they were. The department couldn’t trace every connection anyone made to her old interests, but this one might be too obvious. With a sigh, she put in earbuds, opened up YouTube, and started watching a tutorial about fieldstripping a rifle. It probably wasn’t anything she’d ever need to know, but it couldn’t hurt.
Kevin woke up at five thirty on the dot. He just sat up, as alert as if someone had flipped a switch to turn him on. He patted the dog once and headed toward the door. It took him only a second to notice the gas mask she was wearing and jerk to a stop. The dog, right on his heels, paused too and pointed its nose in her direction, looking for whatever had upset its master.
“Give me a sec,” Alex said.
She got awkwardly to her feet, still aching and sore – whether more or less than at the beginning of the night, she couldn’t tell – and walked stiffly to the door to undo her security precautions.
“I didn’t say you could do that,” Kevin said.
She didn’t look at him. “I didn’t ask for your permission.”
He grunted.
It took her only a few seconds to clear his path. She removed her mask and used it to gesture to the door.
“Knock yourself out.”
“Knock you out,” she thought she heard him mutter as he passed her, but it was too low for her to be sure. The dog followed him, tail swishing so fast it blurred. She imagined the guy at the front desk probably wasn’t paying any attention at this hour, but she still thought Kevin was pressing their luck a little. A screaming match with the management wasn’t going to help them stay incognito.
She rummaged through the food Kevin had bought last night. The remaining sandwiches weren’t as appetizing as they had been eight hours ago, but there was a box of cherry Pop-Tarts she’d missed before. She was working her way through the second pastry in the sleeve when Kevin and the dog came back.
“You want to catch a few hours?” he asked her.
“If you don’t mind driving, I can sleep in the car again. Better to get where we’re going.”
He nodded once, then went to the bed and lightly kicked his brother.
Daniel moaned and rolled onto his back, covering his head with a pillow.
“Is that necessary?” she asked.
“Like you said, better to get going. Danny’s always had a problem with the snooze button.”
Kevin yanked the pillow off Daniel’s head.
“Let’s go, kid.”
Daniel blinked owlishly for a few seconds, and then she watched his face change as the memories hit, as he realized where he was and why. It hurt to see the peace of his dreams crumble into the devastation of his new waking reality. His eyes darted around the room until he found her. She tried to make her expression reassuring, but the damage done to her face would probably trump any arrangement of her features. She searched for something to say, something that would make the world a little less dark and scary for him.
“Pop-Tart?” she offered.
He blinked again. “Um, okay.”
CHAPTER 12
Alex did not approve of the safe house.
They’d reached it late in the afternoon. She’d kept her nap to just four hours during the drive. She didn’t want to be on a nocturnal schedule forever. So she’d been awake as they turned off the highway onto a two-lane surface road, then to an even smaller road, until finally they were on a one-lane dirt path – calling it a road was too complimentary.
Sure it was hard to find, but once you did… well, there was only one way out. She never would have chosen to live backed into a corner like this.
“Relax, killer,” Kevin told her when she complained. “No one is looking for us out here.”
“We should have switched plates.”
“Took care of it while you were snoring.”
“You weren’t actually snoring,” Daniel said quietly. He was driving now, while Kevin directed. “But it is true that we stopped at a junkyard and stole a few license plates.”
“So we’re trapped out here on a dead-end lane while Mr. Smith goes to Washington,” she muttered.
“It’s secure,” Kevin snapped in a tone that was clearly intended to close the discussion. “So don’t go stringing your death traps through my house.”
She didn’t answer. She would do what she wanted when he was gone.
At least his setup was far away from neighbors; they drove for at least fifteen minutes down the dirt path without seeing any evidence of other human beings. That would keep the collateral damage low if for some reason she felt the need to burn everything to the ground.