CHAPTER 7.

She was rusty, that was all. It had been three years. That's why she was feeling things. That's why this subject was affecting her. It was nothing except her having been out of the game so long. She could still get her groove back.

She entered the room once during this session to keep the computer alive but didn't stay to watch. She came back only after the dose was waning, about fifteen minutes later.

He lay there gasping again, but this time he didn't cry, though she knew the pain had been much worse than before. Blood from his chafed skin now stained all the restraints and dripped onto the table. She might need to paralyze him for the next round so his injuries didn't get any worse. That was a frightening feeling, too; it might help.

He started to shiver. She actually turned toward the exit one millisecond before she realized that she was heading out to get him a blanket. What was wrong with her?

Focus.

"Do you have anything to say?" she asked gently when his breathing was more even.

His answer came out in exhausted, breathy gasps. "It's not me. Swear. I'm not-planning-anything. Don't know the drug guy. Wish I could help. Really, really, really-wish I could help. Really."

"Hmm. You're showing some resistance to this method, so maybe we'll try something new."

"Re... sistance?" he croaked in disbelief. "You think... I'm resist... ing?"

"Honestly, I'm a little worried about messing up your head with hallucinogens-seems like there's already enough trouble up there." She tapped her fingers against his sweaty scalp as she spoke. "Maybe we have no choice but to try old-school..." She continued to absently tap his head as she glanced at the tray of tools on her desk. "Are you squeamish?"

"Why. Is this-happening to me." Totally rhetorical, he wasn't looking for an answer to his broken whisper. She gave him one anyway.

"Because this is exactly what happens when you plan to release a lethal influenza virus in four American states, potentially killing a million citizens. The government takes exception to that kind of behavior. And they send me to make you talk."

His eyes focused on her, horror suddenly overtaken by shock.

"What. The. Actual. h.e.l.l!"

"Yes, it's horrific and appalling and evil, I know."

"Alex, really, this is nuts! I think you have a problem."

She got in his face. "My problem is that you aren't telling me where the virus is. Do you have it already? Is it with de la Fuentes still? When's the drop? Where is it?"

"This is insane. You're insane!"

"I'd probably enjoy life a lot more if that were true. But I'm beginning to think they sent the wrong doctor. We need the doctor for crazies here. I don't know how to get the other Daniel to show up!"

"Other Daniel?"

"The one I can see in these pictures!"

She whirled and grabbed a handful from the desk, jabbing the computer once angrily in pa.s.sing.

"Look," she said, shoving them toward his face, peeling off one after the other and dropping them to the floor. "It's your body"-she smacked one photo against his shoulder before letting it fall-"your face, see? But not the right expression. There's someone else looking out of your eyes, Daniel, and I'm not sure if you're aware of him or not."

But there it was again, the recognition. He was aware of something.

"Look, for right now, I'd settle for you just telling me what you see in this picture." She held up the top photo, Other Daniel skulking in the back door of a Mexican bar.

He looked at her, torn.

"I can't... explain it... it doesn't make any sense."

"You see something I don't. What is it?"

"He..." Daniel tried to shake his head, but it barely moved, his muscles were so fatigued. "He looks like..."

"Like you."

"No," he whispered. "I mean, yes, of course he looks like me, but I can see the differences."

The way he said it. Of course he looks like me. The transparent honesty again, but something still withheld...

"Daniel, do you know who this is?" A real question this time, not snark, not rhetoric. She wasn't playing psychiatrist-badly-now. She felt for the first time since the interrogation started that she was actually onto something.

"It can't be," he breathed, closing his eyes less out of exhaustion and more to block out the picture, she thought. "It's impossible."

She leaned forward. "Tell me," she murmured.

He opened his eyes and stared at her searchingly. "You're sure? He's going to kill people?"

So natural, his use of the third person.

"Hundreds of thousands of people, Daniel," she promised, earnest as he was. She used the third person, too: "He's got access to a deadly virus and he's going to spread it for a psychopathic drug lord. He already has hotel reservations-in your name. He's doing this in three weeks."

A whisper. "I don't believe it."

"I don't want to either. This virus... it's a bad one, Daniel. It's going to kill a lot more people than a bomb. There'll be no way to control how it spreads."

"But how could he do this? Why?"

At this point, she was nearly 65 percent convinced that they were not talking about one of Daniel's multiple personalities.

"It's too late for that. All that matters now is stopping him. Who is he, Daniel? Help me save those innocent people."

A different kind of agony twisted his features. She'd seen this before. With another subject, she would know that his desire to be loyal was warring with his desire to avoid more torture. With Daniel, she rather thought the war was between loyalty and wanting to do the right thing.

In the perfect stillness of the night, as she waited for his answer, through the weak sound barrier of the foam, she clearly heard a small prop plane overhead. Very close overhead.

Daniel looked up.

Time slowed down while she a.n.a.lyzed.

Daniel didn't look surprised or relieved. The noise did not seem to signal rescue or attack to him. He just noticed it the way someone might notice a car alarm going off. Not relevant to himself, but distracting from the moment.

It felt like she was moving in slow motion as she jumped up and raced to the desk for the syringe she needed.

"You don't have to do that, Alex," Daniel said, resigned. "I'll tell you."

"Shh," she whispered, leaning over his head while she injected the drug-into the IV port this time. "I'm just putting you to sleep for now." She patted his cheek. "No pain, I promise."

Understanding lit his eyes as he connected the sound to her behavior. "Are we in danger?" he whispered back.

We. Huh. Another interesting p.r.o.noun choice. She'd never had a subject anything like this before.

"I don't know if you are," she said as his eyes drooped closed. "But I sure as h.e.l.l am."

There was a heavy concussion, not immediately outside the barn but too close for her liking.

She put the gas mask securely on his face, then donned hers and screwed in the canister. This time was no drill. She glanced at her computer-she had about ten minutes left there. She wasn't sure it was enough, so she tapped the s.p.a.ce bar. Then she jabbed a b.u.t.ton on the little black box, and the light on the side started blinking rapidly. Almost as a reflex, she covered Daniel with the blanket again.

She shut the lights off, so the room was lit only by the white gleam of her computer screen, and exited the tent. Inside the barn, everything was black. She searched, hands out in front of her, until she found the bag beside her cot and, with years of practice guiding her, blindly put on all of her easily accessible armor. She shoved the gun into the front of her belt. She took a syringe from her bag, jabbed it into her thigh, and depressed the plunger. Ready as she could make herself, she crept into the back corner of the tent and hid where she knew the darkest shadow would be if someone came in with a flashlight. She pulled out the gun, removed the safety, and gripped it with both hands. Then she put her ear to the seam of the tent and listened, waiting for someone to open the door or a window into the barn, and die.

While she waited through the slow seconds, her mind raced through more a.n.a.lysis.

This wasn't a big operation coming for her. No way any extraction team or elimination team worth its salt would announce its arrival with a noisy plane. There were better ways, quieter ways. And if it was a big, SWAT-style team sent after her without any briefing, just busting their way in by sheer might, they would have come in a copter. The plane had sounded very small-a three-seater at most, but probably two-.

If a lone a.s.sa.s.sin was coming for her again, as had always been the case in the past, she didn't know what this guy thought he was doing. Why would he give himself away? The noisy plane was the move of someone who was lacking resources and in a very big hurry, someone to whom time was much more important than stealth.

Who was it? Not de la Fuentes.

First of all, a small prop plane didn't seem like a drug lord's MO. She imagined that with de la Fuentes, there would be a fleet of black SUVs and a bunch of thugs with machine guns.

Second, she had a gut feeling about this one.

No, she wasn't a lie detector. Good liars, professional liars, could fool anyone, human or machine. Her job had never been about guessing the truth from the subject's shifty eyes or tangled contradictions. Her job was breaking down the subject until there was nothing left but compliant flesh and one story. She wasn't the best because she could separate the truth from the lie; she was the best because she had a natural affinity for the capabilities of the human body and was a genius with a beaker. She knew exactly what a body could handle and exactly how to push it to that point.

So gut feelings were not her forte, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd really felt something like this.

She believed Daniel was telling the truth. That's why this exercise with Daniel had bothered her so much-because he wasn't lying. It wasn't going to be de la Fuentes coming after him. No one was coming after Daniel, because he wasn't anything more than what he said he was-an English teacher, a history teacher, a volleyball coach. Whoever was coming was coming for her.

Why now? Had the department been tracking her all day and only just discovered her? Were they trying to save Daniel's life, having realized too late that he wasn't the guy?

No way. They would have known that before they set her up. They had access to too much information to be fooled in this. The file wasn't entirely make-believe, but it was manipulated. They had wanted her to get the wrong person.

For a moment she felt a wave of nausea. She'd tortured an innocent man. She put that away quickly. Time for regret later, if she didn't die now.

The columns reversed again. Elaborate trap, not real crisis. Though she did believe the situation with de la Fuentes was genuine, she no longer believed it was quite so urgent as she'd been told. Time was the easiest small change to make to a file; the tight deadline was a distortion. Low stakes again-just her own life to save. And Daniel's, too, if she could.

She tried to shake the thought-it felt almost like an omen-that her stakes had somehow doubled. She didn't need the extra burden.

Maybe someone else-that brilliant and unsuspecting kid who had taken her place at the department-was working on the real terrorist now. Maybe they didn't think she still had the ability to get what they wanted. But why bring her in at all, then? Maybe the terrorist was dead, and they wanted a fall guy. Maybe they'd discovered this doppelgnger weeks ago and held him in reserve. Get the Chemist to make somebody confess to something, and tie a bow on a bad situation?

That wouldn't explain the visitor, though.

It had to be near five in the morning. Maybe it was just a farmer who liked to start the day early and knew the area so well that he didn't mind flying without radar through a bunch of tall trees in the pitch-black night and then enjoyed a good crash landing for the adrenaline kick...

She could hear Daniel's breath rasp through the gas mask's filter. She wondered if she had done the right thing putting him under. He was just so... exposed. Helpless. The department had already exhibited exactly how much concern they had for Daniel Beach's well-being. And she'd left him trussed and defenseless in the middle of the room, a fish in a barrel, a sitting duck. She owed him better than that. But her first reaction had been to neutralize him. It wouldn't have been safe to free him, she knew. Of course he would have attacked her, tried to exact revenge. If it came to brute strength, he'd have the advantage. And she didn't want to have to poison him or shoot him. At least this way, his death wouldn't be on her hands.

She still felt guilty, his vulnerable presence in the darkness worrying at the edges of her mind like sandpaper against cotton, pulling threads of concentration away from her.

Too late for second thoughts.

She heard the faint sound of movement outside. The barn was surrounded by bushes with stiff, rustling leaves. Someone was in them now, looking into the windows. What if he just let loose with an Uzi through the side of the barn? He obviously wasn't worried about noise.

Should she lower the table, get Daniel down in case the tent was sprayed with bullets? She had oiled the accordion base well, but she wasn't positive it wouldn't squeak.

She scuttled over to the table and cranked it lower as fast as she could. It did make some low, ba.s.s groans, but she didn't think they would carry outside the barn, especially through the foam barrier. She scooted back to her corner and listened again.

More rustling. He was at another window, on the other side of the barn. Her b.o.o.by trap's wires were inconspicuous, but not invisible. Hopefully he was only looking for a target inside. Had he gone to the house first? Why hadn't he gone in?

Sounds outside another window.

Just open it, she thought to herself. Just crawl inside.

A sound she didn't understand-a hissing, followed by a heavy clank from above. Then a thump, thump, thump so loud that the barn seemed to shake. Her first thought was small explosives, and she hunkered down into a protective position automatically, but in the next second she realized it wasn't that loud, it was just the contrast with the silence before. There was no sound of anything breaking-no gla.s.s shattering or metal tearing. Was the reverberation enough to break the connections around the windows or door? She didn't think so.

Then she realized the thumps against the wall were moving up, just as they stopped. Above her.

Major hitch-he was coming through the roof.

She was on her feet in a second, one eye to the seam in the tent. It was still too dark to see anything. Above her, the sound of a welding torch. Her intruder had one, too.

All her preparation was falling apart. She glanced back once at Daniel. His gas mask was on. He would be fine. Then she darted out into the larger s.p.a.ce of the barn, bent low with her hands stretched out in front of her to find the objects in her way, and moved as quickly as she could toward the faint moonlight filtering through the closest window. There were milking stalls to maneuver around, but she thought she remembered the clearest route. She broke into the open s.p.a.ce between the tent and the stalls, half running, and one hand found the milking apparatus. She dodged that and reached out for the window- Something tremendously hard and heavy threw her to the ground face-first, knocking the wind out of her and pinning her to the floor. The gun flew away into the darkness. Her head thudded resoundingly against the concrete. Bright pops of light skittered across her eyes.

Someone grabbed her wrists and pulled her arms behind her, then wrenched them higher until she guessed her shoulders were close to dislocating. A grunt escaped her lungs as the new position forced the air out. Her thumbs quickly twisted the rings on her left and right hands, exposing the barbs.

"What's this?" a man's voice said directly above her-generic American accent. He changed his grip so he was holding both her wrists in one hand. With the other, he yanked off her gas mask. "So maybe not a suicide bomber after all," he mused. "Let me guess, those hot wires aren't connected to charges, are they?"

She squirmed under him, twisting her wrists, trying to get her rings in contact with his skin.

"Stop that," he ordered. He clocked the back of her head with something hard-probably the gas mask-and her face smacked the floor. She felt her lip split, and tasted blood.

She braced for it. In such close quarters, it would probably be a blade across her carotid artery. Or a wire around her throat. She hoped for the blade. She wouldn't feel the slice as pain-not with the specially designed dextroamphetamine she had racing through her veins right now-but she'd probably feel the strangulation.

"Get up."

The weight lifted off her back and she was drawn up by her wrists. She got her feet under her as quickly as possible to take the pressure off her shoulder joints. She needed to keep her arms usable.