“‘Needy’?” she fumed. “Needy?”
He nodded.
“I hate you,” she said.
“Yeah, I noticed. So who is this guy? My buddy, Marty. I’ve been digging into every computer database I can find, trying to figure it out He wasn’t in uniform, and nobody saluted him, but he was military. Or ex-military. He had the haircut. The body stance. People were throwing a lot of ‘sirs’ at him—military brass and everybody. So I know he’s somebody fairly high up in the power structure.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing the past few months? Trying to figure out who he is?”
“Among other things. Staying alive has taken up a good bit of my time, lately. I’ve found I really would like to stay alive. There’s a lot I haven’t done yet, a lot of things I don’t want to miss out on,” he said. “So, my guy, Marty—he’s not army, air force, marine or navy. I haven’t been able to dig as far as I’d like into the CIA or the FBI, so far, but I haven’t found him there, either. So who is he? Who am I up against?”
“Not military. Not CIA or FBI Nobody you’ve ever heard of.”
“You could tell me, but you’d have to kill me, right?”
“I told you. Don’t tempt me,” she said.
Alex grinned. “Okay. Fine. About the dead guys at the cabin—what did you find on them? What shook you up so bad and made you decide not to take me in today?”
“What?” Geri blinked, hating him even more. He saw too damned much.
“I thought maybe the fact that you’d killed them was bothering you, but now that I think about it, you handled that just fine. It was while you were searching them that you got upset. Did you recognize them? Or did you find something on them? Something that just didn’t add up?”
Geri thought about strangling him. She got up to do it, but suddenly didn’t think she had the strength. Her head felt so heavy. So did her limbs. She couldn’t even think straight anymore.
“Hey, babe,” he said. “You might want to sit back down.”
“What?” she asked, the words sounding strange to her own ears, all the strength going out of her legs. She sat.
Alex was smiling at her—a new smile, almost apologetic—and her head started spinning as a deep, seductive lethargy invaded her veins, and she knew exactly what was wrong.
He’d drugged her.
Damn him. Somehow, he’d drugged her.
She had nightmares about him, the most horrible nightmares. About that night at the lab. About a dark alley, crawling down it on her knees and her one good arm, about blood and tears and wretched pleas.
Sometimes he was the devil himself, put on this planet just to irritate her, to torment her, and sometimes he was the man from the cabin, the one who’d taken such tender care of her, who’d made such a fool of her. And always, she hated him. She kept telling him over and over again that she hated him.
She thought sometimes he said he knew it, that he understood, that maybe he hated himself a bit, as well. It didn’t make her feel better. In fact, she felt horrible. She fought him off—fought again the efficient but tender hands that tried to soothe her, the cool cloth on her forehead, the water he let her sip from time to time. But he just wouldn’t go away.
It could have been hours later, it could have been days. Geri had no way of knowing when she finally opened her eyes and found herself lying on a bed in the motel room. She felt like she was looking at the whole scene through a curious fog—the bed, the TV tuned to what looked like a music-video channel, the beat going all the way through her, making her head hurt.
Alex—damn, Alex—was leaning against the headboard of the other bed, his feet stretched out in front of him, his computer on his lap. He was studying the screen intently. Working, she thought at first. She’d found him working. Then she heard the sound effects over the music. Exploding things, gunfire, a voice that sounded like an alien’s taunting him. He was playing a damned game. He’d drugged her to play some stupid game?
Fury had her rushing when she shouldn’t have. She went to sit up, maybe to tackle him, the rat, but she still wasn’t clear of the effects of the drug, and her body wasn’t cooperating. Her head really wasn’t cooperating, and her hands...
Her hands didn’t go anywhere, and there was this damned racket—metal banging on metal. She turned her head. It hurt, but she did it, and saw that he’d gotten out of the handcuffs and used them on her.
He’d drugged her and chained her to the bed.
“I’m going to kill you,” she groaned.
But he kept playing the damned game. It was a full three seconds before he looked up from the computer screen and said, “I had a feeling you might wake up wanting to.”
“So you cuffed me to the bed!”
“Hey, you brought the handcuffs into this, and you weren’t exactly eaten up with remorse about sending me off into never-never land last night,” he said. “Remember, I haven’t done anything to you that you haven’t done to me first.”
She jerked hard against the cuffs, sending them biting into the base of her hands and making the worst racket she’d ever heard. She’d sooner shoot herself than have to listen to that noise ricocheting through her aching head again.
“I swear to God,” she said. “When I take you in, I am going to torment you. Torture you—”
“The government’s into torture these days?” he quipped.
“I am,” she promised.
He still had the nerve to smile. “Who do you work for, Geri? This has been fun and all, but I really do have to take care of some things—serious things—and I need to know if you and I are going to help each other or if I’m going to leave you here and take care of this on my own.”
She laughed—one of the sickly cynical laughs he favored from time to time. He’d corrupted her brain to the point where he had her doing it, too. “You want to know if I’m going to be useful to you somehow? Or if you should get up and walk out and leave me here like this?”
“That’s right.”
“And there’s nothing I could say to you that would make a difference? Nothing you’d believe?”
“Maybe. What do you say we play Twenty Questions again? We’ll take turns, I get one, then you get one. No more jokes. We answer. And then we’ll decide what to do.”
“Have you lost your mind?” she retorted. “You could tell me the sky’s blue and that the sun rises in the east, and I wouldn’t believe you. I wouldn’t believe anything you said.”
“Oh, I think you already do. In fact, if I’d known you’d listen to me enough to have the conversation we did before the drug kicked in, I wouldn’t have done that to you.”
“Yeah, right.”
He put his computer aside and came to sit by her. “It’s true.”
Geri wanted to crawl away, as far as she could get, but she wouldn’t let him see that. Her pride wouldn’t let her.
“I am sorry for that.” He touched a hand to the side of her face. His thumb gently lifted her brow, and he looked into her eyes, then reached for her wrist.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, thinking to hell with not showing him anything.
“Fine.” He threw up his hands in mock surrender. “How’s your throat?”
She grimaced. Her throat was raw. He produced a cup with a straw, which she eyed warily.
“What?” he said. “I’m going to let you wake up, only to knock you out again. Why would I do that?”
“Why do you do anything?” she complained. “You’re totally unpredictable.”
“Is that your first question?”
“No. I’m not playing your damned game.”
“Come on. Twenty Questions, and I’ll either let you go or leave myself. Either way, you’ll be rid of me. It should be worth it to you—putting up with a little conversation with me just for the chance to be rid of me.”
“You are insane,” she said.
“No, just determined. I’m surprised you didn’t find that out about me. They must have given you all sorts o
f background reports about me. In fact, that’s where I’d like to start. First question—what was it in my background that led you to believe I would do something like turn the formula for these explosives over to anybody who happened to have the money to pay for them?”
“What?” she demanded.
“It’s a fair question. Do you think I’m evil? Do I seem that crazy to you, Geri?” He laughed cynically. “I have to live in this world, after all. My family lives here. I have nieces, nephews. I still have two sisters. You know that, right?”
“I know all about you, Alex. Born in a suburb of Chicago, the youngest of four children. Your mother died when you were two. Your oldest sister helped raise you for a time. Your father remarried years later, giving you a stepmother with whom you’ve sometimes gotten along, sometimes not Your oldest sister is a photographer who’s traveled around the world, estranged from the family for a long time. Your middle sister married young, to the policeman you mentioned—”
“The one who was going to help you,” he reminded her.
Geri ignored him. “That sister died several years ago—”
“Kelly.” His mouth stretched into a grim line. “She had a name. Kelly. It didn’t mean anything to you? When I told you about her? When I told you how much I regretted the fact that we weren’t closer in the time she was alive?”
Geri paused, watching him. If she believed anything about him, she would swear that still hurt him; that, if nothing else, he cared about his family. Shaking her head, telling herself it didn’t matter, Geri went on.
“Kelly died several years ago, shortly after giving birth to twin boys, whom your brother-in-law, Mitch, and your oldest sister, Leanne, are now raising together. They married, actually, which didn’t sit well with you or the rest of your family. The youngest sister, Amy, is an accountant. You’ve spent most of your life in one school or another. You keep to yourself, work all the time, like to ski—water and snow—climb mountains, run, go white-water rafting, when you let yourself outside. There wasn’t any special woman in your life at the time you disappeared. Never has been one that lasted long, just an endless parade of women in and out of your life.”
“You got that right,” he said.
Geri frowned. “You present a picture of a fine, upstanding citizen. Working for a government contractor, dating infrequently, spending time with those four nieces and nephews of yours. I think I’ve seen some family snapshots.” She smiled with as much sarcasm as she could muster. “Quite touching, really.”
“Was it?”
“Mmm. I wanted to throw up every time I saw you with those kids.”
“Looking happy, you mean? Content? Looking like I love being around them? Because I do. I love them very much,” he said. “Think about it, Geri. My family’s very important to me. We haven’t always been as close as we should be, but we’ve gotten better at it over the years. My sisters... I know what it’s like to lose one. I don’t ever want to go through something like that again. And my nieces and nephews... They have to live in this world, just like you and I do. It’s crazy enough, as is. Why would I do something like this to them? Why would I turn over some fabulous recipe for a bomb to a terrorist? Why would I let that kind of evil loose in the world in which they live?”
“I wouldn’t presume to understand why you do anything,” she said.
“Geri.” He frowned; shook his head. “You’re not playing the game. Come on. What can it hurt to play the game? The way things are now, you’ve got nothing but time, and this won’t take long. Just think about my question for a minute. Why would I do this?”
“Money,” she suggested. “People will do almost anything for money.”
He frowned. “Oh, that’s weak. But we’re just getting started. I’ll let you slide for now. Just think about it, okay? Think about why I did this awful thing.”
She frowned. In truth, he hadn’t seemed the type who needed a moneyed life-style. Oh, he didn’t make a fortune doing what he did, although the company for which he worked certainly profited handsomely from his work. But he seemed to find it easy to live within his more-than-modest means. When he played, he played hard. But he didn’t have extravagant tastes. In fact, he had a hefty savings account—probably because he spent nearly all his time in the lab.
But maybe he was tired of that. Alex’s inventions were owned by his employer. If there was a patent involved, a juicy government contract, the company raked in the fortune, and he might get a small percentage through a profit-sharing incentive program, but that had to get old after a while.
Greed and discontent had a way of growing inside a person, a way of eating people alive—of blinding them to reason, to their conscience, to the consequences of their actions. It had happened to thousands of people over the years. It could easily have happened to him.
“Your turn,” Alex said. “Go ahead. Ask me anything.”
She groaned.
“Indulge me, Geri. I’m crazy, remember? Crazy people should be indulged from time to time.”
“Okay. How did you drug me?” She was honestly dying to know. She hadn’t taken a drink of anything, hadn’t eaten anything he’d had access to. And they’d left the cabin so quickly, she didn’t think he’d had time to grab any but the most basic of provisions. Plus, she hadn’t found anything resembling a drug when she searched the cabin.
“Good question,” he said appreciatively. “I am a chemist by trade, remember, and I told you—I’ve had a lot of time to think about someone finding me, about diversionary tactics.”
“Play the game, Alex,” she countered. “Answer the question.”
He named a drug combination she recognized.
“But I didn’t swallow anything. You didn’t inject me with anything.”
“You can inhale it and get the same effect, if you use it in the right concentrations, in an enclosed space. It’s trickier, of course. The calculations are a bit complicated. But it can be done. I poured some of it on the bathroom wall, pulled the shower curtain closed and then all I had to do was get you into the shower.”
She felt dizzy just thinking about it “You could have killed me,” she protested.
“I have a Ph.D. in chemistry.” He had the nerve to sound insulted. “I’ll admit, I was a little uneasy about being chained to the furniture and thinking you might collapse in there with all that vapor.”
“You could have killed me,” she repeated.
“Geri, I don’t go around hurting women,” he said softly. “I’ve never killed a person in my life, and I’m not about to start with you. There was a time when I honestly liked you.”
“You’re insane,” she said. “If you think I believe that, you—”
“My question,” he interrupted. “You’re doing great, by the way. I’m glad to see you getting into the game.”
She muttered an oath, told him exactly what he could do with his game.
Alex ignored her and went right on. “That man I described to you? Marty? Is he your boss?”
“Yes,” she said, thinking, what was the harm?
It didn’t really tell him anything. He didn’t know whom she worked for. He probably didn’t believe anything she said, just as she’d vowed not to believe him, which should have made this an exercise in futility. Still, the idea of being able to ask him a question and getting an answer—even a false one—was tempting. And it was her turn. She thought about all she wanted to know.
“Come on, Geri,” he coaxed. “Play the game.”
Exasperated, she asked, “Why are you doing this?”
“‘This’?”
“Running. Living in that shack. Kept away from everyone you know, everything you own. You’re on top of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. You have been for months. Do you know what that means? If anyone catches you? And they will catch you, Alex. It’s only a matter of time. What do you think you’re accomplishing?”
He looked her right in the eye. “Someone’s out to steal this godforsaken thing I invented, and I’m
not going to let that happen.”
“Steal it?” she repeated.
She’d heard those accusations before—that security wasn’t what it should have been in his lab, that he’d claimed there had been a series of mysterious break-ins; that he’d insisted on being moved repeatedly. Even once he’d been put under protective custody by the government, until that night he’d ended up with Division One and finally gotten away. That was the theory—that he’d needed to be in a situation where he could get away, that he kept complaining of these mysterious break-ins until he was in a place where he could disappear.
“So you’re saying this is some kind of humanitarian gesture?” Geri asked. “That you’re out to save the world? Not blow it up?”
“Nobody’s going to blow it up with something I invented,” he declared. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
Geri gaped at him. He was trying to tell her he was one of the good guys? The corners of her mouth twitched. “You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not,” he said sharply, as if her inference greatly offended him. “My question. Where did you get the bruises?”
She grimaced. “Mexico. Trying to find you.”
“I haven’t been in Mexico,” he told her.
“So I discovered.”
He arched a brow. “And got beaten up for your troubles?”
“Things got a little out of hand. My question. How did you get out of the lab that night?”
“I walked out,” he replied.
“Come on. Make up something more elaborate than that.”
“I’m not making up anything. I walked out. Somebody broke in—”
“People can’t break in there. You saw the security setup.”
“Somebody was in there, where nobody was supposed to be, and I knew what they’d come for. I wasn’t about to let them have it. And forgive me, but I’d lost all faith in my own government to safeguard my work. So I took off.”
“How?”
“A little chemical surprise. Basically, the same thing I used on you, only something that takes effect much more quickly. I knew someone would be coming for me sooner or later, and I made sure I was ready. I grabbed my laptop, some cash, and I was gone.”
Spies, Lies and Lovers Page 13