Stephenie Meyer - The Chemist

When she turned, blinking against the brilliance of the overhead lights, the man was twenty feet from where she stood. He had to be six foot three or four, and the skin on his neck and jaw was definitely white, but that was all she could be sure about. His body was covered with a black one-piece suit – almost like a wet suit, but rough, with jutting plates of Kevlar. Torso, arms, and legs all armored. He looked pretty muscular, but some of that could be the Kevlar. He wore heavy all-terrain boots, also black, and a black watch cap on his head. His face was hidden by her gas mask. Over one shoulder was slung an assault rifle – a McMillan.50-caliber sniper. She’d done her homework; it wasn’t hard to become an expert on just about anything when you spent all your free time studying. Knowing gun makes and models could tell her a lot about an assailant, or any suspicious man on the street who might be planning to become an assailant. This assailant had more than one gun; a high-standard HDS was holstered on his hip, and a SIG Sauer P220 was in his right hand, pointed at her knee. Right-handed, she noted. She had no doubt he could hit her kneecap from this distance. Given that particular rifle, she figured, he could probably hit her wherever he wanted from however far away he wanted to.

He reminded her of Batman, but without the cape. Also, she thought she remembered something about Batman not ever using guns. Though if he did, assuming taste and skill, he would probably choose these.

If she couldn’t get this assassin out of the gas mask, it wouldn’t matter how many super-soldier friends were waiting for him outside. He would have no trouble killing her once he had what he wanted.

“Disarm your leads.”

She feigned a brief dizzy spell as she limped over to the barn door, trying to get as much time for thinking as possible. Who would want her alive? Was he a kind of bounty hunter? Did he think he could sell her back to the department? If they’d put out a contract on her, she was sure that all they would have asked for was her head. So a blackmailer-slash-bounty hunter? I have what you want, but I’ll release it alive, back into the wild, unless you double the reward. Smart. The department would definitely pay.

That was the best guess she could come up with by the time she was to the back edge of the door.

The system wasn’t complicated. There were three sets of leads for each area of ingress. The first was outside in the bushes to the left of the barn door, hidden under a thin layer of dirt. Then there was the trigger line that ran across the seam where the door opened, connected loosely enough to pull apart with the slightest breach. The third was the safety, tucked under the wood paneling beside the door; its exposed wires were separated by an inch of space. The current was only stable if at least two of the connections were linked. She wondered if she should make the process look more convoluted than it actually was, but then decided there was no point. All he’d have to do was examine the setup for a few seconds to understand it.

She wrapped the ends of the third lead tightly together and then stood back.

“It’s… off.” She made her voice crack in the middle of the words. Hopefully he would buy that he’d knocked the fight out of her.

“If you would do the honors?” he suggested.

She gimped her way to the other side of the door and then pulled it back, her eyes already on the spot in the darkness where she assumed the dark heads of his companions would be. There was nothing but the farmhouse in the distance. And then her eyes dropped, and she froze.

“What is that?” she whispered.

It wasn’t actually a question for him, it was just shock breaking through her façade.

“That,” he answered in a tone that could only be described as obnoxiously smug, “is one hundred and twenty pounds of muscles, claws, and teeth.”

He must have made some kind of signal – she didn’t see it, her eyes were locked on his “backup” – because the animal darted forward to his side. It looked like a German shepherd, a very big one, but it didn’t have the coloring she associated with Alsatians. This one was pure black. Could it be a wolf?

“Einstein,” he said to the animal. It looked up, alert. He pointed to her, and his next word was obviously a command. “Control!”

The dog – wolf? – rushed her with its hackles rising. She backed up until the barn door was against her spine, her hands in the air. The dog braced itself, snout just inches from her stomach, its muzzle pulled back to expose long, sharp white fangs. A low, rumbling growl began deep in its throat.

Intimidate would have been a better name for the command.

She thought about trying to get one of her barbs into the dog’s skin but doubted they were long enough to make it past its thick fur. And it wasn’t like the thing was going to sit there and let her pet it.

The Batman wannabe relaxed a bit, or she thought he did. It was hard to be positive about what his muscles were doing under the armor.

“All right, now that we’ve broken the ice, let’s talk.”

She waited.

“Where is Daniel Beach?”

She could feel the shock on her face even as she tried to suppress it. All her theories whirled around again and turned upside down.

“Answer me!”

She didn’t know what to say. Did the department want Daniel dead first? Make sure the loose ends were all tied up neatly? She thought of Daniel, exposed and unconscious in the center of the tent – not exactly a strong hiding place – and felt sick.

Batman stalked angrily toward her. The dog reacted, moving to the side to allow the man through even as its snarl grew in volume. The man shoved the barrel of his SIG Sauer under her jaw roughly, knocking her head against the barn door.

“If he’s dead,” the man hissed, “you’re going to wish you were, too. I’ll make you beg me to kill you.”

She almost snorted. This thug would probably hit her a few times – maybe, if he had any creativity, he would cut her up a bit – and then he’d shoot her. He had no idea how to generate and maintain real pain.

But his threats did tell her something – he apparently wanted Daniel alive. So they had that one thing in common.

Resistance was counterproductive at this point anyway. She needed him to think she was out of the game. She needed him to relax his guard. And she needed to get back to her computer.

“Daniel is in the tent.” She pointed with her chin, keeping her hands raised. “He’s fine.”

Batman seemed to consider this for a moment.

“Okay, ladies first. Einstein,” he barked. “Herd.” He pointed to the tent.

The dog barked in response, and moved around to her side. It poked her thigh with its nose, then nipped her.

“Ow!” she complained, jumping away. The dog got behind her and poked her again.

“Just walk, slow and steady, to your tent thing, and he won’t hurt you.”

She really didn’t like the dog behind her, but she kept her pace to the injured hobble she’d been faking. She glanced back at the animal to see what it was doing.

“Don’t worry,” Batman said, amused. “People don’t taste very good. He doesn’t want to eat you. He’ll only do that if I tell him to.”

She ignored the taunt and moved slowly to the curtained access point.

“Hold that open so I can see in,” he instructed.

The tarp was stiff with the layers of egg foam. She rolled it back as far as she could. It was mostly black inside. Her computer screen glowed white in the darkness, the monitors dull green. Because she knew the shapes, she could make out Daniel under the blanket, just a foot off the ground, his chest rising and falling evenly.