Stephenie Meyer - The Chemist

“Kill!” she said again, louder.

Kevin heard this time and shot her a look that clearly said: If I weren’t in the middle of teaching these dogs something very important, I would have them tear you to shreds.

Khan sat out the next round, while Einstein supervised again. The barrel-chested Rottweiler took Kevin down even harder than Einstein had. She heard the breath crush out of his chest; that had to hurt. She smiled.

“Do you mind if I ask what all that was about?” Daniel asked as Kevin heaved himself to his feet and started brushing the dirt off his dark jeans and black T-shirt.

“It’s a command behavior I created for personal-protection dogs. These three dogs will guard you with their lives from here on out. They’ll also probably be under your feet a lot.”

“Why honey?”

“It’s just a word. But, to be honest, I was mostly picturing it being used for women and children…”

“Thanks,” Daniel retorted.

“Oh, relax. You know I don’t mean it that way. Think of a better command and we’ll use it with the next generation.”

There was an awkward pause. Kevin looked at the car, then back to his brother.

“Look, you’re safe here. But stay close to the dogs anyway. And the poison lady. She’s tough. Just don’t eat anything she tries to feed you.”

“I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

“If anything happens, give Einstein this command.” He held out a little piece of paper, about the size of a business card. Daniel took it and stuck it in his pocket without looking at it. Alex thought it was odd that Kevin wouldn’t say it out loud. Or maybe he just wrote it down because he didn’t trust Daniel’s memory.

Kevin looked now as if a hug was actually on his mind, despite what she’d imagined before, but then Daniel’s posture stiffened slightly, and Kevin turned away. He kept talking as he walked to the sedan.

“We’ll talk more when I get back. Keep the phone on you. I’ll call when things are set.”

“Be careful.”

“Wilco.”

Kevin got in the car and revved the engine. He put his right hand on the back of the passenger headrest and watched out the rear window as he maneuvered the car to face the road. He didn’t look at his brother again. Then the red taillights were fading into the distance.

A weight seemed to lift off Alex’s chest with his leaving.

Daniel watched the car for a minute, the loyal three all sitting close to his feet. Then he turned and walked thoughtfully up the porch steps. The dogs moved with him. Kevin hadn’t been kidding about them staying underfoot. Daniel was lucky Khan kept to the rear or he wouldn’t have been able to see where he was going.

He stopped next to Alex and turned to face the same way she did, both of them staring out into the featureless black night. The dogs arranged themselves around their feet. Lola got muscled out by the Rottweiler and whined once in protest. Daniel gripped the porch railing in both hands, holding tight like he was expecting a shift in gravity.

“Is it bad that I’m relieved he’s gone?” Daniel asked. “He’s just… a lot, you know? I can’t process everything with him always talking.”

His right hand relaxed its hold, then moved to rest on the small of her back in an almost automatic manner, like he hadn’t consciously decided to place it there.

The way he was always touching her reminded Alex of the experiments she and Barnaby had done years back with sensory deprivation tanks. It was an effective means of getting someone to talk without leaving any marks, but on the whole, it took too much time to be the best option.

Anyone who went into the tank, though, no matter his level of resistance, had the same reaction when he was let out: he craved physical contact like a drug fix. She thought of one memorable experience with an army corporal – a volunteer they worked with in the initial testing phase – and the very long and somewhat inappropriate hug she’d received upon his exit. They’d had to have security peel him off her.

Daniel must feel a lot like that soldier. For days he’d been completely out of touch with anything he considered to be normal life. He would need the reassurance that another warm, breathing human being was there next to him.

Of course, this diagnosis also applied to herself; she’d been out of touch with normal life for much longer than Daniel had. While that meant she was used to the lack, it also meant that she’d been starved of human contact for a very long time. Maybe this was why she felt so improbably comforted whenever he touched her.

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” she answered him. “It’s natural that you’d need space to deal with all of this.”

He laughed once, a darker sound than his earlier fit of hysteria. “Except that I don’t need space from anyone but him.” He sighed. “Kev has always been like that, even when we were kids. Has to be in charge, has to have the spotlight.”

“Funny traits for a spy.”

“I guess he’s figured out a way to suppress those instincts when he’s working – and then it all comes surging out when he’s not.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about it. Only child.”

“Lucky, lucky you.” He sighed again.

“He’s probably not so bad.” Why was she defending Kevin? she wondered. Just trying to cheer Daniel up, maybe. “If you weren’t stuck in this very extreme situation, he’d be easier to deal with.”

“That’s fair. I should try to be fair. I guess I’m just… angry. So angry. I know he didn’t mean to do it, but his life choices have suddenly destroyed all of mine . That’s so… Kevin.”

“It takes a while to accept what has happened to you,” Alex said slowly. “You’ll probably stay angry, but it gets easier. Most of the time, I forget how angry I am. It’s different for me, though. It was people I didn’t know very well who did this to me. It wasn’t my family.”

“But your enemies actually tried to kill you. That’s worse; don’t even try to compare what happened to you to what’s happening to me. Kevin never meant to hurt me. It’s just hard, you know? I feel like I’ve died, but I have to keep on living anyway. I don’t know how.”

She patted his left hand on the rail, remembering how that had made her feel better in the car. The skin over his knuckles was stretched tight.

“You’ll learn, like I did. It turns into a routine. The life you had before gets… dimmer. And you get philosophical. I mean, disasters happen to people all the time. What’s the difference between this and having your nation overrun by guerrilla warfare, right? Or your town destroyed by a tsunami? Everything changes, and nothing is as safe as it was. Only that safety was always just an illusion anyway… Sorry, that might just be the world’s crappiest pep talk.”

He laughed. “Not the very crappiest. I do feel infinitesimally better.”

“Well, then I guess my job here is done.”

“How did you get started with all this?” The question rolled out lightly, as if it were a simple thing.

She hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“Why did you choose this… profession? Before they tried to kill you, I mean. Were you in the military? Did you volunteer?”

Again, the questions were spoken lightly, like he was inquiring how she had become a financial planner or an interior decorator. The very lack of emotion was its own tell. He kept his face forward, staring out into the darkness.

She didn’t evade this time. She would want to know this, too, if fate had saddled her with one of her peers as a companion. It was something she’d asked Barnaby in the early days of their association. His answer wasn’t much different from hers.