His eyes opened again. They were a very gentle hazel, an even mix of green and soft gray. She tried to picture them intense—fitting under the baseball cap of the self-assured man meeting with de la Fuentes in the photos—and failed.
She didn’t know what she would do if he actually had dissociative identity disorder. She’d never worked with that before.
“You’re right,” he said. “I know you are. I need to see her for what she really was, not what I imagined she was.”
“Exactly. We build up these ideas of people, create the one we want to be with, and then try to keep the real person inside the false mold. It doesn’t always work out well.”
Gibberish. She had no idea what she was saying. She’d been in one semiserious relationship in her whole life, and it hadn’t lasted long. School had been prioritized before the guy, just like work had been prioritized before everything else for six years. Like how she now prioritized breathing over everything else. She had a problem with obsessiveness.
“Alex?”
“Yes?”
“Am I dying?”
She smiled reassuringly. “No. If I thought you were dying, I would have called an ambulance. You’ll be fine. I just want to double-check.”
“Okay. Will I have to have blood taken?”
“Maybe.”
He sighed. “Needles make me nervous.”
“It will be fine.”
She didn’t like that this bothered her—lying to him. But there was something about his simple trust, the way he seemed to ascribe the best motives to everything she did… She had to snap out of it.
“Thank you, Alex. Really.”
“Just doing my job.” Not a lie.
“Do you think you’ll call me?” he asked hopefully.
“Daniel, we’re definitely going to spend an evening together,” she promised. If he hadn’t been drugged, he would have heard the edge in her voice and seen the ice in her eyes.
CHAPTER 5
The rest went almost too smoothly… did that mean something? Her paranoia level was already so high, it was hard to say if this new worry elevated it or not.
He got into the cab at the Rosslyn station without protest. She knew how he felt—she and Barnaby had tried out most of the nonlethal preparations to have some concrete experience with what they could do. This one was like dreaming a pleasant dream, where problems and worries were for someone else to figure out, and all one needed was a hand to hold and a nudge in the right direction. In their notes they’d nicknamed it Follow the Leader, though it had a more impressive name on the official reports.
It was a relaxing trip, and if it weren’t for the fact that she desperately needed her inhibitions, even back then, she might have indulged again.
She got him talking about the volleyball team he coached—he’d asked if he’d be back at school in time for practice—and he spent the entire cab ride telling her about the girls until she felt she knew all their names and their strengths on the court by heart. The cabbie paid no attention, humming along to some song too low for her to make out.
Daniel seemed mostly oblivious to the travel, but at a particularly long red light, he looked up and frowned.
“Your office is far away.”
“Yes, it is,” she agreed. “It’s a hell of a commute.”
“Where do you live?”
“Bethesda.”
“That’s a nice place. Columbia Heights is not so nice. My part of it, at least.”
The cab started moving again. She was pleased; the plan was going very well. Even if they’d clocked her getting on and off the last train, they’d be hard-pressed to keep track of one cab in a sea of identical cabs twisting together through rush hour. Preparation felt like a magic spell sometimes. Like you could force events into the shape you wanted just by planning them thoroughly enough.
Daniel wasn’t as talkative now. This was the second phase of the drug’s action, and he would be getting more tired. She needed him to stay awake just a little bit longer.
“Why did you give me your number?” she asked when his lids started to droop.
He smiled dreamily. “I’ve never done that before.”
“Me either.”
“I’ll probably be embarrassed about it later.”
“Not if I call you, though, right?”
“Maybe. I don’t know, it was out of character.”
“So why did you do it?”
His soft eyes never left hers. “I like your face.”
“You mentioned that.”
“I really wanted to see it again. That made me brave.”
She frowned, guilt pulsing.
“Does that sound weird?” He seemed worried.
“No, it sounds very sweet. Not many men would tell a woman something like that.”
He blinked owlishly. “I wouldn’t usually. Too… cowardly.”
“You seem pretty brave to me.”
“I feel different. I think it’s you. I felt different as soon as I saw you smile.”
As soon as I roofied you, she amended in her head.
“Well, that’s quite a compliment,” she said. “And here we go, can you get up?”
“Sure. This is the airport.”
“Yes, that’s where my car is.”
His brow furrowed, then cleared. “Did you just get back from a trip?”
“I just got into town, yes.”