Part 10 (1/2)
He stared in that direction, and she imagined he was eyeing the switches warily.
”Look, anything that can kill you is going to kill me first,” she pointed out.
He grunted and then leaned away and punched the power b.u.t.ton.
The lights flared overhead.
Suddenly the tent looked less threatening. With all the medical equipment, it could have been a medic's tent in a war zone. Except for the torture implements on the tray, of course. She saw his face orient toward them now.
”Props,” she explained.
She felt the glare again. He whipped a look back at Daniel, naked and clearly intact on the table. His focus swung back to her.
”What's the flas.h.i.+ng light?” he demanded, gesturing to the little black box with the keypad.
”It's telling me the door is unarmed,” she lied evenly. In fact, the box wasn't hooked up to anything. It was just a nice red herring to distract from the real trap.
He nodded, accepting that, then leaned over to look at her computer. There were no open doc.u.ments, no files on the desktop. Her background was just a pale geometric design, little white squares on a faintly darker gray field.
”Where are the keys?” He jerked his head toward Daniel.
”Taped to the bottom of the desk.”
He seemed to be eyeing her again through the mask.
She willed herself to look calm and compliant. Take it off, take it off, take it off, she prayed silently.
He kicked her chair over.
She held her neck tight as her left arm and thigh smashed into the ground with bruising force. She was just able to keep her head from hitting the concrete again. She wasn't sure if she was already concussed, and she really needed her brain working right.
He grabbed the back of the chair and yanked her upright. In his right hand he held the keys.
”That wasn't necessary,” she said.
”Einstein, control.”
Growling in her face, more drool on her chest.
Batman turned away and quickly unlocked Daniel's shackles.
”What's in the IV?”
”Saline in the top one, nutrients in the lower.”
”Really.” Sarcastic. ”What happens if I pull the tubing out?”
”He'll need a drink when he wakes up. But don't use the water bottles on the left side of the minifridge outside the tent. Those are poisoned.”
He turned, pulling the mask off his head so he could glare at her more effectively, yanking the sweaty watch cap off at the same time.
Yessssssssss!
She kept the relief off her face as he dropped the mask on the floor.
”You've changed your tactics,” he noted sourly, running his free hand through his short, damp hair. ”Or are the ones on the right really the poisoned bottles?”
She looked up at him calmly. ”I thought you were someone else.”
And then she really looked at him.
She didn't have the resources to keep her face from reacting now. All the theories spun around again, and a bunch of things fell into place.
He smirked, realizing what she was seeing.
So many clues she'd missed.
The pictures that were Daniel but at the same time weren't.
The holes in the file on Daniel's history, the missing photos.
Time, dates, birth dates -the easiest small changes to make if you wanted to hide something.
Daniel's strange reluctance to believe what he was seeing when he looked at the spy images.
His struggles with loyalty.
Those long, long fingers.
”Other Daniel,” she whispered.
The smirk vanished. ”Huh?”
She blew out a breath and rolled her eyes-she couldn't help it. It was all too much like one of her mom's ridiculous soap operas. She remembered the frustration of every holiday she and her mother had spent together, the afternoons lost to the incredibly slow-moving, implausible dramas. No one was ever really dead; everyone came back. And then there were the twins. Always with the twins.
Batman actually didn't look that much like Daniel, as far as identical twins went. Daniel's features were refined, his aspect gentle. Batman was all hard angles and tightly gripped expressions. His hazel eyes seemed darker, maybe just because his brows were pulled down, putting them in shadow. His hair had the same color and curl but was cropped close, the way she would expect in an agent. Judging from his thicker neck, she would guess Batman had the gym musculature to Daniel's sports build. Not immensely bulky or he wouldn't have been able to pa.s.s for his brother in the pictures. Just harder, more defined.
”Kevin Beach,” she said in a flat voice. ”You're alive.”
He sat on the edge of her desk. As her eyes followed him, she didn't let them rest for even a second on her computer's clock right by his elbow.
”Who were you expecting?”
”There were a few options. All of whom would want both me and your brother dead.” She shook her head. ”I can't believe I fell for this.”
”For what?”
”Daniel's never even met de la Fuentes, has he? It was always you.”
His face, which had begun to relax, was suddenly guarded again. ”What?”