Part 5 (1/2)

Finished, she quickly backed fifteen feet away; showing tremendous respect for Desh's training and abilities. She was smart and careful. Even the fastest, most accomplished street fighter or martial artist couldn't disarm a vigilant a.s.sailant as long as they maintained a respectful distance. In addition, she had tied him to a virtually immovable anchora”the 300 pound dead-weight of Matt Griffina”who, Desh noted with relief, was breathing shallowly, indicating that at least he wasn't tied to a corpse. For the moment, anyway. So far, her tactics had been flawless.

When the effects of the stun gun were beginning to wear off, Kira Miller held up a sheet of paper on which she had used black marker to write a message in large, block letters.

SAY A SINGLE WORD, EVEN BREATHE TOO HARD, AND I'LL PUT A BULLETT IN YOUR HEAD.

She put a finger to her lips to underscore the point and pointed his own gun at him meaningfully. She held up a second sheet.

NOD IF YOU UNDERSTAND.

Desh nodded warily. From the look in her eye, he didn't doubt for a second she would carry out her threat.

She pulled out a third sheet, already prepared, an indication that she had planned her attack with military precision.

STRIP. WAIST DOWN. COMPLETELY NAKED. NO WORDS. NO NOISE.

Desh kicked off his shoes and clumsily pulled off his socks, pants and briefs: a difficult task from a supine position and anch.o.r.ed to Griffin that involved flopping about like a fish out of water and contorting like a circus performer.

Desh was focusing too hard on the imminent threat to his life to waste any energy feeling self-conscious or humiliated about his nudity, but it was human nature to feel more vulnerable when naked, and he was no exception.

Kira tossed him a pair of gray sweatpants that matched the sweats.h.i.+rt he was now wearing and motioned with her head for him to put them on. He was only too happy to comply. All in all, while she didn't seem to like his taste in clothing, he was encouraged that she was taking the time to see that he was re-clothed. If her plan was to execute him in the apartment, this wouldn't have mattered. On the other hand, Desh remembered Jeffrey Dahmer, and he realized it was dangerous to make any a.s.sumptions about her actions or motives. She could be dancing to a song that only she could hear.

When he finished re-dressing, she tossed him a pair of soft leather slip-on shoes from her bag, and he managed to get them on his feet. The fit was perfect. And why not? He had bought several pairs of shoes in the past, online, and she now had ready access to the e-mail confirmations of these orders.

She tossed three plasticuff strips to him, one after another, and he gathered them up wordlessly. She held up another sign.

ONE TIGHT AROUND EACH ANKLE. THE OTHER BETWEEN THEM.

It took several minutes, but Desh did as she had ordered. His feet were now cuffed together in a three-plasticuff chain, leaving about eighteen inches of play between them.

Kira motioned for him to roll onto his stomach and put his arms behind his back, which he found a way to do despite having to drag Griffin's arm along for the ride. She held the gun against his head with one hand and slipped a plasticuff la.s.so around his crossed wrists with the other, yanking it so tight that it bit into his skin.

With Desh's ankles linked and his wrists now firmly secured behind his back, Kira cut him loose from Griffin using his own knife and retreated rapidly to a safe distance the moment she had. Desh noted she was quite agile and light-footed.

Kira motioned for Desh to get up, which he did awkwardly and with considerable difficulty. She opened the door, checked the hallway, and directed him to enter. Only being able to move his feet a slight distance apart, he was forced to shuffle them in a rapid-fire series of tiny steps. Kira followed about eight feet behind, her gun tucked beneath her oversized sweater but not wavering from the target.

It was now after 10 o'clock and the hallway remained deserted. A rental car was parked just outside the exit from Griffin's building; a large Ford sedan. As Desh shuffled toward the car, Kira pushed a b.u.t.ton on the remote and the trunk popped open. It was completely empty.

Kira motioned for Desh to climb inside.

Frowning miserably, he bent at the waist and slid into the trunk headfirst, having to curl up into a ball to fit inside the tight quarters.

Kira didn't waste a moment. The instant he was fully inside, she pushed the trunk door closed in a single, smooth motion, and Desh was plunged into an all-enveloping, claustrophobic darkness.

10.

Kira Miller drove for about ninety minutes. The air in the trunk was stale to begin with and got steadily worse as time wore on. While there were long stretches during which the ride was relatively smooth, probably indicating highway driving, there were also brief interludes during which Desh was bounced around violently, jarring him inside and out and inflicting several minor cuts and bruises. Finally, after what seemed like forever to Desh, the car stopped for good. A minute later the trunk was popped open again.

”Get out,” ordered Kira in hushed tones, s.h.i.+elding Desh as well as she could from any possible onlookers. She held a stun gun in one hand and her black duffel in the other, and it was clear she had no intention of helping him.

”Back out. Legs first,” she instructed. ”Silently. Call attention to yourself and you're dead,” she threatened.

Restrained as he was, not to mention crowded into close quarters, it took a Herculean effort to comply, but he was finally able to manage it. They were at a seedy motel that stretched like a single-story serpent around a pothole-filled parking lot, forming three legs of a rectangle. The building was poorly maintained and the grounds were almost completely lacking in external lighting.

Kira had parked directly in front of one of the rooms and she quickly ushered Desh inside. The unmistakable stench of mildew a.s.sailed them as they entered along with a stale, smoky odor that could only have been generated by thousands of cigarettes smoked there through time. The door opened into a short corridor, about five feet long, with the bathroom on the immediate right, and then widened into a main room that was surprisingly large. Long, garish drapes were hung across the only window and a cigarette burn adorned the bottom of a faded bedspread. The room was one of a pair of front-to-back, rather than side-to-side, adjoining rooms. At the back wall, two thin wooden doors were both open, creating a narrow pa.s.sage between the two separate but identical rooms. Kira had obviously rented both, but had left the lights off in the one adjoining.

”Get on the bed,” she commanded once they had entered. ”With your back against the headboard.”

Desh climbed onto the queen-sized bed as instructed, and she looped a plastic restraint around one of the outer wooden posts that were on both sides of the thin headboard, and then through his plasticuffs.

A lamp sitting on a small end table by the bed currently illuminated the entire room. Kira had knotted a thin rope around its cord, with the free end of the rope tied in a noose. She lifted the noose off the floor and walked to the door, looping it around the handle and pulling tight. This caused the lamp cord to become as taut as it could possibly be and still remain plugged into the wall outlet. She must have measured this carefully beforehand. She then quickly and expertly ran a trip wire across the corridor where it met the main room, about a foot off the ground.

This done, Kira removed a pair of state-of-the-art thermal imaging goggles from her bag and strapped them on, leaving them on her head and ready to be slid over her eyes. She pulled out a black jumpsuit, made from an unusual material that appeared to be partially crystalline, stepped into it, and zipped it up, so that her entire body was completely covered all the way up to her chin. She then retreated to a wooden chair twenty feet away and moved it so that it couldn't be seen from the doorway. All of her activities had been well planned and had been performed with military efficiency.

With her preparations completed, Kira tossed her wire-rimmed gla.s.ses into the open duffel, sat in the chair, and s.h.i.+fted her gaze to David Desh.

She let out a heavy sigh. ”Are you okay?” she asked with what appeared to be sincere concern.

A look of disbelief came over Desh. After all this, this was her first question of him? Why the pretend concern for his welfare? ”What am I doing here?” he snapped, now that speech was apparently no longer punishable by death.

She frowned, almost regretfully. ”I needed to speak with you. Convince you that I'm not the villain you think I am. That I'm innocent.”

Desh was taken aback. ”Innocent! Are you kidding? You go from, *quiet or I'll put a bullet between your eyes' to claiming you're innocent.”

Desh hadn't known what to expecta”torture, threats?a”but protestations of innocence wasn't on the list. But to what end? He was already at her mercy. Was she simply attempting to keep him off balance?

Kira frowned deeply. ”Look, I'm truly sorry for what I just put you through. Really. Believe me, this wasn't the first impression I would have liked to make. But I'm innocent nonetheless.”

Desh snorted. ”Just how stupid do you think I am!” he snapped. ”You blast me with enough electricity to light up Broadway. You repeatedly threaten my life. You leave Matt Griffin for dead. And now you have me hogtied to a bed at gunpoint.” He shook his head. ”I must be missing how this adds up to your being an innocent woman,” he finished bitterly.

”I can a.s.sure you your hacker friend will be fine. I just hit him with a very potent sleep agent. He'll wake up tomorrow more refreshed than he's been in years,” she added. ”With no memory of what happened. But I had to handle things this way. You're far too dangerous to be given even a little wiggle room. This was my only option.”

”How do you figure?”

”Put yourself in my shoes. If you wanted to have a friendly conversation with someone who's been preconditioned to think you're the devil incarnate, and who also happens to have Special Forces training and is constantly being monitored, how would you go about it?”

Desh ignored the question. ”What makes you think I'm being monitored?”

”Because the people behind Connelly won't spare any measure to get their hands on me,” she said with absolute conviction. ”And not for the reasons you think,” she added. ”Do you really think they just sent you off on your own recognizance? Just like that? I'm far too important to them for that. Rest a.s.sured, they've been tracking your every move since you took this a.s.signment.”

Desh raised his eyebrows. ”People behind Connelly?” he repeated.

”Connelly is just a dupe in this game. Just like you,” she said bluntly. ”The people pulling his strings are the ones tracking you.”

”If they're tracking me, as you say, how is it they didn't intervene in my kidnapping?”