The Detachment - Barry Eisler [95]
The plan now was for Treven and Larison to continue the shell game for the next couple hours, then to ditch the van, bleach it out, and get back to the hotel using buses and the Metro system. By the time they were done, Horton would be facing thousands of possibilities, each of which would have to be manually tracked, assuming it could be tracked at all. As for Dox and me, we did one more switch, into the U-Haul truck, which we had left in a giant underground garage in a mall in Westwood. Dox stayed at the wheel and I stayed in the cargo area with Kei.
At a little past noon, I felt a series of short turns that told me were back at the motel. “How are you holding up?” I asked Kei.
“I need a bathroom. Badly. Please don’t put me in a diaper.”
I checked my watch. “Can you hold on for three more minutes?”
She glared at me. “Barely.”
The truck stopped. “Face the front of the truck,” I told her. She complied. A moment later, the cargo doors opened and Dox climbed in. He was carrying an extra-large cargo carrier, 59 by 24 by 24 inches. Just roomy enough for someone of Kei’s dimensions. He pulled the doors shut behind him.
“All right, Mimi,” I said. “One more transfer.”
Dox, looking distinctly reluctant, set down the cargo bag and held it open. Kei grimaced, then stepped into it and curled up on her side. “I’m not going to gag you,” I told her. “Remember our deal.”
I was betting I’d be able to spot when she was planning an insurrection, and that I’d be able to preempt it. In the meantime, she would bide her time, believing she was lulling me. That was fine. The net effect was that she would be unconsciously inhibited by what she thought was hope. Meaning she would be comfortable. And, more importantly, more cooperative.
We zipped her in and opened the door. Dox picked up the bag as though it was filled with nothing but Styrofoam peanuts, slung it over a shoulder, and carried her into the motel. I shut the truck doors and followed him in.
We set her down in the room, unzipped the bag, and helped her to her feet. I opened the folding knife I was carrying and let her see it. Dox was holding the Wilson—not because he wanted to, but because I’d told him to. I wanted to give her every possible psychological excuse not to resist, including the obvious facts of our numbers, our size—or Dox’s size, anyway—and our weapons.
“I’m going to untie your wrists,” I said. “Take your time in the bathroom. We won’t watch you, but the door stays open. If you do anything we don’t like, we’ll have to diaper you, hogtie you, gag you, and put a hood on you, and leave you like that for what could be days. It’s up to you.”
I stepped behind her and quickly patted her down. Larison already had, and even if he hadn’t, it wasn’t likely she was carrying, but this was Horton’s daughter, after all, and it would be foolish to assume any woman couldn’t be equipped with pepper spray or an FS Hideaway knife. Better to double check. But Kei had no weapons, nor even anything that could be used for one. I took hold of her wrists and cut the flex ties.
She hurried into the bathroom. It was tiny and windowless, and with the door open there was nowhere she could go for concealment. And I’d already checked it for anything that could remotely be used as an improvised weapon. About the only thing she might have done was to wrap her fist in a towel, smash the mirror, and pick up a long shard using the towel as a kind of handle. I judged such a move at this point extremely unlikely. If I was wrong, though, I would have plenty of time to get an upraised desk chair between us, while Dox approached her from behind.
I turned away while Dox dragged a dresser in front of the door. A small thing, but enough to dissuade her