Wired - Douglas E. Richards [43]
Desh settled in for what he expected to be a long vigil. Periodically, he retreated farther into the woods and did jumping jacks to keep his blood flowing and to generate warmth on the chilly autumn night. He had the odd feeling that if Kira Miller had had an extra coat in her magic bag, she would have left that in the bathroom for him as well.
So what to make of her? Could her story have been true? It was impossible to say. But regardless, Desh had to admire her competence. She planned brilliantly, was quick on her feet, and was decisive.
But was she too decisive? She had shot one of the intruders to get information with a ruthless efficiency. Few people were capable of acting so callously. On the other hand, she could easily have killed them all. A true psychopath wouldn’t have hesitated. Unless for some unfathomable reason it continued to be of importance to her to convince Desh she was innocent, so much so that she was able to sublimate her psychotic nature.
Or was she not a psychopath at all? Had she really been a model citizen before she had altered her own brain chemistry? Maybe. But even if she was, it was equally possible that the changes to her nature she claimed to have come about as a result of her experiments had become permanent, despite her assurances to the contrary.
But this still wouldn’t explain the deaths of her parents and uncle and teachers, Desh realized. Even if the murder of her brother and her collaboration with terrorists could be explained as a result of self-induced psychopathic behavior, a horrible side effect of the rewiring of her own brain, these earlier murders could not be. Could it be that she honestly was unaware of her own true nature? What if she had suffered from schizophrenia and had developed a split personality at a young age? Maybe it had always been a Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde thing with her, with the changes to her brain chemistry doing nothing more than allowing the Mr. Hyde personality to become more dominant.
Desh shook his head, annoyed with himself. Why was he trying so hard to identify some part of her that was innocent! He knew that she was getting to him, but he hadn’t realized just how much until now. Along with a powerful intellect that he found stimulating and those soft, expressive eyes, there was a charm and sincerity to her that was undeniably appealing, even though he knew it was nothing but an accomplished acting job. He had to hand it to the ancient Greeks: they knew that a treacherous woman who could still captivate a man was far more dangerous than the most powerful of sea monsters. How many others had been mesmerized by Kira Miller’s siren song, he wondered, letting down their guard and crashing against the cliffs. If their paths crossed again, he had better find a way to tie himself to the mast if he wanted to have any chance of surviving the encounter.
He was still lost in thought, forty minutes after he had abandoned the cell phone, when a large, two-door sedan pulled off the road a hundred yards before the church. Two men with night-vision equipment of their own jumped out and without a word began to double-time it to the church, leaving the driver waiting in the car. They had taken the bait already. Impressive. Whoever they were, they were exceedingly well connected. Despite the police presence in the motel, they had been able to pull the required strings to retrieve their men and track the missing cell phone in record time.
Desh pulled out the tranquilizer gun he had borrowed. Despite the fact they had been tailing him, they were still most likely friendlies. He wasn’t exactly in a trusting mood, but he wasn’t about to consider lethal force, either, until he knew who they were.
Desh sprinted along the tree line in the opposite direction from the church so he could circle back around behind the car. As the two men entered St. Peters,