“Standard procedure,” Osterman soothed, snapping on the ankle restraints. He adjusted the rubber head clamp so that he could position the X-Cog helmet on her head. “Relax. You’re doing fine.”
Her lips really were beautiful, he thought, with a pang of regret. She was babbling anxious questions that he no longer bothered to answer. He was miles above her now, preparing for the grand event.
Cait might have grown into a beautiful woman, given other circumstances, he mused. But she was so damaged. One might go so far as to say he was giving her life a meaning it would never otherwise have had. Progress ground ever forward, for the good of humanity in general. And for Christopher Osterman, MD, PhD, in particular. He slid the needle into her arm, taped it, started the IV drip. He put his own master crown on. Now all he had to do was watch, and hope.
“Fucking pervert,” said a low, grating voice behind him.
Osterman jumped, spun around. He let out an explosive breath when he saw Gordon, his pet assassin, clean-up man and factotum.
Well, “pet” wasn’t quite accurate. Keeping Gordon on staff was like holding a tiger by the tail. One kept a tight grip. The corollary being that Gordon’s grip on Osterman’s own tail was correspondingly tight.
Osterman found the resulting forced intimacy quite unpleasant.
“Do not sneak up on me like that,” he scolded.
“You didn’t answer your phone. I figured you were playing doctor with one of your girlies back here in the pervert playroom,” Gordon said.
Osterman exhaled, and let that insulting comment pass. “Did you take care of that item of business you mentioned in your last call?”
“Ah.” Gordon chewed his lip. “There’s been a new development.”
Osterman waited, hands clenched. “And that is?”
“Kevin McCloud’s brother made contact with the girl.”
Osterman stared. “What do you mean, contact? You were supposed to kill her. How can he make contact with a corpse?”
“I hadn’t concluded the job,” Gordon said. “He talked to her today, at her bookstore. The one that I burned to the ground last night.”
“Burned?” Osterman gaped at him. “Have you gone crazy?”
“You told me to work up a stalker scenario, didn’t you?” Gordon’s voice was faintly sullen. “I took you at your word, Chris.”
“I was thinking dirty letters, slaughtered cats, that sort of thing!”
“I can’t go from dirty letters and dead cats to homicide,” Gordon protested. “You need natural buildup. The violence has to escalate in a way that makes sense. Trust me. I know my abnormal psych.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Osterman muttered.
“Watch the snotty remarks. As I was saying, McCloud talked to her. Then he pulled her out of her car before my bomb could go off.”
“Bomb?” Osterman’s voice rose in pitch. “What bomb?”
“Chunk of Semtex I’ve had lying around. Don’t worry, I wasn’t showing off. Any fool with access to the Internet could build it. I rigged the final touches this morning, while everyone was looking at the fire.”
Osterman’s heart thudded. “This was supposed to be a discreet hit! A bomb in a shopping district? I thought you were a professional!”
Gordon looked hurt. “Think outside the box, Chris. My stalker craves attention. It fills the void inside him. The bigger the gesture, the more he imagines that it will impress the object of his deranged love.”
“Your pseudo-psych bullshit is not a justification for—”
“I enter my character’s personality structure, and follow its directives,” Gordon lectured, enjoying himself. “That way, each crime has its own coherence. Which keeps me, your buddy Gordon, from leaving a signature. In fact, the lack of a signature is my signature.”
“You’ve explained your criminal philosophy to me before. It won’t keep the cops from investigating the shit out of this!” Osterman fumed. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison!”
“Oh, prison wouldn’t be so bad. With that pretty face of yours, I’m sure you’d be very popular.”
Osterman forced himself to breathe. “Are you showing a desire to stop the downward spiral of violence? Is this a cry for help, Gordon?”
“Fuck, no.” Gordon’s toothy grin was cheerfully manic. “Nothing will stop my downward spiral. I live for this shit.”
“The Helix Group will not help us, if the police find your tail.”
Gordon’s shrug was casual. “You do your job, and I’ll do mine. Back to McCloud. As I said during the Midnight Project fuck-up—”
“Do not say the name,” Osterman ground the words out.
Gordon rolled his eyes. “I told you we should take out Sean McCloud in a preemptive strike—”
“I didn’t want the body count to get higher,” Osterman snarled.
“You always get squeamish at the wrong moment,” Gordon complained. “That girl passed the info on, and went into hiding.”
“Then why haven’t they come for us? We haven’t heard anything in fifteen years,” Osterman argued. “He might have been passing by. A burning bookstore attracts attention. Or did that not occur to you?”
“Yeah. Right. Coincidence.” Gordon hawked, and spat on the floor tiles. “McCloud is on to us. He guessed my bomb. He knows, Chris. The question is, do we kill him now, before trouble has time to begin?”
Osterman stared at that hateful glob of yellow mucus, and contemplated ways of killing Gordon. He did not like cleaning up his own messes, but things were getting seriously out of hand.
On the other hand. The prospect of training someone new was daunting.
“I should question the girl before I put her down,” Gordon mused. He glanced over at Caitlin. “Speaking of which. Want me to dump this one for you? She looks like a shredder to me.”
Oh, God, he’d forgotten all about Caitlin. He turned, and knew instantly, as Gordon had, that the attempted interface had failed.
She was twitching, straining against the restraints. Broken blood vessels marred the whites of her eyes. Her mouth was wide, as if she were screaming, though she made no sound. Hallucinations, no doubt. X-Cog had paralyzed her motor functions, but the side effects had fried the rest. Or maybe the electrical stimulation had been too aggressive. He made a note to dial it down for the next subject.
He averted his gaze. That silent scream effect was grotesque.
“Nice titties,” Gordon crooned, fondling them.
“Stop that,” Osterman snapped. “Let’s get back to McCloud. And the girl. Just kill them, for God’s sake, and get it over with.”
“So let’s talk fee adjustment. And take off your pervert crown.”
Osterman lifted off his master crown, and carefully smoothed back his thick, glossy dark hair. “I’m paying you a fortune already.”
“McCloud is high-risk. Ex-special forces. One brother who’s an ex-fed, another who’s a private investigator. Those men are going to be unhappy. It may be necessary for me to relocate. That takes capital.”
Osterman was tantalized by the fantasy of Gordon disappearing from his life forever. “How much do you want?”
Gordon named a sum.