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 assailed 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 passage 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 glasses into the open duffel, sat in the chair, and shifted 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 expect—torture, threats?—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 assure 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 assured, they’ve been tracking your every move since you took this assignment.”