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. Osterman stared at the man, appalled.
“You’re welcome to call someone else,” he taunted. “Feel free. I’d be happy to wash my hands of this. Because you’re bugging me, Chris.”
“Too much,” he said testily, already making the calculations in his head, liquidating assets, transferring this, converting that.
“Your slush fund should cover it. And the big boys at Helix won’t have to worry their pretty little heads, right? We’ll keep it between us. He jerked his chin at Caitlin. “Want me to load her up?”
“Yes. I’m sick of looking at her. I’ll mix up a dose of heroin and fentanyl. Inject her right before you dump her. Don’t let her asphyxiate in the trunk of your car. It looks suspicious to the forensics techs.”
“Might take her a while to finish dying,” Gordon warned. “You want to risk her ending up in the emergency room?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Osterman adjusted the knobs. “She’ll have so much cerebral damage, she won’t be able to tell them her own name.”
Gordon whistled softly. “Now that’s cold.”
The silence behind him made him suspicious as he loaded the syringe. He turned, to see Gordon peeking under Caitlin’s shirt.
“Why do you do that?” he snapped. “It’s disgusting.”
“Why does a man do anything? Why does a dog lick his balls? Because he can, Chris. Because he can.”
Osterman shuddered with distaste. “You are such an animal.”
“So throw me a chunk of meat.” He moved his hand down to caress her crotch, and snatched it away with a hiss of distaste. “Yuck. She’s wet herself. I’ll back the van up to the cargo door. You got any more body bags? I don’t want her leaking in my trunk.”
“I’m almost out. It’s really hard to get those in bulk,” he said.
“Yeah, ain’t life difficult? Is that one of your annoying passive aggressive ways of asking me to get some more of them for you?”
The door swung shut on their wrangling, leaving the vidcams to record the subject’s response to X-Cog NG-4. Wrists straining, heels drumming. Face locked in the rictus of an endless, silent scream.
Chapter 5
Crash. Bam. Kitchen cupboard doors bounced shut, and swung open again. Sean watched in horrified fascination as his older brother stormed around the dim kitchen of their father’s old house.
“I don’t know why you’re so pissed with me,” he said plaintively. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” He paused for a moment. “Yet.”
Davy made a snarling noise. There was a squeak, and he was staring at a detached drawer, its handle torn half off. Rubber bands, nails and other detritus rattled onto the kitchen floor. He flung it away.
“Hah,”
