She had a feeling that twice with the tazer might not be good. He had to live a long life. When she tried to put the back half of the head box under his head, he threw it side to side, making it difficult. Finally she could see that the effort was bruising her arms and he was screaming incessantly so that even the music might not be sufficient to disguise the noise.
This part of the ritual had been prescribed by Gaudet, more, she thought, as a form of torture than anything else. The drugs might take another five or ten minutes or they might not be strong enough for a man wild with panic. Primarily, the succino coline would erase his memory of events in this room. Gaudet had given her another more potent hypodermic but for some reason didn’t want her to use it unless she felt compelled.
“DuShane,” she said calmly.
He stopped his struggling and his screaming. It was a powerful feeling.
“You don’t want me to put you to sleep with a syringe. You’ll be unconscious. I would think you would hate that.”
“Let me up.”
She went back to the closet and took out a black box. In front of Chellis she opened it and took out the second hypodermic.
“One stick and you are floating among the stars without even a memory of what has happened to you. Do you want us to steal some history? And if I have to use it, you never know what I might do.”
The illusion that he might yet hang on to a little power amused her and was like a narcotic for him. Apparently DuShane reasoned that if he was awake he still had some control. “One chance, DuShane. Let me put the box on you and I’ll leave the trapdoor open in the front. I’m not going to bruise my arms playing with this contraption.”
“Damn you.” He began screaming again. “Help, somebody help me.”
Her own miscalculation made her angry. Being very careful with her aim, she took the bear spray and shot it at his screaming throat. Then she stepped way back, her eyes stinging, and opened the bedroom door, retreating into the living room while she watched. The reaction of his body was dramatic. He turned white, then red, and looked as if he were trying to swallow the room.
She wondered why she hadn’t thought to use the gas mask. Holding her breath, she ran to the closet and put it on. Now she could watch the spectacle in comfort. He gasped terribly.
Although she knew he was trying to talk, it was a while before she could read his contorted lips enough to make out his words.
“Take me to the hospital.”
It was becoming tedious.
After a few minutes he appeared paralyzed; all he did was breathe, and he didn’t do that very well. This time she easily slipped the box under the back of his head and closed it. There was a trapdoor in front that she opened.
“There now. That’s much better.”
After a half hour of reading Cosmopolitan aloud to him, the English version, he was pretty much back to normal-that is, he was starting another screaming fit.
“Shut up or I’ll close your door.”
He quieted, but he looked so angry she thought he might burst veins in his eyes.
“Just tell me why.”
“It’s simple. I want what you have. If I kill you, then your living trust provides that the trustees for the brat takeover, Marie and I would get a pittance, and we lose the company. Those jackal lawyers of yours would have us escorted off the premises.”
“Marie would get millions.”
“Twenty, dear. Only twenty. What is that compared to the billions you control? On the other hand, if you are incapacitated, then Marie and I are in charge. Surely you remember how and why you set it up that way. You said, I think: ‘I don’t want those bastard lawyers taking over unless I’m dead and stinking.’ Isn’t that what you said? So don’t crap your pants and die, honey.” She closed the door of his head-box and he began his muffled screaming. After a second she opened it. “Look, you get to live. If you are good, we will give you oil and some days, at least Christmas and Easter, you won’t be far off normal. Sort of like Jason. Well, a little more paranoid than Jason, but still alive.” She closed his door again.
As a test she left the room, and noted that his words were unintelligible and the sound not particularly audible even with the bedroom door open. It was time to deliver Jacques’s vector in the manner prescribed. This was definitely an important experiment. It would be the first aerosol use and it was imperative that they know exactly the amount DuShane inhaled and that he inhale the amount prescribed by Jacques. After dosing him she would begin his education.
The phone rang.
She knew it would be Gaudet, and it was one of those rare occasions when he would be gleeful as a schoolboy over their progress.
Thirty-six
The place reminded Anna of Jason’s lodge, the way it was laid out and even the aesthetic aspects of the design. There were five bedrooms in addition to the master suite, as well as two guest houses with three bedrooms each. To further supplement the living space, a large banquet tent had been placed on the lawn near the pool. Normally it was used for summertime parties, but now it was being used as a barracks. Sam, Anna, Spring, Jason, Grady, and T.J. each took a room in the main house.
With a grin, T.J. had won the toss for accommodations in the primary residence. That left six men to the tent and six into the two guest houses. There was a lot more coin tossing. Anna unpacked her stuff in the master suite knowing that Sam would be busy for a while with the men. Whether it was necessary or not, she knew that Sam would feel compelled to have a meeting to set things in order.
Although laid as unobtrusively as possible, sandbags now lined the interior walls of the house, rising to window level in the living room. In the event of a full-scale assault the living room would provide the final shelter other than the safe room. More “safe” than “room,” it consisted of a large concrete-reinforced, habitation-adapted, steel safe that sat inside what had once been a utility room. If it got down to the safe room, Sam was counting on the Mounties to arrive before it was breached.
After unpacking, Anna took from her closet a silken robe that she had acquired from Japan. She had never worn it, having resolved to keep it for a special occasion. It wasn’t a special occasion, but it felt right for the moment. Under the robe she decided to wear a silk nightgown that looked vaguely like a cocktail dress. For a second she pondered something more translucent, but dismissed the idea. A quick check of Sam’s room revealed that he was still roaming around with the boys. She should have known that he would need to mark his territory before retiring. She hoped to talk for a while before leaving him to sleep.
She was nearly done with the biography of the Warner brothers, and decided to finish the last chapter.
There was a soft knock.
It was Spring.
“Hi, I would have thought you would be asleep,” Anna said.
“No. I have been wanting to follow up on our prior conversations. You finished the book that your friend gave you.”
“Yes.”
“I wondered if you figured out where she went.”
“I have always resisted any notion that we are somehow the product of our upbringing. I like to feel like the captain of my own destiny. I don’t like introspection as much as I like goals and making choices to get where I want to go.”
“So you’re captain of your ship. And who is captain of Sam’s?”
Anna laughed at that. “Oh, I have a sneaking suspicion that he feels the same way I do. But then you will say: If Sam is in the grip of his past, then who is to say that I’m not? Is that it?”