Authors: Cheryl Kaye Tardif
"Put down the bag and step away from the shelves."
Deirdre went still. "I'm going away, Agent McLellan."
"Yes, you are."
"Life behind bars isn't for me."
"You don't have a choice now."
"We always have a choice."
"And you made yours the day you started this," Jasi replied. "It's your legacy. Is this how you want people to think of you? As a murderer?"
"Well, at least one person knew me and loved me for who I am," Deirdre said, sniffling.
"Your sister."
Deirdre sneered. "Marilyn will be more than happy to see me out of her life."
"I'm sure that's not true. She loves you."
"Love?" Her laugh bordered on maniacal. "Marilyn hates me. She always has."
Keep her talking, Jasi.
"Why do you say that, Deirdre?"
"Because I tried to ruin Monty's career," the woman whispered. "And because she knew the truth about Daddy's death."
"What truth?" she asked.
The woman closed her mouth.
"What happened with your father, Deirdre?"
The woman grinned. "I killed him."
"Your father died in a boating accident."
Deirdre's eyes gleamed. "Really? An accident?"
"Your sister said there was an explosion onboard. An engine problem."
"Bombs aren't that difficult to construct," the woman said. "You can learn how to do just about anything on the Internet. Daddy never thought I was as bright as Marilyn. Well, I showed him."
Jasi shuddered at the satisfied gleam in the woman's eyes. The situation was critical. She had to get Deirdre to surrender.
"I wish I'd been there to see the look on his face when he realized that someone had cut the gas line," Deirdre said with a laugh. "And when he found the bomb onboard. Too bad I only gave him ten seconds once he lifted the engine hatch."
"You thought you'd get your inheritance," Jasi said. "But what you didn't know was that your father had drawn up a new will making your sister the executor of the estate and the one holding the purse strings."
Deirdre pouted. "Marilyn had everything I ever wanted. Brains, beauty, a respected husband, wealth, power…and Daddy's love. I wanted her and Monty to split up. I thought she'd pay some attention to me, listen to my ideas about Paragon's future, maybe even let me have the money Daddy left me." She looked around the room. "Now she has nothing. Like me. There
is
justice after all."
"What I don't understand," Jasi said, "is why you'd concoct a scheme to brainwash a couple of politicians. What have you got against them?"
"Nothing."
"What do you mean nothing?"
Deirdre shrugged. "I had absolutely nothing against those men."
"There are few motives for this kind of crime. Money―you'll get that from your sister―revenge or love."
"Yes, I'd do almost anything for love. Wouldn't you?"
The question caught Jasi off guard.
"You would murder innocent men for love?"
"They weren't all that innocent, Agent McLellan. Monty messed around on my sister."
"What about Porter Sampson? What was his crime?"
Deirdre gave her a sour look. "Like Monty, he was going to make decisions that would affect everyone, including future generations. Justice needed to be served. Their decisions would have resulted in more deaths, more corruption."
"What
you
did was corrupt. Where's the justice in your actions?"
"Justice is blind. And sometimes plain stupid." She laughed. "You think you're going to cuff me and take me off to prison where I'll wither away and die." Her voice dimmed to a whisper. "I'll die alone."
"Maybe you should've thought of that before you decided to brainwash government officials into obeying your twisted agenda. What you did will be viewed as a terrorist act. That's quite an accomplishment, Deirdre."
"What do you think
you're
accomplishing here?"
"I'm stopping you."
Laughter echoed in the room and Jasi shivered.
"You think you can stop this? You fool! You have no idea how far this goes."
"What do you mean?"
"We've been doing this for nearly a year."
"Let me get this straight," Jasi said, praying that her data-com was getting every word. "You've been messing with Sampson and Winkler for a year?"
"And others. We didn't just manipulate a few homegrown politicians. It started with a few test subjects, but now there are people in every department of government, in the courts, in every official capacity. People in power."
"It shouldn't be too difficult to find a few wayward Canadian government officials."
Deirdre laughed again. "Don't you get it, Agent McLellan? This crosses borders. Canada, the United States, Britain even. The funny thing is you'll never know who is affected."
"And these people have all been brainwashed."
"
Transitioned.
That's what we prefer to call it. With Project Chrysalis, the subjects' brains were exposed to months of high frequency sound waves. This allowed us to implant the next phase."
"Which was?"
"The sound waves activated dormant areas of their brains and made the test subjects susceptible to suggestion."
"You make them sound like nothing more than lab rats."
The woman's mouth curved into a deadly smile. "It was a highly successful experiment in neural conditioning, Agent McLellan."
Jasi fought the sudden urge to pound Deirdre to a pulp.
"So these suggestions altered their normal impulses or desires and made them do what you told them."
"That's correct," Deirdre said with a nod.
"And the CDs?"
Deirdre flinched. "My boyfr―
investor
came up with that idea. He created a disk that helps reinforce the subjects' openness to suggestion, makes them relax. We're talking about using the power of suggestion with high tech frequencies that humans can't hear but that alter their brain waves and activate parts of the brain that are normally dormant. It's quite a fascinating process."
"And the phone calls?"
"Instructions that induced a hypnotic trance, allowing certain suggestions to activate."
"Then why kill Winkler and Sampson?"
"They were our failures."
"So your entire team here at Paragon was in on this?"
"No, they knew nothing about we really did. They ran the tests and studies, then activated the frequencies when I told them. They thought it was all part of our research."
But one person, Deirdre had admitted, knew everything.
"What's your boyfriend's name?"
Deirdre clenched her lips tight. She wasn't telling.
"Come on, Deirdre. Cooperate and things might go easier for you. We need to know who else is in on this."
"And if I don't? What then, Agent McLellan? Are you going to use that gun on me?"
"Not if I don't have to." She raised the gun. "It's over."
"Not quite, Agent McLellan. There's one thing stopping you from taking me in."
"What?"
Deirdre opened her hand. "This."
Jasi swallowed.
Oh shit.
The detonator in Deirdre's hand made her heart stop.
"What are you doing, Deirdre?"
"What do you think I'm doing, Agent McLellan?"
"Look," Jasi said, holding up her hands and stepping back. "We can all leave here in one piece. It doesn't have to end this way, Deirdre."
"Of course it does," the woman shrieked. "I'm ruined. Everything I've worked for this past year is destroyed."
"But what about your family?"
"I have no family!"
"Marilyn―"
"She'll be happier when I'm gone."
"But you're in love. What about him?"
"I'm in love, yes. But he doesn't love me. He used me and I let him. He raped my mind and twisted my ideas. He called it a partnership of the soul, what we had. He said we were helping mankind."
"Who said?"
But Deirdre wasn't listening. "He said my research would exist for generations to come. That one day we'll not only be communicating with extraterrestrials, we'll be able to modify human behavior right through their television sets." Her eyes flared insanely. "Think of how this would affect war."
"What do you mean?"
"We'd have the power to extinguish a war with a single transmission to terrorist leaders. Saddam, Bin Laden, all of Al-Qaeda. Terrorists watch TV too. We could've stopped 9-11 from ever happening again. He said whoever had this technology would hold all the power."
"Who said this?"
"He thinks he's a God, but he's not even close."
"Who?"
Deirdre stared at the ground and Jasi was tempted to take her down, but something made her hesitate.
"Jasi!"
a voice hissed to her left.
She turned her head a few inches.
Natassia squatted beside the door, her gun readied. Beside her was the security guard from the gate.
She jerked her head subtly, signaling her partner to circle around behind Deirdre.
"Let's end this, Deirdre," she said, trying to smile.
The woman held out the hand with the detonator. "I wasn't planning on taking anyone else with me, but feel free to join me." Her thumb hovered over the red button. "Or you can leave now."
"Deirdre, think of your sister."
"You have less than 5 minutes." Deirdre pushed the button. "I've activated the bomb."
Shit!
Jasi had to make a decision.
"Natassia! Get out now!"
Natassia and the guard flew toward the doorway.
With sad eyes, Deirdre watched them. "You'd better run too, Agent McLellan. There's only one place I'm going."
"Please, Deirdre. Let's walk out of here. Both of us."
Deirdre gave her a cold smile. "There's enough C-4 in the basement to turn Paragon into dust." The woman glanced at her watch, then darted for the doorway to the back stairs. "You have four minutes left," she hollered.
Jasi didn't have a choice. She'd never be able to get the woman out of the building or disarm the bomb in time. So she did the only thing she could do. She ran.
Fleeing down the hallway, she prayed that Natassia and the guard had made it out. She was almost to the front door when an explosion rippled through the building, its force so powerful that it blew the door behind her off its hinges and sent it airborne into the waiting area.
"Shit!"
She hit the floor as the door smashed into a wall. Scrambling to her feet, she raced out of the building just as a second explosion rumbled. Shattered glass rained down on her and she ran toward the parking lot where Natassia, Ben and the guard waited inside the idling SUV.
Jasi dove into the back seat of the SUV. "Drive!"
The guard shifted the vehicle into gear and sped off down the road. Behind them, a thunderous explosion shook Paragon Research Corporation. Two smaller blasts caused the building to implode. Walls buckled and folded inward, collapsing on decades of research and destroying the final pieces of evidence in a case that had proven to be far more insidious than anyone had ever guessed. The silence of the night was broken by the crackling of a deadly fire.
Jasi glanced at Ben. It seemed like he was barely breathing. Even worse, blood blossomed through the gauze.