The Mind Virus

Chapter 12 - Part 1

Her target was fast asleep, but Harriett tip-toed around his house as quietly as she could anyway. It was a force of habit. She'd spiked his food with enough sedatives to put an elephant into a coma, but she didn't like the idea of making a lot of noise. Anything could happen. A neighbor could hear the commotion and come to visit the man. In theory, the doorbell shouldn't wake him up, but you can never be too sure. Harriett took no risks. That was her style. That was how she'd always done it, and it was how she'd always do it.

A sharp pang of guilt went through her as she thought about the possible negative side-effects of drugging the man with as heavy a dose as she did, then she remembered he'd be dead within a few hours with or without the sedative anyway, so it was all moot. That brought her to her next job – rigging his car. This required a lot of finesse. Cutting his brakes was an old movie favorite, but in reality, he'd notice it when pulling out of his garage. He'd probably end up coasting into his neighbor's car across the street, and the plan would be ruined.

When she was "working" in Southern Italy, she'd picked up a neat trick from the mafia. It was a set of small devices that would be attached to the brake cables. Battery-powered and remote-controlled, the blades would snap closed and disable the brakes on command, usually when the target was going fast around a winding mountain road. Harriett had always enjoyed the marriage of ingenuity and simplicity in it, but she wouldn't dare try that here. There was too high a risk of the police finding the devices, and then there would be a murder investigation, which, in all her risk-averse glory, she wouldn't accept.

No, Harriett would have to resort to something a lot more destructive – something that would leave nothing behind. She popped the car's hood, bag of tricks at her side, and got to work.

*

The deed was done. Her target's next drive would be his last, but her work was not finished for the day. Harriett had been doing her homework, and she'd tracked down her next target. She pulled out the candid photo she'd snapped the day before and caressed it lovingly.

"Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, I wish it didn't have to be this way," she spoke to the picture of her old companion. When she first saw his name back in the car outside of the clandestine building where she had been given this job, she had hoped and prayed hard that it wasn't the same Eddie that she knew from years gone by. She'd told herself it was a common name, but it was a stupid lie. If it had been any other place in the country, she could have believed it, but she had heard from common acquaintances that her own Eddie was working in this area. Sure enough, with minimal digging, she had found it was indeed the same Eddie. She still loved him. She had never stopped loving him, but that was immaterial. She had chosen her career over love once before, a long time ago, and she was going to do it again now.

She felt the tears forming in her eyes. It was unlike Harriett to cry. She fought them down. She wasn't going to let herself break apart with emotion. There was plenty of time for that between jobs, but not while she was working.

A piece of paper that was sitting in her center console had scribbled upon it the days and hours that Eddie worked and his home address. He was going to be home fairly soon, and it was there that Harriett had something of a gift for him.