Chapter 6 Power of Influence
"He will choose you, disarm you with his words, and control you with his presence. He will delight you with his wit and his plans. He will show you a good time but you will always get the bill. He will smile and deceive you, and he will scare you with his eyes. And when he is through with you, and he will be through with you, he will desert you and take with him your innocence and your pride." Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us
Karen prided herself on the fact that she had never really kidnapped Helena. Each time before, she had managed to get HG to come to her and refused to count coercion as the same thing. But now that Mrs. Frederic made a big deal out of her actions, she knew HG would need a little persuasion to come. And she knew exactly what would get her to cooperate. She had two cards up her sleeve now.
Still believing that Helena was under some ill power by Myka, she was convinced that once she broke that spell, Helena would see who she really was meant to be with. Karen was getting frustrated though. There didn't seem to be a time that the agents weren't traveling to and from the B&B together. She rarely saw Myka without Helena. Following them didn't seem prudent since there wasn't anyone on the road and her car would be noticed. She sat there watching them leave Thursday morning and made her boldest move yet. She saw the truck pull up with two workmen in it and watched as they spoke to Leena. They were there to remove the fallen paneling from the basement. She waited for Leena to drive off in the direction of town and walked up through the front door. "Just forgot something upstairs," she said to one of them, and of course they assumed she lived there. She went directly to Helena's room where she put on a pair of gloves. She smelled HG's clothes and remembered the perfume she wore. She touched her belongings and looked at things on her shelf. She looked at the box with the bottles on the desk and turned HG's notes over and read that the liquid became gaseous upon opening and when inhaled, induced a hibernation like state. She laughed to think her brilliant friend had just handed her such a treasure and believed that somehow, HG was working on this hoping it would help. She took a few of the bottles and closed the box and put the notes back the way she found them. She looked around the room tempted to take something, but she remembered that Myka Bering had an eidetic memory and might see something was missing. She left without anyone seeing her.
Leena begged Artie to give HG a designated area in the Warehouse where she believed her experimenting would be safer than in the house. Artie promised to put it on the 'things I will eventually get around to' list. Leena hoped he would before the house came down around them. Pete had insisted that he could sit at the Warehouse instead of sitting at home. No one said it but they all knew he meant in the Pete Cave which was fine with them. His head still had the bandage on it, and although he said he felt okay, they were concerned. And no one more than Helena, who expressed her guilty feelings by following him around trying to anticipate his every move and need. When he went to grab his jacket she had it behind his back holding it open for him. He liked the attention but when she followed him to the Pete Cave he drew the line. "HG, I appreciate all your help today, really but I just need to spend some alone Pete time - alone - okay?" he said trying not to insult her. "Oh sure, yes, of course. Understood. Perfectly okay. But you'll call me if you need anything?" HG said closing in on him. "Yes promise," Pete said as he closed the door on the Brit and prayed she wasn't angry. "How does Myka do it?" he wondered.
Artie was waiting for HG when she returned to the office. "Well, HG you've managed to bring the fire department to the house after blowing the basement door off its hinges and now you've injured one of your fellow agents with another harebrained experiment. I believe this concludes your adventures in home experimentations for the time being, does it not?" Artie asked knowing there was only one answer. HG stopped to think for a minute as if there really was a choice and then caught Artie's expression. "Yes," she said guessing the right answer.
"Good," he said before he handed out the inventory lists.
"Darling, would you remind me to remove the wires from Artie's chair in the dining room," HG asked Myka nonchalantly as they walked together into the Warehouse.
"Wires? You weren't going to electrocute him were you, Helena?" Myka said laughing and then stopped when HG didn't smile.
"No, don't be silly. The impulses would never have actually electrocuted him. They would have merely delivered a charge through the seat at a designated time," HG explained.
"And when would that designated time be, Helena?" Myka asked realizing that the next experiment had already been set in place.
"When Artie yelled. You see, I was hoping to deliver a negative response in an attempt to alter some of his behavior," HG said as she looked over her sheet.
"Yes, well I'm glad to see that you didn't carry through on that experiment, Dr. Skinner," Myka said referencing B.F. Skinner and his work on conditioning. "Why don't you try reading Jane Austen?" Myka suggested but that made HG think of "Emma" and whether she should try her hand at matchmaking based on some scientific variables.
"You know Myka, Skinner proved that behavior that is rewarded is repeated," HG said invading her space and practically whispering it in Myka's ear.
"And do you think there's any behavior that I want you to repeat?" Myka asked trying to maintain what little control she had in these exchanges.
"Oh I dare say your pleas of - 'don't stop, do it again Helena, please," indicate several behaviors you wanted repeated – over and over again just last night," HG said with an air of total confidence. Myka blushed and stammered as she uttered – 'yes, well,' - and left to do her inventory.
Karen considered her options and none of them seemed as flawless as she had hoped. Barging into the B&B had its definite drawbacks. And although she had their schedules down, it seemed they traveled in a group. The ideal plan would be to have Myka come to her alone. And she had just met the woman last night who could help her get that to happen. Gloria Brown was about to become her pawn.
Karen convinced Randall that she would need a place to talk to Helena and that she couldn't bring her back to the hotel. She hacked into the IRS database and found an office building in foreclosure that was empty. Randall struck her as the type that would talk under pressure so she decided to keep the location of it to herself.
She was sure that if she could break Myka, she would break whatever hold she had over Helena. She would want Helena to see just what kind of person Myka Bering really was. Then she would come to Karen willingly.
"Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea," Randall was saying and caught her attention. What a wuss this guy is, she thought. "Why baby?" she asked in a girly voice that made men melt.
"What am I doing? Trying to prove something? She doesn't care! What's to prove?" he sulked in the chair. God how he was getting on her nerves. But he was the ticket to Helena and so she would tolerate him. "Now listen to me, Randall," she said straddling his legs and letting her dress rise up. "You deserve to have this. Your mother has been really mean to you and it's about time she paid. Don't let her get off the hook just because we all know how this is going to turn out. People must pay for their actions, Randy," she cooed in his ear and once again brought him under her spell. Rubbing up against him she said; "We deserve to be happy together," and he had no idea that she wasn't talking about him.
"You're absolutely right!" he said as he picked her up and pushed her back on the bed.
How many more times she was going to have to sacrifice herself for Helena, she wondered. In her mind, this was something HG would have to appreciate ….. or else.
In Randall's mind, the plan was to be at dinner with his mother at seven o'clock. Karen would barge into the agents' home, insist that Agent Wells come with her so that they could talk. The gun meant no one would threaten Karen and she would finally get her chance to explain her irrational behavior. The agents would panic that one of their own was taken and the call would be made. And then he would sit and watch the expression on his mother's face as she struggled to tell him she had to leave. One of her agents needed her and she was going to have to leave …. for them. These thoughts played over and over in his head. It was like sitting in a car on the train tracks waiting for the crash. He knew it would end badly for him.
"If she chooses them, I want you to hurt one of them," he said to Karen who was surprised that he had the guts to utter the suggestion.
"Oh believe me, sweetie, that will not be a problem," Karen smiled wickedly. She smiled to think that not only would she get to hurt the person who had ruined things for her, she was being asked to do it now by the son of the woman who sent her away. "Not a problem at all," she said again almost laughing.
Thank you for waiting for this (short) update. It has proven a bit more challenging to write the psycho character without repeating what she's already done.
Thanks to Ariel Hedgehog and Xenite who know these characters so well and make suggestions to move this along. Thanks to PolarDawn who has graciously taken on the task of catching my grammatical errors. And to everyone who took the time to read along and esp those who posts your comments/thoughts/ ideas. I appreciate them all. Keep them coming when you can.