Page 42 of Radar (Iniquus Certified Cerberus Tactical K9 #2)

Elyssa

Sunday

Washington, D.C.

White made a call, and soon someone knocked on the door with a stretcher covered in pristine white sheets.

“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” Elyssa mumbled.

“No.” White smiled. “But it would be good if you lie down for a bit. And this is much more comfortable than the floor.”

White pointed to a place where the stretcher should be parked, then she walked to the door, effectively dismissing the first responder.

Xander got up from behind Elyssa and snapped his fingers to tell Radar to get off her lap.

Elyssa missed Radar’s weight as soon as it was gone.

White unbuckled the straps on the gurney and adjusted the headrest to a comfortable elevation, then stepped aside.

Elyssa expected Xander to hold out his hand, but instead, he did a kneeling squat and scooped her into his arms. It was the stupidest, most girly sensation in the world, but Elyssa really liked it.

She liked how it made her feel precious and cared for.

Maybe it harkened back to the time when loved ones cradled her in their arms when she was a baby.

Who knew? But it was true that it was wonderful.

And she was a little sad it was over when Xander gently laid her on the stretcher.

“Do you want Radar back on your legs?” Xander asked, handing her a drink, then moving a bag of chips within reach.

“I would, thank you.”

Xander lifted Radar into place, his hand on the tactical vest handle and another under his hind legs. Radar seemed used to it, lucky dog.

She should be mortified that that all happened in front of White when it seemed so intimate, felt so intimate. But Elyssa had zero energy to worry about such things right now.

Radar across her lap not only helped with Elyssa’s blood pressure, but it also made her feel less vulnerable.

Xander had moved over to the wall and sat on the floor with his legs crossed at the ankles.

White dimmed the lights, then she too came to sit on the floor next to Xander with her legs stretched out in front of her.

Elyssa could see them both without strain.

“If you felt up to it, Elyssa,” White’s voice matching the calm state of the room, “I thought maybe you could ramble.”

“Ramble.” Elyssa tried on the word.

“I bet you’ve had a lot of thoughts come up since we’ve forced a paradigm shift onto you. We’re grasping at straws as we figure out what’s happening, and I’m afraid that our time frame has moved up to before Tuesday.”

“Because Orest didn’t have time to wait for me to fly there on my own, he was going to kidnap me.” Elyssa paused. “But he bought my ticket. So that means he thought that if something were to happen, it would be later.”

“We agree with that,” White said. “So rambling, sometimes, in a stream of consciousness can allow your mind to offer up details that we wouldn’t know to ask you about. How about you just start talking, and let’s see where we go with that?”

“All right. I was thinking about other people’s names that I might have mentioned in front of Orest. And if maybe my conversations put people in danger.

Maybe Uncle Orest invited them to Singapore, like he did me.

I can imagine that people are leading their lives and can’t drop everything to go.

I had to turn down his invitation. Is he just out grocery shopping for scientists?

I may need what’s in his brain? I may need what’s in hers?

With Paca, perhaps Orest thought, he's interesting, I might as well put it in my cart while I’m getting some meat and cheese. ”

“I don’t think that’s far off from the reasoning,” White said.

Elyssa looked up. “I don’t know what Orest wants. What is the goal of all this madness?”

“A return of the USSR,” White said.

“Wait. What?” Elyssa’s brows pulled tightly together.

“A return of the USSR, The Family has a grievance with the western world because their entire way of life was upended.” White turned as Finley and Hiro came back into the room.

Elyssa hadn’t seen them leave.

Hiro and Finley moved forward joining their teammates on the floor. Elyssa thought she should probably feel bad that everyone was sitting on the carpet. But they were adults and could make their own choices, so she let that guilt go.

“Elyssa agreed to ramble for a bit,” White said.

They both nodded; it seemed like a tactic they liked.

“Here I go with my rambling. I get why Orest would want me. I even kind of get why they’d want the cheese scientist and Eddie.

What I don’t get is Paca. It turns out that because I did some consultation work with NASA on food, and Paca has been back and forth talking to them, we have someone in common.

Belinda Hopkins. And in the pattern of rambling, I was thinking about Belinda because Orest had been very interested in her work with enclosed groups. ”

“It’s so odd to want to go back to being the USSR,” Elyssa said.

“There’s a word for that, hiraeth. I think it’s Gaelic, maybe?

It means nostalgia and grief for a place you long for but can never return to.

Although it appears that Orest is doing his best to go back.

But I was talking about Belinda, and the last conversation I had with her really sounds like it might apply here.

She’s part of an advisory group for NASA – seems all I talk about lately is NASA. ”

“For the Mars expedition?” Hiro asked.

“For over a decade, Belinda has been working on the psychology of confined groups. Astronauts are one kind, but also oil rigs, remote science installations, and submarines, things like that.” Elyssa scratched the back of her neck.

“Sorry, I feel like the kid who was just told she was adopted, and while mommy and daddy love me very much, they didn’t make me.

” Elyssa grimaced. “No, that’s not a great comparison.

I don’t really have one. Rug pulled from under my feet.

” She reached a handout. “I’m a big girl.

I can readily admit that I am as gullible as anyone else.

Na?ve with a major case of wanting to be connected to a family.

Which is why, when this amazing, warm, funny, supportive uncle showed up—no, he’s an uncle-figure.

An uncle-figure who apparently kidnapped one of my best friends—I easily accepted him at face value.

” She frowned deeply. “You told Eddie’s fiancé, Ben, right? How’s he holding up?”

“We didn’t,” Finley said. “This information is in a chain of authority, and I’m not at liberty to act. None of us in this working group is able to talk with him.”

“Shit.” Elyssa blinked.

“You were saying about your social psychologist friend?” White reminded her.

Elyssa stared at White, trying to remember why she’d even brought this up.

“Yes, she’s been talking a lot lately about understanding the problem with how American society is having an addiction crisis.

I know everyone is a bit addicted to the algorithms on social media and what have you.

But she said that there’s a big chunk of the human race that has an addiction- prone brain.

And that recent peer-reviewed A++ kinds of research studies say that revenge is addictive. ”

“What’s this?” Finley asked.

“They did MRIs and found that revenge lights up the same space in the brain associated with other addictions, porn, drugs, gambling, and alcohol. Revenge, in these kinds of brains, releases dopamine to reinforce that revenge-seeking behavior. And Belinda said that in some people, the pleasure of the chemical reward means that the drive for the reward supersedes self-control and good judgment. There’s this powerful ‘happy brain’, if you will, created in the presence of retribution.

It can become compulsive and unhealthy. And, like any addiction, revenge addiction can both run in families and ruin families.

I think anyone with two eyes can see that in the wild.

White, you said that the Zorics have a grievance from their entire way of life getting upended.

I’m imagining that the Zorics and Kalinskys are Russian mafia-type families.

And if they have the genetic predisposition for revenge addictions—as mafia-type families often do—it sounds like they might be trying to OD. That’s kind of scary.”

“It’s an interesting theory,” White said.

“Yeah, well, Belinda says that grievance, the feeling that ‘I didn’t get mine’ or ‘someone took something away from me’ is a trigger that pushes people with the propensity for revenge addiction to drug-seek.

In this case, that drug is secreted when they can say ‘gotcha!’ It’s the cruelty that’s the point.

There’s an internal drive to see suffering, so the addict doesn’t undergo withdrawal symptoms. This is physiological in nature.

” Elyssa scratched behind Radar’s ears, then reached into her backpack to pull out an envelope of electrolytes.

Shaking the crystals to the bottom before tearing them open, she said.

“I mean, schadenfreude is a thing. And, for example, I’m thrilled that the snowmobile guy got some instant karma when Radar bit him.

But what I’m talking about here is another level. ”

“Dr. Belinda Hopkins,” White said. “You said peer reviewed, so this study is published?”

“Yes, and there was more to it, like, if the results of the revenge were short-lived, the person had to keep gathering personal grievances so that then they could have reasons to seek retribution, which, can I say, is a pretty messed-up way to live a life. And the vengeance can come by proxy like I got mine through Radar.”

“Someone can take revenge on your behalf, and you’ll still get the dopamine hit?” Xander asked.

“Like a whole family might all feel really good when one of their family members does something that makes people they don’t like suffer.

You don’t need to be mad at someone specific; a group works fine.

The addiction is obsessive-compulsive. The same as any addictive cycle: craving, tension, arousal, revenge (which is the drug hit), and around and around and around. ”

“Well, I can’t see anything wrong with that hypothesis as it applies to the Zorics,” White said. “That’s the pattern we’ve been documenting.”

“Maybe we just need to send the Zorics to a revenge rehab center with a twelve-step program to treat them for their addictions,” Hiro said.

“Not saying it wouldn’t be beneficial to them,” Finley said. “So as long as it’s in a MAX security prison system where they’re serving life.”

“Looking forward to the dopamine hit of the perp walk?” White asked.

“I am looking forward to the world being a safer place,” Finley said.

“If I wanted a dopamine hit, it would be much more extreme. The family would be wiped off the face of the planet. Kidding.” He pressed his lips out as if he was reconsidering what he’d just said.

“Okay, only partially kidding. They’ve done a lot of bad things to innocent people, and I would like that to stop. ”

“Like what?” Elyssa whispered, still trying to put together that jovial, life-loving Uncle Orest was Orest Kalinsky, a terrorist. “If they did something really terrible, I would have heard about them, right?”

“The kinds of things they do? It’s likely that they killed the power in a hospital and wiped out all of the medical records in Syria. It’s likely that they messed up the instruments on the flight and disappeared a plane,” Hiro said.

Elyssa paused her hand as the envelope emptied into her bottle. “Not possible.”

“Completely possible.” Xander reached for the packet and bottle, then finished pouring in the salts. After mixing the solution, he handed the bottle to Elyssa, pressing it into her hand as she stared at the wall.

She blinked, and she was back focusing on White. “I’m sorry, White, my ramblings didn’t get me anywhere nearer to understanding why you have a fistful of my photos. But I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.”

“While we appreciate how hard these revelations have been today,” White said, “there will be time to process it later. We are working on the Orest problem from various angles. The angle we need from you is to help us understand Orest’s movements during your overseas visit.

We’re arranging tickets to get you back over to London.

We’re asking you to please go to London with Xander and retrace your footsteps for him, so we might be able to figure out what Orest was up to.

“You mean.” Elyssa looked around the room, then shifted in his arms so her gaze landed on Xander. “She means now?”

“Now,” Xander said. “That’s why we were getting your passport.”

“I don’t have clothes.” Elyssa could hear the bewilderment in her voice.

“We’ll buy them.” Xander reached out and rubbed Radar’s butt. “We really don’t have any time to waste. And frankly, you don’t want to be in DC right now.”

Her breath hitched. “Because you think the city is the target?”

“No. You are,” Xander said softly. “Three Zoric family members were waiting for you when you got off the plane.”

“You’re a target,” White said, “and we need to know why. So, I’m suggesting London. Finley, though, could take you into protective custody, if you prefer.”

Rubbing the words on her tattoo, Elyssa drew her focus away from Xander, flicking it toward White. “I’ll go to London with Xander. It’s just I wasn’t ready for this.”

“Xander will be your point guy along with Radar,” White said.

“Radar, are you sure?” Hiro asked.

“Radar is trained for electronics alert and found the case in Newark, I’ll remind you. He’s also a medical alert dog,” Xander said. “He can wear the vest and go anywhere. He passed all his trials, he was only taken out of the program because he was too high-drive to make that his lifestyle.”

Hiro touched his phone on speaker.

“Sir?”

“I need a service dog vest for a German Shepherd. I need it now. Lights and sirens getting it here. I’d go down to Sandra’s office and borrow the one from her dog. Tell her it’s an emergency.”

“Sir.”

And that line ended.

“Xander and Radar will be with you every step of the way, Elyssa,” White said.

“But we need you to be as specific as possible, not just location, but where in that location did Orest stand or sit. Do you recognize anyone? Do you remember speaking to anyone? Every detail. It’s important. Do you have your phone?”

“No,” Elyssa whispered. “I lost it when the plane dumped over to the side.” She put her hands on her head. “Oh wow, you’re asking me to get right back onto a plane!”