Before she could respond, Pollux walked past her and out the door, a suitcase in each hand.  Two cars were waiting outside… nondescript four-door sedans, dark blue with tinted windows.  The visitor sat in the back seat of one of the cars, along with Pollux.  She and Castor sat in the front of the other. 

“So….”, she cooed sweetly as she snuggled up to him, feeling his muscles stiffen defensively at her touch.  He stared straight ahead, his jaw locked.  “Where are we going now?”.

At first he said nothing… the silence between them rang in her ears, almost deafening.  He cleared his throat and spoke up quietly.  “I don’t know if I want you involved… there could be some complications.”.  He said the last word with a breathy, almost esoteric inflection, and the thought of what he might mean alarmed and intrigued her all the same.

“But, I don’t want to leave you…”, Heather responded.  She had to stay with him at all times, even if it meant she would not leave the island alive.  The numb part of her brain, the one that got her in this mess, acknowledged this a little too eagerly for her taste.      

 Castor looked in the rearview mirror, then started the car.  Turning to her, he was the epitome of cool… his face giving in to the slightest smile, a murky tempest of charismatic pride.  “You’re hooked on me, babe.  While I would normally find that highly appealing, it’s not so great in this situation.”.  For a moment, she thought he would force her to stay behind, but he didn’t.  Instead, he took her hand and pulled her to him gently, kissing her softly on the lips.  “If you want to come with me, then you have to play by my rules.  Do exactly as I say.  If something were to happen to you…”, he whispered, then looked away, rubbing his face with his hand, then grasped the steering wheel and howled maniacally.  “Damn, I love my life.  Love it!  Love… it!!”, he screeched, banging on the horn as they pulled out of the driveway. 

Throughout the entire trip, the sedans didn’t pass a single vehicle, which was not surprising… it must have been around 1 in the morning, and there weren’t many people on this side of the island anyway.  Castor was in high spirits, as if every mile crossed fed him with life and energy.  He tapped rhythmically on the steering wheel to a song in his head while Heather looked outside, and as they turned a corner, she saw a large gray building in the distance surrounded by an electric fence.  Street lights shone down on the parking lot in front, which was empty except for a couple of small delivery trucks.  It appeared to be an old factory – the company sign was faded and unreadable, but soft yellow light shined through the dirty windows.  As they passed through the front gate, Heather noticed the guards… there were at least a dozen goons patrolling the grounds with small machine guns in hand.

“Welcome to my little piece of Wonderland.”, he said to her as she stepped out of the car, squeezing her hand playfully.  By this time, Pollux and the other man were approaching the front door… the noise was overwhelming as they walked inside and found themselves in a huge production room, with towering machines enclosed in tin sheeting lined along the walls.  Each one was shooting out neat stacks of VCR tapes, six at a time, shrink-wrapped in plastic and ready to be boxed by the workers at the end of each assembly line.  The boxes were placed in a wood crate and nailed shut by still more workers.  There must have been at least fifty people toiling like frantic little ants, and none of them paid attention to the foursome as they walked by. 

“I bet you’re wondering what this is all about… VCR tapes.”, Pollux yelled in her ear, above the roar of the machines.  Heather nodded her head.  She didn’t believe for a second that Castor and his gang would be engrossed in such bourgeois activity unless it concealed something deeper.  He shouted something to Castor, and he looked at Heather and shook his head.  Pollux shrugged his shoulders and walked away with the gray-haired gentleman, towards a far corner of the factory, while she and Castor went upstairs to a small office.

Shutting the door behind them, he stood beside her and stared out the window to the activity below.  From this vantage point, she could see even more than at ground level… she noticed a large tin pipe of some sort hooked to the top of each machine with a chimney-like contraption.  Was the pipe for ventilation?  She couldn’t tell.  As she studied its structure, she felt warm hands begin to rub her shoulders tenderly, and that familiar breath on her ear. 

        “Let’s not forget one thing, Sinclaire…”, he whispered.  For a brief moment, he squeezed her shoulders and neck tightly, causing her to squeak in surprise.  This admission of pain seemed to make him relax again, but it disturbed her all the same.  “Your pretty words, your beautiful ass, and everything else about you that makes me hard as hell doesn’t make up for the fact that you’re still my enemy… at least, in theory.”.  She was melting now, barely comprehending what he was saying.  “You have control over me.  You could never love me as much as I love you, because you play for the other team… do you know how deeply that hurts me?”.  He was squeezing again, but this time it was lust and possession that drove him. 

“Castor…”, she whispered, trying not to let on that he was getting a bit rough.  “Being with you has made me see things in a different way.  I’ve never had a man who cared about me the way you do.”.  In a way, she was being truthful.  His means of expressing his devotion were complex and gnarled, like the layers of an onion.  There was nothing normal or sane about it.  “Please… be honest.  Do you really love me?”.  This question caused him to whip her around to face him.  He bore down on her with his lips, pinning her arms against her sides, then backed away. 

“I wanna show you something… I thought about showing you earlier, but now is the best time.”.  He reached into his wallet, pulling out two pictures – snapshots worn around the edges from a hell of a lot of handling and abuse.  He looked them over carefully before handing them to Heather.  They were pictures of her – she guessed they were taken several months ago, based on the clothing she wore.  She was at a barbecue… they were candid photos, and realizing they were taken without her knowledge creeped her out.  Castor sensed her disturbance, and tentatively reached out to stroke her arm lovingly.  “I’ve known about you for a long time now… and I knew you’d be sent to help bust me.  That’s why I allowed myself to be sniffed out.”.  He snorted and giggled, then added, “What a ****ed-up way to meet women!”.

Heather turned to face him, handing back the photos.  “How long have you been trailing me?”.

“For about six months now… do you remember Dodson?”.  The flash of recognition on her face said it all.  One of her more interesting cases... he was a small-time assassin and she profiled him after his capture.  “You do remember him!  He told me all about you… I suppose we should invite him to the wedding, since he made it all happen.”.  With another giggle, he put the pictures back in his wallet, then clutched her hands in his.  She couldn’t bear to look at him, but he was unrelenting in his affections, stroking her cheek and covering her face with light kisses until she broke down.  “It’s almost ****ing sick how much I need you.”, he said to her softly.  “Join me.  If you stay with me, I’ll give you whatever you want.  Please let me love you.  Even if you don’t love me, I could live with that, as long as you never leave my side.”.  His lips found the hollow of her neck and nibbled it gently, and she started to feel dizzy… her hands instinctively ran through his hair as she tilted her head back.

“You trust me?”, she asked him.

“Implicitly.  I know you need me… even though you don’t realize it yet.”.   

“You’re persuading me…”, she answered playfully, mustering every crumb of self-control she had left, “and you’ve got me curious as well.”

“Curious?”

She nodded her head towards a window.  “Did you set all of this up yourself?”.

Castor looked worried at first, then relaxed when she caressed his chin and rested her head on his shoulder.  “Yeah.”.  She knew he was lying.

“What’s that pipe that runs across the ceiling and hooks into all the machines?  Is it for ventilation?”.

“You notice details… I like that.  Beauty and brains.”, he said to her and he opened the office door and led her downstairs.  As she was walking behind him, inspecting the machines, she suddenly remembered the tape recorder she hid in her purse, and turned it on discreetly.  Surely she would find out something interesting in a place like this. 

On the other side of the room was an unassuming set of doors.  Deftly unlocking them, he pushed them open to reveal a long rectangular cubby hole.  The pipe led down to this room from the ceiling and into an enormous barrel attached to various wires and electronic equipment that she didn’t recognize.  A second pipe, linked to the left side of the machine, went out of the room to parts unknown.  Shutting the door behind them, he lifted the lid on the barrel, peered inside then closed it again.  “This”, he said, tapping on the equipment, “is a deionizer.”, he said as he looked back at her.

“Why do you need a deionizer to make VCR tapes?”

He looked back down at the machine, gliding his long fingers over the buttons.  “It’s for what we put in the tapes… chemical impurities from liquid metal, liquid plastic… they all have to be sorted out and removed before they’re crystallized.”

“Sorry, I guess I don’t understand.”

Castor looked back at her again, smiling sheepishly.  “To be perfectly blunt, I don’t either.  But it makes us a hell of a lot of money, and that’s all I care about.  Aside from you, of course.  My brother is the technical genius in the family, really.  I’m the one who keeps him in line.”.

A soft knock on the door was followed by Pollux and the stranger, who by this time looked like he needed a cognac and a long nap.  “Little brother!  I was just bragging on you… please, enlighten us, just what the **** does this thing do again?”, Castor asked, moving closer to Heather and wrapping his arms around her.  This public display of affection made her a little uncomfortable somehow, but she didn’t let on.

Pollux shuffled his feet a little, looking down at the ground and grinning with pride.  “That tube up there?”, he said, indicating the pipe coming from the west wall.  “It carries different things – scrap metal and plastic, mostly.  Some glass, some water.  It’s all melted down and pushed through the tube into the deionizer.  Then it’s purified and crystallized… it looks exactly like diamonds.”.

“Isn’t it amazing?”, the stranger said, his eyes glinting with excitement for the first time since she’d met him.  “They really do look just like the real thing!  Here, let me show you!”.  He leaves the room and comes back a couple of minutes later with a handful of stones.  “See?  This machine is amazing.  Nobody can tell the difference.”.  He held them up to her – she had to admit, there was nothing cheesy about the rocks.  They were unfinished and rather large, but otherwise looked very real. 

“If you don’t purify the materials, they set off metal detectors.  We found that out the hard way.”, Pollux said with a smirk, fiddling with his sleeves.  “The last guy we sent to deliver them couldn’t get them through Customs.”.  He turned to face Heather, not quite looking her in the eye.  “Ever been stopped at Customs in South America?”.  He giggled ferociously. 

“The ribbons in the tapes are magnetic, and they help hide them as well.”, the stranger continued, tucking the rocks in his pocket.  “These gentlemen have saved me a world of trouble – this is a stroke of genius.  All of my factory’s waste is being sold at a huge profit – and any stupid son of a bitch who would buy smuggled diamonds gets what’s coming to him anyway.”.

Her head was reeling with all the details and the amazing amount of information she had managed to obtain.  And it was easy, almost too easy.  Instead of pride and confidence, she felt a sudden surge of terror.  Castor had manipulated a scenario to bring them together… who is to say he wasn’t doing it now as well?  But what could she do?  He led her everywhere, never allowed her out of his sight, yet it was becoming more obvious that she was the one in control.

As they were leaving the factory, Castor took her by the hand and squeezed it again, kissing her shoulder tenderly.  It was disturbing how comfortable she was becoming with his touch, how she no longer drew away or felt sick over it, how she actually enjoyed it.  “Now, see?  That wasn’t dangerous.”, she said to him as they got in the car. 

“That comes later.  We’re flying that shipment out to Dublin.  The goons who are buying this **** are not exactly people-friendly.”, he answered, then fell silent.  He stared ahead, fidgeting with his cufflinks.  “You’re certain you want to come with me?”.

It puzzled Heather that he would even consider allowing her to leave his side.  If she stayed behind, she would be in the company of other guys instead… and it was pretty much guaranteed they wouldn’t be as kind to her as he was.  Would she have a chance – or means – to escape?  Her mind clicked and whirled her options… Dublin would put her in closer proximity to American contacts, which would increase her odds of getting out of there safely.  Then there was the dogged, stubborn need to follow Castor through this whole thing… she really, honestly didn’t believe he was truly dangerous.  He was a criminal, certainly, but not a threat.  So far, she had seen nothing more than his ability to delegate and micromanage… he was a middle-management pawn of the underworld, and a rather naïve one at that.  How long had he been doing this sort of work?

“I love being with you… and I’ve always wanted to see Ireland.”, she told him.  “Please?  I’ll be safe as long as I’m with you.”.

He seemed to be nearly overtaken with pride, all the way to the airport… he couldn’t stop talking about his exploits and big plans for the future.  A man obsessed, a man in love… mostly with himself and with money, but slowly bringing Heather into the nucleus as well.  “I am a man… ain’t nothin’ but a man… without you….”, he sang at the top of his lungs, off-key but brimming with charm, grasping her hand as he turned the corner onto the runway.   The four of them – including Pollux and the stranger - were met by others… more guys dressed in the same blue jumpsuits as before.

“You’re probably tired.”, he said to Heather before walking into the terminal.  “Feel free to wait for me on the plane – I have a little surprise waiting for you there.”.  At this point, she was open to just about anything from him… when she boarded the plane, she found a bottle of chilled champagne and glasses.  Wrapped around the neck of the bottle was something sparkly and shiny… it was a bracelet.  In the dim light of the plane, it glowed and flashed against her wrist, the white gold nestled around emeralds and rubies.  She could be certain they were real – Castor Troy might help make fake jewels, but he sure as hell wouldn’t buy them.  Caught up in admiring his gift to her, she didn’t hear the pilot walk in behind her.

“Fasten your seatbelt… it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”.

She jumped a little in surprise, then turned around to face him – the same guy that flew them here.  At least, she was reasonably certain it was him… he was about the same size, from what she remembered, and wearing the same black ski mask.

“Oh… sorry, you scared me.  I didn’t hear you come in.”.

“Yeah.  Love does that to you, doesn’t it?  It makes you blind, and deaf too.”

His voice was strangely familiar… raspy, a little sarcastic.  She couldn’t quite place it.

“Where’s Castor?”, she asked, timidly.

“Heather…”, he answered, shaking his head in disgust.  “he’s being taken care of.  We don’t have much time.  I need your help in bringing him down.”.  He took off his mask and rubbed his face, and her heart nearly fell out of her chest.  She had never formally met him, but had seen him around headquarters plenty of times.  Too stunned to speak at first, she perched on the edge of the seat.  He smiled widely at her shocked face.