Two Weeks' Notice

Chapter 12

The day dragged by, hour by stunningly normal hour. The sun shone nicely outside, the groundskeepers came and tended the grass, and around the city, as everywhere, people died. Most of those deaths were standard, peaceful, natural-causes events that were sad occasions, nothing horribly traumatic.

Bryn and Joe worked a service together that morning, from church to burial, and although she was alert for anything odd, she saw nothing.

At noon, Joe came in and gave her the usual shot, which burned. “We’ve got another week’s supply of Manny’s latest batch,” he said. “After that, we’re back on Pharmadene standard formula plus the inhibitors. We’ve got enough of that to last maybe three months before we’re out of the inhibitor.” She sat still until the worst of the shaking and pain rolled off, and saw he wasn’t finished. He held up a second syringe. “Tracker nanites. It’s going to take about twenty-four hours for them to form the chains and start broadcasting. After that, you’re golden. We can track you anywhere.”

She expected that to hurt, too, but it didn’t. The shot did, but she’d gotten so used to the sensation of a needle that it hardly even registered anymore. I have a solid career path as a junkie, she thought, without much humor. She couldn’t even get high; the nanites would burn it off within minutes.

Sucks to be me. But at least Patrick and Joe could keep an eye on her, virtually, once the trackers came online. There was probably even an app for it. Hell, she’d met a sniper in Iraq who’d had an app on his phone to calculate windage for distance shots. Amazing what they could do these days.

The afternoon was the gang funeral, which she’d assigned to Joe. Bryn stayed in the office, doing paperwork, then went downstairs to see if there was a backlog of work in the prep room. Their principal embalmer, William, was finishing the last stitches in the mouth of Mrs. Gilbert. She’d passed in her eighties, and the infusions had given her back a faint flush of color through the crepe-soft skin. She looked peaceful. “Hey,” he said, and clipped the thread neatly. If you didn’t know the thread was there, you’d never even suspect it. “Want to put the caps in for me? It’d be a big help.”

She nodded, gloved and gowned up, and slipped rounded plastic caps under Mrs. Gilbert’s eyelids. It was one of the few things that bothered her, this cosmetic touch that kept the face looking more like someone sleeping than deceased, as the eyes were the first thing to start drying and losing their firm shape. Bryn did it quickly, and tried not to think about it.

William added a few finishing touches, gently adjusting the skin on Mrs. Gilbert’s lips for best possible effect. “I hear you added another green funeral option.”

“It’s popular,” she said. “No embalming, simple winding-sheet, burial in a biodegradable coffin.”

“Ah, hell, no. I’m not rotting in some recycled cardboard crate; that’s just not dignified. Just stick me in a wood chipper and blow me over the flower beds. Does the same thing,” William said. “Okay, Mrs. Gilbert, you look fabulous. Time to put on your clothes.”

Together, they dressed the body, which was harder to do than it looked—living bodies cooperated, even unconscious, but the dead had no such consideration. Bryn was always struck, when it came to this, how careful William was, how gentle his touch. He treated the dead like his own—no hesitation, fear, or callousness. It was one of the things she liked best about him. He took the time to get it exactly right, straightening the woman’s dark blue dress until it fell just so around her body.

“Did you have time to finish the reconstruction on the Lindells? The husband and wife?” Bryn asked, as he settled the sheet back over Mrs. Gilbert.

“Yeah. It’s not going to look as good as I’d like, but there’s only so much you can do when the bone structure’s broken like that. You can take a look if you want—they’re in the cooler. Hey, I heard there was some kind of robbery last night. Broken window, right? Was anything taken?”

“They never got inside,” Bryn said. “The cops were here in minutes. Nothing to worry about.”

“Good. I hate those assholes who come in to steal body parts and shit. Drunken jerks. My buddy took classes at the body farm on situational decomposition, and he said that kind of thing happened all the time out there. Had to have guards patrolling. Imagine that, armed guys to look after fields full of dead people. What’s the world coming to, eh?” He rolled Mrs. Gilbert back toward the large walk-in refrigerator. “Would you get the door?”

“Sure.” She held it back for him, then went inside with him and inspected the reconstruction work on the Lindells. It was solid work, but there was no way it could look completely natural; still, she thought the kids would appreciate the opportunity to see their parents one more time. “This looks good, William. Thanks for the extra effort.”

“I think that’s the last for today,” he said. “The service for the Lindells is tomorrow afternoon. Mrs. Gilbert is in the morning. I’ve got nothing much until they start bringing in today’s customers—I heard there’s four coming, so OT in the near future. Mind if I take an early day?”

“Not at all,” Bryn said. He smiled sunnily. “Got plans?”

“Movies,” he said. “And pizza with my buds. Maybe some beers, try to meet a girl. The usual. You know.”

She realized that she really, really didn’t. Normal life had passed her by, at light speed; she’d cashiered out of the military and hadn’t had time to form casual friendships before she’d taken the job at Fairview…and then her life had ended. Well, maybe not ended, but certainly morphed into something that was not normal even if it was sometimes amazing. When had she last had a simple, glorious evening of movies, pizza, and beer with friends? Or even had one of those by herself?

William stripped off his lab gear and grabbed his motorcycle helmet—despite the statistics, he insisted on playing the odds—and was gone before she finished clipping all the paperwork together for the morning. She carried the packet upstairs and dropped it off with Lucy, then sat down at her desk to check her e-mail.

Her phone rang, and she picked it up, only half-focused on it. “Davis Funeral Home, Bryn Davis speaking.”

“Are you at your computer?” It was a female voice—brisk, unfamiliar, and cheerful.

“Excuse me?”

“Are you at your computer right now?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“Just bear with me. I want you to open your e-mail.”

She just had. There were six new messages—two from Lucy about various office things; one from Gertrude Kleiman whose header was, surprisingly, I quit (and hallelujah about that one); two spam offers; and…one e-mail with no sender name.

“You see the anonymous one with the subject line of Play me?”

“Yes,” Bryn said. She pulled out her cell phone and began texting on it to McCallister. Trace office phone call right now.

“I sincerely urge you to click that file, Bryn.”

She switched her cell to silent mode and put it on the desk before her, then clicked the file attached to the e-mail. She expected—braced herself for it—to see another of those creepy execution videos, but this was very different. It was taken with night vision, in the dark, and it was a close-up on…

On a child’s face. A little boy with thick blond hair and wide, scared eyes. A boy with a gag over his mouth.

The camera pulled back, showing Bryn that he was tied hand and foot, and sitting on a wooden box, in the dark.

“Oh God,” she said, stunned, and touched her fingers to her lips. “What the hell—Who are you?”

“Never mind me. That,” the voice said, “is someone you know—wait, the light should be coming on in just a second. You’ll probably recognize him a little more clearly.…”

She was right. There was a flare of light, the camera switched into full-color mode, and now the little boy looked horribly familiar.

Bryn’s chest ached as if she couldn’t get a breath. “Jeff,” she said. “Jeff Fideli. Joe and Kylie’s son.”

“A-plus, Bryn. You’re doing great. Now, this is what I need from you. You’re going to take that cell phone you just put on the desk, open it up, and take out the SIM card. I’m not cruel—you don’t have to destroy it and lose all your phone numbers—just put it in your office drawer. Then I want you to take your purse and walk straight for the exit. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t stop for anything. Go straight out the door, get in your car, and meet me at Coffee Jack’s. You know where that is, don’t you? You’re a regular there.”

“Yes, I know where it is,” she said. She was still staring at the screen, feeling numbed and frozen with terror. “Let him go—he’s just a kid!”

“We’ll discuss those options once you come to the shop,” the woman said. “But if you deviate from these instructions, or if you don’t leave in the next fifteen seconds, this particular kid is deader than Dixie. Copy that?”

“Copy,” Bryn said, automatically slipping into the language of her military life. Fifteen seconds. She didn’t have time to try to write a note, or give a signal, or do anything except leave all this on her screen…

Except that suddenly, her computer screen exploded into static, and then turned blue. The error box flashed, and the whole machine powered down.

“Sorry about the virus. Hope you didn’t have anything too valuable on that hard drive,” the voice said. “You’ve now got about seven seconds. Better move.”

There was no time for a plan. She grabbed her purse and ran for the office door, then forced herself to slow to a walk down the hall. She passed Lucy’s desk but didn’t glance at her, didn’t deviate at all as she went outside into the sunlight, through the gardens, out to the parking lot. Her fingers were shaking so badly it was hard to find the remote button to unlock her car, but she made it inside, and didn’t hesitate there, either.

I have to think, she told herself as she drove. I have to get word to Patrick and Joe. Somehow, she knew whoever had been talking to her would be watching her; she would have some way to see if Bryn tried to do anything counter to the instructions.

She simply couldn’t take the risk of doing anything that might put Jeff in more danger, and she didn’t have anything to tell them, except that Jeff had been abducted—which they’d know soon, if they didn’t already. With time, they might be able to trace the e-mail back, or analyze the video file, if it hadn’t taken the e-mail server down along with her hard drive, but if she screwed up now, it wouldn’t matter. Jeff was a hostage for her good behavior.

She had to play it out. The problem was, her tracker nanites weren’t fully attached yet; they wouldn’t be active for hours.

And she’d just gone right off the reservation.

Bryn checked her rearview mirror in the forlorn hope that somehow, impossibly, she might have a tail, that Joe might have stuck with her at the office instead of doing his job at the funeral…or that Patrick might have somehow been close enough in the area to follow.

But the road was empty of traffic, and she kept hearing that cheerful, confident woman say, Deader than Dixie. Copy that?

There wasn’t any choice at all but to keep going.

She parked and lunged out of the car without bothering to lock it up, and felt a warm burst of relief when she saw that there was—as there often was—a San Diego police cruiser parked in Coffee Jack’s lot, and two uniformed officers standing in line at the counter. This might work out. This was her place, not the kidnapper’s; she knew the people well. Dave the Doorman, for instance—he’d see her and know instantly that something was off. Maybe she could pass him a message as he held the door for her. Maybe…

But she wasn’t that lucky. Dave wasn’t there. But then, she rarely came at this time of day. Maybe Dave had someplace else he liked to haunt, a restaurant where he greeted another set of clientele by name and got his meals comped, as so often his coffee came free here for his good cheer.

There were six customers seated around tables in the interior of the shop and two employees behind the counter. She didn’t recognize either of them, but the shift would have changed from her usual morning crew. The warm smell wrapped around her like a fog—coffee, chocolate, steamed milk, cinnamon. Safety. Home. Familiar surroundings.

It shouldn’t have felt so full of menace, so much like being trapped in a nightmare. She couldn’t stop thinking about little Jeff, about the fragile courage on his small face. Bryn stared at the two police officers, willing them to turn and look at her, to see that something was wrong and approach her.…

A hand fell on her shoulder. “Bryn?”

It was Carl, her Pharmadene problem child, suddenly here and in the flesh. She blinked, and turned to face him. “What—what are you—” It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter at all. “I can’t talk to you right now.” She had no patience with coddling him right now. He was an obstruction, not an opportunity. It’d take too long to try to make him understand enough to use him as a messenger.

Carl looked pale, shocky, hunched as if he’d been punched in the guts. “Sit down for a second,” he said. Bryn ignored him and looked around for the woman she was supposed to meet. No one presented herself as a possibility.

Carl grabbed her arm, hard enough to bruise, and forced her to pay attention. “Bryn! Sit down!”

She bent her knees and sank into the chair, staring now at him. “What is this?”

He wet his lips. He looked terrible—really terrible. Gray, as if he was at least two doses down on Returné. “It’s not me,” he said. “I’m not doing this. I’m a pawn, just like, a pawn.…No, sit down! I don’t have a choice.” He spoke in a terrified hiss, and held her wrist when she tried to get up. “Sit!”

She slowly lowered herself back to the chair. “You’re in this with her.”

“No,” he said. He didn’t let go of her. His eyes were wild. “Just wait. Wait.”

Suddenly, she knew what was happening. Carl was under orders.

Protocol orders. He didn’t have a choice in what he was doing.

She didn’t know what he was waiting for until the two cops, chatting and joking with the barista, claimed their coffees and headed out the door. Bryn tried to catch their eyes, and tensed to grab one, but Carl’s desperation warned her that she’d better not try it.

Once the cruiser had pulled away into traffic, he let her go. “Go get a drink,” he said. “Go on. Get in line.”

“I don’t want any goddamn coffee,” she hissed back. “Where’s Jeff? Where are they holding him?”

He stared back at her and didn’t speak, just pointed at the counter. She grabbed her purse and walked to the counter. The register worker took her order and five dollars, and she moved to the other end, where the barista worked the machine and, in about a minute, put a cup up for her to take.

“You’re Bryn, right?” he asked. “Take it.”

The cup was empty.

She felt something blunt jammed low against her back, somewhere in the vicinity of her liver. “Drop the purse,” a man’s voice said—not Carl’s this time. “We’re going to walk very quietly toward the bathroom hallway.”

Bryn stared at the barista, hoping desperately that he’d do something…but he stared back at her without any expression at all. She glanced over at the man working the register, the other new employee. Same blank indifference.

They knew. More than knew. They were part of the team.

“Do you want me to start shooting some of these nice people?” the voice whispered in her ear. “Move it. Now.”

She did, but only to put a little distance between herself and the man herding her. She passed a woman seated next to the display of coffeemakers, beans, and grinders. She was sipping and reading a folded newspaper, which she put down as Bryn made eye contact. Help, Bryn mouthed.

The woman raised her eyebrows, looked past her at her captor, and then turned casually toward the center of the room. “Carl. Get up and lock the door and flip the sign. Do it now.”

No one in the coffee shop even moved other than Carl, who looked deathly pale now and very shaky. He did as directed. One of the other customers began pulling the shades down.

It wasn’t just Carl. It wasn’t just the baristas who were in on this.

It was all of them. The whole shop. God.

Her captor shoved her down into the chair opposite the woman. She was just…there. A soft, rounded face, dark hair, unexceptional but presentable. Even her clothing was nondescript. “So. You’re Bryn Davis,” she said. She reached down next to her and pulled a cell phone out of her purse, which she laid in the center of the table. “Let’s be clear. I know you can cause me trouble, and that’s why we’ve gone to these lengths. But you won’t cause any trouble, and this is why.” She took the phone and activated it, scrolled, and then faced it toward Bryn.

The same video setting as before—Jeff, sitting bound hand and foot on a box. Only now, his gag had been removed, and he was blinking into the camera’s spotlight. His jaw was set in an expression that Bryn recognized as being straight from his dad. Stubborn. “My dad’s going to kill you,” he said to the videographer, in a remarkably matter-of-fact tone. “But my mom’s going to kill you way more.”

The video shut off, but that was all Bryn really needed to see. “Fuck you,” Bryn said softly. “Fuck you for using kids.”

“Not just kids. Oh, don’t look at me like that, sweetie. I’ll use anybody I need to use to finish the mission. Now. We’re going to go into the bathroom, and I’m going to strip you naked and do the kind of search that requires rubber gloves inside of body cavities. Then you’re going to put on the clothes I brought.”

She gritted her teeth until she saw stars. “What happened to these people? The regulars in here?”

“They’re safely sleeping it off in the storage room.” The woman’s eyes weren’t any remarkable color, just a plain dull brown, but the expression in them was extraordinary. “Why, do you really care about them more than this precious little boy? That’s just sad, and if you insist on asking me stupid questions, we’re going to have a problem that gets little Jeffy hurt.”

“No,” Bryn said tightly. “No problem.”

She cast a filthy look at Carl as she got up, and he flinched. “It’s not my fault,” he blurted. “I didn’t have a choice.”

She did know; it just didn’t make it any better. “You know they’re not going to let either of us go now,” she said. “You know that.”

He nodded, but she could tell he didn’t actually believe it. He thought there would be a chance for escape, or mercy; he thought that he could clever his way out of it.

Bryn already knew. She’d seen it in the other woman’s dark, chilling eyes.

Twenty-four hours until the nanites begin to broadcast our position.

That didn’t matter. She needed to make sure Jeff was released unharmed. That was her primary, her only concern right now. Everything else—the pain that was sure to come, the eventual end of her life—all that had to be secondary.

She wouldn’t let this happen.

Bryn glanced into the tote bag of clothes that the woman thrust into her hands. “Not my color,” she said. “But I’ll make do.”

The woman’s smile wasn’t much warmer than her eyes. “Move it.”

The strip search was humiliating and efficient. Bryn’s clothes were bundled into a trash bag, and everything else—earrings, watch, necklace—went as well. The cavity search was unpleasant in every way possible, except that it was fast. It took a total of one minute to reduce Bryn to…nothing. No identity, nothing to call her own. Just a walking corpse.

Well, she thought, that’s not new, at least. Odd how that could be comforting at a time like this.

After that, it was simple. She put on the plain pants and shirt, and her captor walked her out the back door to a brown SUV waiting there—not a flashy bulletproof model like the one Manny Glickman owned, but the kind thousands of soccer moms drove every day. There was even a baby-friendly sun screen on the rear window with SpongeBob featured on it.

Bryn took a seat on the passenger side, and belted in when ordered. Her captor wasn’t alone; two other fake customers from the coffee shop got in the back. As the SUV pulled away, another took its place in the alley, and Bryn looked back to see Carl being loaded in with his own escorts.

“Eyes front,” said the woman. “Hands on your lap. Don’t bother trying the door; the child lock is enabled, so you can’t open it yourself. Don’t want you throwing yourself out at high speed from the vehicle.”

Too bad. Bryn had been considering the possibilities. “What do I call you? Bitch?”

“Well, it has a ring to it, but you can call me Jane.”

“Jane Doe.”

“Something like that.” That seemed to entertain Jane a little, from the smile on her face. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your questions answered when it’s time.”

Bryn leaned forward, testing the limits of their patience, as the SUV accelerated for the freeway entrance.

Something metallic flashed past her eyes, and as she jerked instinctively back, she felt the cold bite of something snugging tight against the fragile skin of her neck.

Jane sighed. “Oh, Bryn, we discussed this. My friend John Smith in the back has this little thing called a commando saw. Do you know what it is? Diamond-coated wire, can saw through wood, metal, bone, spinal cords…really very easy to use. If you move again, he’s going to start practicing his technique. Maybe he’ll only saw through to your backbone and then let you heal. Or maybe he’ll just take your fucking head off. I really don’t know. How do you feel, John? Particularly into beheading?”

John didn’t answer. He wasn’t paid to banter, apparently, just to play lumberjack. Bryn stayed very, very still, hyperconscious of the cool, rough texture of the wire around her throat. “Don’t hit too many bumps,” she said. “Or your detailer will be really unhappy.”

“Not my car, not my problem,” Jane said. “Now shut up or I text my friend and little Jeffy gets a few bones broken for your attitude.”

Bitch, Bryn thought, but she couldn’t do anything, anything at all, except sit quietly, and breathe.