Working Stiff

Chapter 13

She woke up to someone screaming, and for a moment she was back in the white room, hearing that awful birth scream through the glass….

... And then she realized that she was hearing it full-strength, somewhere a few feet away.

Bryn blinked and rolled over. The agony in her head was like spikes of steel driven deep, and she thought, That is bone digging into my brain. No, it couldn’t be. The back of her skull felt soft, but not shattered.

Busy little nanites. She knew it had been smashed.

She was lying on a blood-smeared kitchen floor, all alone, and there was a woman in a fluffy pink bathrobe standing in the doorway, shrieking like a banshee.

Get up, she told herself. You have to get up.

She managed to drag herself to her knees, then up to her feet. The woman stopped screaming and ran. Next stop, 911. Time was running out.

Annie. Mercer had taken Freddy with him; he must have taken Annie as well. God, Annie killed me. Or had tried, anyway. Not her fault; she’d been controlled. She wouldn’t have done it on her own, not even out of fear.

Bryn had to cling to that. There was very little left to cling to.

Oh, God, McCallister. He was walking into a trap, and—on her insistence—probably taking Joe Fideli with him. She had to stop it. Stop him.

She had to find Annie.

Bryn gasped and lurched for the living room, past the sofa and the toys. She tripped, hit the door, and bounced off. Locked. Nice that Mercer had been so considerate of the family that he locked up as he left—only he hadn’t bothered to move the dead woman on the kitchen floor. The woman in the bathrobe was on the phone, shrieking out the address.

Have to get out of here.

Bryn twisted the dead bolt and made it outside, staggered down the steps, and broke into an off-balance run once she hit the sidewalk. The neighborhood was still quiet, but lights were coming on all over now, responding to the screams.

She had to get out of here, fast. At the very least, she’d be arrested for breaking and entering; even if no charges were filed, she’d be held long enough that McCallister …

She had to run faster. Somehow, she had to try.

It was ironic that the sun was rising, and it was a beautiful morning; birds were singing in lyrical melodies from the treetops. Morning glories bloomed on the fences. She left fat drops of blood behind her on the sidewalk, but fewer and fewer with each step as the injury’s last bleeder sealed itself. Her head ached unbearably, but she ignored that, concentrating on the pounding rhythm of her feet.

How long had she been lying there? How much time had it taken for the nanites to repair her broken skull?

Two blocks up was the convenience store. She dug for the keys and threw herself into the van, fired up the engine and sped away, not caring about traffic cameras or anything else. If she led a parade of cops to the Civic Theatre, fine. The more, the better.

The clock on the dashboard said she was already too late to get to McCallister to warn him, hours too late, but she had to try.

She had Joe’s burner phone with her, and used it to dial McCallister’s number. Pick up, pick up….

She got an answer. “Patrick! Patrick, listen—”

“It’s Joe,” said the voice on the other end. “Bryn?”

“If you’re at the theater, get the hell out of there!” she yelled. “Mercer sold us out, understand? Harte knows! She knows you’re coming; get out!”

“Too late for that; we’re in—” His voice was covered by gunfire, shockingly close. “Got to get Harte and shut this down or all this is for nothing. Stay away, Bryn. Just stay away.”

“No! I’m coming!” She hung up and tossed the phone, and drove faster.

There was an eerie sense of quiet at the Civic Theatre, but the entrance to the parking area was manned by men and women in suits and sunglasses, scanning the area with merciless intensity. Bryn took a right turn and drove by, knowing they were tracking the van as it came close to the perimeter. I’ll never get inside. Not against Pharmadene robots. They were definitely company people; she could see that at a glance. Not all of them were trained security, but they were on alert, and she had no doubt that every single one of them had orders to hold the perimeter against any and all comers. They’d do it. For one thing, they were all revived. Hard to kill.

Like her.

What happened to the other security? The Secret Service should have been here; there should have been other government bodies in place. It was entirely possible that Pharmadene had already overwhelmed the Secret Service, then. And the FBI. And anyone else who posed a threat.

You’d never know guns were being fired inside the building; it looked cool and calm. No emergencies reported at all, or there would have been some sign of police, of ambulances. Something.

Bryn moved on, looking for some way onto the grounds. Her panic was mounting; out here, she was useless, and she couldn’t help them. If Harte got to McCallister and turned him … she could order McCallister to do anything. And he was capable; Bryn knew that. Capable of anything. If someone as essentially peaceful and harmless as Annie could be turned into her sister’s killer, just like that, McCallister would be a deadly weapon. No wonder Harte had wanted him so badly.

And Joe. He was already separated from his family, but he was risking something much, much worse, something that would take him away forever, dig a gulf that even love couldn’t breach. If he was revived. Harte might not even bother.

Bryn had to get in. If nothing else, she could kill Harte. She wanted to. She needed to, after that white room, after seeing the horror of that hallway at Pharmadene.

Harte had to be stopped, and like the Pharmadene staff, Bryn would be very, very hard to kill.

I could call the cops, report shots fired. If she did that, though, there was a very good chance that she’d be signing the death warrants of anyone who responded. They could be killed, revived, made to report that nothing was wrong.

But I don’t know how to do this alone, she thought in utter despair. I’m not a spy. I’m not some special ops expert, like McCallister. I’m just…

Just a funeral director. What did funeral directors have that would be of any use at all …

Oh, God.

It was crazy, it was insane … and it just might work.

Bryn turned the van at the next light and headed at high speed out to Fairview Mortuary.

She tried to call Fideli again, but got nothing except a bland computer voice asking her to leave a message. Either the phone was dead, they were too busy to talk, or McCallister and Fideli had been taken already.

Time was not just running out; it was gone. She had no options left. Nothing except this one last, desperate try.

The only car already in the Fairview Mortuary lot belonged to Riley Block. That was fine; Bryn planned to avoid her. This wouldn’t take long.

She went in, raced to her locker, and took out the extra set of clothes she kept there—a nice business suit, discreet and dark. Sensible but attractive shoes. She changed fast, rinsed the blood out of her hair, and slicked it back in a severe ponytail. No time for makeup. She made do with pale lipstick.

Then she clipped on Irene Harte’s gold-edged Pharmadene badge and went out to the parked Fairview limousine; like all their family transport cars, it was unmarked. She tossed a body bag in the back, and was preparing to pull out when a knock came on the window.

Riley Block was standing there, still in her spotlessly white Fairview lab coat.

Bryn hit the button and rolled down the window. “Riley, I have an urgent pickup to—”

Riley silently held up a black leather wallet and flipped it open. Inside were a gold badge and an ID card.

FBI.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d been hoping to break it to you gently.” She raised her other hand, and in it was a gun, which she pointed at Bryn’s head. “I know it won’t kill you, but it’ll slow you down. Don’t try to drive away. Hands off the wheel, please.”

Bryn slowly raised her arms. Riley said, “Keep them up,” and walked around the long, gleaming hood to the passenger side, where she got in, never taking her gaze off of Bryn as she fastened her seat belt. “You’re going to the Civic Theatre.”

Bryn couldn’t control her surprise. “How did you—”

“Believe it or not, the FBI’s been aware that Pharmadene had something to hide for some time. We traced McCallister’s activities and connected him to Fairview, although he hid it very well; we still weren’t sure it was a way into their organization, but I was tapped to go undercover and check it out. I’ve had mortuary experience.”

“Joe brought you in,” Bryn murmured. Oh, Joe. God, no. She couldn’t believe it—didn’t want to believe it.

“McCallister passed my name along to him,” Riley said. “And I was recommended by a former FBI agent whom I worked with in the past, a mutual friend of McCallister’s.”

“Manny Glickman.” Bryn felt the missing piece click into place, and saw the flare of recognition in Riley’s dark eyes. “McCallister trusted him.”

“And Manny had to follow his own conscience about all this. He knew it was going to go wrong; he tried to tell Patrick McCallister that from the start. He was simply hedging his bets. But of course, it’s Manny, so nobody believed him. Not at first.” Riley shook her head slowly. “I’m not sure whether to be impressed or nauseated by what they’ve done. What you are. It’s an incredible achievement, but … so very wrong.”

“I’m not one of Pharmadene’s robots,” Bryn said.

“I know enough about the capabilities of the drug they’ve given you to know I can’t trust your word about that. Or about anything.”

“But you know about what they’re planning to do at the Civic Theatre, don’t you?”

Riley nodded. “The secretary of state is not coming, obviously. Neither are any government officials. We headed them off.”

“You should have stopped it as soon as you knew. You could have locked down Pharmadene.”

“Oh, we have,” Riley said. “The building’s empty, although we’ve got our own people in place to return calls and give the appearance that things are proceeding normally. Harte made that easier by pulling most of the staff out to man her Civic Theatre plan. And now all of their most important people are in a vulnerable place.”

Bryn’s lips parted in horror, and then she blurted it out. “You’re going to take them out. All of them.”

“Most of them in one go,” Riley agreed. She had a sad glint in her eyes, but in the next blink it was gone. “We have to stop it. You’d say the same. And it’s more merciful to do it this way, one surgical strike, take out everyone at once.”

“How many?”

“What?”

“How many people at the theater?”

“We estimate about three hundred of Pharmadene’s employees,” Riley said. “Technically, they’re bodies, not living people.”

“That’s not true. They’re like me. They think. They feel. They are alive. They don’t deserve this.” Bryn swallowed hard. “Riley, I heard them dying. I heard them screaming. Most didn’t want to do this. They didn’t sign up for it—they’re victims. You have to help me stop it. If we get Irene Harte, all of it can stop. It can be controlled.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “And that’s what I argued for. But it’s too late now, and it’s out of my hands. In about thirty minutes, that building will suffer a catastrophic event, and everyone in it will die.”

“Patrick McCallister is in there. So is Joe Fideli.”

Riley didn’t blink. “Let’s take a drive,” she said.

“Where?”

“Where you were going in the first place. The theater.”

“But—”

“Bryn,” she said patiently. “You understand, this is a cleanup. And you’re a loose end. I’m very sorry—really I am—but this is a national security situation, and we have to take drastic measures. I don’t like it, but I have to do what’s right.”

“You mean that you’re going to kill me, too.”

Riley didn’t try to argue the point. She actually seemed a little sad, Bryn thought. “For what it’s worth, I like you. I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry you got caught up in it. It wasn’t your fault, but sometimes things just happen.”

Bryn shut her mouth and didn’t argue. There was no doubt in Riley’s face, and no mercy, either. Like Irene Harte, she was a true believer … just on the other side. Broken eggs and omelets, and the greater good.

Bryn wasn’t entirely sure she was wrong, and besides, at least it was where she wanted to go.

Where she had to go. Because if it had to end this way, at least she’d be with McCallister, where she knew—finally—that she belonged.

The Civic Theatre perimeter was deserted when they arrived. There were buses parked in the lot that hadn’t been there on Bryn’s previous drive-by, and as she pulled into the parking area close by she saw that the buses were full of people sitting in unnatural stillness.

Pharmadene employees. The ones who’d been on the perimeter.

“How did you do that?” Bryn asked. It was incredibly creepy, as if all of them were already dead.

“The bioengineered protocols,” Riley said. “Manny told us all about them.” She looked a little pale now, but still very controlled. “You can’t blame him for that, Bryn. He was doing the right thing. This was never something that a few independents could handle, no matter how well-meaning they might be.”

“McCallister was more worried about Mercer’s operation; that was a rogue element.”

“He wasn’t wrong about that. Mercer’s a sociopath. He never had any doubts about what he was doing, because the only thing that mattered was his own profit. We tried to reach out to him and bring him in on our side. He refused.”

That, Bryn thought, was because he already had his own ideas of how best to use the drug.

“Bryn,” Riley said, very gently. “I’m really very sorry about all this, but I have my orders. Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“I want you to get out and go inside.”

Bryn laughed, a bitter bark of sound. “Are you trying to invoke protocol on me? Because it doesn’t work. If Manny told you anything, he would have told you about his antidote.”

“He did,” Riley said. “But I know you a little better than that. You’re not running away. You were never running away, were you? You came here to finish something. So go finish it.” She hesitated, and looked away. “I was supposed to restrain you and put you on one of the buses. But I can’t do that. It doesn’t matter where you are anyway. So go in. Find McCallister, if that’s what you want to do. It’s all I can do to help you.”

“Thank you,” Bryn said. She got out of the limo, walked up the steps, and opened the Civic Theatre doors.

When she glanced back, Riley gave her a faint, sad smile, and rolled up the tinted window.

The lobby was opulent, but mostly deserted; Bryn glanced around and spotted men stationed at each of the entrances to the theater proper. She walked calmly and confidently toward one of them. “I’ve got a limousine for Ms. Harte,” she said. “She sent for me. I’m to find her and escort her out. She has a critical meeting in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll have to check,” he said, but she was right, the looming black presence of the limousine outside the glass doors was a convincing argument. Bryn checked her watch impatiently and tapped her foot as he pulled out a radio.

“Oh, wow, can I see that?” she asked, and plucked it out of his hands. He blinked, startled, and in the next second she’d reached under her coat, drawn her sidearm, and pressed the barrel under his chin. “Back up three steps, please.”

He did it, surprise derailing anything else, and in three steps they were in an alcove safely hidden from the other security people. “Condition Diamond, do you hear me?” Bryn asked, and saw his eyes widen. An eerie relaxation came over his body. “Okay, I need you to take this radio, get on the air, and broadcast an alert that you received a threatening phone call. There’s a bomb in the building. The building must be evacuated. Do you understand me? I need you to say it and believe it. I’m depending on you to save all these people. Tell me you understand.”

“Condition Diamond acknowledged,” he said. “Broadcast radio alert that there is a bomb in the building, and evacuation must proceed. Protocol priorities state that executives must evacuate first.”

“Perfect,” Bryn said. “After you’ve broadcast the alert, call Irene Harte’s people and tell her that her car is waiting at the front door. Questions?”

His eyes focused on hers, perfectly untroubled, but she knew that deep inside he’d be screaming. She’d felt this. She knew how … unclean it was. “Where’s the bomb?”

“Basement,” she said. That would take the maximum amount of time; typically, it was a maze of machinery and locked rooms. “Start now.”

She stepped back and took the gun away from his chin. If the protocol was going to fail, it would do it now, in spectacular Technicolor; he could have been faking it, waiting for his chance.

Instead, he just looked at her and said, “I need my radio, ma’am.”

She handed it over.

“This is Ledbetter at the entrance. I have a Level One bomb threat. Device is located in the basement. Initiate immediate evac of executive personnel.” He met Bryn’s eyes as he said, “Ms. Harte has a private car at the front—get her out here now.”

He clicked off. Bryn nodded and holstered her weapon. “Mr. Ledbetter, I want you to join the others now and lead them in a search for the bomb. Do you understand?”

“Yes. In the basement.” He hesitated. “Is this related to the two men we have pinned down?”

Bryn felt her whole body flush with adrenaline. “Pinned down where?”

“The hallway on the left,” he said. “Ballroom.”

“Go!”

Ledbetter raced off, looking as committed as if he really believed in the bomb … which she supposed he did, in a certain sense that was beyond his control. Bryn shuddered. The protocols might create kamikaze bombers and suicidal terrorists, but they weren’t likely to produce any brilliant military strategists.

Ledbetter’s radio message had poked a stick into the hornet’s nest, and people boiled out of the building. Bryn stopped another security man and commandeered his radio as he raced toward the basement, and waited next to the glass doors. Executives arrived in neat tailored suits and expensive shoes, surrounded by assistants and armed escorts; she recognized one as the first man she’d seen converted to Pharmadene’s new corporate loyalty program.

He recognized her, too, and his eyes widened. “You,” he said, and broke free of his guards to come toward her. “You were there. Across the hall.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” Bryn said. She meant it. But the man just smiled.

“No need to be sorry. Best thing that ever happened to me, or to the company. First time in years we’re all in agreement on what needs to be done around here.” He glanced down at her badge, then back up at her face, a frown grooving his brow. “You’re not Irene Harte.”

“Ms. Harte gave me her badge to get me into security,” she said. “I’m her driver.”

He wasn’t buying it, and as an executive, he would have knowledge and power to invoke Diamond protocol. He could bury her in bodies in seconds.

The radio suddenly rattled with static in her hand, and Ledbetter’s voice came over it to say, “This is a Level One alert. All executives need to be out of the building now! We have a credible bomb threat!”

The man’s security team grabbed her problem executive by the arms and hustled him out. She heard him saying, “But I don’t think she’s got the right badge….” They weren’t listening.

Diamond Condition. She was starting to love it.

Except that in the next five minutes, she saw dozens of executives flee the building, and not one of them was Irene Harte.

She used the radio. “I need a twenty on Ms. Harte. I repeat, there is no sign of Ms. Harte in the evacuation. Where is she?”

A female voice answered, calm and brisk. “Who is this?”

“Her driver.”

The voice turned cold. “I’m her driver.”

“Ma’am, I’ve been assigned to drive both of you out of here as an emergency measure,” Bryn improvised. She was probably talking to Harte’s assistant, she realized. “There’s a bomb in the building.”

“No, there’s not. We swept it for devices hours ago.”

“Ma’am, as a precaution …”

“Harte doesn’t move from her current position until the gunmen already in the building are eliminated.”

There was a final click, and Bryn knew she’d lost the bet. No time to lose now, not if she wanted to actually end this; she abandoned the doors and ran, looking for someone, anyone, in a security blazer. She found one heading for the basement. “Harte!” she yelled at him. “Where is she? I’m her evac driver!”

“Downstairs private meeting room,” he said, and kept running in the opposite direction, where she could hear the muffled booms of gunfire. Two gunmen. Pinned down. That was McCallister and Fideli.

But she couldn’t help them yet.

Bryn raced down the silent hallway, the empty one, all the way to the end, and banged open the door to the stairs. Her heart was hammering now, her palms wet, and she knew there would be someone waiting for her at the bottom. Probably a lot of someones, all intent on stopping any intruders.

She could take some pain, and some injury, but it still frightened her.

This has to be done. And you’re the only one left.

There were security men stationed at the bottom of the stairs, inside the door. Both had guns out and trained on her as she rounded the last turn of the staircase, and they didn’t challenge or wait.

They just fired.

The bullets took Bryn in the chest and left arm, and she staggered against the wall under the assault. The pain rose and then receded, too fast for it to be a nanite thing; shock, she guessed. She felt woozy and strange, but calm enough as she lifted her gun with her right hand and fired clean head shots.

They went down. So did she, falling the last few steps, but she staggered up, pressed her wounded left arm to her side, and kicked their handguns out of the way into the shadows. They weren’t permanently down, but it would take time.

And time was what she needed.

The shots had drawn more security out from their positions in front of the meeting room the security guard had told her about, and Bryn didn’t wait this time; she began shooting, fast and accurately. She took four of them out and wounded a fifth, but then something hit her from behind with staggering force. Not a bullet, though.

A chair.

Bryn twisted around and caught the wooden chair as it descended again, using her wounded left arm; it didn’t stop it entirely but it reduced the force of the blow. She kicked out, and her assailant fell back, dropping the chair in the process.

Mareen, Harte’s executive assistant. She held up her hands in surrender as Bryn aimed at her. “I’m not revived!” she gasped. “I didn’t get the shot yet; you can’t!”

“No, I really can,” Bryn said, but she shifted her aim and took out Mareen’s knee instead. The woman went down screaming. Somewhere deep inside, the nicer, kinder Bryn winced and complained, but this wasn’t the time for mercy or kindness. It was time to get it done.

The meeting room doors were closed and locked. Bryn kicked, bracing herself, and it took three tries before they flew open.

She went flat to avoid the hail of gunfire that followed, and was only partially successful. She felt more bullets striking, and this time, the shock didn’t really protect her as much. The bright, razor-edged net of pain fell over her and tried to pin her down, but Bryn fought her way back out of it. She rolled, stumbled upright, and dropped three men in jackets, one after another. One got her with yet another round, but it was a flesh wound in the upper arm. Still, it made Bryn’s vision gray out for a moment.

That was just long enough for Irene Harte to step up and shoot her in the chest, twice, point-blank. This time it was bad enough to stop her. Bryn went down flat on her back, unable to breathe, unable to think. The wave of agony was crippling. Her brain seemed to be covered in a red and silver storm—red for the pain, silver for the nanites trying desperately to abate it.

“I knew it’d be you,” Harte said, from a great distance away. “Not McCallister. You. Because you never understood the good we were going to do here.”

Bryn blinked, and the world steadied and sharpened just a little. Irene Harte was standing over her with the gun, staring down. She didn’t say anything else as she cocked back the hammer of the revolver and aimed it at the center of Bryn’s forehead.

Bryn couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t think, but she could tilt the gun that was still in her right hand, and with the last of her strength, she pulled the trigger.

She hit Irene Harte in the chin, and the bullet exited the top of her skull in a shattering explosion of blood, bone, and brain.

Harte stared blankly down at her and tried to squeeze the trigger—or at least, that was what it looked like, in that split second of frozen time. But then Harte’s eyes rolled back, and she folded like a paper doll, and the shot, when it came, bored into the floor an inch from Bryn’s head.

The next security wave poured in, looked at Harte’s body, and went still in confusion. Bryn rolled up to her knees. She could breathe only in shallow hitches, and she knew the nanites were working overtime to keep her moving, but it was enough.

Harte had invoked protocols, but she’d specified only that they were supposed to protect her. With Harte dead, they had no real direction to follow. Nothing to work for. Nothing to achieve.

Nobody paid attention to Bryn until she gasped out, “Evacuate the building. Get everybody outside. If they resist, knock them out. No killing. Go.”

Five security personnel dashed out to do her bidding, and she hadn’t even tried to invoke protocols. Her ability to get up wavered when she achieved a kneeling position, so she stayed there for a long few moments, wondering how much time was left, wondering whether she had the strength to make it to McCallister. She wanted to. She wanted to get him and Joe safely away, before it was too late. The FBI would allow them to go. They weren’t … infected. They were still alive.

Harte was safely and permanently dead. Bryn checked. There was no sign of any nanites trying to heal her wound. Her eyes remained open, fixed, with uneven pupils. Like Mareen, she hadn’t taken the shot; she’d wanted to be the puppet master, not the puppet.

Thank God.

It took five long minutes before Bryn could make it to her feet, and another three before she could manage to crawl up the stairs. She left a bright trail of blood behind. The hallways were chaotic now, Pharmadene people with conflicting orders, all trying to carry them out.

Gunfire was still coming from the area where McCallister was pinned down. Someone had given this batch of security personnel orders to take down the intruders, and somehow, even the bomb threat hadn’t altered that order.

Bryn made it to the doorway, leaned against the jamb, and methodically put rounds into the backs of six guards who were firing at McCallister’s barricade. The last one turned and tried to shoot her, but then he hesitated. She knew him. It was the man who’d escorted her through Pharmadene on her first day.

“Get out,” she told him. “Just go. Go now, before it’s too late.”

He thought about it, raised his gun, and then lowered it again. There was confusion in his eyes, and fear.

Then he ran.

Bryn collapsed.

McCallister lunged forward as he came around the barricade and caught her on the way down.

“She’s dead,” Bryn said. “Harte’s dead. You have to go now. Get out before it’s too late; the government’s cleaning all this up. Please go. You have to go while you still can….”

“Fuck,” McCallister spat. He picked her up, turned, and said, “Joe! We are leaving!”

“About fucking time,” Joe said. “Harte?” He slid around the barricade, carrying a shotgun.

“Bryn says she’s down. Move your ass.”

“Hey, you’re the one who just gained weight, not me.”

McCallister gave him a wild-man grin, and Bryn relaxed against him, thinking, If we go now, it’s all right. Everything’s all right.

They made it to a fire exit. The alarms went off screaming. Bryn had a confused impression of the buses in the parking lot, still full of silent Pharmadene revivals, waiting for the end. I should save them, she thought. As many as I can.

But before she could, a black limousine pulled up to block McCallister’s path, and Riley Block stared at them. She had a semiautomatic pistol aimed right at McCallister’s head, and held it there for a long few seconds before she sighed and said, “Oh, fuck it. Just get in.”

McCallister threw Bryn inside and dived in after, with Fideli close behind. The limo sped away without even waiting for the door to close.

Bryn turned her head away just as there was a screaming sound from overhead, and a tremendous shove at the back of the limousine, and the world exploded into fire around them.

“… worst explosion in the city’s history,” a tinny voice was saying when Bryn swam up out of the dark. “Gas company officials continue to say that the incident is under review, but according to recent information from government sources, gas officials were warned about the dangerous state of the pipes under the Civic Theatre as long as a year ago. Clearly, this could have been much worse had the rupture occurred during a major event….”

Bryn cracked her eyes, widened them, and blinked to try to get things clear again. She was lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to monitors, and a television was playing. The thin flat-screen was sitting on top of a rolling cabinet across the room. She blinked and fixed on the picture, which was of a rolling ball of fire rising up into a cloudless blue sky. Burning buses. A wrecked limousine.

Her wrecked limousine.

She felt surprisingly good, but then she would, wouldn’t she? Goddamn nanites. She could have been shredded by the blast and might have come back together again.

Maybe.

An alarm went off on her monitor, and she squinted at it, trying to see what emergency it was sensing. Before she could, the door opened, and a doctor looked in.

No, not a doctor. A woman in a lab coat.

Riley Block, with a livid bruise on half of her face, and a patch over one eye.

Riley turned the alarm off and said, “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.” She poured Bryn a glass of water and handed it over. “Drink.”

She did, almost choking at first, then draining it eagerly. “More.” She coughed. Riley poured. “McCallister?”

“He’s all right. You got the worst of it—shrapnel through the door. He had cuts and bruises, and Fideli got a broken leg, which he hasn’t stopped griping about.” Riley touched the patch with one fingertip. “I got this. Glass. It’s just scratched, though.”

“Sorry.”

“Better than losing my life.” She regarded Bryn in silence for a second, then sat down on the bed beside her. “Some of the Pharmadene people were caught in the blast, but some got out. You warned them, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I had to.”

Riley nodded slowly. “I can understand that, but now we’re stuck. The government doesn’t want to officially acknowledge what happened. Pharmadene’s executives have been detained. Their threat is done. The people who made it out were seen and captured on film; their names were recorded. If they disappear now, it looks bad.”

“Public relations. What a bitch.”

“Right now, they’re quarantined for exposure to hazardous chemicals. Just like you.” Her smile was crooked, and a little sad. “You’ve complicated everything, Bryn. But I don’t blame you. You were trying to do right. Hell, we were all trying to do right. Even Harte, in her own megalomaniacal way.”

“So what are you going to do with them? With me?”

“We seized the supplies and the production line for Returné, and quite frankly, we’re debating about whether to destroy the lot and let the whole thing die. For now, I would imagine that most of the survivors will be kept on at what used to be Pharmadene, with the story that there was a takeover … not too far from the truth. If they talk, their supply of Returné disappears forever. That’ll hold almost everyone, and the few it doesn’t will just … disappear.” Riley cocked her head a little. “And a few are going to be released on other conditions.”

“What conditions?”

“That they work for us,” she said. “We still have a rogue producer of the drug to contend with. Mr. Mercer doesn’t seem like the type to just go away.”

“He still has Annie,” she said. “I have to get her back. You understand? She’s my sister, and I have to—”

“I know. Luckily, what I’m authorized to offer you helps us both,” Riley said. “You go back to Fairview Mortuary, and find a way to make contact with Mercer again. You get your sister back, and give Mercer to us.”

“Not good enough,” McCallister said. He was standing in the doorway—leaning, really. Riley had underplayed his cuts and bruises; he looked as if he’d been in a spectacular prizefight, and been thrown through a window. “She gets a written guarantee of a permanent supply of the drug from the highest levels. She and her sister.”

“I’m not going to bullshit you. There’s no such thing as permanent. Theoretically, the nanites could sustain her life indefinitely, after all. We need some natural end to this arrangement.”

McCallister looked at Bryn and raised his eyebrows, silently asking. She nodded. “A fifty-year guarantee,” she said. “Unless I revoke it first. I always have the right to opt out.”

“You mean, commit suicide.”

“Something like that. But I control it. Not you.” Bryn took in a deep breath. “And the government doesn’t own my mortuary, by the way. I own it.”

Riley smiled. “How exactly are you going to manage that? Pharmadene was bankrolling you. I’ve seen your assets, Bryn. You don’t exactly have the capital to invest.”

Bryn felt a hot burn of anger, and a little bit of shame. Of course she didn’t have the capital. There wasn’t any need to rub it in. “You can buy it and give it to me. My tax dollars at work.”

“She doesn’t need to,” McCallister said. “I’ve been informed that the McCallister trust has acquired Fairview as part of its very large and varied investment portfolio.”

“You bought the funeral home,” Riley said, frowning.

“Not me. The estate administrator controls the trust’s investments. You’ll have to talk to him about why he made that decision.” McCallister said it straight-faced, but Bryn knew exactly who the estate administrator was. Liam.

Riley’s frown intensified, and now she looked very serious. “What the hell are you up to, McCallister? I’m warning you …”

“Easy, Riley. I’m not up to much right now, and neither are you.” He sighed. “It’s been a tough few weeks for all of us. I’m not going to war with the government over any of this, I promise. I just want some peace—for me, for Bryn. Even for you.”

Riley clearly wasn’t convinced. “You’re trying to give Bryn a safety net so she doesn’t remain dependent on us.”

“Absolutely right. Budget cuts happen, especially in black ops. She can’t rely on having you in her corner for long, and we both know it. After all, to you she’s an asset, not a person. Give her some hope for her own destiny.”

Riley shook her head and smiled. “I thought you were smarter than that, Patrick. None of us controls our destiny. Not in this day and age. Especially someone with her … special challenges.” She looked straight at Bryn. “I can authorize a fifty-year guaranteed supply of Returné, provided you carry out any assignments you’re given to earn it—the first of which is that you track down Mercer and his operation, and shut it down. Agreed?”

“Do I have any choice?” Bryn asked.

“You could see if Mercer’s offering a better deal,” Riley said, and shrugged.

Bryn met McCallister’s eyes for a moment, and then said, “I’ll take it. One condition.”

“Which is?”

“You’re fired from Fairview.”

Riley laughed, a sound of real amusement this time, and left.

McCallister limped over and sat down on the edge of Bryn’s bed, sighing in relief. She put her hand over his, and their fingers twined together.

“We have to find Annie,” she said. “No matter what, I have to get her back. I have to make this right.”

“I know,” he said. “And we both know that no matter what Riley says, you’re running on borrowed time. They won’t honor their agreements. You noticed the caveat she slipped in?”

“About assignments?” Bryn nodded slowly. “They’ll use me.”

“Until they can’t use you anymore. Then they’ll cut you off.” He cleared his throat and looked down. “I know Manny informed on us, but he’s our best bet at this point to work on a reverse-engineered replacement for Returné. He’s close to cracking it.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“I don’t either, but he’s the only nongovernment game in town except Mercer, and we need him.”

“We,” she repeated. She closed her eyes and felt a wave of darkness and despair rise up to choke her from within. “Why are you even here? Pharmadene’s gone. It’s over. You can walk away now. You should.”

“My family’s trust has a significant financial investment in Fairview,” he said. “And in you.” That sounded calm and clinical, but there was nothing clinical about the way he touched her face, so gently, and when she opened her eyes she saw that he’d dropped his guard. All his armor, split open.

She saw the look in his eyes, and her heart shattered, and healed, and broke again.

“We can’t do this,” she said. “Why the hell would you want me? I’m not—”

He put a finger over her lips. “You’re not dying anymore. I, on the other hand, still am. So I think the question isn’t why would I want you. It’s why would you bother with me? If you intend to, of course.”

She stared at him, transfixed by the glow in his eyes, by the emotion flooding out of him, unexpressed but all the more real for that.

“I guess I will,” she said. “Bother with you, I mean. I’ve got fifty years to kill, right?”

“Well, I am a good conversationalist.”

“Really. That’s all you’ve got?”

His mouth pressed hers, warm and soft, and his tongue slowly stroked her lips until they parted in a soft breath. “Not all,” he murmured. “I have all kinds of skills I can share.”

“Oh,” she whispered back. “I think I can find a use for you after all, Mr. McCallister.”

She felt his lips curl into a smile where they pressed against hers. “Is this an interview?”

“Why, do you need a job?”

His smile widened. “Actually, I do seem to be temporarily underemployed.” And then he kissed her again, more urgently this time, and she felt her heart pick up beats and start to race. “What do you say?”

“That depends,” she said, and pulled him onto the bed with her, his warmth heavy against her. “How do you feel about the death business?”

He kissed her again, and let it linger. “Actually,” he finally said, “I’m starting to like it quite a bit more than I ever expected.”

“What about Mercer—”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow we deal with that.”

“And tonight?” Because it was dark out; she could see that from the glow of streetlights through the shuttered blinds.

McCallister reached over, picked up the control lying next to the bed, and lowered the lights in the room. “Tonight,” he said, “we deal with the two of us.”