Working Stiff

Chapter 2

“I’ve got to hand it to you, honey,” said Lucy several hours later. They’d been interviewed by the police, Bryn had been escorted to the locker room to shower and change, and then there had been more whiskey, because Lucy had said she needed it. Bryn supposed it did make things better, or at least less connected to what she was feeling. “That was one hell of a bad first day. Worst I’ve ever seen. Good news is, it can only go up from here, right?”

“Right,” Bryn said. She felt comfortably numb now— not peaceful, just not feeling much of anything. She especially could not feel hope for a better tomorrow.

“Then I think it’s time for you to go on home. Hot bath, more wine, maybe get a massage.” Lucy wheeled her chair back from the reception desk and pulled a Givenchy purse from the bottom drawer. She was a gorgeous woman with flawless dark cocoa skin, and she was generously curved in ways that shouldn’t have looked good but did, especially the way she dressed. Bryn wondered how much time she spent every day on the carefully lacquered updo of her hair. Probably more time than Bryn spent all week, added together, getting her own ready. “You going to be all right on your own this evening?”

“I … Sure.” In truth, Bryn didn’t really know, but she wanted to be okay. “I’m going to talk to Mr. Fairview, finish up some paperwork. And I’m supposed to introduce myself to Mr. Watson in the prep room.”

“Oh, don’t let Mr. Fairview catch you calling it that. It’s preparation room, always.” Lucy’s friendly expression took on a sharper edge. “My advice is, if you have to say hi to Fast Freddy, do it tomorrow. And whenever you go down there, you watch it with him. That man is trouble; I told Lincoln that from the day he was hired on. We used to have a great restoration man, a real artist. His name was Vikesh, but he moved off to Arizona. Now we got Fast Freddy. I have to tell you, I am not impressed. I saw Mrs. Salzman’s viewing last week—I swear, it looked like she was on her way out to pick up sailors at the dock. No class, that man.”

Bryn tried for a smile. “I’m pretty sure I’ve met worse.”

“You may think so, but he’s a slimy little shit, I don’t mind telling you.” Lucy gazed at her a moment, clearly undecided. “You got your car here, honey?”

“I took the bus. But it’s okay; the last one runs in a couple of hours. I don’t want to go home just yet anyway. I need to walk off the Scotch a little.”

“Well, okay. And don’t you worry about tomorrow. One thing about this business—it’s steady. Every day, you get different sad people with the same sad stories. Sooner or later, you get used to it.” Lucy reached over and patted her hand, a quick, impersonal little gesture. “You take care, Bryn. I like you. Hope you stick around.”

The office felt really empty with Lucy gone. Bryn walked the hushed paneled hallways back to her office and found that Mr. Fairview had left the Granberry folder neatly in the center of her desk. She signed all the paperwork, filled out the cost sheets, and made a list of to-do items before setting it aside.

Fairview had also left a sticky note on the folder that read, Don’t forget to brief Freddy downstairs about the arrangements for Mr. Granberry; he needs to know as soon as possible.

It was the last thing she had to do. Easy enough to pick up the phone—it had a clearly marked extension labeled PREPARATION ROOM—but she felt that she ought to get the lay of the land down there. She was already having the worst day of her life…. She might as well get the slimy Mr. Watson out of the way, if the introduction was going to come.

That way, tomorrow there would be nothing she had left to dread.

There were two realities in all funeral homes—the public space, which was all beautifully appointed and quiet and comforting, and the prep areas, which were medical and sterile and cold. The stairs going down were sort of a transition between the two—still carpeted, but with an industrial metal railing and an institutional fluorescent light fixture overhead. The bottom floor was all Formica, easily cleaned. There was a freight elevator in the back, and down the hall seemed to be storage and rolled-down loading-dock doors. Bryn stopped outside the frosted-glass door of the prep room. She breathed shallowly; the smell of embalming fluids always made her a little queasy at first, until she adjusted to it. The ever-present smell of decay was just the cherry on top. She knocked on the door, a hesitant rap of knuckles. She could see shadows moving inside.

“Come in,” someone said, and she entered. There were four spotlessly clean stainless-steel preparation tables in the room, each with all the pumps and tubing necessary to the embalming process. Only one was occupied at the moment—Mr. Granberry, fat as a frog. He really wasn’t that fat, Bryn thought. And he had a nice face. She was mildly religious, and she hoped that wherever Mr. Granberry was, he could comfort his daughter now. Poor Melissa.

Standing over Mr. Granberry’s corpse, massaging fluids through his tissues, was a handsome guy only a little older than Bryn…. Golden hair, creamy skin, big blue eyes, and a devastating smile. Except for what he was doing at the moment, he was completely smoking hot.

The smile put her on guard. It was just a little too predatory.

“Hey,” he said, jerking his chin up in welcome. “Bryn, right? Just a sec. Got to finish this; I’m almost done. He’s pinking up okay, don’t you think?”

She nodded, not sure she knew what to say, except, “You’re Mr. Watson?”

“Fast Freddy, they call me,” he said, and winked. “Don‘t let it bother you. Everybody in this industry’s got a nickname, right?”

“Do they? I don’t think I do,” she said. She felt faintly ill, and she wasn’t sure coming down here was a good idea, given the day she’d had. Her head was spinning a little from the drinks.

“I think you got one today,” he said. “Double Trouble Davis.”

“Oh. You heard?”

“About the girl? Of course I heard. It only looks like a cave down here. I don’t actually live in one.” He shook his head, and she expected the normal platitudes—what a shame, or she must have been so distraught. “What a dumb-ass bitch.”

Bryn blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Look, well-adjusted people don’t go offing themselves messily in funeral home restrooms. If she wants to take the easy way out, fine. I’m not standing in her way, but if she was going to do it, the least she could have done was do it at her own home, not our place of business. Now we’re the ones stuck cleaning it up. Trust me. She was a selfish little bitch.”

It wasn’t so much what he said as how he said it that made her muscles go tense and quiet; Freddy looked ripe, but there was something rotten in the relish he took in dissing the dead girl. It was like biting into a juicy red apple and getting a mouthful of worms. “Her name was Melissa. And she was only eighteen.”

“Old enough to vote, fuck, and know better,” Freddy said, and shrugged. “Like I said, she was a selfish bitch. End of story. So, you got any orders on Mr. Granberry, here?”

Freddy’s callousness reminded her of some of the soldiers she’d served with, the ones who’d lost all feelings of humanity, especially for the Iraqis, whom they saw as walking meat ready for body bags.

She’d tried to avoid those people. Hadn’t always been successful. And here was another one, thrown right in her path. “Yes,” she said, grateful for the opportunity to deliver the paperwork and escape. She handed over the folder, which he took in his latex-gloved left hand as he continued his gentle massage of the former Mr. Granberry with his right, working the embalming fluid through his chest. “Thanks. See you tomorrow.”

“Oh, man, you’re going to dump and run? Not cool, Double Trouble. The least you can do is help me out, here. I’ve been stuck all alone in the dead room for days; I’m starved for the company of a pretty woman.” He flashed that brilliant smile at her again. “You’ve had enough of all this shit, I’ll bet. Tell you what. Instead of me giving you the grand tour of the freezers, how about going out for a drink, or preferably lots of drinks? Could be your lucky night.” With one last squeeze of Mr. Granberry’s puffy biceps, Freddy stepped back and peeled off his blue gloves, which he three-pointed into a biohazard bin. His plastic apron followed, leaving him in a lab coat with neatly pressed jeans showing beneath, and some shoes that Bryn was almost sure were Kenneth Cole, or at least that expensive. “Unless you want to spend the evening with Mr. Gran, here. I mean, he’s not much of a talker, but he’s working a nice after-death stiffy right now. You want to see?”

“No.” Bryn tried to keep her voice even, her gaze straight. She had the eerie impression that Freddy was one of those men who would go for the slightest sign of weakness. “I’ll be going now.”

“So you didn’t get into the business for the cold ones? Some do, you know. Lucky you, then. I’m nice and warm.” He winked at her, and Bryn wanted to throw up. “Right, it’s drinks, then. We’ll see about what comes after.”

Bryn took a step back as Freddy rounded the end of the embalming table, suddenly aware of everything—the chilly temperature of the room, the deserted mortuary, the fact that the alcohol had led her into what could be a very bad decision. “No. Thanks. Really, I was just … on my way out.”

“Going home to what? A single-serving frozen dinner and a twin bed? You don’t look like a woman with a boyfriend—at least, not a boyfriend who’s keeping you satisfied, and I can always tell. So how about that drink? You can tell me all about how lonely you are.”

Bryn was shaken, not that she’d let him see it. “Take no for an answer, Freddy. You ought to know the word by now. I’m sure you hear it enough.”

“Ouch.” He seemed more amused than hurt. “Look, I don’t really want to be seen in public with you either; you’re not exactly up to my usual standards. So how about a quickie down here? Nobody here but Mr. Granberry; I don’t think he’d mind. I could break out the wine coolers.”

“If you come near me with a wine cooler, I hope you go both ways, because I will shove it up your ass.” Bryn walked for the door, half expecting him to grab her and throw her to the floor, but when she looked back Freddy was still standing there, smiling at her.

“Don’t know what you’re missing,” he said. “When you’re ready for a good time, you know where to find me, sweetheart. You’re welcome down here anytime.” He blew her a kiss.

Bryn didn’t even remember going up the stairs, or going into her office—only the slamming of the door let her know that there was a solid oak surface between her and Fast Freddy. She shuddered, locked the door, and backed off to collapse into her office chair. “Ugh, ugh, ugh,” she said, and dropped her head into her hands. “Now I really need a shower.” She’d met guys like him, of course. Lots of them. It came with the territory of working in a traditionally male area. And she’d learned to deal with them. She just hadn’t quite expected to have to do it here, in civilization.

And not at the end of a miserable first day.

After taking a few dozen deep, calming breaths, she stripped off her lab coat and retrieved her purse from the drawer of her desk. So time to go home. Maybe Lucy had been right—a glass of wine and a massage—but if she couldn’t get the massage, at least a glass of wine, a movie, something to take her mind off of things.

Bryn jerked at the sound of a thunderously loud knock on the door. “Hey, girl? You still here? Come out! Come out!”

She hadn’t turned her fluorescent office light on, so as long as she kept quiet, Freddy wouldn’t know she was there. Hopefully.

She could hear him breathing. There was something very creepy about that.

Finally, he muttered, “Man, you are one cold bitch,” and she heard him walking away. She held her breath until she heard what sounded like the front door slamming, and then went to the window to look out. Carefully.

Freddy drove a silver sports car, and she watched him climb inside and drive away in a squeal of tires. Oh, thank God.

Just her, then. Her and the late Mr. Granberry downstairs.

She bet Freddy hadn’t bothered to put him in the refrigerator. That seemed like the kind of slap-dash asshole move he’d pull.

Bryn unlocked the prep room door and turned on the lights, and yes, she was right: Freddy had left poor Mr. Granberry naked on the table. It was cold in the room, but not cold enough to properly retard decomposition … and besides, it was just disrespectful, leaving the poor man there exposed and alone.

Bryn walked over and looked down at his face. Bodies didn’t scare her—never had, really. They were a sad remnant of a life already gone by the time she saw them like this—an impermanent memorial, melting like paper in water. Everybody—and every body—had a story. She supposed Mr. Granberry’s was kind of tragic, given his wife and what had happened with his daughter, but he didn’t look especially tragic—just absent.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and put her hand on his cheek. He felt cool and utterly lifeless, like a rubber doll left outside in winter. “Take care of Melissa, wherever you guys are. I don’t think she meant to hurt anybody. She just didn’t want to live with all the pain. I’m sure she really loved you.”

Talking to the dead was always useless. Mr. Granberry didn’t hear, didn’t feel, didn’t care. But Bryn felt better for having said it, and that was really the point.

“Time to go to your room.” Bryn spread a clean white sheet over him, then removed the brakes from the wheels and rolled his table into the walk-in refrigerator. “Sleep tight, Mr. G. I promise we’ll do our best for you. Oh, look— you’ve got a friend.” Mr. G had a neighbor, it seemed— another body, still zipped in a dark plastic cocoon. She supposed it was a late arrival from a hospital or the coroner’s office.

As she closed the door on him, she could have sworn she heard something. Bryn paused, holding her breath, but she heard nothing now but the hum of machinery. She couldn’t help but think of poor Mr. Granberry sitting up on his tray. Corpses sometimes did that sort of thing. It wasn’t anything to do with zombies; it was just muscles contracting. It seemed creepy, but it was just … biology.

Although biology could be pretty damn creepy, when you came right down to it.

She looked inside, but nothing seemed to have changed. As she swung the door shut, she heard it again. A faint sound but definite.

Kind of a scratching.

“Rats,” she said, and shuddered. She’d have to tell Mr. Fairview. The last thing any mortuary needed was a rodent problem. That would get them shut down quickly, and ruin their reputation forever.

Bryn clicked off the lights decisively and walked out the doors, locking them behind her.

She was halfway up the stairs when the door at the top opened. She was caught—nowhere to go. All she could do was stand there and look alarmed. Of course, Fast Freddy had come back … and this time, he had her where he wanted her.

No … As the shock faded and her eyes adjusted, she realized that the man standing at the top of the steps wasn’t Fast Freddy, or Lincoln Fairview. For a second she couldn’t place him at all, and then she remembered.

It was the man who’d come earlier today to talk about his brother’s arrangements. Joe. Joe Fideli.

He lifted a finger to his lips, a clear shushing motion, and Bryn took a step backward slowly.

Mr. Fideli raised a pistol. Not just a Saturday-night special—no, this looked like a very serious professional semiauto. Not military issue, but a similar model, and just as good. She raised her hands in mute surrender. Mr. Fideli gestured her down the stairs. She slowly went, feeling for each step as she took it backward.

Once she was at floor level, there still weren’t many options. The elevator and loading-dock doors were closed, and she didn’t know the maze of basement storage at the other end well enough to count on another exit. Still, she had the crazy impulse to run—but there was something about running into the dark that stopped her.

Well, that and the fact that she thought Mr. Fideli was probably a crack shot.

“It’s Miss Davis, right? You’re not supposed to be here,” Mr. Fideli said. “Sorry. I don’t mean to scare you, but I’m going to need you to do what I say for a while.”

He sounded like he meant it. He also sounded completely different from the buttoned-up, blankly inquisitive man who’d been sitting across from her this morning. He was kind of relaxed, as if this were his job, and he was very, very good at it.

Also, she supposed an unarmed, first-day-on-the-job funeral director probably didn’t pose much of a threat.

“What are you doing here?” Bryn demanded. Her voice was shaking, so it spoiled the confrontational words, but Mr. Fideli just raised his eyebrows and ignored the question anyway.

“Anybody else here I need to know about?” he asked. “Fairview? Freddy Watson? Lucy?”

He knew everybody’s name. That was … strange. Bryn shook her head.

“Okay.” He stared at her for a long second, and she sensed he was making some kind of decision. It might have been about her own life and death. “Upstairs. Let’s have a seat in your office and talk. Might as well be comfortable.”

She led the way, terribly aware of the gun he was aiming at her back; she supposed some movie action hero would have been able to spin around, roundhouse-kick the gun out of his hand, and martial-arts him into blubbering submission. She’d been through extensive unarmed combat training, and she knew that in no way was that a good idea.

Bryn lived in the real world, and in the real world, you followed a gunman’s instructions, and waited for any opportunity that wouldn’t get you shot.

Once they were in her office, Mr. Fideli locked the door and sat down in the guest chair opposite her desk with a relieved sigh. When she hesitated, he gestured with his free hand for her to take the chair behind the desk. She did, making no sudden movements.

“Long day,” he said. She nodded. You’ve got no idea, mister. “So. You weren’t on my briefing paper. I’m guessing you’re the new hire?”

“Today’s my first day,” she said.

“Well, you picked a honey of a time to start, Bryn. Mind if I call you Bryn?”

“Mind if I call you Joe? If that’s even your name?” She felt a little better sitting down. A little more in control.

“Sure. And yeah, it’s my name.”

“Do you even have a brother?”

“Had,” he said, and tilted his head slightly, still watching her. “How the hell old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Damn. You ought to be an actress; you could do those teen shows. You look sixteen.”

Bryn ground her teeth and said nothing. She was so tired of people assuming she was high school age. She supposed when she was forty, she’d be grateful for the baby face, but up to now it had been a total pain in the ass.

Probably not the most important thing on the radar at the moment, from a macro point of view.

“Anyway,” Fideli said, “I’m just here to do some reconnaissance. You know what that means?”

He clearly didn’t know her past. “Check out the lay of the land.”

“Ding. I wasn’t planning on running into anybody. Where’s your car?”

“I don’t have one. I ride the bus.”

“No shit. Is that one of those save-the-planet things, or I’m-too-poor-to-afford-it things?”

“Both. Mostly the latter, honestly.” Sadly.

“Well, good for you, I guess. Bad for me, though. Tougher for me to get you out of here.” Fideli fell silent, staring at her.

She felt compelled to say something. “What do you want? We don’t have a lot here that’s worth taking, if that’s what this is about. I mean, the furniture, maybe, but—”

“I’m not a thief.”

“Well, there’s not a load of opportunity for industrial espionage in this business,” she said. It was a joke, but he didn’t smile. His eyes certainly didn’t. “What did you want in the prep room?” Preparation, Bryn remembered, too late. Fairview always wanted to be formal about it with the customers. Not that Mr. Fideli was shaping up to be a customer, after all.

“I’m supposed to find out if Mr. Fairview and Fast Freddy are running drugs,” he said. “Prescription drugs. Stolen.”

“What? Of course not!”

“No offense, but you’re what, a day into this job? How would you know?”

“This is a successful business. Why would they do something so stupid?” Then again, she’d met Freddy. And she wouldn’t put anything past him. “Unless—maybe it’s not Mr. Fairview? Just Freddy?”

Fideli’s head came back upright, and there was a new tension in his body. “You know something about the guy?”

“Not that much. Just … he’s a creep. You know the type.”

“Explain it to me.”

“He came on to me. Downstairs.”

“Romantic.”

“Exactly.” She cleared her throat. “Look, I’m not Wonder Woman—do you think you could put the gun down?”

“What?” He seemed genuinely surprised, and then smiled. “Yeah. I already went through the drawers of your desk. Just in case you had a thirty-eight-caliber surprise in there. So I guess you’re safe enough.”

She was startled. “When did you do that?”

“While you were downstairs.” His gaze shifted, and the easy friendliness disappeared instantly. “Hold up. Don’t move.” She didn’t. He got up and went to the window, looking without moving the blinds. “You know of any reason why your boss and Freddy would come back here after hours tonight?”

“No.”

“Well, they’re parking cars right now.” Fideli backed up next to her, and the gun made an unpleasant reappearance. “Not a word, Miss Davis.”

“You’re not going to kill me are you?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re the one with the gun?”

He looked at it. “This old thing? Family heirloom. I hardly ever shoot anybody with it.” He was lying, but he was doing it with style and a sense of humor, and whether she wanted to or not, she felt a little bit better about being held hostage. “You’ll be quiet?”

“Absolutely.”

He sent her a sassy wink, which wasn’t nearly as creepy as when Fast Freddy did it. “Good girl.”

Fideli moved to the closed door and listened with great concentration—but still keeping an eye on her; she was sure about that. Bryn didn’t move. Straining her ears, she heard the front door opening and the door chime faintly making the announcement. Then nothing. Soundproofing worked in bad ways, too.

Fideli, however, had heard something she hadn’t. “They’re heading downstairs,” he said. “Okay, let’s get you out of here, miss.”

“Excuse me?”

“No place for bystanders right now. Up and out.”

Not that waiting in the dark for the bus was going to be her favorite thing, either. “Can’t I just wait here? You know, until you‘re, ah, done?” Whatever that might mean.

“No,” he said. “Get your stuff, Bryn.”

The kinder Joe Fideli was gone again, replaced by one highly mission-focused. She got her purse and coat and followed him as he cat-footed it down the hall to the lobby door.

She grabbed his arm. “The bell!” she whispered. “They’ll hear it!”

“You’ve got reason to be here, and reason to be leaving,” he whispered back. “Play it cool, whatever they do. Just pretend like everything’s normal, and leave. Go catch your bus.”

Then he opened the door, the bell dinged, and he disappeared into the shadows, moving so fast that Bryn was left standing there, openmouthed, with the door swinging back shut against her outstretched hand.

Nowhere to go but out.

Bryn didn’t get far. She was less than ten feet from the door when she heard the muffled chime of the bell again, and looked over her shoulder to see Mr. Fairview standing there.

“Bryn,” he said, still using that soothing working-hours voice. “Well. This is a surprise. We thought you’d already left, especially after the day you’ve had.”

“I got caught up in reading over the materials. There’re a lot of things to learn. I’m sorry if I broke any rules…. I’m not putting in for overtime, I promise.”

She felt nervous, and she knew he could see it—but hopefully, he’d put it down to the natural uneasiness of a new employee caught doing something slightly odd, and God, how had she gotten herself into this, anyway? Working with the dead was supposed to be peaceful. That was the whole point.

The silence seemed to stretch on. Bryn felt sweat break out under her arms. She had a choice to make—tell Fairview about Joe Fideli’s quiet infiltration, or stay quiet and risk being wrong about him. He’s a man with a gun, skulking around at night. You should tell Fairview.

And she would have … except that he said, “Did you go into the preparation room after Mr. Watson left tonight, Bryn?”

“Why?”

“We have a silent alarm that operates when we’re off premises. To prevent any, ah, tampering with the bodies. I’ve turned it off now, since we’re here.” Fairview’s eyes were in shadow, his face rendered into a blank mask by the lighting in the parking lot. There was nothing in his voice, either, but Bryn’s instincts screamed that there was something wrong. Very wrong.

“I realized that Freddy left Mr. Granberry out on the table,” she said. “I just went in to put him in the freezer. I hope I didn’t do anything wrong. I do have the keys. Nobody told me the area was off-limits.”

“Oh, it’s not—not normally, of course. I was just concerned, based on the alarm.” Fairview smiled. “Why don’t you come on back inside, my dear? It’s chilly out here at night, and the fog’s coming in.”

He was right; she was shivering, and the gray mist had rolled over the coast and faded out the lights of the town in the distance. Even the bus-stop lights seemed smeared and indistinct.

“I need to get home,” she said. “The last bus is on the way any moment.”

“Oh, no need to worry about that,” Fairview said. “I’ll drive you home, Bryn. But come back inside; have some coffee. I have something I need to discuss with you first.”

She swallowed. The night felt dark, deep, and icily empty; she was fifty feet from the bus stop, but the shelter was empty at this hour, and although there were cars going by on the road, they weren’t going to notice anything happening here. Running seemed stupid. At best, it would let him know she suspected something was going on inside; at worst, at least Joe Fideli was somewhere nearby, with his gun.

She wasn’t sure why, but she felt that she trusted Fideli more than the man who’d hired her. The man she’d admired so much for his compassion and composure just this morning. Standing here in the chilly dark, watching his face, she thought he might be more of a killer than the guy with the gun.

The thought of lying cold on one of those trays robbed her of the will to run—not that there was anywhere to go; the bus wasn’t even in view. She stayed where she was as Mr. Fairview descended the steps and came toward her. He took her arm and escorted her back into the mortuary.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said, still using that soothing professional tone. “I just want to explain about some of our procedures, Bryn. You’re in no trouble, I promise. If you’d wait in your office for a bit, I have to meet with someone else first. I’ll come right up, and after we’ve talked I’ll give you a ride home. I hate making you wait out there in the dark. It’s just not safe.”

“Okay,” she said. This was a really bad idea, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do except go along with him. Mr. Fairview hustled her, quietly and irresistibly, back into the mortuary and down the hall to her office. She fumbled with the keys and opened it, and Mr. Fairview gave her a reassuring smile.

“Just a few minutes,” he assured her, and closed the door. She listened, but couldn’t hear a thing … and then she heard his footsteps on the stairs leading down to the basement.

I really need to get out of here. Whatever the hell was going on, it wasn’t her business. Not at all. In fact, Bryn decided then and there that she was officially quitting. She could get another job, and she could get it at some big-city mortuary where there were lots of people coming and going.

Someplace sane.

She was heading for the door when the bell rang, and a new person came in the front. Bryn ducked into the shadows, holding her breath, and a man and woman she didn’t know walked into the foyer. The woman didn’t look well; she was sweating, trembling, and had to be supported as she moved. Terminally ill? Maybe a late-night consultation?

The couple went straight for the basement stairs. Bryn frowned, watching them, and then looked at the front door. It was like Grand Central; one more bell ringing wouldn’t matter now, right? And she could just run. Run like hell, flag down a car, get out of here …

Except now she was curious. Deeply curious. Was Fideli right? Were they running some kind of drug lab down there? Fairview had talked about how trade had fallen off. She supposed he’d do almost anything to keep the family business going.

She walked over to the basement door and eased it open a crack. Just to listen. The problem was, although she could hear voices, they weren’t very loud, and she missed more than half of what was being said.

She came out onto the landing.

Down a couple of steps, very quietly.

Then all the way down, drawn by what the voices were saying.

“… need it!” a man’s voice was saying. Not Freddy or Mr. Fairview, or even Joe … She was hearing the man who’d come in with the sick lady, Bryn guessed. “I know that’s not the amount we agreed on, but it’s all we have; please, she needs the shot right now….”

“This isn’t a charity hospital, Mr. Jones,” Mr. Fairview’s voice said, rich with regret and sympathy. “I’m afraid that miracles are, by their very definition, rare—and rare means expensive. The terms were spelled out for you clearly, weren’t they? Ten thousand up front, and five hundred dollars cash per shot?”

“I can get it for you; it’s just … it’s thirty-five hundred a week….”

“Thirty-five hundred a week to keep your beloved wife alive,” Mr. Fairview said. “I have to believe that you value her life more than the money, sir. And I must urge you to act quickly. She’s clearly missed at least one dose, possibly two, and she is looking very distressed. After four days, the skin begins to slip; muscles loosen. It’s a very nasty process.”

Bryn couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. Joe Fideli had been right: her boss was selling drugs—bad ones. And they were extorting money from sick, desperate people.

It was horrible.

“I’m very sorry,” Mr. Fairview continued. “But I really must have cash in hand before I can give her the shot. This was made clear to you from the very beginning.”

“I lost my job,” the man said. It sounded like he was crying. “I can’t … We already had to give up our house. I can’t afford to pay you this much. Please. Please don’t let her die! We’ve got kids!”

There was a second of silence. “I’m afraid that even though we talked about this, you still don’t understand. She’s dead, Mr. Jones. We haven’t made her living. I explained to you that you were simply delaying the inevitable dissolution, and now it appears that the inevitable is upon you.”

Not only were they selling some hard-core drug; they were bilking people. How could Fairview possibly be telling people he was bringing back the dead? Who’d believe that? Maybe the drug induced some kind of coma, then woke up the addicts…. It didn’t really matter. Bryn felt deeply sickened. She’d been trained to help people in their darkest, worst moments, and this was an obscene, horrible perversion of what she’d believed. A betrayal of the worst kind.

She turned to go back up the steps, but a shadow blocked her path at the top of the stairs. She had a moment of déjà vu, but it wasn’t Joe Fideli.

It was, unfortunately, Freddy Watson.

He descended the stairs faster than she could scramble backward, and grabbed her by the arm in a crushing grip. She tried to knee him in the groin, but he was obviously an old hand at that one; her patella caught the meaty part of his thigh instead, and then he was shoving her off balance, turning her, and locking his arm around her throat. She tried to stamp on his feet, but her Payless heels weren’t that sturdy. He just laughed in her ear and dragged her, off balance, through the double doors into the prep room.

“Surprise visitor,” he said, and it obviously was, to the three people standing there. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and Mr. Fairview.

Mr. Fairview looked wearily disgusted. “I left her upstairs. And, Freddy, I thought you were supposed to scare her off from snooping around down here.”

“I did,” Freddy said. “I played the Big Bad Wolf as hard as I could, but she’s tougher than she looks. I caught her listening on the stairs.”

“Really? What did you hear, Bryn?” Mr. Fairview asked.

“Nothing,” she said, and tried to jam her elbow back into Freddy’s ribs. That worked well enough that he let up on the grip, and she slipped away and put the prep table between them. “He attacked me!”

“Yes, well, he does have impulse-control issues,” Mr. Fairview said. “It’s the reason I can’t have him doing intakes. He doesn’t inspire confidence in others. And I don’t believe you, Bryn.”

“You saw—”

“Not about the attack; about what you overheard. You did hear something. The question is what, and how much you understand.”

On the second prep table, Mr. Fairview had a leather case open, with a small bottle of some injectable drug nestled in padding, along with a syringe.

Mr. Jones was taking advantage of Bryn’s entrance to edge closer and closer to it. Now he grabbed the case, ripped the cap off the syringe, and quickly filled the chamber from the vial of liquid.

Mr. Fairview slapped it out of his hand. The syringe skittered across the floor, and Mr. Fairview stepped on it, cracking the plastic and leaving a wet smear on the tile floor as the drug leaked out.

Then he took out a gun from a drawer next to him and aimed it at Mr. Jones’s chest, and pulled the trigger three times, the booms shockingly loud in the tiled room.

Before Mr. Jones fell, Bryn bolted for the door. Freddy grabbed her and pressed her up against the wall just as Mr. Jones hit the tile floor, light already fading from his wide, surprised eyes. His wife cried out and dropped down next to him, but after a second of horrified staring, she scrabbled for the vial of the drug held loosely in his dead hand.

Mr. Fairview scooped it neatly away. “Freddy,” he said. “Stop playing with the new girl and take care of all this mess, please.”

“Yes, boss.” Freddy let go of Bryn and hit her. Hard. She saw darkness and flaming stars, and the world tilted sideways on her.

Cold floor.

By the time she got her eyes open again, Freddy was at the shelves. He yanked open a drawer and pulled out two body bags. Then, after a glance at Bryn, he added a third.

He unrolled the first one on the floor, dragged Mr. Jones over, and zipped him inside.

Bryn scrambled in slow motion to her feet, fought for balance, and staggered for the door, but Mr. Fairview was already there, and the sight of the gun made her slow and stop. She knew he’d shoot her.

She’d already seen the proof.

“How much do you know?” Fairview asked her. “Who are you working for?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! Let me go!” Her heart was hammering. Fear screamed at her to stay still, but she knew fear was going to get her killed. She needed to go back to her training. She needed to think. She had no idea what had happened to Joe Fideli, but if he hadn’t already shown up, she had no reason to think he’d come riding to the rescue in time to save her now.

Freddy finished zipping Mr. Jones into his storage bag, and then unrolled a second one. Bryn caught her breath as he grabbed Mrs. Jones by the arm and dragged her over onto the plastic. The woman slapped at him weakly, but she just couldn’t fight back.

He was zipping her into the body bag, still alive.

“No!” Bryn blurted, and lunged toward them to let the woman out. Freddy punched her, a true, no-holds-barred impact that sent another wave of blackness over her in a sticky, cold flood. She stayed upright somehow, and raised her fingers to her mouth. They came away bloody.

And just like that, her training came back to her, like a ghost returning to her body. The fear went away and the pain got blocked. She altered her balance, wishing for body armor, for boots, for a knife and a gun and all the things she didn’t have. Then she let that fall away.

She’d manage.

Freddy’s eyes were cold and avid. “She’s not like you thought. Look at her. She’s a fighter.”

“I can see that, Freddy.”

“I’m going to have to kill her.”

Fairview sighed. “I really can’t keep replacing people. It’s just impossible, the recruiting fees; you have no idea.”

“So don’t replace her,” Freddy said. “Kill her and give her the shot. She’ll be just as reliable as I am, after. Bonus points—you get to have special fun with her, too.”

Mr. Fairview smiled, but it looked bitter and pinched. “I hardly have enough to keep you fresh, plus our retail stock. You know that. And I still have Mr. Garcia to contend with, which is entirely your fault.”

Garcia. That name rang a bell, something immediate…. They’d mentioned, during her hiring process, that she was replacing a man named Cesar Garcia, who’d left town.

Maybe he hadn’t left town at all.

“He’s nearly done.” Freddy shrugged. “It’s been five days since his last shot. He won’t last the night.”

“Check him,” Mr. Fairview said. “I don’t want an unpleasant surprise.”

Freddy opened up the walk-in refrigerator and wheeled out the other body that had been in the freezer, the one in the body bag. And Bryn, to her horror, heard that sound again.

That scratching.

Not rats. She could see the bag moving, very slowly.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. She couldn’t seem to move as Freddy unzipped the body bag.

The smell spread through the room, sickly sweet and foul, and from all appearances, what was in the body bag was at least several weeks dead and decomposing. Bryn was used to the stench, but what made her eyes widen and her throat close up was the fact that this corpse, this decomposing thing, was still moving. Not involuntary biological twitches. Real, directed movements.

The lipless mouth opened, and air scraped out—not a scream, because the vocal cords were gone, but she understood.

Deep inside, she knew it was a howl of utter horror.

“Christ,” Freddy said in disgust. “He’s hanging on better than I’d expected. I may have to disassemble him.”

“No,” Mr. Fairview said, and came to stand next to Freddy, looking down on the remains of Mr. Garcia … Bryn’s predecessor. “This is fine. We can document the progress, until he’s too far gone to be of any use to us. Five full days is the longest anyone’s lasted, right? Maybe he’ll go to six. Or Mrs. Jones will. I suppose we can give up any hope of a payday on her as well.”

“What—” She hadn’t realized that she’d spoken until the word slipped out, and then it was too late. She’d drawn their attention.

Bryn grabbed a scalpel from the tray of sterile instruments and menaced Freddy as he came her way. “Back off!” she said. “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch.”

He laughed. “Late to the party, Double Trouble. Fairview got me first.”

She was fast, but he turned out to be faster, slapping the scalpel out of the way and slamming her face-first into the wall. Everything went vague, except for the pain, which remained cuttingly sharp, and then she was on the floor in a heap, watching her own blood crawl red over the tile. Just like Melissa.

The voices came at her smeared and disembodied, from what seemed like a great distance.

“Do you want to keep her?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe. It’s a bother to set up her disappearance properly. Let’s do it and get her in storage. I’ll decide later, once we dispose of Mr. Jones.”

Bryn felt herself being lifted, then settling into place on a stiff, cold surface.

A preparation table.

“No,” she whispered, and Mr. Fairview looked down on her with that distant, professional compassion she’d thought was so wonderful before. Adrenaline surged through her, and she tried to get up. He had leverage, and muscle, to keep her down.

“Sorry it didn’t work out,” he said. “You really did have a lot of promise, Bryn. I hope you don’t take this personally.”

He nodded to Freddy, and Freddy snapped on a pair of latex gloves, then lifted up a clear plastic bag.

He put it over her head.

Bryn involuntarily gasped, but the plastic filled her mouth and nose and blocked off her air. Freddy made sure of it by pressing his hand down over her face, and all her struggling didn’t make any difference at all. It seemed to take forever, and the panic was so extreme that it was painful, like needles in her skin. She was screaming, but the sound couldn’t get out. Her lungs ached, then hurt, then shrieked for air. God, it hurt. It hurt so badly.

Then it all started to go softly gray at the edges, and the edges pushed in, and in, until it was all a hazy mist, and she couldn’t remember why she was fighting so hard, and it was all pain, all of it. Dying was supposed to be easier.

Something crashed in the room, loud enough to penetrate even her fading senses, but she couldn’t make sense of it. Nothing made any sense. Everyone was yelling, and there was smoke, and fire, and the sharp pops of gunfire. Freddy’s chest exploded in a red mist, and he fell away. Blood splattered the bag over her eyes, and she couldn’t see anymore.

None of it mattered as she gasped, and gasped, and the taste of plastic was the last thing she knew as the shadows slipped over her and drowned her.

And it hurt, all the way to the very last scream of the last nerve.

“Crap, crap, crap,” a voice whispered, from a very long distance away. “Goddamn it. Shit. Come on, Bryn. Come on back.”

Someone was patting her face, which felt cold and clammy with moisture. She felt … numb. Cold to the bone. And oddly disconnected, as if she weren’t quite inside her own body.

Then, with a harsh, electric snap, she was back, and everything woke up.

Bryn’s body arched, and a scream raked its way up from her guts, out through her throat, and burst out of her mouth with so much force that she felt something tear inside of her. It didn’t even sound human, that scream: certainly nothing she could imagine coming out of her own body.

And then the pain drowned her in a thick, stinging wave, and she knew why she was screaming.

There was a murmur of voices, and she saw a glimpse of a face in the haloes of bright lights.

Joe Fideli. He looked grim and sad, and he was holding her hand. “Relax,” he said. “I know it hurts. Just relax now. You’ll be okay.”

She reached out, but it was too hard, too far, and whatever liquid they were injecting into her arm made her fall very far, very fast, into a hot, airless darkness.

Waking up the second time was both easier and worse. Easier because she no longer felt all the pain and horror; worse because she didn’t know where she was. It was a featureless room, very clean. She was tucked in a narrow bed with rails, and there were portable medical monitors, cabinets—the usual hospital room accoutrements. Nothing else that she could see. She didn’t even have an IV in her arm, only an oxygen clamp on her fingertip. The place smelled of antiseptic.

As she sat up to get a better look around, the door at the far end opened, and Joe Fideli came in. He was followed by another man Bryn didn’t know—younger than Joe, with black hair and brown eyes and skin a few shades darker than Bryn‘s. He was wearing a tailored black suit and a sober-looking tie, and both he and Joe had ID badges clipped onto their pockets.

Joe’s face was very, very calm, blank, and bland, and from the first look at him, she knew she was in trouble.

She just had no idea why, or how.

“Hello,” Bryn said. The two men didn’t say a word. She wet her very dry lips. “Where am I? What happened?”

Joe exchanged a look with the unknown man, then said, “You’re in a safe place.”

“Safe …” That didn’t seem to make sense to her. There was no safe place. Not anymore.

The other man, the one she didn’t know, walked forward, pulled up a single aluminum chair, and sat down next to her bedside. Close up, he was handsome in a quiet kind of way, and a little older than she’d thought—probably midthirties.

“Your name is Bryn Davis,” he said. She nodded, waiting for him to offer his own. He didn’t. “What do you remember about what happened to you?”

“I—” She stopped, because there was a black curtain between her and those memories, and she didn’t want to walk through it. She knew instinctively that it was there for a reason. “I’m not really sure. I remember going to work; there was a girl who killed herself—”

“Yes,” the man agreed, without any emotional weight on the word at all. “Go on.”

“I worked late. I met Mr. Fideli….” Bryn looked past her inquisitor to Joe, who was leaning against the wall by the door, still looking neutral and distant. He nodded at her. “And then I tried to leave, but Mr. Fairview took me back inside….”

Her voice faded. Whatever had happened to her after that, before Joe Fideli had slapped her face to wake her up, she didn’t remember, or want to remember. It made her stomach churn with anxiety to think about it.

“Something bad happened,” she whispered. “Something …”

The man didn’t blink. “Yes,” he agreed again, exactly the way he’d agreed to her earlier statement. “Bryn, I need to know what you know about the business Mr. Fairview and Mr. Watson were running from the basement.”

“The embalming?”

“Not the embalming.”

“I don’t understand.” She really didn’t, and her head hurt. Her mouth felt dry and tasted of metal, and she desperately craved a drink. “Could I have some water, please?”

“Not yet. I need you to tell me what you saw, Bryn.”

“I can’t.” She meant it. She was shaking all over, ice-cold at the thought of even trying to pull up those memories.

He studied her for a moment, then pushed back the chair, stood up, and walked over to murmur with Joe Fideli in the corner. It was a quiet, fierce argument, and finally Joe turned and left the room. He didn’t look happy.

The man in the suit looked at Bryn, and she felt vulnerable, fragile, and cold.

“I’m afraid I have to give you some very bad news,” the man said. “Please, I want you to stay calm.”

Bryn’s hands clenched into fists around the sheet that was draped over her body. “I’m calm.”

“You’ve suffered an attack,” he said. “Unfortunately, you didn’t survive.”

She blinked. What the hell had he just said? “Excuse me?”

“You’re dead, Bryn. You were suffocated with a plastic bag over your head.”

“I’m not dead.” But what he was saying made the darkness in her head ripple and threaten to tear and let those awful memories come out. “Obviously, I’m not dead; I’m talking to you. It’s not true.”

“I’m sorry, but I have no choice but to explain this to you. You’ve been treated with a proprietary drug, a drug that can bring a subject back from death for a limited period of time.”

“Limited,” she echoed faintly. “What do you mean, limited?”

“Without another injection, the nanites in your bloodstream will shut down in twenty-four hours. They’re all that’s keeping your body running, Bryn. They can repair damage and maintain your body at a certain level, but they don’t restore life permanently. It’s a facsimile of life, not sustainable on its own.” He clasped his hands behind his back and met her eyes steadily. “You’re a problem, Bryn. My problem. I made the call to bring you back, in the hope that you could give us some information about what was going on at the Fairview Mortuary, where they were obtaining the drugs stolen from our company.”

She didn’t understand. She didn’t want to understand. Her heart was pounding—if she were dead, her heart shouldn’t be beating, right? But she could feel it. She could feel everything. She was thirsty, for God’s sake.

She was alive.

“You brought me back,” she said. “From the dead.”

He said nothing.

“To ask me questions.”

“Questions you haven’t yet been able to answer,” he said. “Which is a problem for us both, you see. I made a substantial investment that isn’t paying off. As things go, I really don’t have any justification to give you a second shot. Unfortunately, that means you face a very difficult five or six days while the nanites completely shut down, and you … continue on the natural path of decay. We don’t really know if consciousness survives during that process, but I’m afraid it might, for a time. We’ll do everything we can to make you comfortable.”

It burst in on her with a blinding light: Mr. and Mrs. Jones. The drug. Mr. Fairview demanding all that money.

Mr. Garcia’s rotting corpse, moving weakly in its bag.

That’s going to be me.

“No!” she burst out. “No, you can’t do this to me! You son of a bitch, you can’t just let me rot!”

“Then tell me something that I can use to keep you alive,” he said, and for a second, his hard shell of reserve cracked. “Please Miss Davis. Tell me something I can use. Anything.”

She swallowed hard, squeezed her eyes shut, and then opened them. “Mr. Fairview was charging ten thousand dollars, and five hundred per shot. I saw him with someone named Mr. Jones. His wife needed the shot. And … he’d lost his job. He tried to grab the drugs, but Mr. Fairview shot him.” The world went too bright, and wobbly around the edges for a moment. She grabbed a deep breath to steady herself. “They put Mrs. Jones in a body bag. She was still alive. Still moving, anyway.”

There was a flash of horror across the man’s expression that made him seem, at least in that moment, human. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but that doesn’t help us. Did you hear Mr. Fairview say anything about where he was obtaining the drugs …?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t know anything about that.” And she realized, with a sinking sensation, that she’d just doomed herself. She had nothing left to tell him. Nothing he didn’t already know.

He seemed to know it, too. He looked at her for a long, silent moment, and then he turned and headed for the door.

“Wait,” she said. “At least tell me your name.”

She didn’t think he would. It was probably easier for him if he didn‘t. But he surprised her. “My name is Patrick McCallister,” he said. “I’m the chief of security for Pharmadene.”

“What’s Pharmadene?”

“The company that created Returné,” he said. “The drug that we gave you to bring you back.”

“You mean the drug that’s going to take five days to kill me again,” she said.

He unclipped his badge and swiped it through a strip reader next to the door. The door clicked open. “Unless I find a good reason to give you the next shot,” he said. “Yes.”

She watched the door slowly close, and then lowered her head to the clean, soft pillow.

I’m alive, she thought. Damn it, I’m alive.

For five more days, anyway.