Working Stiff

Chapter 6

McCallister drove her home, and they didn’t talk. Not at all. He cast her glances occasionally, but he seemed to understand that Bryn wanted silence more than comfort. She did like that about him; he wasn’t afraid to just let her think, and having him there soothed the constant roil of terror inside her.

Except that he can make me do anything he wants, she thought, and shivered, even in the blast of the car’s heater. Anytime he wants it.

McCallister glanced her way and turned up the heater.

“It’s not that,” she said.

He nodded slowly. “You’re realizing how vulnerable you are,” he said. “I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you there was something I could do, but for now, we have to wait and see.”

“I thought having a gun would make me feel better, but if you order me to put it away, I have to do that, don’t I?” Her voice sounded soft, but bitter. “I have to do anything you want. Boss.”

“I’m not going to take advantage of that.”

“But you could.” She turned her face toward the passing dark streets. “Some would.”

He was silent for a moment, and then said quietly, “Yes. Some would.” That was it. He didn’t race to reassure her again, or to argue that he wasn’t like that. He just let it go.

And strangely, that made her trust him, just a little bit. If he didn’t need to defend his character, there was a lot better chance he actually had one. “Why did you bring me back?” She’d asked it before, but somehow, she didn’t feel he’d really answered.

“Would you rather we hadn’t?”

“Yes. I think I’d be better off dead. Don’t you?”

“No,” he said. “And if you want a real answer to that question …” He stopped, as if he were weighing his answer carefully. “You must have fallen next to the far wall, and a table tipped over and covered you. We had no idea you were suffocating until Joe realized you weren’t where he thought you were, and started looking for you. We were right there, and we let you die while we screwed around securing the scene. I was the one who moved the table and found you. I was too late. You were gone. When it came down to a choice, I really didn’t have one.”

There was so much going on in his voice, although he was trying to keep it bland and even. She could imagine how that had felt, to find someone like that—someone you might have been in time to save. Someone whose chance had slipped away while you were only feet away.

“So it’s guilt,” she said. “You did it out of guilt.”

He looked at her and said, “Would it make you feel better if I said yes?”

Obscurely, it did. A little. “Would you do it again?”

“Yes,” he said. “And I wouldn’t even think about it. Not now that I know you. And it wouldn’t be guilt if I made the choice now.”

“No?” She smiled a little, intrigued despite her weariness. “What would it be?”

He avoided that question neatly. “We’re here,” he said. “Home.”

The apartment complex looked shabbier than ever; the wind had blown some trash out of the overflowing bins, and it lay heaped against parked cars like dirty snow. McCallister found a parking space, and Bryn led the way up to her door.

He took her keys and edged her out of the way. “Let me check it first,” he said.

“It’s fine. Mr. French is on guard inside.”

He gave her a slightly baffled look, but eased the door open and hit the light switch. The bulldog inside stood up on the couch, growling, staring at McCallister with murderous beady eyes.

“Mr. French, I presume,” McCallister said. He sounded amused. “Call him off, please.”

Bryn whistled, and Mr. French’s ears perked. He stopped growling and sat down, but he still looked concerned until Bryn pushed past McCallister and came over to pet him. “Good boy,” she said, and scratched him behind the ears. “You just stay on guard against all the bad men.”

“Me included?” McCallister shut the door and locked the dead bolt.

“I have to walk him, you know.”

“Not until I check the other rooms.”

“There’s no need. Mr. French—”

“I’m not doubting his abilities. I’m just double-checking.”

It didn’t take long, really—the kitchen was tiny, the bedroom disorderly and almost as small. Closets held no surprises, and neither did corners or the dust bunnies beneath the bed. McCallister was methodical; she had to give him that: he not only checked every conceivable hiding place, including the bathtub, but made sure every window was firmly secured. She was vaguely worried about what he thought of her housekeeping.

“All clear,” he said. “I’ll take the dog out.”

“He’s my dog.”

“And I don’t want you outside alone,” he said.

“Fine. Come with.” Bryn clipped the leash onto Mr. French’s collar. “It’s a nice night for a walk, right?”

McCallister clearly didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t argue the point. Together, they walked the dog down the stairs and out to the grassy area on the other side of the parking lot. It was the common pet-walking area, and Bryn had brought her poop bags; Mr. French did his business; she cleaned it up. It was all very normal except that she had a solid male shadow who kept watching the shadows as if waiting for an army of ninja assassins to appear.

The only thing that happened was that a rat scrabbled out of the trash container and raced across the parking lot, making Mr. French bark and lunge to the end of his leash. Bryn struggled to hold on to him; he had a lot of muscle packed into his small body.

“Let’s get back in,” McCallister said. His body language was almost as tense as the dog’s, and Bryn finally surrendered and let Mr. French drag her back partway on the rat’s trail before she tugged him toward the apartment stairs. He went willingly enough, confident he’d driven off the invader, and by the time they were back inside, locked in, he stretched out and looked supremely self-satisfied.

McCallister checked the apartment again.

“We should eat something,” he said, coming back to find her still on the couch with the dog.

“I could call out for pizza.”

“No deliveries. It’s not safe.”

“Oh, come on, it’s pizza.”

“And if someone wanted to get to you, and me, it’s easy enough to doctor a pizza. No. We make something here.”

Bryn scratched the bulldog’s ears. “Okay, well, I hope you’re one of those amazing cooks who can make a feast out of two dried cranberries and a lemon, because that’s about all I have.”

McCallister looked at her in complete bafflement, as if she were making some kind of an obscure joke, and then checked the fridge. He stared a moment, then let the door swing closed. He repeated the exercise in the pantry, and pulled out a moldy half loaf of bread, which he threw out, and finally an open package of crackers and a peanut-butter jar.

“You don’t cook,” he said.

“Are you sure you’re not Sherlock Holmes? Because the way you notice subtle clues …”

“I thought everyone was capable of cooking at least a can of soup. How do you survive? Not on pizza.”

“They also deliver spaghetti, and sub sandwiches. And Chinese food.”

McCallister shook his head and sat down across from her with the crackers and peanut butter and a butter knife. He handed her a paper plate, which was the only kind she owned. Mr. French stood up, curiously examining the peanut-butter jar until Bryn shooed him off the couch. He obediently sat down, staring at the two of them, and the peanut-butter jar, from a different angle, and doing his best to convey that he was, in fact, starving.

Bryn ate in silence, casting glances at McCallister from time to time; chewing crackers and sticky peanut butter didn’t make for much conversation. By the end, though, the silence had begun to feel oppressive, and as Bryn swallowed the last of what was clearly a highly inadequate meal, she thought she ought to at least try to be social. “Thanks,” she said. “For, ah, making this.”

He gave her a trace of a smile and took her empty plate into the kitchen, along with the rest of the crackers and peanut butter. While he was in there, he opened a couple of other cabinets, apparently looking for a second course. Which wasn’t there, Bryn almost told him; she’d been out of everything, planning to make a run to the store for at least a few basic things. He must have decided that the saltshaker didn’t have much potential, because he began to walk around the apartment, checking the view out the windows.

“I’ll take the couch,” he said, still not looking directly at her. “It’d be nice if you had an extra pillow, but it’s not required.”

“I’m not that bad. I have an extra pillow. And a blanket.”

“One the dog hasn’t slept on?”

She blushed. “Come on, am I that horrible?”

McCallister glanced in her direction and, for the first time, allowed the look to linger. It was almost … human. “No,” he said. “You’re not.”

“Coming from you, that’s nearly a compliment.” Bryn swallowed hard, suddenly feeling the pressure of tears growing behind her eyes. “I’m not feeling anything but horrible lately. Like an alien in someone else’s skin.”

“I can understand that,” he said. He hadn’t looked away from her, and she felt that spark of warmth take hold between them. “What you’ve been through … But you’re still an attractive woman, Bryn, if you have any doubt of that.”

“That was definitely a compliment.”

He smiled with genuine amusement. “I hoped you’d take it that way. I didn’t only ask you out for a drink to pass on information, you know.”

“Could have fooled me,” she said. “You’re very … professional.”

“Never off the clock,” he agreed, and turned back to the windows. “Especially not tonight.”

Great.

Bryn walked into the kitchen, opened a cabinet, and pulled down a bottle of wine. It was cheap, because that was all she could afford, but it was decent. And open. She poured half of the contents into a jelly jar without asking whether he might want any, drank some way too fast, and then moved into the bedroom. She came out with a pillow (the extra from her bed) and a blanket, which she put on the couch. McCallister watched this in silence, leaning against the wall, and as she finished off the giant glass of wine and poured the rest he said, “Don’t you think you might want to slow down on that?”

“Why? It’s not like I haven’t had a fucking awful day. Week. Month. Life. Death.”

“Because of that,” he said. “You’ll get reckless, and we don’t need that.”

“No, we sure don’t want that,” she said. She felt better now, with the wine. Glowing inside. Belatedly, she thought he was probably right; she’d had a cosmo and a Scotch tonight, and most of a bottle of wine wasn’t going to help her keep her head together. But she wanted to be out from under the tension and fear, at least for now. Let McCallister be responsible for keeping her alive. It was all his fault, anyway.

She reached for the glass again.

Bryn hadn’t seen him move, but now he was right in front of her, taking the drink from the counter and moving to the sink, where he poured the rest of it out. “Hey!” she blurted, but it was too late by then, and he was running the water to swirl the last purple stains down the drain. “You jerk, that was mine!”

“You’ll thank me in the morning.”

“I doubt I’ll ever have any reason to thank you!” Rage ignited inside her, sudden and shocking and utterly beyond her control. “You left me to die on the floor; isn’t that right?”

He turned on her, and suddenly he was that Patrick McCallister again, the one who’d burst into that white fire of anger on the street and put a man down with two scientific strokes of a riot baton.

The scary one.

“Sit. Down,” he said. It was quiet, but she had no doubt that there was an or else clause attached to it. But it was the phrasing that triggered something inside her—an almost compulsive wish to do as he said.

And it made her even more enraged.

“Or. What?” she spat back, taking a step toward him, not away. “You think you can invoke your creepy protocol and make me your little living doll? She walks, she talks, she does whatever the hell you want? No. Never going to happen!”

The thought seemed to shock him out of his own anger, and McCallister’s eyes opened wide. “That’s not what I—” He stopped himself and took in a deep breath. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I would never do that to you. I wouldn’t take away your choices.”

“You already did. You brought me back. You took away my choice to live or die—and what choice do I have now? Don’t take the shots? Decompose? You think this is some kind of freedom you’ve given me?” Oh, she was feeling dizzy now, off balance with both alcohol and pure, sweet rage. “Don’t tell me you won’t take away my choices; you take more away from me every day!”

“Bryn …” He didn’t seem to know what to say now, and instead, he did the last thing she expected.

He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders.

She stiffened and started to pull away, but there was something vulnerable in his face just then, and she stilled herself and returned his stare. Seen this close, he was much more handsome than she’d realized—fine soft skin, a dark shadow of stubble stroking his cheeks. His eyes weren’t just dark; they were a rich, complex brown, rimmed with dark green. There were strands of silver in his hair.

He started to say something, then checked the impulse, and for a moment it was just the two of them, feeling something odd and powerful pulling between them. Attraction, yes, but more than that.

Shared desperation.

“You didn’t answer me before, at Fideli’s house,” Bryn said. “About how many of you were working on—”

He covered her mouth with his hand, stepping closer. He bent so that his lips were very close to her ear, close enough that she felt the hot stroke of his breath against her skin, and he whispered, “Say nothing you don’t want overheard. We’re being monitored. We’re always watched. Remember that.”

Oh, God, she felt a sudden flush of heat, one that transmitted directly from the warmed area on her neck down through her body to pool … lower. He was right up against her, his chest brushing hers, and she felt the tension in his hands as he continued to hold her. Instead of pulling back, he stayed where he was, as if he had more to say.

But he didn’t.

“If we’re going to be this close, can I call you Patrick?” she whispered, and it broke his tension, shattered it into a startled laugh low in his throat, and God, how exactly had she stopped hating him? Maybe it was the fact that he was fighting to stay professional; she could feel it.

Just then, Mr. French barked, a single, sharp, angry sound that hit Bryn like a slap. She looked down. He was standing belligerently at her feet, and he glared up at McCallister with possessive zeal.

McCallister looked down, too, and this time, his soft laugh had a little bit of despair in it. “You should probably go to bed before he takes all this personally,” he said to Bryn, and their eyes met again just for a raw second before he moved back, leaving her cold and alone. “I don’t think he likes me.”

She started to say something, and fell silent when he shook his head. “Better we don’t start anything between us,” he said, very quietly. “We have enough to worry about already without making our situation more … complicated.”

“Right,” she said. “We’ll just … keep things simple. That sounds”—awful, she thought, but managed to change it to say—“awfully sensible.”

“That’s me,” McCallister said, with a bitter twist to his lips. “I’m nothing if not sensible.”

He sat down on the couch and fiddled with the pillow, clearly wanting her to go. So she did, with Mr. French trotting along in her wake.

She closed the bedroom door, leaned against it, and looked at the dog. “You are an asshole; you know that?”

He snorted, turned three times in a circle, and flopped down in the doorway.

“Now you think you’re a chaperone? Fine. Knock yourself out. No treats for you.”

It seemed unnaturally quiet as she prepared for bed; she found herself stopping, waiting for some hint of sound from the living room. Bryn made herself move briskly, brushing her teeth, her hair, slipping into comfy flannel pajama pants and a cotton tank top. When she got into bed, Mr. French abandoned his post at the door and jumped up onto the bed to curl at her feet.

She glared at him “Don’t even try to make it up to me, loser dog.” He licked his chops, grunted, and put his head down on his paws. “And don’t give me the sad eyes. I’m not going for it.”

He whined softly, so she melted and petted him, and got rewarded with an affectionate lick before she turned off the lights.

Now it was quiet. Really, really quiet. Except for the always loud bulldog breathing, it felt like her apartment had been wrapped in soundproofing. She usually heard something from her neighbors—voices, smeared TV noise, something—but tonight it was like her room had been launched into outer space. Maybe they were on vacation. Or out to a late dinner.

Maybe they’re dead. That morbid thought crept in unexpectedly, and Bryn fought to get rid of it. Not everything had to have an awful explanation. Not every shadow had a threat.

But it was really quiet.

Bryn turned, twisted, sighed, flopped over on her back. It felt hot in the apartment. Almost stifling. She considered getting up to adjust the thermostat, but it was in the living room, and no way was she going out there. Better to sweat.

She drifted, almost asleep, and found herself sighing happily as a cool breeze dried the sweat on her face. Felt good.

Breeze.

Mr. French suddenly bolted off the bed, barking furiously, louder than she’d ever heard him, and the shock threw her off the opposite side in instinctive reaction. She fumbled for the gun she’d left sitting out on the nightstand, found it, and crouched behind the bed as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

The pale square of the window. Billowing curtains. The cool breeze moving over her skin.

Mr. French, snarling and barking.

There was no one at the window. I didn’t open that. Someone else did. He may already be inside.

No. If someone had gotten in, Mr. French would have gone after him.

The next second, her bedroom door slammed open, and McCallister stepped in, took cover next to Bryn, and said, “What happened?” He was still in his suit pants and shirt, but his tie and jacket were off—that was a minor, fleeting detail, though. What she mostly noticed was that he’d come armed. His voice sounded a lot calmer than she felt. “Window,” she said. “I didn’t open it.”

Mr. French was bouncing up and down, ricocheting off the wall and snapping at the blowing curtains.

“Call him off,” McCallister said. “Let me check it out. Maybe you did and forgot.”

“I didn’t! And it didn’t open itself!”

“I know. Just let me check.”

She whistled, but Mr. French wouldn’t heel; he was fixated on the window, angrier than she’d ever seen him. McCallister shook his head and stepped out and moved like a ghost to the side of the window. Mr. French, apparently realizing he had backup now, stopped barking and stood at alert attention, watching as McCallister eased back the curtain and looked out. His body language stayed tense, even after he gave Bryn the all-clear sign and slid the glass closed. He checked the lock. “Not broken,” he said. “Someone must have slipped the catch and opened it. Not that hard to do, with these kinds of cheap locks. I just didn’t expect anyone to come up the wall. It’s a pretty rigorous climb.”

“Could you do it?”

He shrugged, which she assumed meant yes. Bryn sat down on the bed and imagined someone climbing up that wall—and without her will, that image morphed from a shadowy figure to Fast Freddy. She imagined him raising his head and grinning as he did it, and it was the memory of his weird, lewd smile that made her shiver. “Jesus,” she whispered. “He didn’t get in …?”

“Mr. French says no,” McCallister said. He reached down and patted the bulldog on the head; the dog growled in response, lifting his lips to show teeth, but didn’t bite. Just made the point. “I think the dog stopped him.”

If she hadn’t let Mr. French into the bedroom—which she usually didn’t, actually—he might have been in the other room, barking at the door. More time for Freddy—if it was Freddy—to get in and do … whatever he was planning to do.

Or—on the pleasant side—maybe it had been a garden-variety rapist/murderer. That, Bryn thought, would actually be a relief.

“I don’t think you should stay here,” McCallister said. “Please pack a bag.” It was, she noticed, in the form of a request.

“I’m not leaving my dog.”

“We’ll take him with us. Please.”

McCallister still seemed tense, and she wasn’t in any mood to be obstinate, or to argue about the twinge of obedience she felt even though he’d phrased it politely as a request. He was one of those people who was so normally unreadable that when he flashed actual stress, it had to be a real crisis. Plus, someone really had jimmied her window—whether it was Fast Freddy or not. Getting out of here didn’t sound like a bad idea at all.

Packing took about five minutes. Hell, as much as Bryn owned, she thought she could have packed to move house in under an hour, depressing as that was. McCallister checked his car thoroughly, inside and out, for tracking devices, hidden passengers, or explosive parting gifts before he allowed her to come anywhere near it. He even checked out the trunk. She felt that little frisson of revulsion when she imagined Fast Freddy hiding in there, like a trapdoor spider down its hole.

They’d gone about a mile from her house, taking apparently random twists and turns, when McCallister finally said, “I don’t see a tail.”

“That’s good.”

“Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. “I’m switching cars.”

“You’re what?”

“I could have missed something. This isn’t a game, Bryn. It’s not television. I can’t afford to take a chance with our lives.”

“I thought I was hard to kill.”

His voice, when it came, sounded grim. “You’re not hard to hurt.”

McCallister got on the car phone and ordered up a second car from one of his Pharmadene henchpersons. Within half an hour, they’d pulled into a parking lot and switched vehicles with another man driving a similar car.

“Where’s he going?” Bryn asked.

“Anywhere but where we’re going. If anyone’s tracking him, it’ll be a wasted and lengthy trip.”

“Well, where are we going?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“In case we’re being monitored.”

He didn’t answer, but then, she really had stopped expecting him to make the effort to give her any actual information.

They left the downtown lights behind and drifted into suburbia, sleepy streets and darkened houses. He kept driving, and now that the adrenaline had worn off she found herself dozing, her head at an uncomfortable angle against the window. She must have faded out for a while, because when she jerked upright again McCallister was pulling to a stop in front of a massive stone wall pierced by an enormous, forbidding wrought-iron gate.

It slowly opened, revealing a moonlit blue-tinged gravel drive that was probably blindingly white in full day. The hedges were manicured and shaped as if they’d been taken to a high-end salon, not one leaf fluttering out of place. Bryn blinked as he drove up a long, winding path, past stately old trees and perfect rose gardens and a white gazebo large enough to host the New York Philharmonic for an afternoon concert.

A massive square block of a house appeared at the top of the next curving hill, illuminated with tasteful outdoor spotlights. The place was the size of a mall, Bryn thought, not to mention being so elaborate it could have been used in a movie with women in corsets and men behaving badly.

McCallister pulled up in front of the front steps, and the massive wooden door opened to reveal an actual butler. Well, she assumed he was, although he wasn’t wearing a tuxedo. More of a dinner jacket, which was remarkable enough at this late hour.

“Where are we?” Bryn asked.

“Home,” McCallister said. “Come on.”

This could not possibly be someone’s home. Not anyone who actually worked for a living. But McCallister walked around, opened her door, and she looked at Mr. French, who huffed something in dogspeak and jumped out to toddle along after him.

“Traitor,” she said, and grabbed her bag.

The butler was an older man, well into gray hair, but with a kind face that put Bryn at ease immediately. He took the suitcase from her without hearing any kind of protests, and said, “Miss Davis, I’ll take this to your room.”

“Give her the Auburn Room, Liam. I want her in a defensible position,” McCallister said. The butler nodded briskly and went up the stairs with her bag, leaving her and Mr. French to gawk at the huge, vaulted entry hall. It was some odd shape—octagonal, maybe—with three doors angled out of it, plus the staircase sweeping grandly into the shadows. She had an overwhelming impression of age, solidity, and above all, wealth. The paintings. The tapestries. The richly colored rugs on the floor.

“Welcome,” McCallister said, “to the ancestral millstone around my neck. Before you ask, yes, it’s mine. Or, more properly, it belongs to my family’s trust, and I’m allowed to rent it for a nominal fee.”

What did you say to that? Bryn finally settled for a subdued “Wow,” and studied a painting close to her. She’d seen that image before. They sold posters of it at Wal-Mart. “So you’re … rich.” Evidently, that was an understatement.

“Not really. As I said, most of this belongs to the trust; I just act as the administrator. I’m …” He thought for a second, and smiled. “A caretaker, I suppose. I avoid the place as often as possible, anyway. Liam is more than capable of running the enterprise without my interference.”

“But it belongs to your family.”

“No, to the trust. It belonged to my father. And my father didn’t leave it to me.” McCallister looked around for Mr. French, who was sniffing a low-hanging tapestry quite carefully, flat nose buried in the probably priceless fabric. “Ah, would you mind …?”

“Come here, dogface,” she said, and scooped him up. He squirmed, but she held him. God forbid the mutt should pee on anything in here; she’d be in debt for the rest of her life. “Who did your dad leave it to?”

“My brother,” McCallister said. “He died.” That was short, unemotional, and didn’t invite any more questions. “Let me take you to your room.”

“The Auburn Room,” she said. “Is everything named that pretentiously around here?”

“Be nice. I could have put you in the Aubergine Suite.”

“My God.”

“I’m two doors down,” he said. “If you need anything, you can press the button for Liam, or come get me. Don’t go wandering by yourself.”

“Ghosts?”

“None that would bother you.” Again, there was that slammed conversational door. McCallister jogged up a few steps, then turned and looked back at her. “Something else?”

She paused, hand on the railing. “What is your room called?”

“Patrick’s room,” he said. “But it used to be called the Black Room.”

Somehow, she wasn’t at all surprised.

The Auburn Room was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

Bryn paused in the doorway, staring at the graceful lines of the canopied bed, the massive gilt-framed mirror that stretched half the length of the room, the silks in muted orange, rich browns, harvest golds. If the Queen of England has a favorite room, this is probably it, she thought. Her cheap little suitcase looked particularly pathetic where Liam had put it on a folding luggage rack. The luggage rack was probably worth more than the entire contents, and the suitcase.

She’d been starting to like McCallister, but now … now she couldn’t honestly believe that they had anything at all in common. He came from a whole different reality than she—or anybody she knew—lived in. Why in the hell was he working as some corporate drone?

“I hope this is suitable, ma‘am,” Liam said, and gave her a warm smile. “Shall I bring a bed for your dog?”

“Um … can I let him sleep with me?”

“Of course.”

Yeah, what was a little dog hair on that national treasure of a bedspread, or the rug that the Antiques Roadshow appraisers would have orgasmed over? She let Mr. French hop down to run around the room sniffing excitedly, and tried not to think about the disaster that might happen next.

Liam was watching her, and clearly knew what she was thinking, because he smiled and said, “No worries about the dog, ma’am. We have seven here, including two rottwei-lers, three greyhounds, a poodle, and a pug. Your friend is quite welcome. I’ll bring some food and water for him. Anything for you?”

“I’m all kibbled out,” she said. “I think I just need to sleep, but thank you. And thanks for not making me feel … second-class.”

“You’re assuredly not,” he said, and nodded to her before closing the door behind him.

That lasted about two full seconds before there was another rap on the wood, and when she looked out, McCallister was there. He cleared his throat. “So you’ll be all right.” It wasn’t a question, really. “As I said, I’m two rooms down. The panic button is next to your bed. Press it if you’re in any way alarmed, and Liam will come running. So will I.”

“Why do you work for Pharmadene?” she asked, as he reached for the doorknob. “You must have a reason. It’s not like you need the job. If I lived here, I’d never clip on some corporate badge and wear a monkey suit.”

He considered giving her an honest answer—she could see that in the way he looked at her—but then he shook his head. “We’ll discuss all that some other time; it’s a long story. For now, please get some sleep. Liam will make sure you’re ready for breakfast. We’ll be leaving right after that.”

“Going where?”

“Hopefully,” he said, “to someone who can help you more than I can.”

“Patrick?” She saw him glance back over his shoulder as he opened the bedroom door. “Back at my apartment, we—”

He shook his head, and left without a word.

“—didn’t do anything,” she finished softly, as the door shut. “Right. Professional relationship it is. No problem.”

Despite the amazing down mattress and soft sheets and feathery duvet, neither she nor Mr. French slept much at all.

The morning dawned soft and bright, with those kind of cheerful chirping country bird sounds that Bryn thought existed only in the movies. She felt tired, but oddly at peace, and swung open the window to look out at the unbelievable view of the manicured, jewel-perfect gardens. That lasted about a minute, until Mr. French marched to the closed (and locked) bedroom door, whined, and she remembered that mansions probably didn’t come with convenient doggy doors. She was pulling on her robe and slippers and wondering what the rules were about wandering around this place looking ratty when a soft knock came at the door.

She unlocked it and peeked out. Liam smiled politely and said, “May I take the young lad for a walk outside?”

Oh. “Well … if you don’t mind …”

“Absolutely no trouble, Miss Davis. Will you want coffee or tea with your breakfast?”

Right on cue, she remembered her caffeine deficit, and her stomach rumbled. “Coffee,” she said. “And just a bagel, please. Oh—Liam?”

“Yes, miss.”

“What’s the story about this house?”

Liam regarded her for a few seconds without replying, then leaned against the door and said, “I’m not sure that Mr. McCallister shouldn’t tell you himself.”

“Mr. McCallister has a policy of telling me absolutely nothing, and it’s getting pretty old.”

“He does tend to be very private,” Liam agreed. “Very well. His great-grandfather was a hardscrabble railroad man who made a fortune, which his grandson set about squandering. Luckily, his granddaughter was more astute, and by the time Mr. McCallister’s father was born, the fortune had been successfully defended.”

“He said he had a brother.”

“He did.”

She waited, but he didn’t expand on it. “And?”

“I believe Patrick told you that Jamie died.”

“It sounds like neither one of you wants to tell me the truth about it.”

“So it does,” Liam said. “I should walk the dog, miss. Go down to breakfast when you’re ready.”

He left before she could think of any better way to pry information out of him. Not that she’d have succeeded. Liam and Patrick both seemed to have taken vows of silence on the subject.

Freshly scrubbed and dressed, she came downstairs to find Mr. French comfortably snuggled into a doggy bed near the door, looking deliriously happy. Liam showed her to the Small Room, which apparently was where the breakfast buffet was laid out; the room wasn’t small, and it held enough food to take care of a fairly major armed camp. “I just wanted a bagel,” she said weakly, surveying the ranks of gleaming serving trays. Liam pulled out a chair at the table, and she saw a steaming china cup and a bagel ready for her, just the way she’d asked. “Oh.” She sank down, and was taking her first sip as Patrick McCallister walked in.

I made this man sleep on my ratty old Sears couch, she thought. Covered with a Wal-Mart blanket. In my six-hundred-a-month apartment. I made him eat peanut butter and crackers off of paper plates.

And he smiled at me.

She wasn’t sure which emotion that boiled up in her was the most apt: a vague sense of shame for being … not part of this world; anger, for making her feel inadequate; or surprise, because once again, Patrick McCallister looked like a real person when he smiled.

Or a secret, unsettling sense of delight that there was warmth in the smile, despite everything.

Bryn shook it off and forced herself to look at him analytically. He looked like he was wearing an identical suit, shirt, and tie to what he’d had on yesterday, only these were spotless and wrinkle-free. Maybe Liam had some kind of overnight cleaning service, too. Even his shoes were shiny. He filled up a breakfast plate, moving fast but gracefully, and took a seat across from Bryn.

“Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes,” she said. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I? Fast Freddy rose from the dead and someone is apparently climbing sheer walls like a lizard to get at me. Nothing to keep me awake there.”

“He won’t be climbing them here,” Liam said, sounding absolutely convinced of it. “Motion sensors on the walls, security at every possible entrance. Constant monitoring. You’re quite safe here, miss.”

Before she had a chance to feel better about that, McCallister said, “She’s not staying. We’ll be leaving right after breakfast.”

“I see.” Liam’s eyebrows went up just a little. “Will you be needing anything in the way of supplies?”

McCallister flat-out grinned at that. “I’m starting to wonder if you think being a butler means that you’re Alfred and I’m Bruce Wayne. Do we have a Batcave?”

“Once again, I’m not a butler, sir. I’m an estate administrator. And we do not have a Batcave that I’m aware of, but I can certainly check the basements just in case. I was speaking more of providing you with a packed lunch. Perhaps some coffee in a thermos.”

“Ah,” McCallister said, and took a bite of bacon, which Bryn was starting to regret not having. “Lunch and coffee would be fine. Thanks.”

“And for the lady?”

“Whatever you’re doing is fine,” she said hastily. What did rich people eat for lunch? Finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off? Oysters? She had no idea. This place made Mr. Fairview’s fancy French lunch look like the corner deli had slapped it together. “Where are we going?”

That last was directed at McCallister, and he chewed and swallowed a large bite of eggs before he said, “I told you that I had a contact who might be able to help with your … unique problem. A therapist. We’ll be visiting him shortly.”

Again, he was talking in code, and the reality descended hard on her shoulders, like hands pushing her into the chair: someone was always watching. Listening. Even here. No matter where she went, she couldn’t shake off Pharmadene’s leash around her neck.

She took a bite of bagel. It was probably delicious, but she tasted almost nothing. At least it would keep her going, along with the coffee. “I need my shot,” she said.

“You’ll get it once we’re at the therapist’s.”

“You have it with you?”

“Yes. I keep two with me at all times in case of emergency.” When she frowned, he continued. “If you get severely injured, you may require a booster shot. I don’t want to be unprepared, as long as you’re with me.”

“In other words, I could knock you out and take them, and I’d be all right for two days.”

The smile went back to a tight, controlled, almost humorless expression. “Your problem is assuming you could knock me out.” She knew that glint in the eye; McCallister wasn’t confident because he was arrogant. He was confident because he had historical evidence he was right. “And I don’t think one more day of running would take you out of the reach of Pharmadene.”

He was right about that. Without resources, she’d be delaying the inevitable, and very messy, end. Pharmadene wouldn’t even have to chase her, unless they really wanted to. They could just literally let her rot.

Sucks to be me.

Bryn ate her bagel in silence, and by the time she was finished, Liam had already neatly packed her overnight bag and loaded it in McCallister’s car. He even included a new dog bed for Mr. French to travel in comfort. Lunch was in modular little boxes. “I think he is Alfred,” she said to McCallister, who was downing the last of his coffee as he watched.

“Actually, I often wonder if he’s Batman.” McCallister handed Liam back the cup and saucer and opened the passenger door for her. “Time to go.”

She let Mr. French jump in and take his seat in the dog bed before slipping in herself. McCallister got behind the wheel, and in ten seconds or less they were heading down the gravel path. Bryn let the crunch of the tires fill the silence for another five seconds before she said, “Your family has a shitload of money.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“But it’s not your money?”

“I told you. I’m the trust administrator. I decide where the money is spent, but I’m not allowed to touch it personally.”

“Is that why you took the job at Pharmadene?”

“Even ex-rich people need salaries.”

“But why there?”

He didn’t glance at her. His focus stayed on the long, winding road down to the gates. “I don’t think we need to discuss my job, Bryn. It’s not healthy for either of us to dig too deep into the details.”

“But back at Joe’s you said—”

“Bryn.” He cut her off, cold as a guillotine blade. “Change the subject. Now.”

She hadn’t been going to spill anything top-secret, damn it; she wasn’t that stupid. It offended her that he thought she would. “Fine. Tell me about your family.”

“Pick something else.” He finally reached the estate’s gates, which silently opened for them, and they hit the open road. She could sense his frustration in the way he edged the accelerator up past legal speed.

“Oh, no, you already warned me off of one topic. Liam said your family got its money the old-fashioned way.”

“By oppressing others? Yes, there was a lot of opportunity for that around the early industrial age, and they took full advantage. Great-Granddad was a rival of Rockefeller for a while, only he lacked the civic responsibility. It’s not a glamorous story, Bryn.”

“It is to someone whose biggest family celebrity was a cousin who made it to the second round of American Idol. Nobody’s ever going to mention the Davises in the same breath as the Rockefellers.”

“That’s almost certainly a good thing.”

She laughed. “And you really don’t have a clue what it’s like to grow up poor, McCallister.”

“I know what it’s like to grow up—” He stopped himself, shook his head, and said, “Let’s not talk about this.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not germane to the problems you face.”

“I didn’t think you wanted to talk about my problems. What with all the secrets.”

To her surprise, he laughed. It was a strange, almost humorless little laugh, but closer than she’d ever heard from him. “You can be infuriatingly right; did anyone ever tell you that?”

“I can safely say it’s not a problem that’s really bothered me so far in my life.”

“All right then,” he said. There were crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and a ghost of a smile on his lips. “You tell me about your family.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“You probably know everything about all of them.”

“I know facts. Tell me what they’re actually like.”

So she did, as the miles hummed by under the tires: Annie, her sweet but financially incompetent sister; her brother Tate’s current deployment to Afghanistan; her older sister Grace, the know-it-all, working as a department manager at Wal-Mart, but with embarrassing secrets; George, the asshole Bryn never spoke to, who was still the apple of her mother’s eye because he ran his own business; and, last, Kyle. “But you know about Kyle,” she said.

“Do I?”

She sighed. “He’s serving fifteen years for armed robbery. Don’t tell me you don’t know about my big brother. I barely know him, though. He took off when he was fifteen years old, and I was just a kid. He was smart, though. Smarter than George, for sure. He got in with bad people after he left home.”

“Isn’t this where you tell me he’s not a bad guy?”

“No. As far as I know, he’s a hard-ass Aryan Brotherhood member. It’d be stupid to say he’s not a bad guy.”

McCallister let that lie for a moment before he said, “What about Sharon?”

“What about her?”

“You didn’t tell me about her.”

“I didn’t really know her, either.” That was a lie, though; Bryn remembered Sharon well. Sharon was pretty, with flowing red-blond hair, a teasing laugh, big lovely eyes. “She was a lot older than I was.”

“You refer to her in past tense, you know.”

“I know. She’s dead. I mean, the family party line is that she’s missing, but she’s been missing for a long time, and you know the odds on that. If a pretty eighteen-year-old girl with no history of behavior issues goes missing …”

McCallister nodded slowly. “Still, she could be out there somewhere.”

“If she is, she’s got no interest in contacting any of us. Not even Mom, and they were close right up until the day she walked out of our lives.” Bryn took in a deep breath. “No. She’s dead. Whether it was an accident or murder, she’s lying out there somewhere, waiting to be found. I know it, and so do you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. It sounded like he meant it.

“Then it’s your turn,” she said. “I’ve been talking for more than an hour, spilling my entire family history. What about you?”

“Bryn—”

“I’m not asking for classified secrets. Just tell me about your family.”

He didn’t want to—she could see it—but he finally said, “Nothing much to tell. Rich people are remarkably boring; they’re either big philanthropists, like my mother, or self-absorbed, like my father. Either way, the effect was the same. They didn’t spend much time at home. I had more in common with my tutors and nannies than I did with my parents.” He shrugged. “I’m not trying to be poor-little-rich-boy about it. It’s what it was. My mother was a good person; she just felt that the family’s responsibility was to do good with what we had, so she was always out at fundraisers, contributing to causes, attending charity events. She was beautiful, and I think she would have made a ruthless businesswoman if she’d been required to do that. She wasn’t.”

“And your father?”

Patrick just shrugged and said nothing, but she saw the skin tighten at the corners of his eyes. Not a smile this time—something else. Something darker.

“Liam said your brother’s name was Jamie.”

“That’s right.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what happened?” Nothing. He might have been a mannequin, for all the emotional response he gave to that. “Oh, come on. I spilled about everything, including Grace’s secret adoption. I went all talk-show about it. And you won’t even give me more than his name?”

McCallister said, “What made you go into the funeral business?”

“Oh, no, you’re going to tell me something. No changing the channel. Was he older or younger?”

“Older,” McCallister finally said, after what seemed like a pretty fierce internal argument. “Two years older.”

“Did you get along?”

“I was the younger brother of a filthy rich family. The surplus child. No, we didn’t get along.” From the way McCallister’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, then deliberately relaxed, that was putting it mildly. “Jamie died. That’s all the story you’re going to get.”

“And you were disinherited.” He didn’t bother to answer that one at all. Silence fell, deep and uncomfortable, and Bryn finally sighed and said, “When I was in Iraq, I saw a lot of death. Not just our people, but the Iraqis, too. I didn’t mind helping gather bodies after a bombing; some couldn’t handle it, but I could. It felt like something I could do to restore some kind of dignity to them. So when I came back, I thought … I thought it might be a good thing to do for a living. There’s something honorable about it. Something real.”

McCallister looked over at her, nodded, and said, “I was in the military, too. I can kill, but gathering bodies—that always bothered me. It takes a special kind of strength to devote yourself to that.”

“True believers,” she said, and smiled.

“What?”

“Something one of my instructors said. Two kinds of people in the funeral business: true believers and freaks. I guess I’m a true believer, after all. Except that what you did to me does make me a bit of a freak, I suppose.”

“Different kind of freak, perhaps, than what he was referring to.”

“Yeah. Fast Freddy was the kind he was talking about. Me, I’m … life-challenged.”

“I think that could apply to any of us, Bryn.” McCallister downshifted, and the car slowed for him to make a turn onto the interstate. “We’ve got another hour, if you’d like to take a nap. Mr. French has already beaten you to it.”

So he had; she looked back to find the bulldog snoozing away, comfortably curled in his fluffy new bed. And truthfully, she was tired. Aching, actually. She caught herself yawning. “What about the shot?” she asked.

“When we get there,” he said. “Rest.”

It didn’t take much for her to drop into a dark, uneasy sleep filled with flashes of nightmares. Fast Freddy leering at her. The decomposing, impossibly moving corpse in the mortuary. Her own image, dead on a TV screen, until it screamed.

Last, she dreamed of her sister Sharon the final time she’d seen her—carefree, laughing, heading out on a normal afternoon and walking right out of the family’s life, forever.

Only this time, Sharon wasn’t laughing.

She was screaming as someone carried her away. Reaching out for help, while Bryn stood frozen and silent.

Life-challenged.