Severance Package (10 page)

For a while.

Now Ethan was on the concrete slab of a landing, regaining his senses, pondering his next move.

Calling for help: pretty much out.

Climbing back up the stairs and opening the door to the thirty-sixth floor: Um, yeah, right. He’d had enough of the chemical agent for breakfast, thank you very much. Ethan’s luck, he’d figure out a way to disarm the thing, then realize at the last second he was wrong, and then have to spend the next ten seconds scrambling for a spork so he could scoop out his eyes to stop the poison from reaching his brain. No thanks.

He wasn’t even sure what that chemical was. It didn’t taste like ricin.

So that left down. Thirty-six flights of down.

Are you down? Ethan was down.

Down
to the lobby,
down
to a security guard, where he’d have to put it
down
on paper. Unless a game of charades would be faster. Though it would be tricky to convey the events of the past thirty minutes with a few simple hand gestures.

How do you say “chemical nerve agent” in American Sign Language, anyway?

Worry about communicating later, Ethan told himself. Focus on climbing down this fire tower. One concrete half flight at a time. With a pen tube bobbing up and down in a hole in his throat, like a throat cancer patient leading an orchestra.

Down, down, down.

This, among other reasons, was why Ethan hated working on Saturdays.

Molly led Jamie down the hallway, past the conference room, then down another short hallway and through the main lobby.

A desk of deep oak dominated the room, along with a brass-plated logo of Murphy, Knox & Associates affixed to the wall. Jamie never walked through the lobby. Never had any reason to,
really. The side entrances led him straight to the hallway closest to his office.

“Did you say Amy’s down here?”

Molly said nothing. Kept right on walking.

That didn’t surprise Jamie. Molly had always been an odd duck. Her social awkwardness put him at ease, actually. Whenever they were gathered in a meeting, Jamie could count on Molly to make some kind of weird nervous mistake, or refuse to make eye contact with any other employee, save David. This was good, because it made Jamie look like less of a geek. It was probably why they got along so well. Two fellow inmates on the corporate island of misfit toys.

“Look, Molly,” Jamie said. “All we need is a double-A battery, and we’re pretty much saved. No matter what Amy has in mind.”

Jamie had no idea why Amy would be down this end of the hall. It didn’t make sense. This part of the floor was populated by empty offices and cubicles, a remnant of Murphy, Knox’s gogo years. Or that was the way David had explained it. The company had been buzzing during the dot. com boom, only to succumb to postmillennial downsizing. Now, the only people who ever used this side of the office were the occasional auditors who passed through from time to time, and building inspectors, who insisted on updating it with the latest in OSHA requirements, even though nobody used it.

Without warning, Molly stopped. Turned to the left. Opened a door. Ushered Jamie inside. Closed the door behind them.

Then she did the strangest thing.

Molly looked into his eyes, with a soft, almost doting expression. It wasn’t a sexual look—no
C’mere big boy and I’ll show you a good time.
It was more,
Come here, my sweet friend, and let me give you a hug.

It reminded him of a night a few months ago. A night after a long drunken evening …

“Um, Molly?” Jamie asked. “Why are we in here?”

Molly didn’t reply. She held out her hand. It was small and pale, with thin, elegant fingers. Her breath smelled good. Pepperminty.

Before Jamie knew what he was doing, he reached out and took her hand, as if to give her a handshake.

He felt her fingers slide against his skin. Molly’s fingers danced over his, searching. Then she latched on, and—

Jamie fell to his knees, crying in pain.

His thumb and middle finger were
on fire.

What was she doing?

OH GOD
.

More pressure now, more agony, nowhere to hide.

STOP OH GOD PLEASE STOP
.

Jamie may even have thought he said this out loud.

Keene fixed himself another cup of tea.

He heard McCoy in the other room: “Will you look at this!”

McCoy, again with his Philadelphia people.

They should be focusing on Dubai.

Keene and McCoy shared operational space, and more often than not, operations. But this Philadelphia thing was all McCoy. As a “human resources man”—his words, not Keene’s—he liked to dabble in new talent, build his little network within the larger networks. Having “his” people in various places all over the organization increased McCoy’s power exponentially.

This was how Keene paired up with McCoy in the first place. A series of e-mails, sent back and forth between San Diego and Edinburgh, hinting around the edges. You never come out and say what you do. You sense it in each other.

A few months later, a chance meet-up in Houston had worked to their mutual benefit. Similar adventures in Chicago, and then later, New York City, had been successes as well. So when it came time for a series of operations that needed special attention, it was McCoy who had suggested Keene to his bosses, and from that, thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment had found its way into a Portobello flat.

The primary operation, as Keene saw it, was this Dubai deal. It was still in its infancy, but needed coddling.

Philadelphia was little more than a distraction, but McCoy was engrossed with it.

“C’mere and look at this. Check out what our girl is doing.”

“Aye.”

If Keene didn’t, McCoy would only continue to pester him.

Might as well engage him.

Would do him good to pay attention, probably. If McCoy were to be believed, they could be working with Girlfriend in the near future.

The pain was so blinding, Jamie found himself detached from his surroundings. He was aware that Molly was moving behind him, sending fresh waves of agony up his arm and into the hot pain centers of his brain. Jamie’s hand and arm felt like a thick mass of rubber, alive with agony, able to be bent any way his torturer wished.

His torturer—his friend Molly.

His office spouse.

Suddenly, he was being lifted up. Jamie was startled to discover that his legs could support some of his weight.

Molly had positioned herself behind him. He could feel her body heat, her chest pressed up against his back. The long sleeves of her blouse brushed against his bare forearms. They’d
never touched before, except for the occasional handshake or shoulder pat. If he wasn’t in so much agony, he might have been aroused by the touch of her unfamiliar body.

She was a lot smaller than Jamie, but that worked to her advantage. She could tuck in behind him, do what she wanted, and Jamie would have no prayer of reaching around and stopping her.

Not that he knew how to do something like that.

Molly nudged him to the left, left, left, pointing him to a corner of the empty office.

“That’s it, Jamie,” she whispered.

“Whyareyoudoing
this,”
Jamie said. His voice was raspy. Wheezing. Desperate. It startled him to hear it.

“Shhhhhh, now. The pain will stop soon.”

Keene said, “What’s she doing?”

“Holding him up for us to see.”

“Like a slaughterhouse employee showing off the chicken.”

“That’s exactly right.”

“She going to slice his throat, hang him up by his feet now?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Does it matter that I’m vegetarian?”

“I don’t think she cares.”

Molly hurled Jamie to the floor.

Jamie caught himself on one hand—the numb one, unfortunately. His arm was too weak to support his body weight, so his face hit floor. Sucked in air and dust from an industrial carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed in at least a month.

He saw that Molly was slipping off her shoes, delicately sliding
them into a corner of the office, where they’d presumably be out of the way. But for what?

What was she doing?

Jamie pushed himself up to his knees, then reached out his good hand to the desk. He’d pull himself up, bolt, and leave it to the guys with the cozy white jackets with the buckles and straps to figure out. Molly had lost her mind; that much was clear. Had she lost it after she shot her boss in the head, or was it a good while before that? Who cared? Jamie needed to get out of this office. Off this floor.

Home to his family.

But as he reached out his hand, Molly grabbed it. Yanked it toward the ceiling a few inches.

Then pressed two of his fingers backwards in such a way that it paralyzed him completely.

She did this with one hand.

“Ow,” Jamie said, more out of surprise than pain.

Molly looked at him and smirked. She mouthed something to him, and applied more pressure.

Okay, now it really, really hurt.

“Oh God please let go. I can’t move.”

She mouthed something again.

Maybe Jamie was losing his mind, because he could have sworn she mouthed:
“Just play along and don’t pass out.”

But aloud, she said: “Tell me everything you know about the Omega Project.”

“What?!”

And now Molly pressed her fingers against Jamie’s, and Jamie found himself making a hideous sound that tried to accomplish three things at once:

Suck in air.

Express pain.

Beg.

He’d never made a sound like that before, never thought his vocal cords were capable of such an animalistic cry.

“Tell me,” she said loudly, as if announcing it to the whole office, “about the Omega Project.”

“I don’t know …what you’re …
talking about.”

Molly shook her head, as if she were disappointed.

Then with her free hand—again, Jamie couldn’t believe his entire body was incapacitated by one soft, slender hand—she reached over and unbuttoned the cuff on her blouse. She was the only one in the office, aside from David, who wore long-sleeved shirts in the humid Philadelphia summer. As Molly rolled up her sleeve, Jamie saw why.

A thick silver bracelet was strapped around her wrist. It looked like a series of metal dominoes linked together, side by side, enveloping her delicately muscled forearm. Molly tapped one of the silver dominoes, then flipped open a compartment on the bottom. She pulled something out.

Then she showed it to him.

A silver blade. Nothing too long. It was shaped like a triangle, with one long end wrapped in black electrician’s tape.

Jamie recognized the blade. It was an X-Acto blade. Common office supply, especially in the newspaper business. He’d done paste-up at his college newspaper for a few years. Nicked his fingers with X-Acto blades endless times.

Now Molly pressed the sharp edge of the blade to the pad of his thumb, like a teacher touching a piece of chalk to a blackboard.

“The Omega Project,” she repeated.

Keene asked, “The Omega Project?”

“No idea.”

Keene turned a laptop around, closed the video feed, opened up a new window, and started typing. One window led to another in a furious progression, with Keene typing a series of keywords and passwords and search terms.

“Nothing,” he mumbled.

“Strange. I’ve never run across anything with a name like that. It’s so … 1970s. We wouldn’t give an operation a groaner like that.”

“Bloody
strange.”

Then McCoy’s face lightened. “Wait, wait,” he said. “Hold off on that search.”

“Why?”

“I think she’s messing with his mind.”

“And ours, too. So there is no Omega?”

“Remember, she’s auditioning. Maybe she’s just showing off her interrogation techniques.”

“Even if her subject knows nothing?”

“Even better. She has to take it all the way.”

“She’s sick, mate,” Keene said.

“She’s awesome. Hand me that file, will you?”

Jamie tried to squirm away, but each movement yielded fresh agony in his arm.

“What are you doing?” Jamie asked. He could feel the tip of the blade on his thumb. Maybe it was his imagination, but the blade felt like it was sinking into his flesh, deep enough to scrape bone. God. Was she actually stabbing his thumb?

“Tell me about the Omega Project,” she said aloud.

Then Molly squinted and whispered:
“I know you don’t know anything, Jamie. Don’t pass out.”

“Why the hell are you asking me then?”

“Wrong answer,” Molly said.

Then she cut him, dragging the blade down the length of his thumb, across the thick muscle at the base, and out before she reached the vulnerable veins of the wrist.

Jamie howled. He tried to move, but couldn’t. He couldn’t see the damage to his thumb, because his palm was facing Molly, who was now placing the bloodied tip of the blade to his index finger.

“Tell me about Omega,” she said again.

Then she whispered:
“Stay awake.”

Stay awake? Jamie couldn’t see his thumb, but he imagined a Ball Park Frank on the grill, skin burst and curled open, exposing the meat beneath.