by Rachel Caine
By the time she was done, though, he was back to his usual easygoing self. “Eventful,” he said. “So. I guess we’re not backing off.”
“If you want to move Kylie and the kids…”
“To where, exactly?”
“There’s room at the castle.” That was how the two of them always referred to the McCallister estate—half a joke, half envy. “The kids would love it.”
“If it comes to that, sure, but I’m not uprooting my family over it yet.”
“I just want them to be safe.”
“Kylie’s all grown up, and you do not want to mess with her kids. That safe room in the back of my house has enough firepower to take down a medium-sized country, and she’s checked out on every single piece of it. Relax. How do you want to go at this Chandra thing?”
“Patrick has a plan,” she said. “You’re not going to like it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I don’t like it. You still have some access to Pharmadene, don’t you?” Joe had been an independent contractor for Patrick—someone nominally off the books, but he had a great deal of familiarity with the Pharmadene world nevertheless.
“Not like I used to, but yeah, some. Friends on the inside, all that crap. Why, what do you need out of them?”
“Remember the trackers that Pharmadene put on their early Revival subjects? The ones that bind into bone? I need one.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. You want a tracker, I’ve got—”
“Nothing that can’t be gotten rid of,” she interrupted. “If they make me change clothes, drop my purse, I’ll lose the chip. If you put it in subcutaneously, they’ll find it. These are pros, Joe—you said it yourself. They’ll be looking for a trace. Anything that isn’t deeply embedded, they’ll find it fast.”
The Pharmadene tracking device was composed of nanites specially modified to lock to bone, link together, and broadcast. It was undetectable in terms of searches, and it broadcast on such a tight, specific wavelength that even a thorough scan probably wouldn’t pick it up. Ingenious. Also deadly to anyone who wasn’t Revived…The nanites themselves created a toxic by-product that only someone who’d had a dose of Returné could survive.
“Okay.” Joe finally nodded. “I get the tracker; you’re marked so we can keep eyes on you. What then?”
“Then I wait,” she said, “because they want me. They want to know what I know. They’ll be coming for me—soon.”
“You’re right. I really don’t like any part of this at all.”
“Oh, that’s not the part you won’t like,” Bryn said, and smiled. “It’s the part where you have to lose a fight if you’re around when they come for me.”
“Fuck. Bad enough I managed to actually get my ass kicked by Fast Freddy Watson; this ain’t doing anything for my image.” Joe tossed back the rest of his coffee. “Whatever happened to the nice, calm death business where all we did was cuddle sad people and polish caskets? It used to be so…restful.”
“Glad you think so, because you get to deal with the gang funeral today. Watch out for drive-by tributes.” In truth, gang funerals were pretty much like any other kind, only quieter. The gangs never stinted on their memorial services: always top dollar. It had unnerved her how calm and watchful everyone had been at her first one, but to her surprise the gang members had been more polite than the average country-club darling’s friends, who were often drunk and weepy, not to mention entitled brats.
“You give me the best presents. Hey,” he said, as she refilled her cup. “How much of a fight should I put up on your behalf, exactly?”
“Your call.” Her smile faded as she considered how long this might take. Days, maybe, before her attackers felt comfortable enough to come at her again—and she’d have to go down hard to keep her credibility. This time, she felt, they wouldn’t try such a straightforward abduction. It would be something else.
Something worse.
She hoped like hell she was wrong.
Chapter 12
The day dragged by, hour by stunningly normal hour. The sun shone nicely outside, the groundskeepers came and tended the grass, and around the city, as everywhere, people died. Most of those deaths were standard, peaceful, natural-causes events that were sad occasions, nothing horribly traumatic.
Bryn and Joe worked a service together that morning, from church to burial, and although she was alert for anything odd, she saw nothing.
At noon, Joe came in and gave her the usual shot, which burned. “We’ve got another week’s supply of Manny’s latest batch,” he said. “After that, we’re back on Pharmadene standard formula plus the inhibitors. We’ve got enough of that to last maybe three months before we’re out of the inhibitor.” She sat still until the worst of the shaking and pain rolled off, and saw he wasn’t finished. He held up a second syringe. “Tracker nanites. It’s going to take about twenty-four hours for them to form the chains and start broadcasting. After that, you’re golden. We can track you anywhere.”
She expected that to hurt, too, but it didn’t. The shot did, but she’d gotten so used to the sensation of a needle that it hardly even registered anymore. I have a solid career path as a junkie, she thought, without much humor. She couldn’t even get high; the nanites would burn it off within minutes.
Sucks to be me. But at least Patrick and Joe could keep an eye on her, virtually, once the trackers came online. There was probably even an app for it. Hell, she’d met a sniper in Iraq who’d had an app on his phone to calculate windage for distance shots. Amazing what they could do these days.
The afternoon was the gang funeral, which she’d assigned to Joe. Bryn stayed in the office, doing paperwork, then went downstairs to see if there was a backlog of work in the prep room. Their principal embalmer, William, was finishing the last stitches in the mouth of Mrs. Gilbert. She’d passed in her eighties, and the infusions had given her back a faint flush of color through the crepe-soft skin. She looked peaceful. “Hey,” he said, and clipped the thread neatly. If you didn’t know the thread was there, you’d never even suspect it. “Want to put the caps in for me? It’d be a big help.”
She nodded, gloved and gowned up, and slipped rounded plastic caps under Mrs. Gilbert’s eyelids. It was one of the few things that bothered her, this cosmetic touch that kept the face looking more like someone sleeping than deceased, as the eyes were the first thing to start drying and losing their firm shape. Bryn did it quickly, and tried not to think about it.
William added a few finishing touches, gently adjusting the skin on Mrs. Gilbert’s lips for best possible effect. “I hear you added another green funeral option.”
“It’s popular,” she said. “No embalming, simple winding-sheet, burial in a biodegradable coffin.”
“Ah, hell, no. I’m not rotting in some recycled cardboard crate; that’s just not dignified. Just stick me in a wood chipper and blow me over the flower beds. Does the same thing,” William said. “Okay, Mrs. Gilbert, you look fabulous. Time to put on your clothes.”
Together, they dressed the body, which was harder to do than it looked—living bodies cooperated, even unconscious, but the dead had no such consideration. Bryn was always struck, when it came to this, how careful William was, how gentle his touch. He treated the dead like his own—no hesitation, fear, or callousness. It was one of the things she liked best about him. He took the time to get it exactly right, straightening the woman’s dark blue dress until it fell just so around her body.
“Did you have time to finish the reconstruction on the Lindells? The husband and wife?” Bryn asked, as he settled the sheet back over Mrs. Gilbert.
“Yeah. It’s not going to look as good as I’d like, but there’s only so much you can do when the bone structure’s broken like that. You can take a look if you want—they’re in the cooler. Hey, I heard there was some kind of robbery last night. Broken window, right? Was anything taken?”
“They never got inside,” Bryn said. “The cops were here in minutes. Noth
ing to worry about.”
“Good. I hate those assholes who come in to steal body parts and shit. Drunken jerks. My buddy took classes at the body farm on situational decomposition, and he said that kind of thing happened all the time out there. Had to have guards patrolling. Imagine that, armed guys to look after fields full of dead people. What’s the world coming to, eh?” He rolled Mrs. Gilbert back toward the large walk-in refrigerator. “Would you get the door?”
“Sure.” She held it back for him, then went inside with him and inspected the reconstruction work on the Lindells. It was solid work, but there was no way it could look completely natural; still, she thought the kids would appreciate the opportunity to see their parents one more time. “This looks good, William. Thanks for the extra effort.”
“I think that’s the last for today,” he said. “The service for the Lindells is tomorrow afternoon. Mrs. Gilbert is in the morning. I’ve got nothing much until they start bringing in today’s customers—I heard there’s four coming, so OT in the near future. Mind if I take an early day?”
“Not at all,” Bryn said. He smiled sunnily. “Got plans?”
“Movies,” he said. “And pizza with my buds. Maybe some beers, try to meet a girl. The usual. You know.”
She realized that she really, really didn’t. Normal life had passed her by, at light speed; she’d cashiered out of the military and hadn’t had time to form casual friendships before she’d taken the job at Fairview…and then her life had ended. Well, maybe not ended, but certainly morphed into something that was not normal even if it was sometimes amazing. When had she last had a simple, glorious evening of movies, pizza, and beer with friends? Or even had one of those by herself?
William stripped off his lab gear and grabbed his motorcycle helmet—despite the statistics, he insisted on playing the odds—and was gone before she finished clipping all the paperwork together for the morning. She carried the packet upstairs and dropped it off with Lucy, then sat down at her desk to check her e-mail.
Her phone rang, and she picked it up, only half-focused on it. “Davis Funeral Home, Bryn Davis speaking.”
“Are you at your computer?” It was a female voice—brisk, unfamiliar, and cheerful.
“Excuse me?”
“Are you at your computer right now?”
“Yes, who is this?”
“Just bear with me. I want you to open your e-mail.”
She just had. There were six new messages—two from Lucy about various office things; one from Gertrude Kleiman whose header was, surprisingly, I quit (and hallelujah about that one); two spam offers; and…one e-mail with no sender name.
“You see the anonymous one with the subject line of Play me?”
“Yes,” Bryn said. She pulled out her cell phone and began texting on it to McCallister. Trace office phone call right now.
“I sincerely urge you to click that file, Bryn.”
She switched her cell to silent mode and put it on the desk before her, then clicked the file attached to the e-mail. She expected—braced herself for it—to see another of those creepy execution videos, but this was very different. It was taken with night vision, in the dark, and it was a close-up on…
On a child’s face. A little boy with thick blond hair and wide, scared eyes. A boy with a gag over his mouth.
The camera pulled back, showing Bryn that he was tied hand and foot, and sitting on a wooden box, in the dark.
“Oh God,” she said, stunned, and touched her fingers to her lips. “What the hell—Who are you?”
“Never mind me. That,” the voice said, “is someone you know—wait, the light should be coming on in just a second. You’ll probably recognize him a little more clearly.…”
She was right. There was a flare of light, the camera switched into full-color mode, and now the little boy looked horribly familiar.
Bryn’s chest ached as if she couldn’t get a breath. “Jeff,” she said. “Jeff Fideli. Joe and Kylie’s son.”
“A-plus, Bryn. You’re doing great. Now, this is what I need from you. You’re going to take that cell phone you just put on the desk, open it up, and take out the SIM card. I’m not cruel—you don’t have to destroy it and lose all your phone numbers—just put it in your office drawer. Then I want you to take your purse and walk straight for the exit. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t stop for anything. Go straight out the door, get in your car, and meet me at Coffee Jack’s. You know where that is, don’t you? You’re a regular there.”
“Yes, I know where it is,” she said. She was still staring at the screen, feeling numbed and frozen with terror. “Let him go—he’s just a kid!”
“We’ll discuss those options once you come to the shop,” the woman said. “But if you deviate from these instructions, or if you don’t leave in the next fifteen seconds, this particular kid is deader than Dixie. Copy that?”
“Copy,” Bryn said, automatically slipping into the language of her military life. Fifteen seconds. She didn’t have time to try to write a note, or give a signal, or do anything except leave all this on her screen…
Except that suddenly, her computer screen exploded into static, and then turned blue. The error box flashed, and the whole machine powered down.
“Sorry about the virus. Hope you didn’t have anything too valuable on that hard drive,” the voice said. “You’ve now got about seven seconds. Better move.”
There was no time for a plan. She grabbed her purse and ran for the office door, then forced herself to slow to a walk down the hall. She passed Lucy’s desk but didn’t glance at her, didn’t deviate at all as she went outside into the sunlight, through the gardens, out to the parking lot. Her fingers were shaking so badly it was hard to find the remote button to unlock her car, but she made it inside, and didn’t hesitate there, either.
I have to think, she told herself as she drove. I have to get word to Patrick and Joe. Somehow, she knew whoever had been talking to her would be watching her; she would have some way to see if Bryn tried to do anything counter to the instructions.
She simply couldn’t take the risk of doing anything that might put Jeff in more danger, and she didn’t have anything to tell them, except that Jeff had been abducted—which they’d know soon, if they didn’t already. With time, they might be able to trace the e-mail back, or analyze the video file, if it hadn’t taken the e-mail server down along with her hard drive, but if she screwed up now, it wouldn’t matter. Jeff was a hostage for her good behavior.
She had to play it out. The problem was, her tracker nanites weren’t fully attached yet; they wouldn’t be active for hours.
And she’d just gone right off the reservation.
Bryn checked her rearview mirror in the forlorn hope that somehow, impossibly, she might have a tail, that Joe might have stuck with her at the office instead of doing his job at the funeral…or that Patrick might have somehow been close enough in the area to follow.
But the road was empty of traffic, and she kept hearing that cheerful, confident woman say, Deader than Dixie. Copy that?
There wasn’t any choice at all but to keep going.
She parked and lunged out of the car without bothering to lock it up, and felt a warm burst of relief when she saw that there was—as there often was—a San Diego police cruiser parked in Coffee Jack’s lot, and two uniformed officers standing in line at the counter. This might work out. This was her place, not the kidnapper’s; she knew the people well. Dave the Doorman, for instance—he’d see her and know instantly that something was off. Maybe she could pass him a message as he held the door for her. Maybe…
But she wasn’t that lucky. Dave wasn’t there. But then, she rarely came at this time of day. Maybe Dave had someplace else he liked to haunt, a restaurant where he greeted another set of clientele by name and got his meals comped, as so often his coffee came free here for his good cheer.
There were six customers seated around tables in the interior of the shop and two employees behind the counter. She d
idn’t recognize either of them, but the shift would have changed from her usual morning crew. The warm smell wrapped around her like a fog—coffee, chocolate, steamed milk, cinnamon. Safety. Home. Familiar surroundings.
It shouldn’t have felt so full of menace, so much like being trapped in a nightmare. She couldn’t stop thinking about little Jeff, about the fragile courage on his small face. Bryn stared at the two police officers, willing them to turn and look at her, to see that something was wrong and approach her.…
A hand fell on her shoulder. “Bryn?”
It was Carl, her Pharmadene problem child, suddenly here and in the flesh. She blinked, and turned to face him. “What—what are you—” It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter at all. “I can’t talk to you right now.” She had no patience with coddling him right now. He was an obstruction, not an opportunity. It’d take too long to try to make him understand enough to use him as a messenger.
Carl looked pale, shocky, hunched as if he’d been punched in the guts. “Sit down for a second,” he said. Bryn ignored him and looked around for the woman she was supposed to meet. No one presented herself as a possibility.
Carl grabbed her arm, hard enough to bruise, and forced her to pay attention. “Bryn! Sit down!”
She bent her knees and sank into the chair, staring now at him. “What is this?”
He wet his lips. He looked terrible—really terrible. Gray, as if he was at least two doses down on Returné. “It’s not me,” he said. “I’m not doing this. I’m a pawn, just like, a pawn.…No, sit down! I don’t have a choice.” He spoke in a terrified hiss, and held her wrist when she tried to get up. “Sit!”
She slowly lowered herself back to the chair. “You’re in this with her.”
“No,” he said. He didn’t let go of her. His eyes were wild. “Just wait. Wait.”
Suddenly, she knew what was happening. Carl was under orders.
Protocol orders. He didn’t have a choice in what he was doing.
She didn’t know what he was waiting for until the two cops, chatting and joking with the barista, claimed their coffees and headed out the door. Bryn tried to catch their eyes, and tensed to grab one, but Carl’s desperation warned her that she’d better not try it.
