Severance Package

by Duane Swierczynski

  She was being stupid. She needed to tie off her wrists. Then continue crawling.

  But how?

  You can’t tie off anything without hands, can you?

  She’d try anyway.

  Nichole would be damned if she would pass out from blood loss before a final encounter with her nemesis.

  Her boss.

  She rolled over onto her back, then angrily ripped at her shirt with her teeth. Fine. Let him see me in my bra. As I squeeze my blood into his face. Let that be the last thing he ever sees.

  Tastes.

  Then the solution came to her:

  Kitchen.

  Electric range.

  A dial that could be turned with her teeth.

  Yes.

  Keene needed to stop with the orange juice. He was drinking it compulsively now, and the acid was tearing up his stomach. The old habits were slowly creeping back. Only now with Florida’s best, rather than the smoky nectar of the Scottish highlands.

  But what he was reading … well, it would have driven anyone to drink.

  Keene had worked another source.

  Keene’s second source was high-placed; it was rumored that she was the one who currently acted as a director of CI-6, or whatever you wanted to call their thing. She certainly knew enough. Keene never walked away from one of their conversations disappointed.

  If this intel could be trusted, then “Murphy, Knox” was not what his good buddy McCoy had claimed it was:

  A cover for CI-6 operatives. Fixers. Sleepers. Black baggers. Accident men. Killers. Professionals, mixed in with civilian support, to complete the illusion of a working financial services company.

  Nope.

  It was a financial services company.

  Granted, it was a financial services company that was designed to infiltrate and destroy terrorist financial networks. Or for that matter, anyone whose finances needed destroying, international or domestic.

  According to Keene’s second source, the funding worked both ways. Money poured out of Murphy, Knox, too. Funding training. Weapons. Research. Operations. Anything that you didn’t want attached to an official budget line? Simply run it through a guy like Murphy.

  So why had McCoy lied to him? He clearly had to know this. He acted like he knew every intimate detail of that office.

  And for God’s sake—why were more than a half dozen people going to die there this morning?

  Jamie stared at the back of the chair he’d been sitting in about … oh, what was it? An hour? Two hours? Jamie was bad at noting the passage of time. Whenever he poured himself into his writing, it was as if the digital clock on his computer played tricks on him. He had an arrangement with Andrea during his parental leave: Every morning, he could devote some time to his freelance career, pitching stories to men’s magazines.

  It was the only way, Jamie had explained, he’d ever be able to quit Murphy, Knox. Leave the Clique behind.

  But by the time Jamie felt like real work was being accomplished, time was up. Chase needed his attention. Andrea needed a break. He was glad to give it to them. They were his family. His everything. But every minute away from his desk felt like another minute the dream was delayed.

  And now this, stuck in the conference room with his half-dead boss, was like that. Being in that strange place where the clock seemed to be actively working against you.

  “Jamie,” a voice said. “Are you there?”

  God.

  It was David.

  Amy and Nichole had left clear instructions about what to do if someone—who was not Amy or Nichole—tried to enter the conference room: Aim for the head.

  “I’m not going to kill anybody,” he’d told them.

  “You want to see your kid again?” Nichole had asked.

  “You can’t make me,” he said, feeling like a third-grader the moment the words left his mouth.

  Nichole stuffed the third gun in his waistband.

  “Do it for your family,” she said.

  And then they’d left.

  They had not told him what to do if David started talking to him. David, the man who started all of this when he tried to force everyone to drink poisoned champagne.

  “Jamie … please.”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “Could I ask a favor?”

  “What?”

  “May I have a cookie? I’m starving.”

  As much as he wanted to ignore him, Jamie couldn’t. This was a man who’d been shot in the head, asking for a cookie.

  Never mind that a man who’d been shot in the head shouldn’t be asking for a cookie.

  A few weeks before Chase was born, Andrea purchased a children’s book from a store near work. “To start his library,” she’d said. It was called If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Late one night, Jamie read the book. The point was cute and simple: Give a mouse a cookie, and he’ll want something else. And then something else. And something else still, until finally, you’ve surrendered your soul to a rodent.

  Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly the point of the book. But that’s what it felt like now. David would ask for a cookie. Then a gallon of milk. Then a gun. And then …

  “Do you mind?” David asked.

  “What kind?” Jamie heard himself saying.

  “Anything but a Chessman.”

  Of course.

  Chessmen were for losers.

  The conference table was frozen in time. Napkins with cookies stacked on top. Moisture-beaded bottles of champagne. Notebooks. Pens, some uncapped. Molly’s white cardboard bakery box—the one that had been holding doughnuts and a gun. Snipped string.

  Jamie fished a Milano from the bag and carried it over to David, whose eyes were closed. Jamie knelt down next to him. His head swam with options. He had to proceed carefully.

  If you give a boss a cookie …

  “I have your cookie,” he said.

  David’s eye fluttered open. “Thanks.”

  “You want it?”

  Jamie dangled the cookie above David’s open mouth. His boss looked, somewhat absurdly, like a baby bird, waiting to be fed a worm.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, not yet.”

  David’s eyes narrowed. “Really.”

  “First you’re going to tell me how to disable the lockdown so I can get off this floor.”

  David smirked. “And then I get the cookie?”

  “Then you get the cookie.”

  Jamie felt like he was engaged in a real estate deal with a toddler. Maybe he could throw in a sippy cup, sweeten the offer.

  “I like you, Jamie, I really do. You’re unlike anybody else in this office. I didn’t want you to come in this morning, but my bosses insisted. Said you had to go. I couldn’t understand it.”

  “Then help me.”

  “I still don’t understand it.”

  “If I can get out, I can call an ambulance for you. You don’t have to die.”

  “Especially with you having a newborn baby at home.”

  “Goddamn it!” Jamie cried. “Tell me how to get off this floor!”

  “I wish I could. But the answer is no. You’re going to die up here, just like the rest of us.”

  Jamie felt his blood burn. He was overcome with the urge to smash his fists into David’s face, force him to cough up the secret code or pass key or the friggin’ Omega Project—anything to help him leave this building. Now.

  Instead, he tightened his fist and pulverized the Milano. The crumbs rained down on David’s face. Some of the crumbs landed in the streaks of blood and hung there.

  Jamie opened his hand. It was smeared with chocolate from the center of the cookie.

  Here he was, trapped on a floor, faced with certain death, and his hands were smeared with blood and chocolate.

  Oh, was life absurd.

  “That was mean,” David said, then flicked his tongue out and caught a cookie crumb that had landed near the corner of his mouth. “Mmmm.”

  Jamie stood up and walked back to
the conference table. The champagne bottles were still lined up, beaded with moisture. Maybe he should force-feed David a mimosa. Shut him up permanently.

  Uh-uh.

  Everything else had gone to hell.

  But he was no killer.

  Besides, Nichole had kept David alive for a good reason: information. If there was the slightest chance they could beat an escape plan out of him, it would be suicide to throw it away.

  But he couldn’t stay in here with him any longer. Because he would kill him.

  “You’re not going to leave this floor alive.”

  “I’ll find a way,” Jamie said.

  “No, you won’t,” David said. “Even if you could, trust me, you don’t want to leave. You think you can just walk away from something like this? You think there aren’t people out there who want to make sure you’re dead? Along with your family?”

  “It would be the last thing you’d ever do.”

  “Tough talk from a tough guy,” David said. “No man wants to ever admit he’s powerless to protect his family.”

  “Oh, suck it.”

  “Whip it out, faggot.”

  Jamie took the gun from his waistband and aimed it at David’s face.

  “Oh, oh, please. Do it. Pull the trigger. Show me how tough you are.”

  Nichole had said there were only two bullets left in this gun. But at this range, it would be a sure shot.

  “Pretty please.”

  This is what he wants, Jamie thought. Just like the cookie. The freak wants to die here on this floor. Why are you so eager to please him? He’s not your boss anymore. You don’t have to listen to him.

  “With sugar on top.”

  Jamie threw the gun on the floor, and headed for the conference room doors.

  “Hey.”

  David was clearly not happy. But Jamie didn’t care. He was almost at the doors.

  “Hey! Come back here!”

  Through the doors.

  “I’m going to put the word out!” David screamed. “I’m going to make sure they rape your wife nice and good! They’ll skin your son alive! Right in front of her!”

  Out the doors.

  “They’ll like doing it! They live for this!”

  The wall collapsed far easier than Amy would have imagined. The space around them swirled with atomized plaster dust. It was hard to tell the ceiling from the floor. But Amy trusted her hands. Which were wrapped around Molly’s neck and slowly, steadily crushing the air out of her. Her hands were the only thing that mattered now. Her strong hands. They had to be strong for Ethan.

  The hallway to the conference room was long. Ridiculously long on elbows and knees and smelling your own cooked flesh. Nichole might as well have been crawling to Harrisburg.

  But she just needed to make it to David.

  And she would.

  If she endured the searing agony of the electric range to stop the bleeding, she could endure the rest of this.

  She longed for David in the most physical way possible.

  Jamie tried the elevator button, simply because he had to, because wouldn’t it be hilarious if all this time David had been lying about the bypass?

  He hadn’t been lying.

  He pressed the button again, mashing his thumb into the plastic key as if he could override the bypass by sheer strength.

  Damn it!

  The fire tower doors were the only other option. He walked to the one closest to their offices, and was surprised to see a hook and wire hanging from the door handle. Had someone already opened this door and dismantled the nerve gas bomb?

  Did he want to take that chance?

  Only now, lying on the carpet and being strangled to death, did Ania realize her miscalculation. She’d thought the sight of Ethan’s corpse would incapacitate Amy. But it had the opposite effect. It had energized her. For the first time since childhood, Ania thought she might actually die.

  Her left hand, attached to her left arm and damaged shoulder, was completely sapped of strength. Her right hand alone was not powerful enough to overcome the concrete grip of Amy’s hands. The awful press of Amy’s thumbs into her trachea. The tips of Amy’s manicured nails hooked into the back of Ania’s neck, as if probing for the place where the brain stem met spinal cord.

  Her light-headedness was real now. Reality was being washed away in waves of gray. Not the plaster dust. Ania saw the gray when she closed her eyes.

  Ania held her breath and squeezed Amy’s wrists with her one good hand. It wasn’t much of a defense.

  This was not something she had anticipated.

  How was Amy doing this?

  By thinking of her true love.

  It was something out of fairy tales, and Ania loathed fairy tales—at least the few she’d been allowed to read. But perhaps there was true magic in thinking about your true love.

  So she thought of Jamie.

  Jamie put his hand on the gleaming silver door handle. If he pushed it down, maybe he’d hear the click of the bomb in time. He could jump out of the way, find another way.

  But there are no other ways, are there, Jamie?

  Andrea, if you can hear me, know that your dumb husband tried the best he could, and this was the only way he could think of to make it back home to you….

  On the floor, David heard a noise.

  He couldn’t turn his head to see, but knew the sound well enough. The swishing of the conference room doors. Ah, Jamie was back. He must have seen the futility of his escape. Now was back to kill his boss.

  Thank Christ.

  “You left your gun here,” David said.

  “I know,” said a voice.

  It wasn’t Jamie.

  But David, from his supine position on the floor, couldn’t see anybody. Was he now hearing things? Wouldn’t surprise him. He had been shot in the head and was completely starving. Nothing to eat all morning but the crumb of a Milano. Cruel tease that was.

  “Hello, David,” said the voice.

  A female voice.

  Nichole.

  He turned his head, and it hurt. But he could see her now. Crawling toward him, with red paint covering her hands. David couldn’t even see her hands, there was so much red paint. Why was she nudging the gun with her face? Pushing it toward him. Nosing it so that the barrel was pointed at him? Why didn’t she pick the goddamned thing up and get it over with already?

  He just wanted to finish his mission and go home.

  When Ania was Molly, she thought herself immune to America. And she was. Except for Jamie. He listened. He truly listened. He didn’t see her as a disposable part of a larger machine. He didn’t see her as a life support system for a pussy and a pair of tits—not that she showed them at work. For some reason Jamie put her at ease so much that she had to be careful not to slip into Russian. Jamie felt that much like home.

  She wanted to touch him, just hold his hand, ever since the moment she met him.

  The only distraction this morning was the thought of Jamie, and the opportunity to hold his hand, even if it meant giving him pain.

  The pain would teach him, and serve as a reminder to her, as well.

  Everything beautiful can be destroyed.

  She was thinking of Jamie, but no surge of adrenaline followed. Only a strange melancholy.

  She could be strangled to death here, and Jamie might not even know or care.

  Jamie.

  With his mangled fingers.

  There she found the answer, and knew it was time to simply let go.

  Jamie pushed down on the door handle.

  For a moment, there was nothing.

  No telltale click.

  Or hiss.

  Or beep.

  He pushed the door open a few more inches.

  Nichole was straddling him now, and David saw that it wasn’t paint on her arms at all. She had bloody stumps where her hands should have been. Okay, there was one hand, kind of just hanging there. Her skin smelled like Chinese food. The sickeningly sweet aroma distrac
ted him from the fact that Nichole wasn’t wearing a shirt, and that her pussy was pressed up against his chest. Clothes separated their flesh—and there were those mangled hands—but still, she aroused him. David never thought he’d experience this kind of intimacy with Nichole, who’d been out to destroy him ever since she’d started working for him. Which was a shame. He’d always found her deliciously screwable.

  “You have one chance,” she said, a tiny bead of blood hanging from one corner of her mouth. “Tell me how to get off this floor.”

  “I could so eat you out right now,” David said.

  Nichole’s eyes widened, and then she leaned forward. For a moment there, David thought she was going to give him a little kiss. Right there on his forehead.

  But she was reaching too far up and behind.

  Nichole pressed her elbow against the grip of the gun that she had positioned next to David’s head. She stuck out her tongue.

  I quit, she thought, and thrust her tongue hard against the trigger.

  David Murphy died not knowing his mission had been accomplished.

  He was still thinking about what Nichole’s pussy would look like. He was thinking well-trimmed, but a little loose. Used. He’d heard she’d been messing around with the mail guys for years. Which she had been. He’d watched some of it. Got off on it.

  David wore a waterproof watch he never removed, even during sex or masturbation. Lovers would tease him about it. What, are you going to time me?

  He had worn it ever since he first rented the thirty-sixth floor of 1919 Market Street, and installed detonating devices on the thirtieth floor. And installed the trigger in his wristwatch.

  The watch was one of those that monitored your pulse. Constantly, quietly, efficiently.

  But it wasn’t exactly one of those kinds of watches. He’d had it modified so that it had room for the trigger. If his pulse stopped, a signal would travel to the detonating devices six floors below. If David Murphy was to go, everything was to go.

  And so it went.

  The moment the door opened, there was an explosion.

  Jamie screamed and hurled himself backwards, slamming against the opposite wall, then slid to the ground and tried to scuttle away like a crab.

  Jesus H….