Severance Package

by Duane Swierczynski

  Uh-uh.

  But if Molly knew a way out, then there was another way out. Maybe he could hide long enough to find it. Watch Molly take it, then take it himself. Or do both.

  Point was, keep moving.

  Jamie moved to the right. If he could make it to the abandoned offices and cubicles, he could duck in and out of those, listening for her footsteps (bare feet on carpet, good luck) and eventually make his way around to the other door, then to the elevator bank, then to the other fire tower.

  Besides, the other way—toward David’s office—was a dead end.

  There was nothing else he could do except move to the other side of the floor. That, and try to control his breathing. His lungs were pumping too hard. He had to slow it down. In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

  On the other side of the office, Jamie saw the white box with the little cartoon heart on it.

  Wait. There was something else he could do.

  He opened the front panel. Read the instructions quickly. Took the paddles in his hands, even his sore one—he could deal with it for a little while—and used his good thumb to hit the charging button. There was a high-pitched whine.

  Sixty seconds to go.

  Jamie put his back to the panel, paddles behind his back.

  Molly was standing in the hallway.

  “You never answered my question,” she said.

  Keene opened the door and fired the Ruger.

  There was no need to play it cute. Keene had a feeling that McCoy would spot a ruse in a microsecond.

  But the bullet struck bare wall. Something sliced at his forearm, ripping through skin and muscle. A butcher knife.

  “Ah, you cunt.”

  The gun tumbled from Keene’s hand. Keene threw his weight into the door. It slammed into McCoy. Keene pivoted, then booted McCoy in the testicles so hard, it sent him staggering backwards. He smashed his head into the corner of an oak bureau.

  Keene, the pain in his forearm overpowering, fell backwards. Landed on his ass. A simple slash across the arm shouldn’t hurt so much.

  McCoy either had braced himself or didn’t actually have testicles, because he recovered quickly. He opened the bottom drawer next to him. Reached below a stack of six T-shirts. Always with his T-shirts. The one on the top said the bad plus.

  He’d hidden a gun under there. It was a Ruger, too.

  Build in opportunity but use it sparingly.

  They were both students of the old school.

  “Have a nice walk?” McCoy said, then shot Keene in the chest.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  “No,” Jamie said. Trying to keep his breathing under control.

  “You don’t have to pretend,” she said. “I can give you everything you want.”

  How many seconds had elasped? Ten? At most?

  Keep yourself calm.

  Keep her talking.

  Molly started walking toward him. “Come with me and we can leave this building. Right now.”

  “No,” Jamie said. “Not until you tell me what this is about. Why everyone on this floor had to die.”

  “What does it matter? You going to write a book about it?” She smiled.

  Jamie could hear the high-pitched whine. Could she?

  “I want to know.”

  Molly was just a few feet away. Jamie pretended to lean back against the wall, frightened. Which was not too difficult to pretend.

  Had a half a minute gone by yet?

  “This is just a company. We’re just employees. I’m going for a promotion. Not just for me. For both of us. And now I want to know if you’ll come with me.”

  “How can I just leave my life behind?”

  “Is it really a life you’ll miss?”

  Behind him, something clicked.

  She touched his chest.

  Smiled.

  Jamie pressed the defibrillator paddles against Molly’s chest and squeezed the plastic handles. Prayed it had been enough time.

  It had.

  There was a loud pop.

  She yelped. The shock blew her body back across the hall. Down there on the floor, she looked like a puppet with her strings cut.

  Jamie droppped the paddles. God bless OSHA, which had started to require these devices in buildings over twenty stories in downtown Philadelphia. Even the abandoned floors of buildings.

  The shock wouldn’t be enough to kill her. Even from this distance, he could see her chest moving. But it would buy him time until he figured a way off this floor.

  Even if he had to lift a desk and hurl it through the glass. Let the firemen below know that there were people up here in need of rescue.

  The conference room was his best bet. Maybe he could use that gun to shoot out the glass. Ah, damn it! He kicked himself for not thinking about that before. Shoot the glass and start heaving office furniture out. A chair first, to get their attention. Then the conference room table itself, if he had to.

  Jamie started down the hallway but stopped when he felt something on his pant leg.

  Fingers.

  Yanking the material downward.

  “You,” Molly said, “never answered my question.”

  The wound was mortal; Keene knew that. There wasn’t much time. The bullet must have nicked quite a few arteries. He could imagine the inside of his chest with miniature leaking hoses, and an imaginary coronary engineer throwing his hands up, exasperated. What am I supposed to do now? I can’t fix this.

  He also had a pain in his arse.

  Literally. Something hard, jabbing him in the soft, fleshy part of his cheek.

  “You just find out, or have you known for a while? I’m thinking you just found out.”

  Keene looked at McCoy. His lover had a smirk on his face. Ordinarily, Keene took great pleasure in that smirk. It made him horny.

  “I’m not going to sit here and explain it all to you,” McCoy said. “I hate that.”

  “Yeah,” Keene said. At least, he thought he said it. It might have been in his mind.

  “I will tell you this, though. And this is more of a personal note, though it does cross over slightly into the business end of things.”

  “Yeah?”

  McCoy. Always drawing things out. Forcing you to ask “what?” or “yeah?” or something. Even as he sat here, dying.

  “I’m not even gay.”

  Keene’s fingers found the Ruger, under his arse. He had the strength to lift it. So of course he had the strength to squeeze the trigger. Repeatedly. He blasted off the five remaining shots.

  Most of the bullets hit McCoy. There was just one miss, making for a grand total of two bullets the next occupant of this flat would have to pry out of the walls.

  If they were being observed—which was absurd, but still—people would be tempted to think it was all about the gay comment. But as he felt his lifeforce ebbing away, Keene mentally denied it, saying he was just being a professional to the end.

  Doing his job.

  Like always.

  After all:

  There is no limit to a human being’s ability to rationalize the truth.

  Molly hurled him against the wall.

  She tried doing that paralyze-you-with-your-own-fingers thing again, but her hands were slick with blood. Jamie slipped away and tried to crawl across the floor. He felt her hand on his waistband. Jamie kicked backwards, caught her on the leg. She exhaled, then grabbed his ankle, flipped him, and kicked him in the chest with her heel.

  It felt like someone had flipped a valve in his chest. Jamie’s breath was trapped in his lungs. He couldn’t breathe in. He couldn’t breathe out. His fingers clawed at the carpet involuntarily, sending fresh waves of agony across his injured hand.

  But he wasn’t really thinking about that, because more important, he couldn’t breathe.

  Then Molly started dragging him across the floor.

  Forty-three hundred miles away from Edinburgh, in a quiet rooming house on the
outskirts of Madison, Wisconsin, a woman in a T-shirt and jeans watched the video image of another man shooting his lover to death.

  A few minutes later, the shooter—an operative using the name Will Keene—appeared to die, too. It was a sudden and shocking end to months of surveillance. She wasn’t sure what this one was all about; her superiors never told her. Just watch them, they said. So she did. As often as she could. They were an interesting pair to watch. Kind of like an old married couple. She never thought it would have ended like this. They genuinely seemed to care about each other. But boom, there it was—the fight, the knife, the guns, and the short conversation before the final, repeated coups de grâce.

  That was totally about the gay crack, she thought.

  The woman picked up the phone and called her director. People would have to be sent.

  As she waited on hold, she idly wondered who’d she be watching next, then thought about pizza.

  “If you want to come with me,” Molly said, “nod your head once.”

  Jamie had no choice. Jamie had no air.

  She hadn’t dragged him far. They were in the conference room. He recognized the ceiling. The floor was hot beneath his back. Smoke was curling and rolling outside the large windows.

  “You’re going to lose consciousness any second now.”

  Jamie nodded.

  She jammed a palm into his chest. The mystery valve released. Air tried to gush in and out of his lungs at the same time. Jamie turned to the side, curled up, and then vomited.

  “There, there,” Molly was saying. “Just breathe. The feeling will pass.”

  The ground was so hot now, Jamie could imagine his own puke sizzling within a matter of moments. Reheating his breakfast. Those Chessmen.

  She was rubbing his back now. Jamie opened his eyes and saw two people lying on the floor. It was a woman, topless except for a bra. She was slumped over a guy in a suit. Nichole … and David?

  Molly rolled him back over, dabbed at his lips with a napkin she must have picked up from the conference room table.

  “No offense, but I don’t think I’m going to kiss you until after you brush your teeth,” she said.

  Jamie’s mouth and throat burned, and his lungs still felt like they were on the verge of exploding. The rest of his body seemed to be in retreat mode. Sensation dimmed—the normal sensations you feel every second of the day. His skin chilled. His legs went numb. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. Was he going to die anyway, after all of this?

  “One last thing, Jamie,” Molly said. “We’re going to need to leave something of you behind. Something the investigators will be able to use to harvest some DNA. Blood won’t be enough. It burns up too quickly. We need a part of you. Something they’ll find, so they won’t come looking for you.”

  Screw you. Let them find me. And David. And Nichole. And Stuart. And Amy. And Ethan. Find everyone who was brought up here this morning to die and figure it out. If he was to die, Jamie wanted Andrea and Chase to know what happened. He didn’t want Chase to grow up thinking, Daddy just didn’t come home one day.

  “I’m thinking your hand,” she said.

  “What?” Jamie croaked.

  “It’s already injured. And yes, you’re a writer. But I’ll be there to help. You can dictate. I can transcribe.” Molly smiled. “After all, I am an experienced executive assistant.”

  “No.”

  “I can numb your arm. I can’t say it won’t hurt, but it won’t be as bad as you think. You can close your eyes. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “No.”

  “We have to act soon,” she said, and stood up. “If you can think of another body part, tell me quick.”

  Molly turned to face a corner of the conference room. She pushed her wet hair out of her face, best she could. She straightened her bra and panties, as if adjusting a business suit after a ride on the regional rail lines. Then she did the strangest thing of all: She addressed a ghost in the corner of the room: “Boyfriend, I’m ready.”

  She’s insane, Jamie thought.

  Truly, truly insane.

  “You’ve watched a demonstration of my abilities,” she continued. “You’ve seen my skills, and how I quickly and decisively respond to evolving circumstances. In the end, despite setbacks, my objectives were achieved. I hope you’ll find that I am a creative and determined operative, able to deal with any challenge placed before me.”

  Who the hell was she talking to? The imaginary voices inside her head that told her to kill, kill, kill?

  “In our discussions, you promised escape and refuge at the completion of my demonstration, if you found my performance satisfactory or greater. I ask you now. Do you find me worthy?”

  Jamie rolled over, looking for another pair of legs. Maybe someone else was in the conference room. Maybe there was a helicopter floating outside, waiting for them to grab hold of a rope ladder and be taken away to safety.

  But there was nobody else in the room. Just the two of them, and their dead coworkers. Stuart hadn’t moved an inch since dropping dead a few hours ago. David must have finally died from his head shot. Or something else. Maybe Nichole had finished him off. But then who had killed her?

  “Do you?” she asked the corner of the conference room.

  Molly, of course. Molly had killed them all. One by one. Why was she sparing him?

  Because of an attempted kiss one drunken night a few months ago?

  “Please answer me,” she pleaded.

  Jamie made it to his belly and used his good hand to push himself up to his knees. He could see Nichole and David more clearly now. More important, he could see the gun on the floor, under her face. The grip was showing.

  “PLEASE ANSWER ME!”

  Thirty-five hundred miles away, there was no one who could answer her.

  The question was, could Jamie do it?

  Could he shoot a woman?

  No, not just a woman. Molly Lewis. Crazy as she was—and that was another consideration, her being clearly mentally incapacitated—was it right to shoot a woman you wanted to kiss just a few months ago? Especially if she’s not in her right mind?

  But Jamie wondered about that. Maybe she was in her right mind. There were bigger things than him at play in this office this morning. Nichole had told him as much. Unless Home Depot was running a sale on chemical weapons, explosives, and poison champagne … wasn’t it possible that this was something larger and stranger than Jamie would have imagined?

  And Molly was at the center of it?

  Jamie looked at the gun. Looked at Nichole, who knew what was going on, but refused to tell him.

  If you don’t already know, then you’re not supposed to know.

  This was a betrayal beyond reason.

  Ania couldn’t understand it. Granted, her audition was technically shaky. Nothing had proceeded as planned. But she had improvised her brains out. And in the end, the mission had been accomplished. Her coworkers were dead. Every single one of them—save Jamie. The explosives had been detonated. Again, not according to plan, but the cleansing fire was under way nonetheless. Things had worked out. She’d proved her worth. She deserved a response.

  Couldn’t they acknowledge her with a simple response?

  Was she not worth a mere syllable?

  A yes?

  Or a no?

  The silence was maddening.

  Ania thought of her mother in that dreadful place, hanging on to the promise of a better life. Don’t worry, Mama, I’m coming back for you, she’d told her.

  Ania had lied.

  Lied to her mother.

  Not a single syllable, and now here she was, in the place of her own nightmares, burning alive, torn apart, covered in blood, trapped with the only man she cared about. The man she’d promised to introduce to Mama.

  You’ll like him. He’s a writer. Just like Josef.

  And they were both going to die.

  She tried one last time. One last beg for a response. She was owed that much.
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  She’d put too much into this job for it to end this way.

  With nothing.

  Could he do it? The gun was right there, on the floor.

  Pick it up.

  This is a woman who could take a full blast from a defibrillator and pop right back up.

  Think about it being the right or wrong thing to do later.

  You need to stop her.

  Do it.

  Do it now.

  The conference room doors slammed open and two firemen, decked out in helmets and face masks and pickaxes, stormed in.

  “I need an answer!” Molly screamed at the corner of the room.

  “Relax, miss,” said the taller one. “We’re here to help.”

  Molly turned around, hands clenched at her sides. She looked strangely lost, even for a woman who was nearly naked and drenched in blood.

  “No,” Molly said. “You are here for me to punish.”

  She looked back at the corner of the room, told her invisible friend: “I will show you I am worthy.”

  Then she cleared three paces and jumped at the taller one, her foot in the air.

  Her heel shattered his plastic face mask, sending him staggering backwards.

  The other one, his partner, who was shorter, charged forward with the handle of the pickaxe and pinned Molly against the wall.

  That didn’t last long. She worked a leg up, pressed her foot against the firefighter’s chest, then flung him across the room. His back struck the edge of the conference room table. The champagne bottles jolted and tittered. Cookies slid off their plates. The firefighter landed on his face, hands splayed on the floor.

  By this time his partner, with a broken face mask, had regained his senses and charged forward.

  Molly kicked him in the face again, shattering the rest of his mask. He screamed.

  Jamie climbed to his feet and gripped one of the conference room chairs. The chair rolled beneath him, and was heavier than it looked.

  He picked it up and swung it at Molly anyway.

  Aiming for her back.

  She needed to be stopped.

  But Molly sensed him. Kicked sideways. Hit the chair. Jamie went tumbling backwards, over the dead bodies of Nichole and David. Jamie kicked out, trying to clear himself of the corpses.