Working Stiff tr-1

by Rachel Caine

  “You—” She bit back her angry retort, and took a deep breath. “I am. I will. I just feel—”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, more gently. “Lost. There’s a lot of that going around.”

  A phone was ringing somewhere, a harsh distant buzzing sound that brought Bryn up out of a restless light sleep in a strange bed. Her eyes snapped open, and for a moment she didn’t know where she was—a darkened room, with streetlights casting slanted shadows across the carpet through the blinds. The place smelled stale and unlived-in, and she finally remembered that she was in the safe house, a nondescript ranch house with a pathetic straggly lawn and secondhand furniture in the run-down rooms.

  The phone was ringing down the hall, where Joe Fideli was sleeping. She heard him answer it, although she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  Exhaustion pinned her flat to the bed until she heard a light knock on her closed bedroom door, and she rolled out to swing it open.

  “You’re dressed,” he said. He sounded surprised, although he was still in his clothes, too.

  “Yeah, I figured we’d better be ready for anything.” That, and being dressed made her feel less vulnerable. She’d spent way too much time in that paper jumpsuit. “You got a call.”

  “McCallister.” Fideli didn’t sound thrilled, and that made her muscles tense in anticipation of the bad news. “Listen, I think you’d better sit down, Bryn.”

  That really didn’t sound good. She backed up without thinking about it, and eased down onto the bed. He stayed where he was, talking from the doorway. “He’s been tracking down your mysterious supplier, and he says he found him.”

  “So … that’s good news, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Some guy named Mercer. Jonathan Mercer. Sound familiar?”

  It didn’t, but then it did. She remembered, far back at the beginning of this nightmare, that McCallister had mentioned the name Mercer…. “Mercer and Sams,” she said.

  “They … created the drug. Right?”

  “Sams offed himself after Pharmadene started the Returné trials; couldn’t take the guilt. Mercer’s been quietly working like a good beaver ever since, until about a week ago when he went on vacation.” That last was said with air quotes. “He dropped off of Pharmadene’s radar. Translation: he had a heads-up that the big conversion push was coming from Harte, and he didn’t want to end up strapped onto a table with a bag over his head. So he bailed, and they’ve been ripping up streets looking for him ever since. That’s stirred up a lot of information, including the fact that apparently Mercer had been quietly setting up his own production line for Returné.”

  “He could ruin everything for them.”

  “The only reason he hasn’t so far is that it’s in his interest to keep this thing a black-market enterprise. They need to shut him down hard and fast. Mercer’s a bigger threat to them than any of us are, but he’s also damn smart; we all checked him out and found nothing on him until he bolted.”

  “Joe,” she said. Her fists clenched where they rested on her thighs. “Why am I sitting down? What are you not telling me?”

  “Mercer wants to make a deal,” Joe said. “McCallister’s full resources and protection of his fledgling operation, in exchange for keeping you supplied with the drug.”

  That wasn’t so bad. It was for McCallister, obviously, but … “What else?”

  This time, Joe just gave up and said it. “He has leverage,” he said. “He has your sister Annie. She never made it to the airport when she left your apartment, and he says he’s going to kill her if we don’t take a meeting and make a deal. We’ve got just under two hours. He wants you there.”

  Annie. Bryn sat frozen; she’d expected … Well, she didn’t know what she’d expected. She hadn’t thought they’d go after her family. She was used to thinking of her people as safely distant, away from all this … but Annalie had walked into the middle of it. Made herself a target.

  And Bryn hadn’t seen it coming.

  “Bryn? Still with me?”

  “Yes.” She stood up, feeling unnaturally calm and focused. “When do we leave?”

  Joe cleared his throat. “That’s just it. We don’t. McCallister says it’s better to keep you out of—”

  “Give me the phone, Joe.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Joe.” She held her hand out, staring into his eyes. “She’s my sister. Give me the phone.”

  He shook his head and handed it over. “His number’s in the call list.”

  Bryn dialed, listened as it rang on the other end, and heard McCallister’s voice say, “Bryn. I thought you’d call.”

  He sounded tense, but there was a kind of animal comfort to hearing him again, hearing him say her name. She shoved all that aside and said, “I’m going to the meeting.”

  “You can’t do that. He’s already got too much leverage over—”

  “He asked for me, specifically. You know him; you know how ruthless he is. If I don’t show up, I’m signing Annie’s death warrant,” she said. “I’m getting her back, one way or another.”

  “You’re emotionally involved. Let me negotiate this. He will work with me. He doesn’t have a choice.” He paused for a bare second, and then continued. “You have to trust me to handle this for you. He could be setting us up, and I can’t have you complicating things.”

  “I do trust you,” Bryn said. “But I’m still going. Either you tell Joe to drive me or I will find a way to contact Mercer myself. I’m not letting you shield me anymore, McCallister. Not from this.”

  That brought an even longer silence, and finally, “Put Joe back on the phone.”

  “No. You tell me where this meeting is. If I let you talk to him, you’ll probably tell him to drive me around for a while and knock me out when I’m not looking.”

  McCallister’s laugh was dry and humorless. “You know me too well already. All right. Here’s the address.” He read it to her, and she burned it into her memory; no chance she’d ever forget it. “Leave Joe out of it. He’s putting on a good front, but he’s hurting, and I don’t want to be responsible for landing him back in the hospital. Or the morgue.”

  “Just you and me, then,” she said. “That sounds right.”

  “Bryn?”

  “Yes?”

  He was quiet for so long that she thought she’d lost the connection, and then he said, “I wanted to get you out of there myself. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I do,” she said. All the fight went out of her, and she clutched the phone hard, wishing she could see his face. “You told him to kill me if it went wrong. Thank you.”

  “I keep my word, Bryn. Always. And I promise, we’ll get your sister back.”

  She hung up the phone and slipped it into her pocket, then held out her hand, palm out. “Keys, please,” she said. “You’re staying here. If you don’t believe me, call him back and ask.”

  Fideli looked at her for a few seconds, clearly trying to decide whether or not she was insane, and then fished the keys out of his pocket and handed them over. “Go in heavy, and go in hot,” he said. “You understand what I’m talking about?”

  She remembered the same conversation, back on a sweltering afternoon as she labored under the weight of body armor, ballistic helmet, weapons, and the stare of her commanding officer. We’re going in hot. It hadn’t ended well that day. Too many IEDs, too many snipers on the rooftops taking out their supply convoy. She could almost taste the grit of blown sand. “I understand,” she said. “Rest. I’ll be back.”

  He reached in his pocket and took out a silver tube. “Don’t forget this,” he said. “This one’s not coded to a particular administrator. You can give it to yourself if you need to.”

  “Thanks.”

  She saw him at the window as she drove away into the night, and wondered whether she’d ever see Joe Fideli again. Wondered whether he’d ever see his family, too.

  So much
had been torn apart, and she still had so far to go.

  Going in hot and heavy.

  That pretty much described her entire relationship so far with Patrick McCallister, come to think of it.

  Chapter 12

  Bryn made a fast circuit of the immediate area around the address McCallister had given her; it was a residential area, which made her worry. She’d thought these types of potentially explosive things went on in deserted buildings, vacant warehouses, open lots … not on a street with brightly colored playhouses and Big Wheels parked in yards.

  There was no sign of McCallister, and she had a horrified thought…. What if he’d deliberately given her the wrong address? And she’d been dumb enough to fall for it? No, he wouldn’t do that. He’d known I was serious. And that I needed to do this.

  Parking the van behind a closed convenience store two blocks away seemed the best option; Bryn locked it and stepped out into the cool predawn darkness. It was misting, and threatening to rain, but the hoodie that Pansy had given her was enough to counter that. The thin shoes were a pain, though. It was hard to feel badass in Payless.

  At least she had the gun she’d stolen from Pharmadene, and a supply of ammunition, thanks to Joe. Not as well stocked as Manny Glickman in his fortress, wherever it was now, but it would do …

  She pulled up short after a few steps, because someone was standing in the light of a street lamp twenty feet away, watching her.

  Patrick McCallister.

  The damp had matted his hair down in a sleek cap around his head, but she’d know him anywhere; if nothing else, nobody she’d ever met had that quality of coiled stillness to their posture. He was wearing dark clothes and a loose Windbreaker that wouldn’t have looked odd if it came with big reflective governmental-agency letters on it, but this one was unmarked.

  “How’d you know?” she asked him, not coming closer. He shrugged and put his hands into the pockets of his dark jeans.

  “Where you’d park? It was tactically the smartest choice,” he said. “So I thought you’d find it.”

  That spoke volumes about what he thought of her … and made her ask, “So where did you park?”

  “Someplace not as tactically sound, but unexpected,” he said. He pushed away from the streetlight and walked toward her, taking his time. “You look good.”

  “You should have seen me a few hours ago,” she said. Without conscious decision, she was also walking toward him. I should have my gun out, she thought. I really don’t know what he’s going to do. Maybe he’d knock her out and put her back in the van and go do the meeting himself. That would be typical McCallister.

  “How bad was it?”

  “Ever seen Night of the Living Dead? Like that,” she said. “Only you’re right. I wasn’t craving brains.”

  “At least that’s a bright side.”

  And then he was right there, a foot away, in her space, with only the gently drifting mist between them. His eyes were wide and dark, and she thought, He’s going to do it now; he’ll strike, and she was ready for that, ready to block a punch….

  ... But not, as it turned out, a hug.

  She stiffened for a second, then relaxed into the embrace. “I’m sorry,” he said. “By the time I found out they’d taken you, they already had you inside Pharmadene. I didn’t have a chance to intercept. When you didn’t come out, I knew they were going to let you …”

  “Decay,” she said, very quietly. “I have to face it. I’m dead. I’ll always be dead. This, all this feeling and looking alive, it’s just … just cosmetics.” She pulled back and stared at him. “You can’t really feel anything for me, can you? Because I’m not really here. Underneath, I’m … that.”

  “Underneath, we’re all that,” McCallister said. “Everybody’s dying, Bryn. You’re just maintaining it better than most people—that’s all.”

  “You can’t actually believe that.”

  “I do,” he said. “I believed it from the moment I saw you wake up. I knew you were a fighter. I knew you’d break my heart.”

  He stepped forward, put his hands on either side of her head, and kissed her. His lips were cool, damp, sweet, and urgent on hers, and suddenly Bryn felt wildly out of control, but safe. Safe. It felt like such an amazing relief.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and pulled her into his arms. “I said I’d never let that happen to you, and I couldn’t … I’m sorry.”

  “You sent Joe.”

  “I should have gone myself.”

  “He did fine. I’m out. I’m … as good as new.” She felt a flashback to that awful place, the white room, the sound of primal screams, her own silent, implacable dissolution caught in the staring eye of a camera. “I’m fine.”

  He knew she was lying; she could tell from the way his fingers traced damp lines on her cheek, and the gentle way his lips brushed hers. “I know how you are,” he said. “It’s in your eyes. They’re darker now.”

  He didn’t mean in color; she knew that. Her eyes were haunted. She’d seen that herself, in the scratched mirror of the safe house as she’d showered off the remembered stink of her own death, again and again. It was hard to feel clean now. Hard not to remember how little separated her from dissolution.

  “I can’t think about this right now,” she said. “I’m sorry; I just can‘t. I have to think about Annie. I have to make sure she’s safe.”

  He hesitated for a moment, looking into her face, and then nodded and stepped back. “Let’s do it. But, Bryn, let me do the talking, all right?”

  She didn’t agree or disagree, just walked with him into the darkness.

  * * *

  The house was halfway up the block, dark just like all the neighbors. There was a play set in the backyard visible through the chain link, and a doghouse, but no dog came out to bark at their approach.

  The whole neighborhood seemed eerily silent. Bryn would have expected to see at least one light on, even as early as it was…. Early risers existed everywhere, didn’t they?

  This felt almost like a movie set—dressed, but vacant of human habitation.

  McCallister mounted the porch steps and held out a hand to keep her on the sidewalk. The front door was open; she could see the black gap from where she stood. She hadn’t seen him draw, but McCallister’s gun was at his side, primed and ready to fire.

  She drew hers as he eased the door open and stepped inside.

  Bryn followed him. She wasn’t staying on the damn sidewalk, and he must have known that because he didn’t bother to try to tell her again.

  “Shut the door behind you,” said a man’s voice from the darkness, and a light flared on, splashing over pale blue, worn carpet, toys spread in a corner in primary-color confusion, newspapers piled on a chair, a faded floral sofa….

  On which sat a man with a round, unremarkable face, short graying hair, and cold, ice blue eyes.

  “Mr. Mercer,” McCallister said. Bryn shut the door and locked it behind her to ensure nobody would be coming up behind them. Mercer didn’t have a gun visible, and they had two; she wasn’t letting anyone in to start to even the odds.

  “Mr. McCallister,” Mercer said, with perfect composure. “I would have expected you to be down at the headquarters getting your shot by now. Surely Irene’s chewing nails over your absence. You know how she is about full buy-in from her team.”

  “You should have been the first one she went for,” McCallister said. “If I’d been making up the charts, you would have been at the top of the list.”

  “I’m glad you weren’t, then. I had just enough time to get my things together and file for my vacation before Harte thought to order my lockdown. That’s something my good little corporate-citizen act bought me, at least— vacation time. That and free Krispy Kreme doughnuts once a week at the team meetings. But in fact, Harte was too afraid to order me put into the program at first; she knew I could engineer a vaccine to counteract the revival process and make myself useless to her. Effectively, she would be rolling the dice
on whether or not I’d wake up, and she couldn’t afford that risk until she was sure she wasn’t dependent on me.”

  Mercer transferred that cool stare to Bryn. “You made it out. I heard they were bringing you in for … What do they call it? Observation. Irene likes to have a record of the process on file, to prove that the experimental failures have been cleaned up properly. I’m not really sure she doesn’t keep copies. You know, for fun.”

  “You really are crazy,” McCallister said, almost admiringly. “I’d heard rumors.”

  “Oh, I’m not crazy. Crazy is sticking a gun in your mouth and blowing a hole in your cerebellum, like my old lab partner. I simply chose to stop counting the cost of what we did, other than in terms of what it could buy me. That’s eminently sane. Thanks for your two hundred thousand dollars, by the way. I’m very grateful. It’s helped me get my new assembly process tooled up in a secured facility. I’m turning out the drug in enough quantities to guarantee steady employment, and that’s all I really want.” He smiled. “Well, that and destroying the company, and particularly Irene Harte. But that’s what I want from you, McCallister. In return, I will guarantee your friend Ms. Davis here a lifetime supply of Returné, as long as she makes her wealthy funeral home clientele available to me as customers, as Mr. Fairview did. I have to look to the future.”

  “I’m not your assassin,” McCallister said. “And she’s not peddling your drugs.”

  “Wait. Let’s review. You are an assassin, as we both very well know; Ms. Davis is in a particularly nasty situation, because her supply from Pharmadene is gone, and even if she managed to secure some on the way out, it won’t be much. It doesn’t store well; did you know that? Ineffective in the vials after about a week. Fresh batches are important. So really, there’s no bargaining going on here; you’re going to do what I want, and she’s going to do what I want. Because the alternatives are unthinkable.”