Working Stiff (30 page)

McCallister drove in silence the rest of the way, parked the van, and walked with her into the mortuary through the back entrance. He kept his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets. It was as much cover as possible, but she still felt an uncomfortable, probably imaginary weight of eyes on them until they were safely inside.

Joe and Doreen weren’t back yet from the hospital run, so Bryn took McCallister directly to her office, locked the door, and opened up a locked drawer in her desk. She set up six miniature bottles of liquor: Scotch for McCallister, vodka for herself.

“Did you raid the minibar somewhere?” he asked, but didn’t turn down the tiny servings. He unscrewed the first and downed it in two gulps, then opened the second.

“Certainly not at the Hallmark Motor Court Inn.”

That got her a shadow of a smile. He saluted her with the bottle, downed it, and sat down. She concentrated on the soothing fire of her vodka as it slipped over her tongue, down her throat, clearing away the taste of rot and despair. Somehow, she managed to drink her third before McCallister had properly started his, but then, as he hadn’t quite said, she’d been holding the saw.

“So,” she said, and leaned her head back against the leather of the chair. “Did you sleep with your boss?” Silence. She opened her eyes just a slit. McCallister continued sipping his Scotch without comment. “You’re really not going to tell me.”

“Is this the question that comes to your mind right now?”

“Evidently it is.” She was starting to feel numbed again, but in a slightly better way.

“Do you have any more of these?” He held up the liquor mini. She opened the drawer, pulled out two more, and pitched him one. “This is bourbon.”

“You’re really going to complain?”

He upended it while she sucked down her fourth vodka. This one was lemon-flavored. Nice. “If I say yes, what does it matter to you?”

“It doesn’t.” It did. It did, and he knew it, the bastard.
Why
it mattered to her was a mystery she didn’t care to explore at the moment; her emotions were confused, raw, and horribly tangled. “Was it good?”

“With
her
? Not likely.”

She almost choked on her drink. “So you did do it.”

“I didn’t say I did.
If
such a thing had happened, for which there is no evidence and no admission, now or ever, then it would not have been a good time. Just … maintenance.”

“Of your low reputation and your alibi.”

His lips twisted into a brief, unhappy grimace. “Something like that.” McCallister got weirdly funny and precise when he drank. If he felt anything like Bryn, he had to be at least slightly tipsy. Overcompensating, probably. “It’s not all fun and games in my business.”

She had a nauseating flashback, and suddenly she realized that she reeked of dead flesh; it had soaked into her clothes, her skin, her hair. The whole office stank with it.

Violetta Sammons’s disconnected head rolling free.

The rasp of the saw vibrating in her hand.

The vodka rushed up on her, and Bryn barely made it to her trash can before she threw up. Between the convulsions, she gasped for breath and sobbed, and McCallister came around the desk and silently handed her tissues, then helped her back into her chair as she covered her face and tried to muffle her wild, uncontrollable sobs.

He stroked her hair, very softly. He didn’t say a thing.

Finally, she was able to shut it off, just enough to gather her voice together. “I have to shower,” she said. Her voice was uneven and broken, but he nodded as he looked down at her. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “I’ll be there after you’re done.”

She grabbed another set of clothes and went into the locker room at the end of the hall; Riley was in there, changing into jeans and a comfortable sweatshirt with her hair still clinging damply to her face. She looked up, surprised, as Bryn dumped her stuff on the bench.

“Everything okay?”

Bryn didn’t want to talk, but she had to try. “Bad one,” she managed to say. “Major decomposition.”

Riley nodded and opened her locker. She tossed Bryn a bottle. “Try this,” she said. “Best I’ve found. Use it four times, you should be okay.”

Bryn didn’t even wait to thank her. The urge to get clean was so overpowering that even after she was standing in the hot spray, soaping herself from head to toe, she couldn’t stop gasping and shaking from the pressure. Two passes with the shampoo and she still felt filthy. By the third she was calming down, and by the fourth she felt almost normal. Her skin tingled from the scrubbing, but that was a good thing; the greasy, horrible stench seemed to have finally rubbed off.

Bryn threw her old clothes into the incineration biohazard bag and dressed in the clean ones, dried her hair, and was just finishing when there was a knock on the locker room door, and McCallister looked in.

He looked rough—pallid, with dark circles beneath his eyes. He’d stripped off his coat and tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt. “All right if I come in?” he asked, and she suddenly felt very selfish for taking up the shower for so long.

“It’s all yours,” she said.

He nodded thanks and opened a locker—Joe Fideli’s—and took out a pair of blue jeans and a clean white T-shirt. “We’re about the same size,” he said. “At least I won’t look like I’m going for gangster style.”

She passed him Riley’s shampoo. “Four passes,” she said. “It works.”

He smiled, faintly, and said, “Good.”

He was already stripping off his clothes before she closed the door, and in those fast, ruthless motions, she sensed that McCallister, too, was on the edge of losing control.

She let him do it in private.

Back in her office, Bryn turned on music, something soft and soothing, and nibbled some crackers to settle her still-restless stomach. Her skin and clothes smelled clean and fresh, but it was hard not to imagine the ghost of that stench still hanging around. She cleaned out the trash can, then used disinfectant spray around her chair and on her shoes. Probably too much.

Finally, she sat down and closed her eyes.

A soft chime made her open them again.

She had e-mail.

Oh, God
. She’d actually forgotten all about it.

Sitting in her in-box was a new message from one of those throwaway account services, with the ominous moniker of
deadman
. There was no subject line, and the message was just an address and a time of day—ten p.m.

McCallister came back, still glistening with drops from the shower, and saw from her expression that something was up.

She mutely spun her computer around and showed him. He leaned over the desk to read it. “Can your tech wizards trace that?” she asked.

“Probably not, but we’ll try it. That is the e-mail equivalent of a burner phone, and if he’s got any sense at all, he hid his IP address through a randomizer.” McCallister already had his cell out and was dialing.

“Don’t you need my account password?”

“Already have it,” he said, and got up to turn his back and talk to his resources.

Proof, once again, that there was nothing secret in her life anymore. Nothing sacred. She’d expected to feel some sense of burning betrayal, but instead, she felt … tired. And, weirdly, a little reassured.

McCallister stayed on the phone a while longer, and she contemplated opening up another set of drinks, but that seemed less like a necessary safety valve and more like a crutch, at this point. Bryn shut and locked the drawer, and looked at the clock.

It was coming up on six o‘clock.

Four hours to get the money and deliver it to the address—or else what? Lose their potential chance at the supplier.

If they did, Bryn had no doubt whatsoever that Irene Harte would pull the plug on the project, and her, with pleasure. It was that, as much as anything else, that made her step back from the comfort of the booze.
I’m not giving you the excuse,
she thought.
Not you. You don’t get to kill me.

But it wouldn’t be Harte, she realized. When it came to the end, it would come from the man pacing the floor on the other side of her office, talking quietly into his cell phone. He’d be the one told to withhold her drug, reduce her to that decayed, rotting shell. She’d be eaten alive. She’d beg for release until eventually the last of the nanites faded and died….

Or until he dismembered her, out of sheer horrified mercy.

No. He promised. He promised me he wouldn’t let that happen.
She closed her eyes and took deep breaths and tried to think of something, anything less painful. He’d promised, and he’d meant it. He wouldn’t let her linger on and rot.

McCallister finished the call. “I have a car and driver coming, and I’m on the way to pick up the money,” he said. “Joe is five minutes out. Stay here, and he’ll take you home. I’ll come by here at eight thirty to pick you up for the rendezvous.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

“For what?” he asked, and she held his eyes until she saw that he knew. “I meant what I said, Bryn. I won’t let that happen.”

“I know,” she said. “Thank you.” She stood up and hugged him. It was an impulse, and she didn’t mean anything by it except gratitude, until she was in his arms, and then … then it was something else entirely. “Tell me you didn’t sleep with her,” she whispered, very quietly.

He didn’t ask what she was talking about. “I didn’t,” he said, and something brushed her forehead, very gently. It might have been a kiss. “Stay safe.”

And then he was gone.

Bryn arrived home at six thirty, feeling exhausted and not up for family drama of any kind. Luckily, she didn’t get any.

The apartment was spotlessly clean, Mr. French was happy to see her, and the air smelled like rich Italian food.

“Hey, sweetie!” Annie said brightly from the kitchen. “Hope you’re hungry. I think I cooked enough pasta for the complex!”

I can’t do this.
Bryn dropped onto the sofa and covered her face with her hands. In a few seconds, she felt Annie’s weight settle in next to her, and her sister’s arm went around her shoulders. She didn’t look up.

“Hey,” Annie said. “Hey, what did I say? You don’t like Italian anymore?”

“It’s just …” For an extremely unsettling second, Bryn thought the dam might just collapse inside her. If she said
anything
, she’d say
everything
, everything that she’d promised to keep secret. And that would unburden her, but doom her sister. McCallister’s people were always listening, and someone was always listening to
them
. “It was a bad day. Really bad.”

“Sorry, honey. Hey, does it have anything to do with the hottie who was here with you before?”

“No! Why would you even assume that?” Bryn looked at her sister finally. Annie cocked an eyebrow and shrugged. “It’s not all about my love life. Or lack of one.”

“I’m just saying, he’s hot.”

“What about
married
did you not understand?”

“There’s married and
married
, in my expert opinion.”

“Honey, I work in a bar. I
am
an expert.”

That was … a good point. Bryn let it pass. “It’s not about Joe, and it had nothing to do with … It was work. Bad day at work.”

“Oh. So … it was disgusting, right?”

“Very.”

“I think I’d rather talk about your lack of a love life. Seriously, there isn’t
anybody
you’re interested in? Come on, Bryn. Humor me.”

“Nobody,” she said, but then she sighed and shook her head. “He doesn’t care about me. Not that way.”

“Is he male?”

“Obviously.”

“Is he straight?”

“As far as I know.”

“Then he cares, sweetie. You don’t have any idea how sexy you are, do you?”

Bryn laughed, and it sounded a little wild, a little despairing. “I am so very far from sexy right now, Annie. And how did we get on this subject again?”

“Because you wouldn’t discuss dinner?”

“Well, I’ll discuss it now. I don’t have much time, though. I’m sorry, but I have to go out tonight. An appointment. I need to be there by eight thirty.”

“Cool.” Annie squeezed her and let go. “We can go out tomorrow night. I made bruschetta and pasta primavera; I walked over to the store and stocked your fridge. You’ll love it.”

And Bryn did. For the first time in a long time—since before that awful moment when her whole life had ended and restarted—she tasted food, really tasted it. Crisp, nutty bread, fresh chopped tomato, basil, garlic, balsamic vinegar, oil … and the pasta, perfectly cooked al dente. Annie offered wine, but Bryn refused, on the grounds of driving. They talked. They laughed. They mocked each other. They did dishes and splashed each other, half out of spite, half out of joy.

Sisters.

Bryn felt the darkness and horror slip away, just for a while.

It all passed in far too short a time. By eight, they were sitting on the couch again, and Annie was flipping channels on Bryn’s TV. “What time do you think you’ll be back?” she asked. She flipped her hair back over her shoulders. She’d showered, and her hair had fallen into golden brown ringlets, perfectly shaped. When Bryn was ten and Annie was eight, Bryn had given her sister a deliberately awful haircut with a pair of safety scissors out of sheer envy—and in truth, she still hadn’t quite gotten over coveting those curls.

“Why? You going to wait up?”

“Are you going out on a date?”

“I wish. No.”

“Are you going to be draining body fluids out of some poor dead person?”

“No, and God, you are morbid.”

“Me? You’re the one with the job in the death business.” Annie made air quotes around it. “I’m sorry, and I don’t want to judge, but it just seems really weird to me.”