Working Stiff (38 page)

“Okay. First, we don’t need a whole syringe full, right?” She took the syringe from Manny’s fingers and disposed of the rest of the blood in a haz-mat container off to the side, grabbed a test sheet from the box, and went to Fideli’s side. “Knife?”

“Yo,” he said, and took one out of his belt—a big, wicked thing with an edge sharp enough to cut the light. Pansy pressed it lightly to his thumb and smeared the thin crimson line that appeared onto the paper.

Blue halo.

“See?” she asked, and handed Fideli’s knife back. “You can get up now. It’s okay.”

Manny clearly didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue. “We can’t stay here,” he said. “I’ve already called the vans. We’ll be moved by the end of the day and in the new location.”

“Manny, there’s no need to do this. We can stay here.”

“No. I need to move. Too many people in and out. It’s not secure.”

Pansy rolled her eyes. “
Not
what I needed today. All right, we’ll move. But first, Bryn needs her inhibitor booster, and then I’ll send them on their way.”

“All right.” Manny pointed at a set of boxes across the lab. “Third carton from the bottom. I packed it underneath the extra saline.”

The boxes weren’t labeled, Bryn realized—not a single one. “Do you remember what’s in every one of them?” she asked.

Manny looked at her. “You can put your hands down,” he said. “I’m not going to shoot you.”

“Yeah,” Pansy said, as she walked toward the indicated boxes. “But only because I took his gun.”

“You really remember what’s in the boxes. There must be two hundred of them!”

“Two hundred thirty-six,” he said. “Not counting the crated machines. Yes. I do.”

“What happens when they mix them all up in moving vans?”

“I pay them to make sure they get stacked and delivered in order.” His green eyes were less crazy now, and he frowned as he looked her over. “You don’t look so great.”

Bryn laughed a little. “It’s been … stressful.”

“They were letting her rot,” Fideli said, “for science.”

“Really?” Those eyes gleamed suddenly. “Did you get any records? Video? That would be very useful.”

“Jesus.” Fideli raised his voice. “Pansy, you really sleep with this guy?”

“I keep one eye open,” she called back, as she restacked cartons—keeping them, Bryn noticed, in precisely the same order as they’d been. “Got it!” She held up an IV bag and needle kit. “Manny, stop being so creepy. It was awful for her. It really was.”

He didn’t look noticeably sorry. “I’m sure it was, but still, the opportunity to study something like that …”

“Yeah, well, I hope you won’t have the opportunity to do it on me,” Bryn said. “Where do I sit?”

“Over here,” Pansy said. She hooked the IV bag on a rolling stand that hadn’t yet been packed and pulled over a straight-backed chair. Bryn sat and let Pansy numb the back of her hand, then guide in the needle. It still, as always, hurt, but the cool rush of fluid into her veins soothed things nicely. “Should take about an hour. I’m going to get you some more water. Anything to eat?”

Food. Bryn’s stomach rumbled, and she realized that she hadn’t really even thought about food for so long, it was an abstract concept. “Uh, anything,” she said. “Whatever isn’t packed, I guess.”

“I’ll find something. Joe?”

“I’ll have what she’s having. Minus the IV.” Fideli put his back against the wall and leaned. Now that he wasn’t under threat of death, he allowed himself to look tired. He nodded to Manny. “So you’re the FBI guy, right? The one McCallister knows.”

“You know McCallister.”

“Yeah, old friends. I kinda work for him.”

“Then I suppose you’re all right,” Manny said grudgingly. “He’d probably take it badly if I’d shot you.“

Fideli grinned, a surprising flash of white, even teeth. “I’d like to think so. Glad I didn’t shoot you, too.”

Manny raised his bushy eyebrows. “Do you think you could have, before I fired the shotgun?” Fideli stared back. He didn’t answer, and he didn’t need to, really. Manny nodded and sat down on the edge of one of the wooden pallets. “Interesting.”

“Mutual, if you do half the stuff he says you do.”

“Interesting that he’s talked to you about me, and not to me about you.”

“I’ve known him longer,” Fideli said. “And he meant to bring me over here. He just didn’t get the chance.”

That made them fall silent for a moment. Bryn felt the anxious flutter in her stomach at the thought of McCallister, still missing, and she knew Joe was feeling it, too. Maybe even Manny was, as well.

Pansy came back with cups of instant soup all around, and by the time they were emptied, the four of them had formed a fragile kind of trust.

For now.

Manny kicked them out as soon as Bryn’s IV was finished. So much for trust.

Pansy walked them down to the van. “Sorry about this,” she said. “Once he gets in this mood, I can’t talk him out of it. We’ll move the lab; he’ll settle down; things will go back to normal. But I can’t take you with us. I can’t even tell you where we’re going, because he won’t tell me either. I’ll contact you later.” She passed Bryn a bundle of things. “Here. I think they’ll fit. You can’t run around in some numbered paper jumpsuit and expect not to get noticed.”

“Thanks.”

Fideli nodded to her, too. “Thanks, Pansy,” he said. “Nice working with you.”

“You too, Joe. It was good to get out and stretch my legs again.” Pansy hugged Bryn, and she hugged her back, surprised but pleased. “You, girl, you take care of yourself. I’ll see you in a week for your booster.”

“Promise?”

Pansy silently crossed her heart. “Get going. The moving vans will be here soon, and that makes him extra paranoid, even with all the background checks.”

“How the hell do you put up with it?” Joe asked, climbing into the van’s driver’s seat.

“I love him,” she said. “And he’s not just paranoid. People really are out to get him. And hey, seems like we’re all in that boat now, right?” She leaned in to put a kiss on Joe’s cheek. “You take care, sweetie. Call me anytime you need a partner in crime.”

Bryn buckled her seat belt and rolled down the window as they left the safety and shadows of the warehouse to let a fresh breeze blow through the van. The inside of the vehicle frankly reeked; the smell of her blood made her a little light-headed, or maybe that was the inhibitors taking hold. She was feeling herself again, finally; her leg’s ache had subsided, and when she ran her fingers over the back of it, she felt only a faint and fading scar.

“You can change clothes in the back,” Fideli said. “I’m not gonna peek.”

“You saw it all anyway.” She sighed. “It’ll be nice to not be dressed in paper.”

And it was, very nice, from the soft cotton underwear to the long-sleeved thermal tee and jeans. Pansy had included a pair of slip-on flats for shoes, which would have to do, for now. At least it wasn’t cold outside.

Bryn climbed over the seats and buckled herself back in place. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“Safe house up in the hills,” Fideli replied. “Strap in; we don’t need a ticket when the back of the van looks like a butcher shop died in it.”

“Is McCallister there …?”

“I don’t know where Pat is,” Fideli said. “When he’s ready to contact us, he knows my number. We’ve both got disposable burner phones. It’s the best we can do, for now.” He was quiet for a moment, watching traffic, watching the rearview mirror. Road noise hissed through the cabin. “You probably ought to know something.”

“What?”

“McCallister made me promise something. If I couldn’t get you out, or if … if you were too far gone, he made me promise to …”

“To end things for me,” Bryn said. “So I wouldn’t suffer.”

“Yeah. I thought you’d want to know that.” He pulled in a deep breath and let it out, slowly. “These are some fucked-up times if that’s romantic, Bryn.”

It made her smile, and it made her eyes well up at the same time. She turned her face away and let the wind whip against her cheeks to dry them as tears rolled down. “Thanks,” she said. “I did want to know that.”

He turned the radio on after that, and surprised her by singing along to it. He had a good voice, baritone, and did a mean version of Harry Nilsson’s song about the limes and coconuts. It almost felt … normal.

That was something Bryn realized she craved most. Normality. The feeling that her reality was still the same one that all these other people shared, the ones driving on the freeway next to them. They were headed to work or play or home or shopping. They had lives, goals, plans, challenges that didn’t include rotting away inside a dead shell of a body.

She envied them all, so strongly that it hurt. Somehow, without ever meaning to, she’d become an alien, stranded in a strange yet achingly familiar landscape.

“Bryn?”

“What?”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Joe said. “My family’s stuck somewhere halfway across the country, if not outside the country, and I don’t know when or if I’ll ever see them again. Deal with your shit and don’t wallow in it.”

“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—”