Severance Package (28 page)

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.

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.

The firefighters, by this point, had enough screwing around.

They remembered their pickaxes had blades.

The shorter one swung at Molly, aiming for her chest. She lifted her forearm to block it, and the blade cut through her metal bracelet. It slipped from her wrist and fell to the floor. The blow had connected with her flesh, though. Molly cried out. Grabbed her wrist. Bent forward.

The taller one took advantage, hurling his pickaxe into Molly’s back, high and to the left. She took a few wobbly steps forward, then dropped.

No one spoke for a few moments. Smoke continued to roil
around the building. The air in the conference room itself was beginning to look wavy.

Molly lay with her check pressed against the carpet, staring at Jamie.

He thought about that night a few months ago, that drunken night when he walked her to her car. She had stared at him the same way.

But now something was different.

Now she was pursing her lips.

Blowing him a kiss.

Before her eyes closed.

The shorter firefighter knelt down beside her. Took off his glove. Pressed two stubby fingers to her neck. Shook his head.

“Okay, c’mon,” his partner said. Then he turned to Jamie. “Buddy, you okay?”

“Yeah,” Jamie said, automatically.

But he wasn’t, of course.

“We’ve gotta get out of here. Now.”

“Buddy. You with us?”

Jamie stood up. It all had happened so quickly. Then he remembered what he had been reaching for.

The gun.

Even though the man was dead—his body was right there on the floor, his head covered in a messy halo of blood—his boss’s words echoed.

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?

I’m no killer, Jamie had told David.

But the truth was, he
could
be.

If it was for his family.

Jamie bent over and took the gun out from under Nichole’s
face. The metal was hung up on her skin, and she was still warm. Then again, everything in the room was superheating.

He lunged for Molly’s body. He needed to be sure.

He needed to put a bullet in her brain.

“Hey
hey,
come on, man,” said shorter firefighter, catching Jamie in his extended arm and holding him back. The firefighter didn’t see he was holding a gun. “She’s gone.”

“Smoke’s getting real bad in here,” his partner said. Jamie could see his eyes and nose beneath the shattered mask. He looked young.

“I have to,” Jamie said.

“No you don’t.”

“She …”

“Buddy, she’s
gone.
There’s another team behind us. They’ll get her. Along with everybody else.”