Rachel Caine: Two Weeks' Notice

She fought back those cruel impulses, but it was tough, really tough, and she had to clear her throat before she said, “Lynn, just take a deep breath. Please. Just let the nanites work. You’ll be all right in a few minutes. Stay still. Riley’s going to give you a shot now to help you.”

Riley already had the syringe lying out on the bed, uncapped, and now she picked it up and administered the dose of Returné with an expert flick of her wrist. It took only a second.

Then she picked up a second syringe and injected Lynnette with that, too. Lynnette’s eyelashes fluttered, and her eyes rolled up to show the whites, and she stopped breathing.

Dead, again.

Riley nodded to her subordinate. “Get her stripped and in the shower. I’ll get some clothes for her. We have about ten minutes before she comes around again, and I want her clean, dressed, and in the car by then.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Bryn blurted. The other agent pushed her out of the way, scooped Lynnette up, and took her into the bathroom. “Riley!”

“She can’t stay here,” Riley said. “She’s going back to Pharmadene, where she can get the treatment she needs.”

“And the bodies? You called off the cops, didn’t you?”

“This will all be handled, Bryn. Now, you both need to go. I don’t have to tell you that this is a national security matter, do I?”

“You can’t just cover this up and make her disappear! You can’t—”

“I can,” Riley interrupted her, “and I have. This entire neighborhood is being evacuated right now for a gas leak. In twenty minutes, this house is going to blow sky-high. The only casualties will be the Renfer family.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Patrick said, from the doorway, “You mean, including Lynnette. Right, Agent Block?” He had that flat, cold look in his eyes Bryn knew meant trouble. “She’s an inconvenient survivor, and you can’t depend on her to keep her mouth shut. What’s her future—quick decapitation? Fast-burning furnace? Or just let her decompose in the white room so you can chart her process?”

If he was planning to ruffle her calm, he was disappointed. “She goes back to Pharmadene,” Riley said, without much emotion. “And you’re right. She can’t leave there again; she’s too high a risk. If she decides she wants to end her drug regimen, or chooses another method of…termination, that is entirely her choice; it’s one we give all the addicts. Frankly, if it was me in this situation, I wouldn’t want to go on.” She looked up then, but not at Pat—at Bryn, who felt a chill ladder up her spine. “Would you?”

Bryn didn’t reply, but she knew if she’d been forced to do so, she would have had to confess that dying, however horrible, might have been better than living the rest of an immortal life with the burden of this on her conscience.

The shower cut off in the bathroom. Riley went to the closet and combed through clothes ( How do you choose an outfit for a time like this? Bryn wondered) and handed underwear, pants, and a shirt off to her colleague. “You should leave,” Riley said to the rest of them. “The clock’s ticking. You should be able to go without any questions being asked, but if you’re stopped at the cordon, give them my name.”

Bryn said, “You can’t just—”

“Can’t just what ?” Riley snapped, and for a moment her shell of calm cracked through to white, furious rage. “Can’t clean up this mess? That’s all I do, Bryn. It’s my fucking job . Day after day. Night after night. I see the wreckage that Pharmadene left us with, and I get to sweep up the broken glass. So either get out of the way or grab a broom.” She paused for a second, shut her eyes, and then looked at Pat. “McCallister, get her the hell out of here. Now.”

He stood still for so long that Bryn was convinced he’d do something , stop what was happening, try , but instead when he did move, he only crossed to Bryn and took her hand. “We need to go,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“We can’t let them just abduct her—”

“Bryn, we’re on thin ice as it is. You can’t fight this. Listen— listen to me !” She was trying to pull free of him, and get to Lynnette, and he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. Hard. “You exist on the government’s sufferance, and that can end anytime they want. Don’t fight them on this. Don’t. There’s nothing we can do for her!”

“There should be!” she snapped, and broke free of him…but then didn’t know which way to go. Toward Lynnette, whose limp body, clothed now, was being carried out by the male agent…or to coldcock Riley Block, just for the hell of it.

In the end, the choice was taken from her, simply because the FBI didn’t stick around for it. In the next breath Lynnette was out of the room, and Riley was a step behind, and it was just her and Patrick standing there, with Lynnette’s blood staining the bedspread in the outline of her head.

And he was, as always, right. She didn’t have the power to fight the FBI on this, and Lynnette probably wouldn’t thank her for doing it. Still, she gulped in a few breaths, and said, “It isn’t right. What they’re doing.”

“No,” Patrick said. “And we can discuss that all you want. But we need to leave. Now.”

She knew that, but looking around the house, she felt a moment of disorientation, of utter loss . “Just a minute,” she said, and went to the plaster cast of the children’s handprints on the wall. She took it, threw another look around the room, and had no idea what else there was. A whole life— four lives—had been lost, and all she could think to grab was this one thing.

She didn’t have the heart to look anymore, certainly not at the bodies cooling in the other room. In the end, she just walked out. She knew Patrick was worried about her, but she didn’t feel upset. She’d shut down. She just felt…distant now. Resigned, and oddly at peace.

She got in her car, put the plaque in the passenger seat, and leaned out the window to say, “I’m going to work. See you tonight.”

“Bryn—”

She rolled up the window on whatever he was going to say and drove away.

It wasn’t until she was in her office, holding the plaque in one hand as she tried to figure out where it should go, that the walled-off parts of her crashed in like a tsunami, and she had just enough time to put the thing down before she collapsed against the solid bulk of her desk.

She was still crying when her phone rang. It was Lucy’s ringtone. Bryn gulped in air, wiped her eyes, and tried to clear her throat before she answered. Better to keep it short. “Yes?”

“You wanted me to remind you about that vendor appointment this afternoon,” Lucy said. “Dang, you’ve got a lot of off-sites all of a sudden. What’s that about? Oh, and don’t forget you’ve got Mr. Chen’s interment tomorrow. In case your meeting runs long today.”

“Thanks.”

Even keeping it brief didn’t help, because after a second’s pause, Lucy said, in a totally different, concerned tone, “Honey, are you okay?”

“Fine.” Bryn hung up, because she definitely couldn’t talk about any of this, not with Lucy, not with anyone . She didn’t need to be sobbing on the floor right now; it wasn’t helping the dead Renfers, or Lynnette, and it wasn’t helping her. Lucy rang back, but Bryn ignored it, went into the private washroom attached to her office, and ran cold water over her hands and face. Her makeup needed significant repairs. Doing that steadied her, focused her, and by the time she stepped out and locked her office door, she felt almost herself again.