Rachel Caine - Working Stiff

And Joe. He was already separated from his family, but he was risking something much, much worse, something that would take him away forever, dig a gulf that even love couldn’t breach. If he was revived. Harte might not even bother.

Bryn had to get in. If nothing else, she could kill Harte. She wanted to. She needed to, after that white room, after seeing the horror of that hallway at Pharmadene.

Harte had to be stopped, and like the Pharmadene staff, Bryn would be very, very hard to kill.

I could call the cops, report shots fired. If she did that, though, there was a very good chance that she’d be signing the death warrants of anyone who responded. They could be killed, revived, made to report that nothing was wrong.

But I don’t know how to do this alone , she thought in utter despair. I’m not a spy. I’m not some special ops expert, like McCallister. I’m just …

Just a funeral director. What did funeral directors have that would be of any use at all …

Oh, God.

It was crazy, it was insane … and it just might work.

Bryn turned the van at the next light and headed at high speed out to Fairview Mortuary.

She tried to call Fideli again, but got nothing except a bland computer voice asking her to leave a message. Either the phone was dead, they were too busy to talk, or McCallister and Fideli had been taken already.

Time was not just running out; it was gone . She had no options left. Nothing except this one last, desperate try.

The only car already in the Fairview Mortuary lot belonged to Riley Block. That was fine; Bryn planned to avoid her. This wouldn’t take long.

She went in, raced to her locker, and took out the extra set of clothes she kept there—a nice business suit, discreet and dark. Sensible but attractive shoes. She changed fast, rinsed the blood out of her hair, and slicked it back in a severe ponytail. No time for makeup. She made do with pale lipstick.

Then she clipped on Irene Harte’s gold-edged Pharmadene badge and went out to the parked Fairview limousine; like all their family transport cars, it was unmarked. She tossed a body bag in the back, and was preparing to pull out when a knock came on the window.

Riley Block was standing there, still in her spotlessly white Fairview lab coat.

Bryn hit the button and rolled down the window. “Riley, I have an urgent pickup to—”

Riley silently held up a black leather wallet and flipped it open. Inside were a gold badge and an ID card.

FBI.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d been hoping to break it to you gently.” She raised her other hand, and in it was a gun, which she pointed at Bryn’s head. “I know it won’t kill you, but it’ll slow you down. Don’t try to drive away. Hands off the wheel, please.”

Bryn slowly raised her arms. Riley said, “Keep them up,” and walked around the long, gleaming hood to the passenger side, where she got in, never taking her gaze off of Bryn as she fastened her seat belt. “You’re going to the Civic Theatre.”

Bryn couldn’t control her surprise. “How did you—”

“Believe it or not, the FBI’s been aware that Pharmadene had something to hide for some time. We traced McCallister’s activities and connected him to Fairview, although he hid it very well; we still weren’t sure it was a way into their organization, but I was tapped to go undercover and check it out. I’ve had mortuary experience.”

“Joe brought you in,” Bryn murmured. Oh, Joe. God, no . She couldn’t believe it—didn’t want to believe it.

“McCallister passed my name along to him,” Riley said. “And I was recommended by a former FBI agent whom I worked with in the past, a mutual friend of McCallister’s.”

“Manny Glickman.” Bryn felt the missing piece click into place, and saw the flare of recognition in Riley’s dark eyes. “McCallister trusted him.”

“And Manny had to follow his own conscience about all this. He knew it was going to go wrong; he tried to tell Patrick McCallister that from the start. He was simply hedging his bets. But of course, it’s Manny , so nobody believed him. Not at first.” Riley shook her head slowly. “I’m not sure whether to be impressed or nauseated by what they’ve done. What you are . It’s an incredible achievement, but … so very wrong.”

“I’m not one of Pharmadene’s robots,” Bryn said.

“I know enough about the capabilities of the drug they’ve given you to know I can’t trust your word about that. Or about anything.”

“But you know about what they’re planning to do at the Civic Theatre, don’t you?”

Riley nodded. “The secretary of state is not coming, obviously. Neither are any government officials. We headed them off.”

“You should have stopped it as soon as you knew. You could have locked down Pharmadene.”

“Oh, we have,” Riley said. “The building’s empty, although we’ve got our own people in place to return calls and give the appearance that things are proceeding normally. Harte made that easier by pulling most of the staff out to man her Civic Theatre plan. And now all of their most important people are in a vulnerable place.”

Bryn’s lips parted in horror, and then she blurted it out. “You’re going to take them out. All of them.”

“Most of them in one go,” Riley agreed. She had a sad glint in her eyes, but in the next blink it was gone. “We have to stop it. You’d say the same. And it’s more merciful to do it this way, one surgical strike, take out everyone at once.”

“How many?”

“What?”

“How many people at the theater?”

“We estimate about three hundred of Pharmadene’s employees,” Riley said. “Technically, they’re bodies, not living people.”

“That’s not true. They’re like me. They think. They feel. They are alive. They don’t deserve this .” Bryn swallowed hard. “Riley, I heard them dying. I heard them screaming. Most didn’t want to do this. They didn’t sign up for it—they’re victims . You have to help me stop it. If we get Irene Harte, all of it can stop. It can be controlled.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “And that’s what I argued for. But it’s too late now, and it’s out of my hands. In about thirty minutes, that building will suffer a catastrophic event, and everyone in it will die.”

“Patrick McCallister is in there. So is Joe Fideli.”

Riley didn’t blink. “Let’s take a drive,” she said.

“Where?”

“Where you were going in the first place. The theater.”

“But—”

“Bryn,” she said patiently. “You understand, this is a cleanup. And you’re a loose end. I’m very sorry—really I am—but this is a national security situation, and we have to take drastic measures. I don’t like it, but I have to do what’s right.”

“You mean that you’re going to kill me, too.”

Riley didn’t try to argue the point. She actually seemed a little sad, Bryn thought. “For what it’s worth, I like you. I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry you got caught up in it. It wasn’t your fault, but sometimes things just happen.”

Bryn shut her mouth and didn’t argue. There was no doubt in Riley’s face, and no mercy, either. Like Irene Harte, she was a true believer … just on the other side. Broken eggs and omelets, and the greater good.

Bryn wasn’t entirely sure she was wrong, and besides, at least it was where she wanted to go.

Where she had to go. Because if it had to end this way, at least she’d be with McCallister, where she knew—finally—that she belonged.

The Civic Theatre perimeter was deserted when they arrived. There were buses parked in the lot that hadn’t been there on Bryn’s previous drive-by, and as she pulled into the parking area close by she saw that the buses were full of people sitting in unnatural stillness.