Rachel Caine - Working Stiff

Pharmadene employees. The ones who’d been on the perimeter.

“How did you do that?” Bryn asked. It was incredibly creepy, as if all of them were already dead.

“The bioengineered protocols,” Riley said. “Manny told us all about them.” She looked a little pale now, but still very controlled. “You can’t blame him for that, Bryn. He was doing the right thing. This was never something that a few independents could handle, no matter how well-meaning they might be.”

“McCallister was more worried about Mercer’s operation; that was a rogue element.”

“He wasn’t wrong about that. Mercer’s a sociopath. He never had any doubts about what he was doing, because the only thing that mattered was his own profit. We tried to reach out to him and bring him in on our side. He refused.”

That, Bryn thought, was because he already had his own ideas of how best to use the drug.

“Bryn,” Riley said, very gently. “I’m really very sorry about all this, but I have my orders. Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“I want you to get out and go inside.”

Bryn laughed, a bitter bark of sound. “Are you trying to invoke protocol on me? Because it doesn’t work. If Manny told you anything, he would have told you about his antidote.”

“He did,” Riley said. “But I know you a little better than that. You’re not running away. You were never running away, were you? You came here to finish something. So go finish it.” She hesitated, and looked away. “I was supposed to restrain you and put you on one of the buses. But I can’t do that. It doesn’t matter where you are anyway. So go in. Find McCallister, if that’s what you want to do. It’s all I can do to help you.”

“Thank you,” Bryn said. She got out of the limo, walked up the steps, and opened the Civic Theatre doors.

When she glanced back, Riley gave her a faint, sad smile, and rolled up the tinted window.

The lobby was opulent, but mostly deserted; Bryn glanced around and spotted men stationed at each of the entrances to the theater proper. She walked calmly and confidently toward one of them. “I’ve got a limousine for Ms. Harte,” she said. “She sent for me. I’m to find her and escort her out. She has a critical meeting in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll have to check,” he said, but she was right, the looming black presence of the limousine outside the glass doors was a convincing argument. Bryn checked her watch impatiently and tapped her foot as he pulled out a radio.

“Oh, wow, can I see that?” she asked, and plucked it out of his hands. He blinked, startled, and in the next second she’d reached under her coat, drawn her sidearm, and pressed the barrel under his chin. “Back up three steps, please.”

He did it, surprise derailing anything else, and in three steps they were in an alcove safely hidden from the other security people. “Condition Diamond, do you hear me?” Bryn asked, and saw his eyes widen. An eerie relaxation came over his body. “Okay, I need you to take this radio, get on the air, and broadcast an alert that you received a threatening phone call. There’s a bomb in the building. The building must be evacuated. Do you understand me? I need you to say it and believe it. I’m depending on you to save all these people. Tell me you understand.”

“Condition Diamond acknowledged,” he said. “Broadcast radio alert that there is a bomb in the building, and evacuation must proceed. Protocol priorities state that executives must evacuate first.”

“Perfect,” Bryn said. “After you’ve broadcast the alert, call Irene Harte’s people and tell her that her car is waiting at the front door. Questions?”

His eyes focused on hers, perfectly untroubled, but she knew that deep inside he’d be screaming. She’d felt this. She knew how … unclean it was. “Where’s the bomb?”

“Basement,” she said. That would take the maximum amount of time; typically, it was a maze of machinery and locked rooms. “Start now.”

She stepped back and took the gun away from his chin. If the protocol was going to fail, it would do it now, in spectacular Technicolor; he could have been faking it, waiting for his chance.

Instead, he just looked at her and said, “I need my radio, ma’am.”

She handed it over.

“This is Ledbetter at the entrance. I have a Level One bomb threat. Device is located in the basement. Initiate immediate evac of executive personnel.” He met Bryn’s eyes as he said, “Ms. Harte has a private car at the front—get her out here now .”

He clicked off. Bryn nodded and holstered her weapon. “Mr. Ledbetter, I want you to join the others now and lead them in a search for the bomb. Do you understand?”

“Yes. In the basement.” He hesitated. “Is this related to the two men we have pinned down?”

Bryn felt her whole body flush with adrenaline. “Pinned down where?”

“The hallway on the left,” he said. “Ballroom.”

“Go!”

Ledbetter raced off, looking as committed as if he really believed in the bomb … which she supposed he did, in a certain sense that was beyond his control. Bryn shuddered. The protocols might create kamikaze bombers and suicidal terrorists, but they weren’t likely to produce any brilliant military strategists.

Ledbetter’s radio message had poked a stick into the hornet’s nest, and people boiled out of the building. Bryn stopped another security man and commandeered his radio as he raced toward the basement, and waited next to the glass doors. Executives arrived in neat tailored suits and expensive shoes, surrounded by assistants and armed escorts; she recognized one as the first man she’d seen converted to Pharmadene’s new corporate loyalty program.

He recognized her, too, and his eyes widened. “You,” he said, and broke free of his guards to come toward her. “You were there. Across the hall.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” Bryn said. She meant it. But the man just smiled.

“No need to be sorry. Best thing that ever happened to me, or to the company. First time in years we’re all in agreement on what needs to be done around here.” He glanced down at her badge, then back up at her face, a frown grooving his brow. “You’re not Irene Harte.”

“Ms. Harte gave me her badge to get me into security,” she said. “I’m her driver.”

He wasn’t buying it, and as an executive, he would have knowledge and power to invoke Diamond protocol. He could bury her in bodies in seconds.

The radio suddenly rattled with static in her hand, and Ledbetter’s voice came over it to say, “This is a Level One alert. All executives need to be out of the building now ! We have a credible bomb threat!”

The man’s security team grabbed her problem executive by the arms and hustled him out. She heard him saying, “But I don’t think she’s got the right badge….” They weren’t listening.

Diamond Condition. She was starting to love it.

Except that in the next five minutes, she saw dozens of executives flee the building, and not one of them was Irene Harte.

She used the radio. “I need a twenty on Ms. Harte. I repeat, there is no sign of Ms. Harte in the evacuation. Where is she?”

A female voice answered, calm and brisk. “Who is this?”

“Her driver.”

The voice turned cold. “I’m her driver.”

“Ma’am, I’ve been assigned to drive both of you out of here as an emergency measure,” Bryn improvised. She was probably talking to Harte’s assistant, she realized. “There’s a bomb in the building.”

“No, there’s not. We swept it for devices hours ago.”

“Ma’am, as a precaution …”

“Harte doesn’t move from her current position until the gunmen already in the building are eliminated.”