Severance Package (19 page)

The radio.

Which came alive in a burst of static.

Thirty-five hundred miles away, McCoy tried to do some math.

“Number three’s a big guy, probably close to two hundred pounds. And that guard looked like he was at least that. Jesus, Keene—she’s hoisting over four hundred pounds of
man
on her shoulders. Is that even possible?”

“Apparently not. Look.”

The view from the glasses froze in place. Then, Ethan Goins—number three—came into view. He was being placed on a concrete step. He looked confused.

“What’s she doing?” McCoy asked.

“I don’t think number three knows, either.”

Vincent heard the return squawk of Rickards’s two-way. It was directly below him.

“Andy!” he shouted, then started down the staircase, wrenching the lead sap from his duty belt. 1919 Market didn’t arm their guards. It freaked the suits out too much. They didn’t like the idea of working in a police state.

All he had was a sap. The weakest kind, too: flat sap with lead shot and no spring in the shank.

No match for somebody, say, with a gun to Andy Rickards’s head.

Molly handed Ethan the radio, hoping he’d understand. She held up an index finger. One minute. I’ll be back for you in one minute. Maybe she could get this guard stashed.

Ethan nodded.

Above, someone shouted, “Andy!”

Molly continued up, guard still slung over her shoulder. She had a decision to make. It was coming down to her mother’s life, or these security guards.

Of course, there was another way.

It would be violating her orders. It would be putting the operation at risk—somewhat. Early on, when she had first contacted Boyfriend, she asked about operational priorities. They were given: sanctions first, experimentation second. By continuing to pursue the experimentation, she was putting the sanctions at risk.

If they were really watching—Boyfriend and his minders—then they’d have to understand why. And they’d have to approve.

Molly stopped midstep, then bench-pressed the guard off her shoulders and flung him down to the next landing. Her back cried out in relief. She wanted to collapse to the staircase and hoped the spasms would go away.

But there was no time for that now. She walked back down a few steps and knelt next to Ethan, who was looking at her with wide-eyed wonder. He was probably wondering what she was doing. Wasn’t she supposed to be stashing the guard somewhere while he distracted the other guard?

“Ethan,” she whispered. “I want you to know something.” She gently placed her hands on the sides of his head.

Maybe she could salvage part of the experiment, after all.

Maybe that would count as extra credit.

A voice behind her said, “Miss, step away from that man.”

The flat sap in his hand was useless, Vincent realized.

Not because he was squaring off against a gun. But because it was a girl.

A young girl.

In a skirt and long hair and bare feet, she didn’t look more than twenty-one. Hell, Vincent’s son would be dating girls like this in a few years.

Here she was, doting on her fallen man—and yeah, Rickards was right. The guy did have a pen sticking out of his neck. What was that about?

But in an instant, Vincent had a pretty clear picture of what was going on. The shattered glass, Rickards’s message, these two kids, this fire tower … all of it. It was a low-budget office burglary gone wrong. Plain and simple. She probably worked here, in an office on the thirty-first floor or higher. Just a secretary, or an assistant or something. She was certainly dressed like it—skirt, blouse. Got by on a little better than minimum. Lived with her parents maybe. Dated this dopehead here—a real sweetheart no-account type. One day, Dopehead decides he needs cash to score ecstasy, or maybe finance a deal of his own, talks his young girl into helping him break into her office. Steal a few laptops, raid the petty cash, whatever. Maybe it was heavier than that. Maybe she had the combo to a safe.

But somewhere along the way, something bad goes down. Something spooks Dopehead; he accidentally shatters a window. She freaks. They fight. He has a seizure, because he’s an X-poppin’ Dopehead. She knows enough to know she has to open an airway. She gives him a quick-and-dirty tracheotomy, saves his life. The unthankful creep makes her carry him down the fire tower steps, hoping to get away clean. They run into Rickards. She pleads for help. Rickards calls Vincent. Vincent agrees. The girl, desperate, pushes Rickards down the steps, still hoping they’ll be able to get out of this one without her parents finding out.

And there’s Rickards now, still out cold, at the bottom of the landing.

And here they are, Girlfriend and Dopehead, realizing they’re done for.

“Miss,” he says in the most reassuring tone he can muster, “I really need you to step away from that guy so I can help him.”

Detain him.

But yeah, help him.

Dopehead deserves jail time, but he doesn’t deserve to die.

Molly ignored the guard, because what she had to say to Ethan was important.

“Amy’s hanging for her life outside her office window,” she whispered. “She’s waiting for you to save her.”

Molly pulled back slightly. She wanted the fiber-optic camera in her glasses to capture everything—his reaction, her words. Maybe it would still prove useful.

Maybe these few seconds of video would be enough to get her back on track with Boyfriend.

Ethan’s reaction was worth the effort. He seemed to rage against his own body. Blood seeped out of the hole in his neck, and there was a phlegmlike rattle in there. He was actually trying to talk.

“Miss, please, step away and let me help him.”

Molly continued, “I’ll let her know you were too busy to come up.”

Ethan wasn’t sure if this was another dream, because none of it made sense. What made it seem like a dream was the fact that it centered around Amy. But it all felt real. His fingertips were pressing down on the smooth concrete.

And it was the wrong woman. It was
Molly
here, touching him. Molly’s bare hands, touching his cheeks. Now caressing his
head, her fingers sliding behind his skull, stroking his chin with her palm.

Molly?

Molly
Lewis?

A second before she pulled and pushed at the same time, Ethan realized this wasn’t about sex.

It was about snapping his neck.

The girl did exactly as Vincent asked, stepping back away from Dopehead. But something was wrong. Dopehead’s head lolled to one side. It might have been his eyes playing tricks, but Vincent thought he saw him seize his girlfriend’s hands on his face.

“Move away,” he said. He needed to get in there, do CPR. Vincent wasn’t quite sure how you did that with a sloppy tracheotomy thrown into the mix—what, do you press your thumb down on the hole in the neck? But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.

The girl stood up and seemed to be moving away.

Right until the moment she turned on Vincent. One of her hands grabbed his neck and drove him back into the cinder block wall. She squeezed
hard.

For Vincent Marella, it was the worst possible kind of déjà vu. A little over a year ago, in the Sheraton. Wide awake, knowing what was happening to him and powerless to do anything about it. His mouth open, silently screaming for air that would not come. Consciousness being stolen from him, one oxygen-deprived brain cell at a time.

Good evening, kids,
his strangler had said. He had been talking to the couple in the room. The people who had later disappeared. All because Vincent had been choked into unconsciousness, and had failed to protect them.

And it was happening again. Not by a muscular thug, but by a young girl. A girl who looked like a mild spring breeze would blow her over.

But her grip was steel. Vincent was already seeing gray spots dancing in his vision.

Then he remembered the sap.

He’d snapped it back onto his duty belt, hadn’t he?

He had.

Grab it. Unsnap it. Forget she’s a girl. She’s trying to
kill
you, Vince. Unsnap it and get to work. Do your job, already.

Vincent unsnapped it.

Molly did not see it coming.

She had been paying half attention to the security guard, waiting for the loss of oxygen to knock him out. She kept the other half of her attention on Ethan’s corpse, wondering where she could stash the body while she finished the rest of the operation. But wait; she couldn’t do that. The fire. The fire was supposed to burn up everything,
including
the bodies, and if he were down here, he could be discovered. Fingerprints could be lifted. And someone with enough incentive could—

Her face felt like it exploded.

It exploded again, this time from the opposite side. Her cheekbone shattered. Her broken camera glasses flew off her face, skittered across the concrete and down three steps, landing facedown.

The security guard had a sap.

The potential skull fractures didn’t worry her as much as the idea of trying to look presentable at the end of her operation. Her long hair could cover the slash trail of a bullet. It could not cover a battered face.

A battered face would not impress her employers.

Molly squeezed tighter. The guard twitched and then smashed the sap down on her forearm, numbing it instantly from the wrist to the shoulder. But she refused to let go. Molly tried to snatch his weapon from him, but the lead cracked her knuckles.

Then he brought it up again at her face, savagely. Her lips burst. A tooth shattered in her mouth.

She squeezed even tighter, careful not to kill him. Even though she wanted to. But security guards weren’t part of the operation; such a sanction would be seen as sloppy.

Oh, but the urge was strong. She hadn’t felt this kind of bloodlust since …

Since 1996.

The Olympic Games.

The bitter sting of loss.

Molly Lewis—whose birth name was not Molly Kaye Finnerty, but Ania Kuczun—tried to resist her basest instincts and stick to the operation.

Ania Kuczun not only would have crushed this man’s windpipe in a matter of seconds. She would have severed and mailed his head, in a plastic-lined box, to the man’s family. She would have researched and found the person who cared about him the most. She would have sent it cash on delivery.

Ania Kuczun had spent many years trying to become Molly Lewis.

She couldn’t give it up now, when it mattered the most.

The life of Helen Kuczun depended on it.

Thirty-five hundred miles away, the monitor showed nothing but an extreme close-up of a concrete slab. Then, gray static.

“What’s going on?” McCoy barked. He slapped the side of the table, as if that would do something.

“I’m trying another camera.”

“Damn it! Tap into building security. You can do that, can’t you?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a tech guy.”

“Get a tech guy!” McCoy caught himself. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Keene said, “but I’m not finding anything. What
we have are access codes to the cameras on the thirty-sixth floor and not much beyond. Guess we never thought we’d need anything else.”

McCoy cursed.

Vincent Marella felt his skin burst with sweat and his muscles start to flutter. He assumed this was it. In his last conscious moment he thought about his boy, and all his wild conspiracy theories. If he could be with him one last time, Vincent would place his hands on the boy’s shoulders—which he remembered his own father doing to him, when it was about something important. And Vincent would tell him:
You were right.
The deck is stacked against the common man, and God bless you for asking the right questions. Keep asking them as long as you can.

Then Vincent was out.

Molly, Ania, Girlfriend. She answered to them all.

But as the guard fell to the floor, she took a few steps back, and she heard one name the loudest:
Victim.

She felt like a victim, once again. No matter the personae she created. No matter how hard she trained. No matter how many things she learned. At her very core was the word imprinted on her DNA:
Victim.