Severance Package (24 page)

She fixated so much, she didn’t fully notice when something cold and wet lashed across her wrists.

Ow.

What had hit her hands?

Oh God.

No.

Nichole staggered backwards.

Where …

… were her hands?

Ania felt the gunmetal on the nape of her neck. Heard the click.

“Freeze,” Amy said.

Still another mistake, Ania realized. Up until a minute ago, she thought she only had one person stalking her. There had been two. Nichole Wise. And Amy Felton.

Nichole had been easy—one swing. Now she was either in shock or busy searching the floor for her hands.

But that had left Ania wide open.

From behind.

And Amy had taken full advantage.

The blade in Ania’s hands was too heavy. By the time she swung it even a quarter of the way, Amy could blast her spinal cord to pieces.

“Drop it.”

Ania did. The floor of this part of the office, a shared workspace, was covered in linoleum. The heavy blade landed with a dull thud.

“Hands above your head. Lock your fingers together.”

Then, she called out, “Nichole? You with me?”

This was all wrong. Somehow Nichole Wise survived her deathblow, and Amy Felton had overcome her fear of heights. Two more disappointments in a long string of them. Had they caught all of that on-screen? Nichole’s miraculous resurrection? Amy’s courageous climb?

What were they saying now?

It was unacceptable to kill someone only partway. With Amy Felton, it had been calculated. Nichole was different. Nichole was supposed to be dead. Ania should have gone for an insurance shot. But in that moment—when escape to the other office seemed paramount—it hadn’t been a priority. Nichole had stopped breathing, thanks to a paralyzing blow to her diaphragm. She should not have been able to draw another breath on her own.

What were they saying about Ania now? Gun to her head, forced to surrender her weapon?

“Let’s go,” Amy snarled, then grabbed the collar of Ania’s shirt, spun her around and pushed her forward, back in the direction where Amy had come from. A few feet down the hall, Amy gave her a violent push, and Ania’s head bounced off the drywall. Amy yanked back on Ania’s shirt, then pushed her forward again.

“Move it,” Amy said. “You’ve got a date with a window, bitch.”

Nichole leaned up against the nearest available wall, intending to ease herself down to the floor, nice and easy. Instead she stumbled. She tried to catch herself with her hands, but no. That couldn’t be right. Her arms usually had hands attached to them.

Look. There was one. On the floor.

The other was still attached.

Sort of.

Ania smiled.

… smiled.

Ah yes, Amy.

Let’s go to your office.

Let’s have a date.

On the way to her office, Amy smashed Molly’s head against dry-wall three more times—which was impressive for a journey no more than a dozen feet. The third time, the wall actually shattered, paint chips and dust drizzling down to the carpet.

Amy’s office door was slightly ajar. Amy knew she had closed it tight when she had escaped. She hadn’t wanted to tip Molly off.

“Why is my door open?”

“Your boyfriend’s waiting for you,” Molly said, then turned to offer her profile. A crooked creek of blood ran down from her hairline. Her lips were curled into a tight little smile.

Amy pushed Molly’s head forward so that it slammed on her door, which had the curious effect of both punishing Molly and causing the door to open all the way.

A second later, Amy wished it hadn’t.

Ethan was perched behind her desk, his hands hanging—palms up—off the metal arms of her chair. The delirious smile on his face would have caused Amy’s soul to leap, if the smile didn’t look so … unnatural.

“Ethan?”

Ohgod.

Ethan couldn’t be …

Ania dropped to the ground, then swept Amy’s legs. Amy’s face hit wall. The gun tumbled out of her hand.

Those sixteen miserable floors of hauling Ethan Goins up the fire tower were suddenly worth every step.

Look at her suffer.

Ania fixed her blouse the best she could, then walked over to Amy’s desk and snatched a pile of Kleenex from a box that was adorned with sunflowers. Stopping the bleeding was key. Lose too much and she’d become light-headed. She needed to finish off Amy, then David, then talk to Jamie. It was almost over.

But Amy was up a lot faster than Ania had predicted.

“I’m going to hurt you,” she said, spitting blood from her lips.

Quickly, Ania ran through her mental repertoire. What hadn’t she used yet? What could she do to impress the men at the other end of the fiber-optic camera? How could she save this abortion of a morning?

Amy lunged forward.

Nichole had only one idea in her head: Crawl back to the conference room and do something indescribably nasty to David to force him to reveal the lockdown code. Ideally she needed a torture she could accomplish with little strength, because she didn’t know how long she was going to last. And something she could do with no hands. Maybe she could crush his face with her heels.

She couldn’t bring herself to look at her severed wrists. She could feel her remaining hand there, hanging by what felt like the thinnest strand of flesh. She knew it wasn’t good. Knew she was losing more blood than she should.

Didn’t matter. She would crawl with two good knees. Crawl faster than she was losing blood.

No, she couldn’t.

She was being stupid. She needed to tie off her wrists. Then continue crawling.

But how?

You can’t tie off anything without hands, can you?

She’d try anyway.

Nichole would be damned if she would pass out from blood loss before a final encounter with her nemesis.

Her boss.

She rolled over onto her back, then angrily ripped at her shirt with her teeth. Fine. Let him see me in my bra. As I squeeze my blood into his face. Let that be the last thing he ever sees.

Tastes.

Then the solution came to her:

Kitchen.

Electric range.

A dial that could be turned with her teeth.

Yes.

Keene needed to stop with the orange juice. He was drinking it compulsively now, and the acid was tearing up his stomach. The old habits were slowly creeping back. Only now with Florida’s best, rather than the smoky nectar of the Scottish highlands.

But what he was reading … well, it would have driven anyone to drink.

Keene had worked another source.

Keene’s second source was high-placed; it was rumored that she was the one who currently acted as a director of CI-6, or whatever you wanted to call their
thing.
She certainly knew enough. Keene never walked away from one of their conversations disappointed.

If this intel could be trusted, then “Murphy, Knox” was not what his good buddy McCoy had claimed it was:

A cover for CI-6 operatives. Fixers. Sleepers. Black baggers. Accident men. Killers. Professionals, mixed in with civilian support, to complete the illusion of a working financial services company.

Nope.

It
was
a financial services company.

Granted, it was a financial services company that was designed to infiltrate and destroy terrorist financial networks. Or for that matter, anyone whose finances needed destroying, international or domestic.

According to Keene’s second source, the funding worked both ways. Money poured out of Murphy, Knox, too. Funding training. Weapons. Research. Operations. Anything that you didn’t want attached to an official budget line? Simply run it through a guy like Murphy.

So why had McCoy lied to him? He clearly had to know this. He acted like he knew every intimate detail of that office.

And for God’s sake—why were more than a half dozen people going to die there this morning?

Jamie stared at the back of the chair he’d been sitting in about … oh, what was it? An hour? Two hours? Jamie was bad at noting the passage of time. Whenever he poured himself into his writing, it was as if the digital clock on his computer played tricks on him. He had an arrangement with Andrea during his parental leave: Every morning, he could devote some time to his freelance career, pitching stories to men’s magazines.

It was the only way, Jamie had explained, he’d ever be able to quit Murphy, Knox. Leave the Clique behind.

But by the time Jamie felt like real work was being accomplished, time was up. Chase needed his attention. Andrea needed a break. He was glad to give it to them. They were his family. His everything. But every minute away from his desk felt like another minute the dream was delayed.

And now this, stuck in the conference room with his half-dead boss, was like that. Being in that strange place where the clock seemed to be actively working against you.

“Jamie,” a voice said. “Are you there?”

God.

It was David.

Amy and Nichole had left clear instructions about what to do if someone—who was not Amy or Nichole—tried to enter the conference room: Aim for the head.

“I’m not going to kill anybody,” he’d told them.

“You want to see your kid again?” Nichole had asked.

“You can’t make me,” he said, feeling like a third-grader the moment the words left his mouth.

Nichole stuffed the third gun in his waistband.

“Do it for your family,” she said.

And then they’d left.

They had not told him what to do if David started talking to him. David, the man who started all of this when he tried to force everyone to drink poisoned champagne.

“Jamie … please.”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Could I ask a favor?”

“What?”

“May I have a cookie? I’m starving.”

As much as he wanted to ignore him, Jamie couldn’t. This was a man who’d been shot in the head, asking for a cookie.

Never mind that a man who’d been shot in the head shouldn’t be asking for a cookie.

A few weeks before Chase was born, Andrea purchased a children’s book from a store near work. “To start his library,” she’d said. It was called
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
Late one night, Jamie read the book. The point was cute and simple: Give a mouse a cookie, and he’ll want something else. And then something else. And something else still, until finally, you’ve surrendered your soul to a rodent.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly the point of the book. But that’s what it felt like now. David would ask for a cookie. Then a gallon of milk. Then a gun. And then …

“Do you mind?” David asked.

“What kind?” Jamie heard himself saying.

“Anything but a Chessman.”

Of course.

Chessmen were for losers.

The conference table was frozen in time. Napkins with cookies stacked on top. Moisture-beaded bottles of champagne. Notebooks. Pens, some uncapped. Molly’s white cardboard bakery box—the one that had been holding doughnuts and a gun. Snipped string.

Jamie fished a Milano from the bag and carried it over to David, whose eyes were closed. Jamie knelt down next to him. His head swam with options. He had to proceed carefully.

If you give a boss a cookie …

“I have your cookie,” he said.

David’s eye fluttered open. “Thanks.”

“You want it?”

Jamie dangled the cookie above David’s open mouth. His boss looked, somewhat absurdly, like a baby bird, waiting to be fed a worm.

“Yes.”

“Well, not yet.”

David’s eyes narrowed. “Really.”

“First you’re going to tell me how to disable the lockdown so I can get off this floor.”

David smirked. “And then I get the cookie?”

“Then you get the cookie.”

Jamie felt like he was engaged in a real estate deal with a toddler. Maybe he could throw in a sippy cup, sweeten the offer.

“I like you, Jamie, I really do. You’re unlike anybody else in this office. I didn’t want you to come in this morning, but my bosses insisted. Said you had to go. I couldn’t understand it.”

“Then help me.”

“I
still
don’t understand it.”

“If I can get out, I can call an ambulance for you. You don’t have to die.”