by Rachel Caine
“Lucy let me know you had a hot one,” Fideli said. “Figured you might need a hand, but I see you’re doing fine.”
“Not so fine for our financial health,” Bryn said, “but it had to be done. Fairview not only robbed his family blind; his brother probably committed suicide over it.”
It wasn’t the first time. When Fairview’s victims stopped coming up with the money, Fairview had stopped giving the shots; it took a horrifying toll. Bryn had been forced to help one of those victims out of her agony, and it haunted her every night in her dreams. She hated to think how many family members had been given that same awful choice.
Fideli said nothing to that, just nodded; he was a good man, but all this was business to him. He wasn’t one of the Revived; he didn’t face the same terrifying dissolution she did if (when) the shots failed her. “So,” he said. “Just to make your day more fun, Riley’s waiting outside.”
“What about the other family that was waiting?”
“I’m on it. They’re looking over brochures right now. Want me to show her in?”
Not really, Bryn thought, but she nodded. There was no avoiding it, after all. Fideli nodded back and left, and in a few seconds he was holding the door open for FBI agent Riley Block. She’d changed her hair to a looser, more tousled style around her sharp face; with Riley’s English-rose coloring, it suited her, made her look less severe.
“You’re not wearing a patch,” Bryn said, and indicated the guest side of the sofa. “I assume your eye’s better?”
“Much,” Riley said. “Only a few scars from our last little outing together—thanks for asking.” She sat back and crossed her legs, looking casual and fiercely competent in her boxy pantsuit. “I’m back on active duty again. I see you’re looking well.”
Oh, aren’t we cordial today? Bryn thought. She gave Riley a calm professional smile that revealed nothing of how betrayed she still felt; Riley had come to work at Fairview Mortuary under false pretenses—spying on her, working against her—and she’d almost succeeded in destroying Bryn’s life, such as it was.
Just the job, Riley would have said. And she’d be right. That was the maddening thing.
“So, what exactly do you want, Riley?”
Riley smiled back, just as professionally. “I thought the script called for offering me some kind of refreshment before you dive in.”
“We’re not on a script.”
“I’d love some coffee.”
“And there are plenty of Starbucks in town. Just get to it.”
Riley considered her for a few seconds, then said, “You’ve changed.”
Bryn couldn’t keep a hollow laugh from escaping. “You think? All things considered?”
“Not the physical changes from the nanites,” Riley said. “You used to be less…bitter.”
“You mean back in the days when I was still in a state of shock and fighting for my life? I’ve had time to reflect. And I’ve taken control. If that seems bitter to you, well, I’ll try to contain my grief. Why are you stalling?”
“I’m not.” Riley shrugged. “I’m assessing, that’s all. To see if you still seem capable of carrying out what I’m going to ask you to do. Bitter sometimes means tough.” She studied Bryn with her head cocked to the side for a long moment. “And sometimes it just means fragile. I can’t really afford fragile.”
“Are you giving me a job or not?”
“That’s the deal you made with me,” Riley said. “And Uncle Sam. You work for us, doing anything we need you to do. So yes. I have a job for you.” She reached toward the briefcase she’d rested at her feet and unsnapped it to withdraw a thick folder. “Sign the paper clipped to the front before you break the seals.”
It was a contractor agreement in wordy legalese, and what it boiled down to was that Bryn was not an employee of the FBI, nor bound by its codes of conduct, but that by breaking the file seals she accepted the penalties for violating secrecy. The penalties weren’t specific. She assumed they included death. Everything in her life did these days.
Bryn signed, pulled the form off, and handed it to Riley, who filed it back in her briefcase. Then Bryn broke the seals and opened the folder. There was only one page in it, and it was short. She read for a moment, then looked up at the other woman and said, “You’re kidding, right?”
“We generally don’t kid at this stage of the process, after the paperwork.”
“You want me to work with Pharmadene?” The company still featured in her nightmares in a starring role…especially the clean white room where they’d left her to rot. The whole idea of going back there made her guts knot up. “Are you kidding me?”
“It’s not the company you knew,” Riley said. “You never have to see the lab area again. Just meet with the CEO in his office. He’s one of ours.”
“Ours? What, are we a team now?”
“One of the FBI’s agents,” Riley clarified without a flicker. “He’s in the process of dismantling the company and disposing of the assets, shutting down production lines. More of an accountant than a field agent, really. He’s discovered something in the books that needs some investigation—large payments made to an outside firm that don’t make any sense with how they’re coded.”
“Don’t you have people to ask questions? I thought that came with the shield and ID card and was, you know, kind of your whole purpose.”
“There are reasons we can’t approach these people. You’re not FBI, and you’re…uniquely suited to the task.”
As in, if this organization got suspicious and decided to put a bullet in her head, it wouldn’t matter; she’d wake up. Lovely. Bryn read over the assignment again, not finding anything that made the deal more palatable, and said, “Can I refuse?”
That was met with silence. She looked up and found Riley watching her with an indefinable chill in her expression. “I’d really rather you didn’t,” Riley said. “The consequences would be difficult.”
“For you or for me?”
“Both.”
“You don’t control my meds, not anymore,” Bryn said. “I don’t need Pharmadene, and I don’t need you.” It was bravado. Manny was supplying her daily shots, but he lacked the resources to stockpile the nanites; he took the allotments from Pharmadene and modified them, created his own variations. She still needed them, and Riley knew it.
But she was nice enough to ignore that part. “You do need Manny Glickman, your little tinkerer,” Riley said. “Like it or not, he’s a point of vulnerability, and if we have to cut you off from him, we will.”
That was unexpected, and sent a cold rush of alarm through Bryn’s body. “You wouldn’t. Manny’s one of yours.”
“Manny is ex-FBI, and frankly he needs meds and professional care—we both know that. But I’m not threatening him. I’m just saying that there are ways we can prevent you from reaching him, and if that happens for long, you know what the consequences would be.”
Bryn knew, all too well. She’d felt it before, in that white room at Pharmadene…the exhaustion setting in, the bruising and discoloration when she slept, the damp skin, the dissolution.…It hadn’t gone so far she couldn’t come back, but it stalked her, always, just a step behind. Death in real, waiting form.
Consequences. “You’re a real bitch, Riley.”
Riley shrugged. “Yes or no, Bryn. All I’m asking you to do is meet with one person at Pharmadene, then do a little fact-finding investigation and report back. It isn’t that complicated. Or that dangerous.”
Bryn closed the folder. “Fine.” She didn’t bother to point out how little choice she’d had; Riley knew all that. “If you threaten Manny again—”
“I didn’t,” Riley said. “And I wouldn’t. I like Manny, and I respect him. But you know that all I need to do is warn him he’s in danger, and next thing you know, he’s moved and left no forwarding address, and you’re roadkill. I’m serious, Bryn. He’s a failure point for you. You need to be careful how much faith you put in him.”
That almost was an expression of…concern. Which seemed very strange, coming from Agent Block. Bryn nodded and felt the tension in her neck relax, just a little. She crossed to her desk and locked up the file as Riley gathered her briefcase.
“So,” she said. “I guess I’ll get on script after all. Coffee, Riley?”
Riley smiled, and she seemed relieved. “Thought you’d never ask.”
When she told her boyfriend, it didn’t go well.
“Have you gone completely off the ledge?” Patrick McCallister asked. He didn’t yell it, didn’t even sound angry, but there was a tension in his shoulders that warned Bryn he was very unhappy. “You can’t do this for them, Bryn. It’s blackmail—Oh, come on, dog, that’s the third time you’ve watered the same spot. Move on.”
He was talking to Mr. French, her bulldog, whose leash he held; Mr. French’s start-and-stop progress was worse today than usual, and whatever scent he was trying to eradicate by peeing on it was clearly pretty stubborn. Mr. French ignored McCallister, nosed the grass, let out an explosive sneeze, and peed again on the same spot. Then he licked his chops, circled the perimeter, and must have decided he’d done his job, because he trotted on. For a few steps, anyway, before snuffling the bark of the next tree.
It was, Bryn reflected, a real test of a good boyfriend that he’d come out in the rain and put up with this. She was carrying the umbrella as the evening shower pattered down; Mr. French didn’t much care, but he would later, when she had to towel him off to take him into Patrick’s huge, fancy house. No, mansion.
McCallister gave her a straight-on look, and she read the worry in it. He was a good-looking man, although not drop-dead gorgeous.…It was more subtle than that with him. He was usually guarded, but not now, and not with her; she could see his concern, and all that went with it.
Bryn took hold of his right hand—he was holding Mr. French’s leash with his left—and leaned forward to brush her lips over his cheek. “Blackmail or not, it’s not worth it to test their patience just now,” she said. “Riley was right. Manny’s fragile, and he’d bolt at a real scare. Think about where that would leave us.”
She realized, when he cast her another look and a devastating smile, that she’d said us and not just me. Not that McCallister shared her…condition, but he was invested in her safety, both financially and personally. Without McCallister, she’d be dead several times over…but that was also true of Joe Fideli and even Riley Block. The difference was that when she got near McCallister, her whole body came alive and grew warm. She wasn’t quite prepared to call it love, at least not out loud. They’d started out as adversaries, then allies, then…something else.
And now he was walking her dog. In the rain. And worrying about her. She wasn’t sure what it meant long-term, but it felt so, so good to have him here.
“Manny’s fine,” he said. “And he’s tougher than he seems, trust me. He can’t be stampeded quite that easily, though they’d like to believe it. They’ve already tried scaring him off a few times.”
“They did?”
“Sure,” he said. “Manny was expecting it. The government would very much like to have total and utter control of the drug, but he’s not about to part with his own formulas.”
“They’ve got Pharmadene’s. They don’t need his, do they?”
“They want it all, of course, but their biggest problem is that Pharmadene encrypted the formula and all the developmental records, and the FBI scientists aren’t having much success at cracking it. They’ve got a refrigerated warehouse of the stuff to try to backward engineer, but it’s getting used up fast. They need Manny’s formulas, and he’s not sharing.”
“I’m surprised he doesn’t trade it to them and run.” Manny Glickman was a bone-deep paranoid, but he still held some residual loyalty to the FBI, who’d trained him; if he was going to give up the formula to anyone, it’d be Riley Block and her team.
“He’s not that keen on them right now.”
“I’m just worried that he could get spooked and leave us.”
“He’s already moved three times in six months,” McCallister said. “But he always lets me know where he touches down. Don’t worry about him. I’m busy worrying about you. You don’t have to play in the FBI’s snake pit, you know. You don’t really owe them.”
“I know,” she said, and squeezed his hand. It was a nice sentiment, for all that it was completely unrealistic. She took in a deep breath; the air was cool and heavy with moisture, and it tasted clean and sweet. They paused beneath another tree as Mr. French investigated the area, then finally decided to do his solid-waste business. Raindrops splashed heavily on the umbrella she held over the two of them, and Bryn leaned in closer. McCallister freed his hand and put his arm around her shoulders to pull her closer. They were much the same height, and she could feel the solid muscle of his body beneath his clothes; it woke all kinds of things inside her—hunger, pleasure, memories, longings. Living things. In his presence, at these times, she could forget a little. “Will you promise to keep an eye on me, though?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” he said. He let go of her as Mr. French finished up, and fished in his pocket for the plastic bag, which he snapped open with a flourish of his wrist and handed to her.
“Really?” she said. “I thought you were walking him.”
“I am doing the manly part of holding the leash,” he said. “But he’s your dog, and I have to draw the line somewhere. This seems like a good place.”
She grinned, kissed him on the lips, and bent to clean up after her dog, who chose that precise moment to shake himself, shedding mud and rain like a sprinkler. Lovely. “I don’t know why I put up with either one of you,” she told Mr. French severely, as she scooped the poop. “It’s way too much trouble.”
“Obviously because we’re adorable,” McCallister said on behalf of Mr. French, who barked sharply to support the statement. Or maybe just to indicate his desire to get out of the rain.
Bryn disposed of the bag in the first bin they passed on the way back to the house, and then stopped to look back. “Pat?”
“Yes?”
“Since when are there garbage cans on the lawn?” If you could call the enormous, sprawling, carefully manicured parkland around the McCallister estate something so prosaic as a lawn.
“They’re for the gardeners,” he said. “Don’t worry. I didn’t have them put in just for you.”
“Liar,” she said.
“Oh, I’m not. We’ve got other dogs, too. If it makes you feel better, garbage day is Thursday. You can roll all the bins to the curb.”
That summed up why she liked him so much, she decided; when he was relaxed and the armor was off him, he was oddly unaffected by all…this. The sumptuous multimillion-dollar estate. Most people of his particular social status probably wouldn’t have known what day the garbage was taken out any more than they could locate the laundry room—but Patrick McCallister was one of the most practical people she’d ever met. It helped that he didn’t actually own this place; his family had left everything in a trust, and his income was relatively modest, given the lush surroundings. He was more like a caretaker than the lord of the manor—or at least, that was how he felt about it. The odd thing was that he was happier that way. Too much money makes people callous, he’d told her once. I don’t want to take that chance. I’ve seen what can happen.
They walked in companionable silence, Mr. French tugging at the lead, and stopped in the mudroom to make themselves and the dog fit for entry into the house. He didn’t like it, but the simple, physical effort of toweling him off was kind of bracing.
So was the kiss McCallister gave her, warm and sweet, before they went into the more formal areas. McCallister headed toward the library, which was his favorite evening spot. Bryn was following when Liam came down the stairs with a telephone in his hand.
Liam insisted he wasn’t a butler, but Bryn couldn’t help but think of him that way. He was silver-haired, dignified, and even t
hough he didn’t wear butlerish clothes, he definitely had the manners. And the grace. She’d felt clumsy and glaringly out of her league when she’d first come here, but he’d never made her feel anything but welcome.
Tonight, he gave her a smile and said, “I have a phone call for you from someone who doesn’t wish to give a name. Do you want me to decline?”
That call could have been from anyone, but Bryn had a sudden, painful conviction—irrational as it was—that it would be her sister, Annalie. The metallic taste of adrenaline filled her mouth. No one had seen or heard from Annie—or her kidnapper, Mercer—for more than a month; there were no reports coming in through Pat McCallister’s contacts, or through Joe Fideli’s.
They’d simply dropped out of sight.
She needed to know that Annie was all right, so without a word, she held out her hand, and Liam put the phone into it, then walked away to give her privacy. She headed off in a different direction, Mr. French at her heels. “Hello?” Her voice shook a little, more from eagerness than fear. Annie, please let it be you. Please. She’d let her sister down in a huge and awful way; she’d allowed Annalie to come into her life knowing things were dangerous. She’d done it because, in the aftermath of her death and Revival, she’d been feeling so alone, so vulnerable. It was Annie who’d paid the price for that.
Annie, too, had joined the ranks of the Revived, against her will. And she now depended on Mercer—the original creator of the drug—and his slimy henchman, Freddy, for daily shots to keep her alive.
Please, Annie, help me find you.
It wasn’t her. In fact, it was a voice Bryn didn’t recognize at all. “Bryn Davis?” A man’s voice, medium register, not much of an accent she could detect.
“Yes.”
“I—I’m sorry for calling out of the blue, but I was given your name by a friend. A Pharmadene employee. Like me. Her name is Chandra.”
She turned her back to the doorway, unconsciously shielding the phone from any accidental eavesdropping by Liam or Patrick. “I’m listening.”