Working Stiff tr-1

by Rachel Caine

  “Screw you!”

  The look in his eyes turned even colder. “Do you want us to walk away? Because we can certainly do that. Ain’t nothing to me, lady.”

  Ah, that closed, choking feeling was her leash being yanked. Bryn stared him down for another few seconds, then reached for her wallet.

  The Pharmadene man smiled and said, “Oh, it’s on me.” He dropped a twenty on the table. “Let’s go.”

  They took her gun as soon as they had gotten her outside. It happened without a fight only because the larger of the two pulled his own weapon first and held it steady on her as his partner searched her. Bryn fumed, but there didn’t seem to be any point in trying to go hand-to-hand with men who were obviously very serious about their jobs.

  The Town Car they put her in was a duplicate of the one McCallister normally drove, but there was no sign of him. Once they were on the road, Bryn said, “This isn’t right. I’m a Pharmadene employee, and I work for McCallister. Call him.”

  Silence. Neither of them even turned to look at her. “Hey!” she said sharply. “Either you call him, or I do. Your choice.”

  “Try it,” one of them said. He sounded smug, and as she checked her phone, she found it dead. “You’ll get service back when we want you to have it. Now shut up. You’re not a person. You’re a proprietary lab rat.”

  A plastic barrier went up between her and the two in front. Bryn tried the door handles, but without much hope, and she was right: they controlled the locks. Kicking out the window was an option, but she didn’t know whether she was desperate enough to try it. Besides, they were right: where was she going to run? It wasn’t like she had a lot of choices.

  The ride to Pharmadene left her time to think about what she’d do, what she’d say, but in truth, she had very few plays to make. The goons in the front seat were right: she wasn’t a person, not once she was in their custody.

  “I’d like to call Ms. Harte,” she finally said, leaning up against the clear barrier that separated her from the men in front.

  “No need for that,” the one who did all the talking said. “You’re on your way to see her.”

  “I need to tell her—”

  “Doesn’t matter what you want to tell her. Paperwork’s been signed. You’re done, sweetheart.”

  An ice-cold panic formed in the pit of Bryn’s stomach. She was going to disappear and never be seen again. Like Sharon. She didn’t want to vanish like her sister, without a word; she didn’t want her last minutes with Annalie to be angry. She didn’t want her mother to spend her last years agonizing over what had happened to yet another daughter.

  She’d given Annie the perfect explanation. Bryn got involved with drugs. That’s probably what happened to her.

  They’d be sad, and they’d be sorry, but she’d be gone. Completely, utterly gone.

  I have to get out of here. Better to be on the run than be hauled in there, to die trapped. Maybe Manny Glickman could help her. Maybe Joe Fideli. Running was her only hope.

  Bryn twisted and kicked. Her heel connected solidly with the window next to her on the first try, with an impact that rattled all the way up to and through her brain, but she got nothing to show for it, not even a hairline crack in the surface. She kicked again, and again, until the barrier between her and the two thugs in front rolled down, and one of them pointed a gun at her.

  “Easy,” he said. “You’re going to break something, but it won’t be that window. Bullet-resistant glass, all the way around. This is our VIP car.”

  “I’m honored,” she said in utter disgust, tugged her skirt down to a ladylike angle, and sat in silence until they’d passed the gates of Pharmadene.

  Until all hope was gone.

  Damn you, McCallister, what is going on? Where are you? She was starting to think that Joe Fideli wasn’t the only casualty of the last twenty-four hours—or the last.

  Irene Harte had an office approximately eight times the size of Bryn’s; it was so large that there were two conference tables at different points, a sofa-and-chair grouping, a full bar…. It was bigger than most apartments, kitchen included, and as Bryn was frog-marched across the expensive Persian carpet toward the desk, there was no sign of the woman herself. Just an extremely impressive desk—clutter-free, save for two thin folders in a letter tray and a Montblanc pen lying at an angle. The empty leather chair behind the desk could easily have doubled for a throne in a movie about Queen Elizabeth the First. The view from the gigantic panorama windows behind it was breathtaking, and mostly green and unspoiled.

  “Sit,” Bryn’s guard said, and pushed her down in one of the two angled visitor chairs. He stood behind and a little off to the side, ready to counter if she did anything stupid.

  Which she was considering, but it would probably be fairly difficult to stab someone fatally with a Montblanc. The pen’s shape was a little too rounded.

  A concealed door opened to the side, and Irene Harte emerged, trailed by another movie-star-beautiful woman who carried a steaming cup in one hand and a notepad in the other. The cup went on the desk, on a crystal coaster. The pad, and the woman, left the room without even a glance at Bryn or her escort.

  Harte nodded to the guard and said, “You may wait outside.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t think it’s advisable. She’s—”

  “I know exactly what Ms. Davis is capable of doing,” Harte interrupted, her gaze fixed on Bryn’s face. “Go. If I need you, I’ll ring Mareen’s desk. You may wait there.”

  “Ma’am.” He touched an invisible hat and left. It seemed to take forever for him to cross the office, even at a brisk walk, but Harte didn’t move or speak until the door had clicked its latch behind him.

  Then she sat back, smiled, and said, “How are you, Bryn? Doing well?”

  That was not what Bryn had expected. She didn’t answer. Harte glanced at the steaming cup on her desk, and her fine eyebrows twitched, then pulled down. She pressed a button on her phone. “Mareen, bring Ms. Davis a cup of coffee….” She paused, looking at Bryn. “Milk? Sugar?”

  “Yes,” Bryn said. If she was going to die, she might as well have coffee. The whole thing—already surreal—was turning into a French farce. “Are you going to offer me a blindfold and a cigarette, too, or just a last meal?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” Harte said. “Mareen, milk and sugar in that, please. Thank you.” She let go of the intercom button and sat back. She tapped her index finger on the desk’s surface, slowly. It was the only sound in the hushed room.

  Bryn said, “You abducted me for coffee and to ask how I was. You know, most people just phone.”

  “I’m not most people.”

  Obviously. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to tell me everything you know about Patrick McCallister.”

  That was a very odd request, coming from a woman who had access, surely, to every scrap of information on record about the man. “I don’t know anything, really. He likes to be mysterious. Don’t you know him better? You’re his boss.”

  “Boss,” Harte repeated softly, with an odd smile. “Yes, I am. But as you say, he’s mysterious. You’ve been working with him quite closely.”

  Bryn shrugged. “If by closely you mean he tells me what to do, yes.” Calm, she told herself. Be calm.

  “It’s come to my attention that Mr. McCallister may be involved in … questionable activities. Do you have any knowledge of these things?”

  “No.” That was still the truth. She had no idea what Harte would consider questionable, considering what was being sanctioned by her at Pharmadene.

  Harte’s eyes went flat and cold, like a shark’s. “I want you to listen to me very closely,” she said. “Condition Sapphire, Bryn. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Bryn said. She felt nothing. The inhibitor was working, she hoped; if it wasn’t, it was going to be a panic-stricken interview on her side, and a very informative one on Harte’s.

  “You and McCallister have become close, haven’
t you? Tell me the truth.”

  “Yes,” Bryn said. Nice to know I can still lie. Patrick McCallister definitely wasn’t close to her; they had an emotional barrier between them the size of the Great Wall of China. She was honest enough to admit that it was partly her own issue.

  Harte was moving on. “You’ve stayed at his family home.”

  “Yes, while security was upgraded on my apartment.”

  “And quite recently, you and McCallister took a trip out of town together—quite an elaborate little trip, apparently, one on which he took great pains to evade surveillance. Where did you go?”

  Bryn didn’t dare hesitate, not for a second; she remembered how it had felt when she’d lost control in the bar. Hesitation would be fatal, and it would betray her completely. “To a motel,” she said. “The Hallmark Motor Court Inn. I don’t really know what town it was in.”

  Harte opened a folder, took up the Montblanc, and marked something down without really looking at her. “And what did you do all that time at the motel, Bryn?”

  Even with the inhibitors, Bryn felt a little stirring of impulse to blurt it out—the lab, Manny Glickman, the IV, Pansy, the mugging, McCallister’s gentle touch on her forehead. She gulped it down and squeezed the arms of the chair as she said, “We made love. Three times. Once on the bed—”

  Harte glanced up, eyebrows arched, and then held up a hand. “I don’t need the details. Well … not yet. Not until I have Patrick McCallister’s story to match it against.” Her smile was cold, and thin enough to cut. “You went all that way, to a motel, to indulge your apparently ravenous sexual appetites for each other. You do know he has a house.”

  “He said we were being watched. And there was something else he wanted there, at the motel.”

  “Did he say what it was?”

  “No,” Bryn said.

  Harte waited a beat before she said, “Did you do anything else while you were on this little pleasure trip?”

  “No.” Again, Bryn felt that stirring inside, like something hammering hard against a closed door, struggling to get free. Tell her. Tell her everything. She shuddered and held on. How long had Manny said the inhibitors would last? Was she getting close to the time they’d wear off? What if he’d been wrong about the effective dose?

  “Did McCallister pay you?”

  Bryn blinked. That was the last thing she’d expected. “Pay me?”

  “Did McCallister give you money in return for sex? Or your silence about such activities?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t be the first, although you’re certainly his most … unusual choice.” Harte lifted her shoulders in a graceful shrug. “I suppose he has somewhat perverse taste, considering your … condition.” She paused and cocked her head, staring hard at Bryn for a moment. “Do you understand what’s happening to you, Bryn? Why you can’t stop yourself from telling me these very personal things?”

  “No.” Bryn tried to remember the panic she’d felt before, the internal struggle. Harte needed to see those things. She expected to see them.

  Mareen entered the room from that same side door she’d used before, set a second cup of coffee pale with milk on the side table beside Bryn, and departed without a word.

  “Drink your coffee, Bryn; I wouldn’t want it to get cold.”

  Bryn obediently reached for it and sipped. It was delicious, and the hot liquid made her feel sharper, but more jittery, too. The cup rattled lightly against the saucer as she put it down. Look at us, so civilized, sipping our coffee from expensive cups while she mind-rapes me. Or tries to.

  “I knew from the moment I saw your revival profile that McCallister had some use for you beyond his stated objectives; he tried to opt you out of certain control features built into Returné for the safety of the company. I countermanded that, in the hopes you’d tell me something more about McCallister’s business. It’s not your fault, Bryn. You may feel you’re betraying him, but I assure you, you’re not. You’re simply a recording device I put next to him.” Harte tapped her fingernails again, thinking, then continued. “Have you seen him meet anyone not associated directly with Pharmadene?”

  “Liam,” Bryn said.

  “The estate administrator. No, not counting Liam. Anyone else?”

  “No. Just Joe Fideli and his other security people. No one else.”

  “Hmm.” Harte’s eyes lowered to half-mast, making her look deceptively relaxed. “And have you overheard him discuss anything that did not relate to Pharmadene business?”

  “No.”

  “That’s deeply unfortunate. I was really hoping you would be more … enlightening.” Harte sat back and drank her coffee in silence for a moment, and Bryn was just starting to relax a bit when she said, “Are you in love with Patrick McCallister?”

  “No!” Bryn said. Too quickly. Too much force. It was an instinctive denial, not a reasoned answer, and Harte speared her with a cold, level gaze. Bryn swallowed and tried again. “I have no feelings for him.”

  “That, Ms. Davis, means that when he took you to the motel, he did so without your consent. I assume that he coerced you by use of the same command I just engaged. Is that correct? You had no feelings for him, yet you participated in a full day of illicit sex with him, under duress?”

  “I …” She was caught, dead caught; either she admitted she had just lied, and proved she wasn’t conditioned the way Harte wanted, or she dropped McCallister in what was, at the very least, a charge of rape. “It wasn’t about love. It was about needing something.” That was the best middle ground she could walk, but she could see, with a sinking feeling, that Harte wasn’t buying it for a second.

  “You should have just admitted it,” the other woman said. She straightened and put her cup down, pressed the intercom button, and said, “Mareen, please send Ms. Davis’s escort in. I have what I need to know.” She went back to her coffee, sipping in ladylike composure. “I have not ended Condition Sapphire, Bryn. You should not be able to lie to me. And the fact that you have tells me that something is very, very wrong here. With you. With McCallister. If you’d simply told me that he’d used the protocols on you, I would have believed you; he’s a ruthless son of a bitch, which is why he’s valuable to me. If you’d told me you loved him, I’d have believed that, too; he’s got that effect on women. But something in the middle … no. Not with him.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t waste your time. The point is that you’ve lied to me, he’s lied to me, and there’s something deeper. Something that threatens me, and the company. And I will find out what that is. Now.”

  Bryn’s guts went tight and cold. The look in Harte’s eyes was that of a hawk zeroing in on a rabbit: no mercy, no feeling at all. This wasn’t about jealousy, which was somehow what Bryn had expected; this was pure, cold calculation, and she had fallen for it.

  The guard who’d brought her in entered the room. “Ma’am?”

  “Please take Ms. Davis to level three,” Harte said. “Check her in. I’ll call down orders in a moment.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And find Patrick McCallister. Now. You don’t have to be gentle about it if he resists.”

  He nodded and started to hustle Bryn out.

  “Wait,” Harte said. “Let her finish her coffee.”

  It was time for the false civility to end. Bryn picked up the coffee cup and threw it hard at Harte’s face. She missed, but the coffee didn’t, drenching the woman in a milky brown, sticky wave from hair to neckline, ruining the teal silk suit.

  Harte jumped up, shocked, wiping coffee from her eyes. Too bad it wasn’t hot enough to leave scars, Bryn thought; that would have been something. She’d have to settle for the look on Harte’s face—comically horrified.

  But then it turned into a stiff mask of spite. “So we know where we stand,” Harte said. “You’re his little spy, aren’t you? His slave. He turned you.”

  “You turned me. You made me this. I’m not dead; I’m not alive; what am
I supposed to do? Thank you?” Bryn was shaking all over with the fury she’d held in for so long, ever since that first raw, primal scream of waking. “I’ve seen how this ends. Have you?”

  “Not yet,” Harte said. She’d regained her composure; she’d taken a hand towel from a drawer and was blotting the worst of the coffee from her hair and face. The expensive suit was a total ruin. “But I’ll be sure to have them record every moment of your deterioration for my home viewing later. Good-bye, Ms. Davis. I hope you enjoy your … retirement. I’ll give Patrick your farewells. You won’t be seeing him again.”

  Bryn kicked and fought, but the guard had all the leverage and muscle, and he was used to restraining angry people; she got in a couple of off-balance shots, but he took them stoically without granting her any chance of escape. After the second elbow to the ribs, he swept her feet out from under her, took her facedown to the carpet, and yanked her arms tight behind her back. She felt zip-cuffs being yanked in place, too tightly, and then he grabbed her by the collar and hauled her back to a standing position. “March,” he said. “You give me trouble, and I’ll give you a beating you’re not going to forget.”

  “I’ll heal,” she said. She wasn’t aware, until she saw herself reflected in a pane of glass, that she was smiling. It was an unhinged sort of smile, half a snarl. She felt like an animal backed into a corner, and that was how she looked.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “You would.”

  And without any warning he hit her with a rock-hard hammer of an uppercut, and she was out like a switched-off light.

  Waking up was painful. Her head, first; it throbbed in queasy red flashes. Next, her jaw; she knew that awful grinding feeling. It was dislocated. Bryn worked it gingerly until it snapped back into place with a mind-numbing zap of agony. It, like the headache, lasted only a few minutes, and then the pain faded. Busy little nanites, burning up energy I can’t afford.

  Bryn sat up.

  She was in an empty white room. No furniture, not even a cot—just a clean, white, shiny room, like a box made of dry-erase whiteboards.