Working Stiff tr-1

by Rachel Caine

  She had Joe’s burner phone with her, and used it to dial McCallister’s number. Pick up, pick up….

  She got an answer. “Patrick! Patrick, listen—”

  “It’s Joe,” said the voice on the other end. “Bryn?”

  “If you’re at the theater, get the hell out of there!” she yelled. “Mercer sold us out, understand? Harte knows! She knows you’re coming; get out!”

  “Too late for that; we’re in—” His voice was covered by gunfire, shockingly close. “Got to get Harte and shut this down or all this is for nothing. Stay away, Bryn. Just stay away.”

  “No! I’m coming!” She hung up and tossed the phone, and drove faster.

  There was an eerie sense of quiet at the Civic Theatre, but the entrance to the parking area was manned by men and women in suits and sunglasses, scanning the area with merciless intensity. Bryn took a right turn and drove by, knowing they were tracking the van as it came close to the perimeter. I’ll never get inside. Not against Pharmadene robots. They were definitely company people; she could see that at a glance. Not all of them were trained security, but they were on alert, and she had no doubt that every single one of them had orders to hold the perimeter against any and all comers. They’d do it. For one thing, they were all revived. Hard to kill.

  Like her.

  What happened to the other security? The Secret Service should have been here; there should have been other government bodies in place. It was entirely possible that Pharmadene had already overwhelmed the Secret Service, then. And the FBI. And anyone else who posed a threat.

  You’d never know guns were being fired inside the building; it looked cool and calm. No emergencies reported at all, or there would have been some sign of police, of ambulances. Something.

  Bryn moved on, looking for some way onto the grounds. Her panic was mounting; out here, she was useless, and she couldn’t help them. If Harte got to McCallister and turned him … she could order McCallister to do anything. And he was capable; Bryn knew that. Capable of anything. If someone as essentially peaceful and harmless as Annie could be turned into her sister’s killer, just like that, McCallister would be a deadly weapon. No wonder Harte had wanted him so badly.

  And Joe. He was already separated from his family, but he was risking something much, much worse, something that would take him away forever, dig a gulf that even love couldn’t breach. If he was revived. Harte might not even bother.

  Bryn had to get in. If nothing else, she could kill Harte. She wanted to. She needed to, after that white room, after seeing the horror of that hallway at Pharmadene.

  Harte had to be stopped, and like the Pharmadene staff, Bryn would be very, very hard to kill.

  I could call the cops, report shots fired. If she did that, though, there was a very good chance that she’d be signing the death warrants of anyone who responded. They could be killed, revived, made to report that nothing was wrong.

  But I don’t know how to do this alone, she thought in utter despair. I’m not a spy. I’m not some special ops expert, like McCallister. I’m just…

  Just a funeral director. What did funeral directors have that would be of any use at all …

  Oh, God.

  It was crazy, it was insane … and it just might work.

  Bryn turned the van at the next light and headed at high speed out to Fairview Mortuary.

  She tried to call Fideli again, but got nothing except a bland computer voice asking her to leave a message. Either the phone was dead, they were too busy to talk, or McCallister and Fideli had been taken already.

  Time was not just running out; it was gone. She had no options left. Nothing except this one last, desperate try.

  The only car already in the Fairview Mortuary lot belonged to Riley Block. That was fine; Bryn planned to avoid her. This wouldn’t take long.

  She went in, raced to her locker, and took out the extra set of clothes she kept there—a nice business suit, discreet and dark. Sensible but attractive shoes. She changed fast, rinsed the blood out of her hair, and slicked it back in a severe ponytail. No time for makeup. She made do with pale lipstick.

  Then she clipped on Irene Harte’s gold-edged Pharmadene badge and went out to the parked Fairview limousine; like all their family transport cars, it was unmarked. She tossed a body bag in the back, and was preparing to pull out when a knock came on the window.

  Riley Block was standing there, still in her spotlessly white Fairview lab coat.

  Bryn hit the button and rolled down the window. “Riley, I have an urgent pickup to—”

  Riley silently held up a black leather wallet and flipped it open. Inside were a gold badge and an ID card.

  FBI.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d been hoping to break it to you gently.” She raised her other hand, and in it was a gun, which she pointed at Bryn’s head. “I know it won’t kill you, but it’ll slow you down. Don’t try to drive away. Hands off the wheel, please.”

  Bryn slowly raised her arms. Riley said, “Keep them up,” and walked around the long, gleaming hood to the passenger side, where she got in, never taking her gaze off of Bryn as she fastened her seat belt. “You’re going to the Civic Theatre.”

  Bryn couldn’t control her surprise. “How did you—”

  “Believe it or not, the FBI’s been aware that Pharmadene had something to hide for some time. We traced McCallister’s activities and connected him to Fairview, although he hid it very well; we still weren’t sure it was a way into their organization, but I was tapped to go undercover and check it out. I’ve had mortuary experience.”

  “Joe brought you in,” Bryn murmured. Oh, Joe. God, no. She couldn’t believe it—didn’t want to believe it.

  “McCallister passed my name along to him,” Riley said. “And I was recommended by a former FBI agent whom I worked with in the past, a mutual friend of McCallister’s.”

  “Manny Glickman.” Bryn felt the missing piece click into place, and saw the flare of recognition in Riley’s dark eyes. “McCallister trusted him.”

  “And Manny had to follow his own conscience about all this. He knew it was going to go wrong; he tried to tell Patrick McCallister that from the start. He was simply hedging his bets. But of course, it’s Manny, so nobody believed him. Not at first.” Riley shook her head slowly. “I’m not sure whether to be impressed or nauseated by what they’ve done. What you are. It’s an incredible achievement, but … so very wrong.”

  “I’m not one of Pharmadene’s robots,” Bryn said.

  “I know enough about the capabilities of the drug they’ve given you to know I can’t trust your word about that. Or about anything.”

  “But you know about what they’re planning to do at the Civic Theatre, don’t you?”

  Riley nodded. “The secretary of state is not coming, obviously. Neither are any government officials. We headed them off.”

  “You should have stopped it as soon as you knew. You could have locked down Pharmadene.”

  “Oh, we have,” Riley said. “The building’s empty, although we’ve got our own people in place to return calls and give the appearance that things are proceeding normally. Harte made that easier by pulling most of the staff out to man her Civic Theatre plan. And now all of their most important people are in a vulnerable place.”

  Bryn’s lips parted in horror, and then she blurted it out. “You’re going to take them out. All of them.”

  “Most of them in one go,” Riley agreed. She had a sad glint in her eyes, but in the next blink it was gone. “We have to stop it. You’d say the same. And it’s more merciful to do it this way, one surgical strike, take out everyone at once.”

  “How many?”

  “What?”

  “How many people at the theater?”

  “We estimate about three hundred of Pharmadene’s employees,” Riley said. “Technically, they’re bodies, not living people.”

  “That’s not true. They’re like me. They think. They feel. They are alive.
They don’t deserve this.” Bryn swallowed hard. “Riley, I heard them dying. I heard them screaming. Most didn’t want to do this. They didn’t sign up for it—they’re victims. You have to help me stop it. If we get Irene Harte, all of it can stop. It can be controlled.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said. “And that’s what I argued for. But it’s too late now, and it’s out of my hands. In about thirty minutes, that building will suffer a catastrophic event, and everyone in it will die.”

  “Patrick McCallister is in there. So is Joe Fideli.”

  Riley didn’t blink. “Let’s take a drive,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Where you were going in the first place. The theater.”

  “But—”

  “Bryn,” she said patiently. “You understand, this is a cleanup. And you’re a loose end. I’m very sorry—really I am—but this is a national security situation, and we have to take drastic measures. I don’t like it, but I have to do what’s right.”

  “You mean that you’re going to kill me, too.”

  Riley didn’t try to argue the point. She actually seemed a little sad, Bryn thought. “For what it’s worth, I like you. I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry you got caught up in it. It wasn’t your fault, but sometimes things just happen.”

  Bryn shut her mouth and didn’t argue. There was no doubt in Riley’s face, and no mercy, either. Like Irene Harte, she was a true believer … just on the other side. Broken eggs and omelets, and the greater good.

  Bryn wasn’t entirely sure she was wrong, and besides, at least it was where she wanted to go.

  Where she had to go. Because if it had to end this way, at least she’d be with McCallister, where she knew—finally—that she belonged.

  The Civic Theatre perimeter was deserted when they arrived. There were buses parked in the lot that hadn’t been there on Bryn’s previous drive-by, and as she pulled into the parking area close by she saw that the buses were full of people sitting in unnatural stillness.

  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.”

  There was a final click, and Bryn knew she’d lost the bet. No time to lose now, not if she wanted to actually end this; she abandoned the doors and ran, looking for someone, anyone, in a security blazer. She found one heading for the basement. “Harte!” she yelled at him. “Where is she? I’m her evac driver!”

  “Downstairs private meeting room,” he said, and kept running in the opposite direction, where she could hear the muffled booms of gunfire. Two gunmen. Pinned down. That was McCallister and Fideli.