Severance Package

Thirty-five hundred miles away, there was no one who could answer her.

The question was, could Jamie do it?

Could he shoot a woman?

No, not just a woman. Molly Lewis. Crazy as she was—and that was another consideration, her being clearly mentally incapacitated—was it right to shoot a woman you wanted to kiss just a few months ago? Especially if she’s not in her right mind?

But Jamie wondered about that. Maybe she was in her right mind. There were bigger things than him at play in this office this morning. Nichole had told him as much. Unless Home Depot was running a sale on chemical weapons, explosives, and poison champagne … wasn’t it possible that this was something larger and stranger than Jamie would have imagined?

And Molly was at the center of it?

Jamie looked at the gun. Looked at Nichole, who knew what was going on, but refused to tell him.

If you don’t already know, then you’re not supposed to know.

This was a betrayal beyond reason.

Ania couldn’t understand it. Granted, her audition was technically shaky. Nothing had proceeded as planned. But she had improvised her brains out. And in the end, the mission had been accomplished. Her coworkers were dead. Every single one of them—save Jamie. The explosives had been detonated. Again, not according to plan, but the cleansing fire was under way nonetheless. Things had worked out. She’d proved her worth. She deserved a response.

Couldn’t they acknowledge her with a simple response?

Was she not worth a mere syllable?

A yes?

Or a no?

The silence was maddening.

Ania thought of her mother in that dreadful place, hanging on to the promise of a better life. Don’t worry, Mama, I’m coming back for you, she’d told her.

Ania had lied.

Lied to her mother.

Not a single syllable, and now here she was, in the place of her own nightmares, burning alive, torn apart, covered in blood, trapped with the only man she cared about. The man she’d promised to introduce to Mama.

You’ll like him. He’s a writer. Just like Josef.

And they were both going to die.

She tried one last time. One last beg for a response. She was owed that much.

She’d put too much into this job for it to end this way.

With nothing.

Could he do it? The gun was right there, on the floor.

Pick it up.

This is a woman who could take a full blast from a defibrillator and pop right back up.

Think about it being the right or wrong thing to do later.

You need to stop her.

Do it.

Do it now.

The conference room doors slammed open and two firemen, decked out in helmets and face masks and pickaxes, stormed in.

“I need an answer!” Molly screamed at the corner of the room.

“Relax, miss,” said the taller one. “We’re here to help.”

Molly turned around, hands clenched at her sides. She looked strangely lost, even for a woman who was nearly naked and drenched in blood.

“No,” Molly said. “You are here for me to punish.”

She looked back at the corner of the room, told her invisible friend: “I will show you I am worthy.”

Then she cleared three paces and jumped at the taller one, her foot in the air.

Her heel shattered his plastic face mask, sending him staggering backwards.

The other one, his partner, who was shorter, charged forward with the handle of the pickaxe and pinned Molly against the wall.

That didn’t last long. She worked a leg up, pressed her foot against the firefighter’s chest, then flung him across the room. His back struck the edge of the conference room table. The champagne bottles jolted and tittered. Cookies slid off their plates. The firefighter landed on his face, hands splayed on the floor.

By this time his partner, with a broken face mask, had regained his senses and charged forward.

Molly kicked him in the face again, shattering the rest of his mask. He screamed.

Jamie climbed to his feet and gripped one of the conference room chairs. The chair rolled beneath him, and was heavier than it looked.

He picked it up and swung it at Molly anyway.

Aiming for her back.

She needed to be stopped.

But Molly sensed him. Kicked sideways. Hit the chair. Jamie went tumbling backwards, over the dead bodies of Nichole and David. Jamie kicked out, trying to clear himself of the corpses.

The firefighters, by this point, had enough screwing around.

They remembered their pickaxes had blades.

The shorter one swung at Molly, aiming for her chest. She lifted her forearm to block it, and the blade cut through her metal bracelet. It slipped from her wrist and fell to the floor. The blow had connected with her flesh, though. Molly cried out. Grabbed her wrist. Bent forward.

The taller one took advantage, hurling his pickaxe into Molly’s back, high and to the left. She took a few wobbly steps forward, then dropped.

No one spoke for a few moments. Smoke continued to roil around the building. The air in the conference room itself was beginning to look wavy.

Molly lay with her check pressed against the carpet, staring at Jamie.

He thought about that night a few months ago, that drunken night when he walked her to her car. She had stared at him the same way.

But now something was different.

Now she was pursing her lips.

Blowing him a kiss.

Before her eyes closed.

The shorter firefighter knelt down beside her. Took off his glove. Pressed two stubby fingers to her neck. Shook his head.

“Okay, c’mon,” his partner said. Then he turned to Jamie. “Buddy, you okay?”

“Yeah,” Jamie said, automatically.

But he wasn’t, of course.

“We’ve gotta get out of here. Now.”

“Buddy. You with us?”

Jamie stood up. It all had happened so quickly. Then he remembered what he had been reaching for.

The gun.

Even though the man was dead—his body was right there on the floor, his head covered in a messy halo of blood—his boss’s words echoed.

You think you can just walk away from something like this? You think there aren’t people out there who want to make sure you’re dead? Along with your family?