Working Stiff

She came out onto the landing.

Down a couple of steps, very quietly.

Then all the way down, drawn by what the voices were saying.

“… need it!” a man’s voice was saying. Not Freddy or Mr. Fairview, or even Joe … She was hearing the man who’d come in with the sick lady, Bryn guessed. “I know that’s not the amount we agreed on, but it’s all we have; please, she needs the shot right now….”

“This isn’t a charity hospital, Mr. Jones,” Mr. Fairview’s voice said, rich with regret and sympathy. “I’m afraid that miracles are, by their very definition, rare—and rare means expensive. The terms were spelled out for you clearly, weren’t they? Ten thousand up front, and five hundred dollars cash per shot?”

“I can get it for you; it’s just … it’s thirty-five hundred a week….”

“Thirty-five hundred a week to keep your beloved wife alive,” Mr. Fairview said. “I have to believe that you value her life more than the money, sir. And I must urge you to act quickly. She’s clearly missed at least one dose, possibly two, and she is looking very distressed. After four days, the skin begins to slip; muscles loosen. It’s a very nasty process.”

Bryn couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. Joe Fideli had been right: her boss was selling drugs—bad ones. And they were extorting money from sick, desperate people.

It was horrible.

“I’m very sorry,” Mr. Fairview continued. “But I really must have cash in hand before I can give her the shot. This was made clear to you from the very beginning.”

“I lost my job,” the man said. It sounded like he was crying. “I can’t … We already had to give up our house. I can’t afford to pay you this much. Please. Please don’t let her die! We’ve got kids!”

There was a second of silence. “I’m afraid that even though we talked about this, you still don’t understand. She’s dead, Mr. Jones. We haven’t made her living. I explained to you that you were simply delaying the inevitable dissolution, and now it appears that the inevitable is upon you.”

Not only were they selling some hard-core drug; they were bilking people. How could Fairview possibly be telling people he was bringing back the dead? Who’d believe that? Maybe the drug induced some kind of coma, then woke up the addicts…. It didn’t really matter. Bryn felt deeply sickened. She’d been trained to help people in their darkest, worst moments, and this was an obscene, horrible perversion of what she’d believed. A betrayal of the worst kind.

She turned to go back up the steps, but a shadow blocked her path at the top of the stairs. She had a moment of déjà vu, but it wasn’t Joe Fideli.

It was, unfortunately, Freddy Watson.

He descended the stairs faster than she could scramble backward, and grabbed her by the arm in a crushing grip. She tried to knee him in the groin, but he was obviously an old hand at that one; her patella caught the meaty part of his thigh instead, and then he was shoving her off balance, turning her, and locking his arm around her throat. She tried to stamp on his feet, but her Payless heels weren’t that sturdy. He just laughed in her ear and dragged her, off balance, through the double doors into the prep room.

“Surprise visitor,” he said, and it obviously was, to the three people standing there. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and Mr. Fairview.

Mr. Fairview looked wearily disgusted. “I left her upstairs. And, Freddy, I thought you were supposed to scare her off from snooping around down here.”

“I did,” Freddy said. “I played the Big Bad Wolf as hard as I could, but she’s tougher than she looks. I caught her listening on the stairs.”

“Really? What did you hear, Bryn?” Mr. Fairview asked.

“Nothing,” she said, and tried to jam her elbow back into Freddy’s ribs. That worked well enough that he let up on the grip, and she slipped away and put the prep table between them. “He attacked me!”

“Yes, well, he does have impulse-control issues,” Mr. Fairview said. “It’s the reason I can’t have him doing intakes. He doesn’t inspire confidence in others. And I don’t believe you, Bryn.”

“You saw—”

“Not about the attack; about what you overheard. You did hear something. The question is what, and how much you understand.”

On the second prep table, Mr. Fairview had a leather case open, with a small bottle of some injectable drug nestled in padding, along with a syringe.

Mr. Jones was taking advantage of Bryn’s entrance to edge closer and closer to it. Now he grabbed the case, ripped the cap off the syringe, and quickly filled the chamber from the vial of liquid.

Mr. Fairview slapped it out of his hand. The syringe skittered across the floor, and Mr. Fairview stepped on it, cracking the plastic and leaving a wet smear on the tile floor as the drug leaked out.

Then he took out a gun from a drawer next to him and aimed it at Mr. Jones’s chest, and pulled the trigger three times, the booms shockingly loud in the tiled room.

Before Mr. Jones fell, Bryn bolted for the door. Freddy grabbed her and pressed her up against the wall just as Mr. Jones hit the tile floor, light already fading from his wide, surprised eyes. His wife cried out and dropped down next to him, but after a second of horrified staring, she scrabbled for the vial of the drug held loosely in his dead hand.

Mr. Fairview scooped it neatly away. “Freddy,” he said. “Stop playing with the new girl and take care of all this mess, please.”

“Yes, boss.” Freddy let go of Bryn and hit her. Hard. She saw darkness and flaming stars, and the world tilted sideways on her.

Cold floor.

By the time she got her eyes open again, Freddy was at the shelves. He yanked open a drawer and pulled out two body bags. Then, after a glance at Bryn, he added a third.

He unrolled the first one on the floor, dragged Mr. Jones over, and zipped him inside.

Bryn scrambled in slow motion to her feet, fought for balance, and staggered for the door, but Mr. Fairview was already there, and the sight of the gun made her slow and stop. She knew he’d shoot her.

She’d already seen the proof.

“How much do you know?” Fairview asked her. “Who are you working for?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! Let me go!” Her heart was hammering. Fear screamed at her to stay still, but she knew fear was going to get her killed. She needed to go back to her training. She needed to think. She had no idea what had happened to Joe Fideli, but if he hadn’t already shown up, she had no reason to think he’d come riding to the rescue in time to save her now.

Freddy finished zipping Mr. Jones into his storage bag, and then unrolled a second one. Bryn caught her breath as he grabbed Mrs. Jones by the arm and dragged her over onto the plastic. The woman slapped at him weakly, but she just couldn’t fight back.

He was zipping her into the body bag, still alive.

“No!” Bryn blurted, and lunged toward them to let the woman out. Freddy punched her, a true, no-holds- barred impact that sent another wave of blackness over her in a sticky, cold flood. She stayed upright somehow, and raised her fingers to her mouth. They came away bloody.

And just like that, her training came back to her, like a ghost returning to her body. The fear went away and the pain got blocked. She altered her balance, wishing for body armor, for boots, for a knife and a gun and all the things she didn’t have. Then she let that fall away.

She’d manage.

Freddy’s eyes were cold and avid. “She’s not like you thought. Look at her. She’s a fighter.”

“I can see that, Freddy.”

“I’m going to have to kill her.”

Fairview sighed. “I really can’t keep replacing people. It’s just impossible, the recruiting fees; you have no idea.”

“So don’t replace her,” Freddy said. “Kill her and give her the shot. She’ll be just as reliable as I am, after. Bonus points—you get to have special fun with her, too.”

Mr. Fairview smiled, but it looked bitter and pinched. “I hardly have enough to keep you fresh, plus our retail