Working Stiff

trying to sound charming anymore. He just sounded impatient.

Bryn’s body, oblivious to the consequences that were bound to be coming, complied, and she settled into the soft leather interior. He was a smoker, and the cabin reeked of it; the metallic, burned taste filled her mouth as completely as if she’d licked the ashes off the floor. She felt wetness on her cheeks. She was crying. Some part of her body, at least, was still operating outside of his control—not that it would help her in the least.

As the man started to shut her door, she heard a sound from outside. It wasn’t loud, but it was a crisp, metallic snap, followed by a solid, meaty thud.

Her door swung open again as the man stumbled, cried out, and turned.

Patrick McCallister stepped out of the shadows, face pale and very tight. He had always been so self- contained, but now, Bryn saw something blazing in him, something so full of rage that it scared her.

He had a riot baton in his hand. That had been the metallic snap she’d heard—the baton extending. The thud was pretty obvious, as the man who’d been abducting her yelled, “You fucker, you broke my ribs!”

McCallister didn’t bother to say anything to that. He stepped forward, swung the baton again, with precision, and put the man down on the pavement. There was some groaning and twitching, but the fight was over, and as the man slipped into unconsciousness and his blood trickled out onto the concrete, McCallister moved around him to crouch down next to Bryn, still in the car.

“Bryn, can you get out?”

She tried. Tried desperately. “No,” she whispered, and felt the tears overflow again. “I can’t.”

He didn’t seem surprised. “Cancel Sapphire,” he said, and she fell forward with a surprised cry, almost smacking herself into the dashboard. She’d been fighting so fiercely for control of her muscles that when she regained it, they tensed with crippling force. Bryn sucked in deep, whooping breaths, shuddering, gagging on the stale taste of cigarettes until McCallister reached in and helped her step out and over the fallen man. He was still holding the baton, and when she looked at it, he snapped it back to its original collapsed length.

“What the hell?” she managed to gasp out. Her whole body felt violated, even though she’d hardly been touched. She yanked free of McCallister’s hand and put a lot of empty space between them.

Then she reached to her shoulder holster and pulled the weapon that still nestled there. She hadn’t bothered to take it off for the club because they’d just been going for a quick drink; now the weight of it in her hand felt like salvation.

She aimed it first at the man unconscious on the street, but he wasn’t a threat, so she focused the muzzle squarely on McCallister’s chest. Her pulse was pounding so hard it was giving her a headache, and she still wanted to throw up, though her nausea was starting to subside with the clean taste of the outside air. “What the hell?” This time, beyond her control again, it came out in a raw scream.

McCallister slowly put his hands up. “Easy, Bryn. Easy.”

“Fuck easy, you son of a bitch. What just happened to me? What did you put in my drink?” She shot a burning glance at the unconscious guy between them. “Is he one of yours?”

“No,” McCallister said. “And I didn’t put anything into your drink. Neither did he.”

“Then what the hell just happened to me? What?”

McCallister glanced around. The bouncer at the club had walked out into the street and was staring their way, attracted by the raised voices. “We shouldn’t talk about it here,” he said, “and if you keep waving that gun around, we’ll have a lot more problems than we already do. Come on, Bryn; my car is across the street. We need to go before the police arrive. Please.”

“And if I don’t want to go with you?”

“Then you don’t have to,” he said. “You can choose to put the gun up and walk away. I understand how you feel, Bryn. I won’t tell you what to do.”

She realized, as he said it, that he hadn’t ordered her to do anything. Not like before. And she didn’t feel that her will had been taken away from her.

You can choose to put the gun up and walk away.

Or she could choose to go with him.

He didn’t try to convince her one way or the other, just waited as the seconds ticked by. A distant wail of sirens made him stir, just a little, but he still stayed quiet.

Bryn relaxed her stance and put the gun back in the holster under her shoulder. “I need to understand what just happened,” she said. “You need to tell me. Now.”

He nodded. “Then please, let me help you.”

* * *

He drove her—to her surprise—to a familiar house, glowing with lights. She recognized the kid’s bike up against the hedge, and the leaning, weathered mailbox.

“Why here?” she asked.

“Because I don’t think you feel safe with me,” McCallister said, as he put the car in park and killed the engine. “Joe and his family have a … calming effect.”

“You bring a lot of people here?”

“No,” he said, then hesitated for a second before getting out of the car. “Never, in fact.”

Bryn pondered that as she followed him up the walk, and as he rang the bell. Joe’s wife, Kylie, answered the door, drying her hands on a dish towel; she blinked in surprise, then smiled in genuine delight and opened her arms to McCallister for a hug. “Patrick, you’ve been avoiding us,” she said. He stepped into the embrace, briefly, and then pulled back to glance at Bryn. Kylie did, too, and if her smile faltered just a touch, it quickly warmed again. “Bryn. Nice to see you.”

McCallister said, “I’m sorry to drop in on you like this, but—”

“But you need to see Joe?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“He’s out back in the workshop. Follow me.”

Kylie led them through the warm, comfortable house, past the playing kids (who stopped to wave, or to stare, or, in the case of the baby, to gurgle), and out the back door. She pointed to a structure twenty feet away across the yard. “Out there,” she said. “Pat, you know how to get in?”

“I know,” he said. “Thanks, Kylie.”

“Visit us for dinner sometime.”

“I will.”

His smile disappeared as soon as she closed the back door, and in its place was a moment of unguarded emotion. Sorrow, Bryn thought. She didn’t need to be told that McCallister dreaded bringing danger here, as much as he enjoyed the company. It was written all over his face.

“It’s this way,” he said, and walked across the yard. He held out a hand to stop Bryn as they approached the closed door of the respectably large wooden shed, and a motion-activated light came on to bathe the area in a mercilessly bright glare. “Wait here.”

She couldn’t see why, but she nodded, and then, just to test that she could, disobeyed him and followed him as he climbed the three steps up to the door.

He shot her an irritated look and shielded a keypad from her as he punched in a series of numbers … a long series, longer than usual for these types of locks. She heard a musical tone sound, and a click as the lock disengaged.

Then McCallister knocked. “Joe? Coming in.”

“Come ahead,” said Joe’s voice from within, and McCallister opened up and entered, with Bryn at his heels.

Joe Fideli was sitting at a desk that was absolutely loaded down with monitors, computer equipment, storage drives—and it took Bryn a second or two to realize that he was putting away a gun. A serious weapon, too, not a pistol but a semiauto rifle, which he put back on a rack behind him.

The man had more guns in here than an armory. In fact, Bryn was fairly sure that she couldn’t even identify many of them, and that was a statement, after four years of supply duty in Iraq. That wasn’t even counting the shelves of other types of weapons—knives, Tasers, throwing stars, and brass knuckles in tidy order.

“Close the door,” Joe said to Bryn. She didn’t do it—another test, to see if she could. She