Working Stiff

butter didn’t make for much conversation. By the end, though, the silence had begun to feel oppressive, and as Bryn swallowed the last of what was clearly a highly inadequate meal, she thought she ought to at least try to be social. “Thanks,” she said. “For, ah, making this.”

He gave her a trace of a smile and took her empty plate into the kitchen, along with the rest of the crackers and peanut butter. While he was in there, he opened a couple of other cabinets, apparently looking for a second course. Which wasn’t there, Bryn almost told him; she’d been out of everything, planning to make a run to the store for at least a few basic things. He must have decided that the saltshaker didn’t have much potential, because he began to walk around the apartment, checking the view out the windows.

“I’ll take the couch,” he said, still not looking directly at her. “It’d be nice if you had an extra pillow, but it’s not required.”

“I’m not that bad. I have an extra pillow. And a blanket.”

“One the dog hasn’t slept on?”

She blushed. “Come on, am I that horrible?”

McCallister glanced in her direction and, for the first time, allowed the look to linger. It was almost … human. “No,” he said. “You’re not.”

“Coming from you, that’s nearly a compliment.” Bryn swallowed hard, suddenly feeling the pressure of tears growing behind her eyes. “I’m not feeling anything but horrible lately. Like an alien in someone else’s skin.”

“I can understand that,” he said. He hadn’t looked away from her, and she felt that spark of warmth take hold between them. “What you’ve been through … But you’re still an attractive woman, Bryn, if you have any doubt of that.”

“That was definitely a compliment.”

He smiled with genuine amusement. “I hoped you’d take it that way. I didn’t only ask you out for a drink to pass on information, you know.”

“Could have fooled me,” she said. “You’re very … professional.”

“Never off the clock,” he agreed, and turned back to the windows. “Especially not tonight.”

Great.

Bryn walked into the kitchen, opened a cabinet, and pulled down a bottle of wine. It was cheap, because that was all she could afford, but it was decent. And open. She poured half of the contents into a jelly jar without asking whether he might want any, drank some way too fast, and then moved into the bedroom. She came out with a pillow (the extra from her bed) and a blanket, which she put on the couch. McCallister watched this in silence, leaning against the wall, and as she finished off the giant glass of wine and poured the rest he said, “Don’t you think you might want to slow down on that?”

“Why? It’s not like I haven’t had a fucking awful day. Week. Month. Life. Death.”

“Because of that,” he said. “You’ll get reckless, and we don’t need that.”

“No, we sure don’t want that,” she said. She felt better now, with the wine. Glowing inside. Belatedly, she thought he was probably right; she’d had a cosmo and a Scotch tonight, and most of a bottle of wine wasn’t going to help her keep her head together. But she wanted to be out from under the tension and fear, at least for now. Let McCallister be responsible for keeping her alive. It was all his fault, anyway.

She reached for the glass again.

Bryn hadn’t seen him move, but now he was right in front of her, taking the drink from the counter and moving to the sink, where he poured the rest of it out. “Hey!” she blurted, but it was too late by then, and he was running the water to swirl the last purple stains down the drain. “You jerk, that was mine!”

“You’ll thank me in the morning.”

“I doubt I’ll ever have any reason to thank you!” Rage ignited inside her, sudden and shocking and utterly beyond her control. “You left me to die on the floor; isn’t that right?”

He turned on her, and suddenly he was that Patrick McCallister again, the one who’d burst into that white fire of anger on the street and put a man down with two scientific strokes of a riot baton.

The scary one.

“Sit. Down,” he said. It was quiet, but she had no doubt that there was an or else clause attached to it. But it was the phrasing that triggered something inside her—an almost compulsive wish to do as he said.

And it made her even more enraged.

“Or. What?” she spat back, taking a step toward him, not away. “You think you can invoke your creepy protocol and make me your little living doll? She walks, she talks, she does whatever the hell you want? No. Never going to happen!”

The thought seemed to shock him out of his own anger, and McCallister’s eyes opened wide. “That’s not what I—” He stopped himself and took in a deep breath. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I would never do that to you. I wouldn’t take away your choices.”

“You already did. You brought me back. You took away my choice to live or die—and what choice do I have now? Don’t take the shots? Decompose? You think this is some kind of freedom you’ve given me?” Oh, she was feeling dizzy now, off balance with both alcohol and pure, sweet rage. “Don’t tell me you won’t take away my choices; you take more away from me every day!”

“Bryn …” He didn’t seem to know what to say now, and instead, he did the last thing she expected.

He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders.

She stiffened and started to pull away, but there was something vulnerable in his face just then, and she stilled herself and returned his stare. Seen this close, he was much more handsome than she’d realized—fine soft skin, a dark shadow of stubble stroking his cheeks. His eyes weren’t just dark; they were a rich, complex brown, rimmed with dark green. There were strands of silver in his hair.

He started to say something, then checked the impulse, and for a moment it was just the two of them, feeling something odd and powerful pulling between them. Attraction, yes, but more than that.

Shared desperation.

“You didn’t answer me before, at Fideli’s house,” Bryn said. “About how many of you were working on —”

He covered her mouth with his hand, stepping closer. He bent so that his lips were very close to her ear, close enough that she felt the hot stroke of his breath against her skin, and he whispered, “Say nothing you don’t want overheard. We’re being monitored. We’re always watched. Remember that.”

Oh, God, she felt a sudden flush of heat, one that transmitted directly from the warmed area on her neck down through her body to pool … lower. He was right up against her, his chest brushing hers, and she felt the tension in his hands as he continued to hold her. Instead of pulling back, he stayed where he was, as if he had more to say.

But he didn’t.

“If we’re going to be this close, can I call you Patrick?” she whispered, and it broke his tension, shattered it into a startled laugh low in his throat, and God, how exactly had she stopped hating him? Maybe it was the fact that he was fighting to stay professional; she could feel it.

Just then, Mr. French barked, a single, sharp, angry sound that hit Bryn like a slap. She looked down. He was standing belligerently at her feet, and he glared up at McCallister with possessive zeal.

McCallister looked down, too, and this time, his soft laugh had a little bit of despair in it. “You should probably go to bed before he takes all this personally,” he said to Bryn, and their eyes met again just for a raw second before he moved back, leaving her cold and alone. “I don’t think he likes me.”

She started to say something, and fell silent when he shook his head. “Better we don’t start anything between us,” he said, very quietly. “We have enough to worry about already without making our situation more … complicated.”

“Right,” she said. “We’ll just … keep things simple. That sounds”—awful, she thought, but managed to change it to say—“awfully sensible.”

“That’s me,” McCallister said, with a bitter twist to his lips. “I’m nothing if not sensible.”