Working Stiff

Then Fideli went in the direction she’d indicated. He moved like the very best combat soldiers she’d worked with, or watched—smooth, calm, no wasted motions. He had some kind of extremely advanced training, whether it was Army Rangers or Navy SEALs or Marine Recon…. Bryn felt unavoidably clumsy next to him, but she kept up as he glided through the hallway, stepping over and around obstacles and trash as best she could. There was a faint clink from somewhere up ahead, off to the right—a bottle rolling? Fideli held up a clenched fist, and she stopped, nerves crawling. After a few seconds, he indicated for her to wait, and he glided a few more steps ahead, checking the exposed point where the hallway emptied into the next room.

Gunfire shattered the glassy silence. Fideli hit the floor, return-firing from a prone position, and Bryn decked it, too, to avoid any ricochets. It was over in a couple of seconds. Her ears were still ringing from the hammer blows of the shots, but she heard running feet somewhere beyond.

Fideli stayed in firing position, but he keyed a throat mike and said, “He’s on the move, heading for the north fence—” He coughed, and rolled over on his back. “And I took one,” he added. “Call nine-one-one, Bryn.”

She saw the dark stain of blood on the filthy floor, and for a second she couldn’t react at all—and then it all snapped together, and she flung herself across to him and pulled his jacket back, then ripped open his shirt.

“Be gentle,” he said. “Got to”—a pause for an ominously wet cough—“explain to Kylie later—”

“Shut up.” Bryn fumbled for her phone and hit the programmed button for McCallister. He answered on the first ring. “Fideli’s down; he took a round in the shoulder but I think it bounced; he’s got a lung wound.” Time was of the essence; she knew that. Depending on the size and location of the puncture to the lung, it could collapse quickly or slowly, but it was bound to happen. “Get in here.”

“I can’t,” McCallister said. He sounded way too calm. “Calling nine-one-one now.”

“But—”

“Handle it, Bryn. Keep him alive until they get there.”

“Wait!” But McCallister had hung up on her, damn him. She dropped the phone and began ripping up the clean portion of Fideli’s shirt to make a pressure pad for his shoulder; it was freely bleeding but not pumping, so it was unlikely the bullet had hit an artery. Internally was another matter; the bullet could have done terrible things on the bounce. No way to tell.

His color was fading, but that was a normal shock reaction. She pressed the wadding of cloth into place, and he winced, turned his head, and spit blood. Not much, though. Not as much as she’d feared.

“Pat call nine-one-one?” he asked. His breathing sounded labored and damp, but not yet critical.

“Yes. I thought he was your friend.”

“He is. But he’s got a job to do.” Another hitch in his breath, but it might have just been a pain reaction; she felt him stiffen, then relax a little. “Should have worn a vest.”

“Yes. We both should have.”

“Next time, eh?” He coughed and reached up to pat her hand where it pressed against the wound. “Good job, Bryn.”

“What, getting you shot?” Her heart was hammering now, and fear was creeping in. “Don’t die on me, Joe. I don’t want to face your kids.”

“Ought to be more afraid of Kylie,” he said, and coughed. This time, there was a lot of blood—oh, Jesus—and she heard distressed breath sounds in his right lung when she pressed her ear to his chest. “Going to be one of those damn tension pneumo things. Check jacket pocket.”

She did, fumbling quickly, and pulled out … a silver tube with a seal. Her drug, which he kept with him in case of her distress. “Joe? Do you want me to give this to you? Will it help?”

“No,” he whispered. His lips were starting to turn blue where they weren’t dark with blood, and his breathing was hitchy and painful. “Drain it. Use it as a needle tube.”

“Is that safe?”

“Safer than dying—ah, God—” His back arched a little, and when his next breath came, she heard nothing from his right side. The lung had collapsed. Fideli’s breathing was shallow and fast.

She ripped the tube open, slid the syringe out, squirted the contents onto the ground in a silvery stream. Well, there goes a few thousand, she thought, stupidly, and filled it with air to push out again, just in case. A drop of liquid hissed out, and then the syringe was clean, or as clean as she could get it. She ripped the handle out to leave a jagged opening for air. She checked his other pockets and came up with a rubber glove; she pricked a hole in one finger and jammed it down over the syringe.

Bryn held the penlight in her teeth and counted off ribs, hoping her years-old emergency field medicine still held true. She pressed on the area, took a deep breath, and pushed the needle home. There was a pop as she went through connective tissue, and then a sudden hiss as air pushed out, inflating the finger of the glove as it escaped. Fideli took in a sudden gasping breath, and the glove deflated, preventing air from flowing in to compress the lung from outside. She couldn’t do anything about the blood in the lung, but that seemed to be less of an urgent issue.

About thirty seconds later, she heard the advancing wail of a siren, and took Joe’s hand. “Hey,” she said. “Looks like I won’t have to get beaten up by your wife. Much.”

He smiled with those pale lips and gave her a thumbs-up, but didn’t try to speak.

One minute later, she heard shouting, and left him to lead them back inside. The police came first to secure the scene, and then let the paramedics in. They immediately threw out her makeshift needle arrangement and inserted a catheter, scooped Fideli onto a gurney, and ran off with him, leaving her in the position of explaining … everything.

Bryn was, of course, promptly arrested. After all, two people with guns, one shot … it looked bad. McCallister didn’t show up to make it better, either. She presented the police with a somewhat ridiculous story about checking out the building for a possible investment, along with her bodyguard, and being fired on by an unknown assailant. The facts would actually support that, as it happened, and her gun hadn’t been fired. The detectives hated the story, of course, but couldn’t argue too much with the evidence that mounted in her support. After six hours in the interrogation room, and another four in very boring custody, she was finally released to her lawyer—someone she’d never seen before, a brusque, harried woman who handed her paperwork and hustled her out to a waiting yellow cab at the curbside.

Patrick McCallister, unshaven and almost unrecognizable in a cap and sunglasses, was driving. He nodded to the lawyer, who tossed an envelope in the window. “There’s my bill,” she said. “Don’t call me again.”

McCallister said nothing, just pulled out into traffic. Bryn was monumentally unsurprised to see him, but she was mildly curious about the disguise. “Who was that?”

“Old girlfriend,” he said. “Best I could do without ringing someone’s bells.”

She let that pass. “How’s Joe?”

“Out of surgery. You saved his life. The bullet bounced and did some damage in his chest wall; he’d have suffocated before help got there if you hadn’t acted. He won’t be able to come back to duty for a few weeks, though.”

“Not my biggest concern.”

“It should be,” McCallister said. His face looked exhausted and pale beneath the thick growth of dark stubble. “Round one went to our friend, and he’s proved he’s dangerous. Very dangerous. Not some rogue accountant with a side business; he’s way too good for that. We’re rerunning every single employee, but he’s hidden this long, and he’s going to stay hidden unless we get very lucky. You’re still our very best option to uncover him.”

“You really think he’ll get back in touch. After this.”

“This didn’t go badly for him. He made off cleanly with a hundred thousand in cash, and took out your protection. You’re alone now, and vulnerable. He’ll like that.” McCallister’s mouth was very tight, and his eyes very dark. “I have to leave you in place, alone. He’s watching us. Closely.”

That was, Bryn assumed, why she was in the back of a cab. Maximum cover for their meeting. Things were getting too hot for him to risk being linked to her directly.

“Do you think you’d recognize him if you saw him again?”

“I doubt it, but I can try. He was good. If it hadn’t been for his contacts, I wouldn’t have suspected a thing, and that was only a trick of the light and the angle.”

“He can’t disguise his height that much.”

“That’s not a lot to work with.”