“Over here,” Pansy said. She hooked the IV bag on a rolling stand that hadn’t yet been packed and pulled over a straight-backed chair. Bryn sat and let Pansy numb the back of her hand, then guide in the needle. It still, as always, hurt, but the cool rush of fluid into her veins soothed things nicely. “Should take about an hour. I’m going to get you some more water. Anything to eat?”
Food. Bryn’s stomach rumbled, and she realized that she hadn’t really even thought about food for so long, it was an abstract concept. “Uh, anything,” she said. “Whatever isn’t packed, I guess.”
“I’ll find something. Joe?”
“I’ll have what she’s having. Minus the IV.” Fideli put his back against the wall and leaned. Now that he wasn’t under threat of death, he allowed himself to look tired. He nodded to Manny. “So you’re the FBI guy, right? The one McCallister knows.”
“You know McCallister.”
“Yeah, old friends. I kinda work for him.”
“Then I suppose you’re all right,” Manny said grudgingly. “He’d probably take it badly if I’d shot you.“
Fideli grinned, a surprising flash of white, even teeth. “I’d like to think so. Glad I didn’t shoot you, too.”
Manny raised his bushy eyebrows. “Do you think you could have, before I fired the shotgun?” Fideli stared back. He didn’t answer, and he didn’t need to, really. Manny nodded and sat down on the edge of one of the wooden pallets. “Interesting.”
“Mutual, if you do half the stuff he says you do.”
“Interesting that he’s talked to you about me, and not to me about you.”
“I’ve known him longer,” Fideli said. “And he meant to bring me over here. He just didn’t get the chance.”
That made them fall silent for a moment. Bryn felt the anxious flutter in her stomach at the thought of McCallister, still missing, and she knew Joe was feeling it, too. Maybe even Manny was, as well.
Pansy came back with cups of instant soup all around, and by the time they were emptied, the four of them had formed a fragile kind of trust.
For now.
Manny kicked them out as soon as Bryn’s IV was finished. So much for trust.
Pansy walked them down to the van. “Sorry about this,” she said. “Once he gets in this mood, I can’t talk him out of it. We’ll move the lab; he’ll settle down; things will go back to normal. But I can’t take you with us. I can’t even tell you where we’re going, because he won’t tell me either. I’ll contact you later.” She passed Bryn a bundle of things. “Here. I think they’ll fit. You can’t run around in some numbered paper jumpsuit and expect not to get noticed.”
“Thanks.”
Fideli nodded to her, too. “Thanks, Pansy,” he said. “Nice working with you.”
“You too, Joe. It was good to get out and stretch my legs again.” Pansy hugged Bryn, and she hugged her back, surprised but pleased. “You, girl, you take care of yourself. I’ll see you in a week for your booster.”
“Promise?”
Pansy silently crossed her heart. “Get going. The moving vans will be here soon, and that makes him extra paranoid, even with all the background checks.”
“How the hell do you put up with it?” Joe asked, climbing into the van’s driver’s seat.
“I love him,” she said. “And he’s not just paranoid. People really are out to get him. And hey, seems like we’re all in that boat now, right?” She leaned in to put a kiss on Joe’s cheek. “You take care, sweetie. Call me anytime you need a partner in crime.”
Bryn buckled her seat belt and rolled down the window as they left the safety and shadows of the warehouse to let a fresh breeze blow through the van. The inside of the vehicle frankly reeked; the smell of her blood made her a little light-headed, or maybe that was the inhibitors taking hold. She was feeling herself again, finally; her leg’s ache had subsided, and when she ran her fingers over the back of it, she felt only a faint and fading scar.
“You can change clothes in the back,” Fideli said. “I’m not gonna peek.”
“You saw it all anyway.” She sighed. “It’ll be nice to not be dressed in paper.”
And it was, very nice, from the soft cotton underwear to the long-sleeved thermal tee and jeans. Pansy had included a pair of slip-on flats for shoes, which would have to do, for now. At least it wasn’t cold outside.
Bryn climbed over the seats and buckled herself back in place. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“Safe house up in the hills,” Fideli replied. “Strap in; we don’t need a ticket when the back of the van looks like a butcher shop died in it.”
“Is McCallister there …?”
“I don’t know where Pat is,” Fideli said. “When he’s ready to contact us, he knows my number. We’ve both got disposable burner phones. It’s the best we can do, for now.” He was quiet for a moment, watching traffic, watching the rearview mirror. Road noise hissed through the cabin. “You probably ought to know something.”
“What?”
“McCallister made me promise something. If I couldn’t get you out, or if … if you were too far gone, he made me promise to …”
“To end things for me,” Bryn said. “So I wouldn’t suffer.”
“Yeah. I thought you’d want to know that.” He pulled in a deep breath and let it out, slowly. “These are some fucked-up times if that’s romantic, Bryn.”
It made her smile, and it made her eyes well up at the same time. She turned her face away and let the wind whip against her cheeks to dry them as tears rolled down. “Thanks,” she said. “I did want to know that.”
He turned the radio on after that, and surprised her by singing along to it. He had a good voice, baritone, and did a mean version of Harry Nilsson’s song about the limes and coconuts. It almost felt … normal.
That was something Bryn realized she craved most. Normality. The feeling that her reality was still the same one that all these other people shared, the ones driving on the freeway next to them. They were headed to work or play or home or shopping. They had lives, goals, plans, challenges that didn’t include rotting away inside a dead shell of a body.
She envied them all, so strongly that it hurt. Somehow, without ever meaning to, she’d become an alien, stranded in a strange yet achingly familiar landscape.
“Bryn?”
“What?”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Joe said. “My family’s stuck somewhere halfway across the country, if not outside the country, and I don’t know when or if I’ll ever see them again. Deal with your shit and don’t wallow in it.”
“You—” She bit back her angry retort, and took a deep breath. “I am. I will. I just feel—”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, more gently. “Lost. There’s a lot of that going around.”
A phone was ringing somewhere, a harsh distant buzzing sound that brought Bryn up out of a restless light sleep in a strange bed. Her eyes snapped open, and for a moment she didn’t know where she was—a darkened room, with streetlights casting slanted shadows across the carpet through the blinds. The place smelled stale and unlived-in, and she finally remembered that she was in the safe house, a nondescript ranch house with a pathetic straggly lawn and secondhand furniture in the run-down rooms.
The phone was ringing down the hall, where Joe Fideli was sleeping. She heard him answer it, although she couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Exhaustion pinned her flat to the bed until she heard a light knock on her closed bedroom door, and she rolled out to swing it open.
“You’re dressed,” he said. He sounded surprised, although he was still in his clothes, too.
“Yeah, I figured we’d better be ready for anything.” That, and being dressed made her feel less vulnerable. She’d spent way too much time in that paper jumpsuit. “You got a call.”
“McCallister.” Fideli didn’t sound thrilled, and that made her muscles tense in anticipation of the bad news. “Listen, I think you’d better sit down, Bryn.”
That
“So … that’s good news, right?”
