Working Stiff

gun, which she pointed at Bryn’s head. “I know it won’t kill you, but it’ll slow you down. Don’t try to drive away. Hands off the wheel, please.”

Bryn slowly raised her arms. Riley said, “Keep them up,” and walked around the long, gleaming hood to the passenger side, where she got in, never taking her gaze off of Bryn as she fastened her seat belt. “You’re going to the Civic Theatre.”

Bryn couldn’t control her surprise. “How did you—”

“Believe it or not, the FBI’s been aware that Pharmadene had something to hide for some time. We traced McCallister’s activities and connected him to Fairview, although he hid it very well; we still weren’t sure it was a way into their organization, but I was tapped to go undercover and check it out. I’ve had mortuary experience.”

“Joe brought you in,” Bryn murmured. Oh, Joe. God, no. She couldn’t believe it— didn’t want to believe it.

“McCallister passed my name along to him,” Riley said. “And I was recommended by a former FBI agent whom I worked with in the past, a mutual friend of McCallister’s.”

“Manny Glickman.” Bryn felt the missing piece click into place, and saw the flare of recognition in Riley’s dark eyes. “McCallister trusted him.”

“And Manny had to follow his own conscience about all this. He knew it was going to go wrong; he tried to tell Patrick McCallister that from the start. He was simply hedging his bets. But of course, it’s Manny, so nobody believed him. Not at first.” Riley shook her head slowly. “I’m not sure whether to be impressed or nauseated by what they’ve done. What you are. It’s an incredible achievement, but … so very wrong.”

“I’m not one of Pharmadene’s robots,” Bryn said.

“I know enough about the capabilities of the drug they’ve given you to know I can’t trust your word about that. Or about anything.”

“But you know about what they’re planning to do at the Civic Theatre, don’t you?”

Riley nodded. “The secretary of state is not coming, obviously. Neither are any government officials. We headed them off.”

“You should have stopped it as soon as you knew. You could have locked down Pharmadene.”

“Oh, we have,” Riley said. “The building’s empty, although we’ve got our own people in place to return calls and give the appearance that things are proceeding normally. Harte made that easier by pulling most of the staff out to man her Civic Theatre plan. And now all of their most important people are in a vulnerable place.”

Bryn’s lips parted in horror, and then she blurted it out. “You’re going to take them out. All of them.”

“Most of them in one go,” Riley agreed. She had a sad glint in her eyes, but in the next blink it was gone. “We have to stop it. You’d say the same. And it’s more merciful to do it this way, one surgical strike, take out everyone at once.”

“How many?”

“What?”

“How many people at the theater?”

“We estimate about three hundred of Pharmadene’s employees,” Riley said. “Technically, they’re bodies, not living people.”

“That’s not true. They’re like me. They think. They feel. They are alive. They don’t deserve this.” Bryn swallowed hard. “Riley, I heard them dying. I heard them screaming. Most didn’t want to do this. They didn’t sign up for it—they’re victims. You have to help me stop it. If we get Irene Harte, all of it can stop. It can be controlled.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “And that’s what I argued for. But it’s too late now, and it’s out of my hands. In about thirty minutes, that building will suffer a catastrophic event, and everyone in it will die.”

“Patrick McCallister is in there. So is Joe Fideli.”

Riley didn’t blink. “Let’s take a drive,” she said.

“Where?”

“Where you were going in the first place. The theater.”

“But—”

“Bryn,” she said patiently. “You understand, this is a cleanup. And you’re a loose end. I’m very sorry—really I am—but this is a national security situation, and we have to take drastic measures. I don’t like it, but I have to do what’s right.”

“You mean that you’re going to kill me, too.”

Riley didn’t try to argue the point. She actually seemed a little sad, Bryn thought. “For what it’s worth, I like you. I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry you got caught up in it. It wasn’t your fault, but sometimes things just happen.”

Bryn shut her mouth and didn’t argue. There was no doubt in Riley’s face, and no mercy, either. Like Irene Harte, she was a true believer … just on the other side. Broken eggs and omelets, and the greater good.

Bryn wasn’t entirely sure she was wrong, and besides, at least it was where she wanted to go.

Where she had to go. Because if it had to end this way, at least she’d be with McCallister, where she knew—finally—that she belonged.

The Civic Theatre perimeter was deserted when they arrived. There were buses parked in the lot that hadn’t been there on Bryn’s previous drive-by, and as she pulled into the parking area close by she saw that the buses were full of people sitting in unnatural stillness.

Pharmadene employees. The ones who’d been on the perimeter.

“How did you do that?” Bryn asked. It was incredibly creepy, as if all of them were already dead.

“The bioengineered protocols,” Riley said. “Manny told us all about them.” She looked a little pale now, but still very controlled. “You can’t blame him for that, Bryn. He was doing the right thing. This was never something that a few independents could handle, no matter how well-meaning they might be.”

“McCallister was more worried about Mercer’s operation; that was a rogue element.”

“He wasn’t wrong about that. Mercer’s a sociopath. He never had any doubts about what he was doing, because the only thing that mattered was his own profit. We tried to reach out to him and bring him in on our side. He refused.”

That, Bryn thought, was because he already had his own ideas of how best to use the drug.

“Bryn,” Riley said, very gently. “I’m really very sorry about all this, but I have my orders. Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“I want you to get out and go inside.”

Bryn laughed, a bitter bark of sound. “Are you trying to invoke protocol on me? Because it doesn’t work. If Manny told you anything, he would have told you about his antidote.”

“He did,” Riley said. “But I know you a little better than that. You’re not running away. You were never running away, were you? You came here to finish something. So go finish it.” She hesitated, and looked away. “I was supposed to restrain you and put you on one of the buses. But I can’t do that. It doesn’t matter where you are anyway. So go in. Find McCallister, if that’s what you want to do. It’s all I can do to help you.”

“Thank you,” Bryn said. She got out of the limo, walked up the steps, and opened the Civic Theatre doors.

When she glanced back, Riley gave her a faint, sad smile, and rolled up the tinted window.

The lobby was opulent, but mostly deserted; Bryn glanced around and spotted men stationed at each of the entrances to the theater proper. She walked calmly and confidently toward one of them. “I’ve got a limousine for Ms. Harte,” she said. “She sent for me. I’m to find her and escort her out. She has a critical meeting in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll have to check,” he said, but she was right, the looming black presence of the limousine outside the glass doors was a convincing argument. Bryn checked her watch impatiently and tapped her foot as he pulled out a radio.

“Oh, wow, can I see that?” she asked, and plucked it out of his hands. He blinked, startled, and in the next second she’d reached under her coat, drawn her sidearm, and pressed the barrel under his chin. “Back up three