Severance Package

Still, she was trouble. David’s charms were totally ineffective on her. She had no discernible sense of humor. It wasn’t clear if her beard of a husband—some paunchy dork named Paul—was a real love interest, or if Molly skipped through Lesbos’s groves. David was totally unable to handle her.

Oh, she listened. Textbook support personnel.

But he couldn’t play her. That vaguely troubled him.

And look how it had all turned out.

David stared up at the ceiling and wondered how much longer he’d be conscious. Maybe it was his imagination, but he swore he could feel the blood throbbing out of the little hole in his head.

Yet, except for the paralysis that had washed over his body, he felt oddly normal. As if he could just snap out of it, and sit up. Which was so not going to happen.

David wasn’t that delusional.

Amy ushered a shaking Molly into her office and closed the door. She needed to calm this one down now, even if Amy ended up calling David’s bosses and had her hauled in for debriefing. Operations were one thing; this was a broken human being here. All Amy knew was that one minute, her boss of five years was threatening to kill everyone in the room, and the next, Stuart had keeled over, and the next, David’s secretary of six months was shooting him in the head. It was too much.

She wished she had somebody calming her down.

Be the adult. Be the adult.

“Are you okay?” Amy asked. “Sit down. Let me get you some water.”

“I’m okay,” Molly said. She continued to stand, but looked around Amy’s office nervously, as if bracing for a wild animal to leap out from behind a desk and pounce.

“Sit down, Molly. Nothing can hurt you in here.”

“I know, I know. I’m okay. I promise.”

Amy wished Molly would sit down and just drink some water already. Her office was hot. It was always hot. The windows faced the north, and the early morning sun always seemed to beat the cool air pumped from the building’s ductwork. Fetching Molly a Styrofoam cup of water would give Amy a few moments in the chilly kitchen, a chance to wipe a paper towel across her forehead and neck and, more important, give her a moment to think. With David gone—and oh, how that was a weird euphemism to use, considering the man was lying in the conference room with a bullet in his head—Amy was technically in charge. And she didn’t have a single idea what to do next.

The Department handbook didn’t cover stuff like this.

She also wanted desperately to find Ethan. While he could act like a schoolboy, he was excellent in crisis moments. Whenever she had an office meltdown, she could walk over to Ethan’s office, close the door, and sink into his blue beanbag chair—a ridiculous holdover since college. Ethan would ask her what was wrong, and no matter the answer, announce that it was time for “creamy treats.” Some guys keep a bottle of booze in their lower right- hand drawer; Ethan kept Tastykakes. Ethan gave her the two things she needed to settle down: a patient ear and a hit of sugar, enriched flour, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

But there was no time to find Ethan now. Because Molly didn’t want any water, or to sit down.

“We need,” Amy said, “to find a way to call in support.”

Support: the euphemism for David’s bosses. As David’s second-in-command, Amy had been given the phone number and code key to use in case of emergency, such as David’s untimely death. Backup would descend upon 1919 Market Street. Hard drives would be secured. Order would be restored. Only if Amy could find a working phone.

But Molly didn’t seem to be listening. She lowered her face into her hands.

God, this couldn’t be easy for her. She wasn’t a high-level operative. She knew what they all did, to some degree. But Molly didn’t know how dangerous this game could be.

Amy put a hand on her shoulder.

“You’re going to be okay,” Amy said, even though it was a blatant lie. The woman had pulled a gun out of a white box—it may even have been a cannoli box from Reading Terminal Market—and shot her boss of six months in the head. That was decidedly not okay.

Molly surfaced from her palms. “Amy?”

“Yeah, sweetie.”

“I’m going to enjoy you the most.”

Amy watched one of Molly’s delicate hands shrink into a tight little fist. Then it smashed her in the eye.

She staggered back. Confusion set in before the pain. Wait. What had just happened?

Did Molly Lewis just punch her in the—?

Again.

And again.

Left hook, right jab. Classic boxer combo.

Amy’s head buzzed with pain, now, finally, radiating from her skin deep into her skull. Her butt bumped up against the front of her own desk. She needed to keep standing. She needed to start defending herself. That much was sure. But what was going on here? Amy lifted a hand, but Molly slapped it aside and then jabbed her in the throat.

Amy started choking.

She slid to the side and put her hands to her throat, as if she could undo the damage manually. But Molly had done something. Something very bad. Amy couldn’t even scream.

Two minutes before, Molly had been alone in David’s office. Everyone had scattered to the rest of the office, to see if their boss’s crazy talk was actually true. To see if the elevators would come. If the dial tone would be there. If their cell phones would work.

Of course they wouldn’t.

Molly had helped David disable them all.

David, a week ago, promised, “You help me; you and I walk out of here. We’ve got new identities waiting for us.”

Later, Molly had found the memo. The faxed hit list.

With her name on it.

Liar.

So she decided to cut a deal of her own.

Molly walked down the hallway and into David’s office. In the corner, where the south-facing windows met with a solid oak bookcase, was a security camera obscured by the wood and dry-wall. It had been positioned so that it could scan not only the entire office, but the face of David’s computer screen. David knew this. It was company policy.

Molly looked up at the security camera and flashed it a tight little smile. She held up her left hand, palm out.

And raised her index and middle fingers.

It wasn’t a peace sign.

It was an announcement.

THE MORNING GRIND

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

—LEE IACOCCA