“Okay.”
“Our strategy is simple. We avoid Molly, and we try to make it off this floor alive.”
“I’m hoping you know how to do that.”
“Yeah,” Nichole said. “We ask David.”
She showed him a syringe.
“That wasn’t in the first aid kit, was it?” Jamie asked.
Thirty-five hundred miles away, Keene asked: “Find your Girlfriend yet?”
McCoy grunted, then drained the rest of his Caley. He walked back to their tiny kitchen for another can. Keene was going to have to think about fixing supper soon. Whenever McCoy reached the six-pack point, he became ravenous. And he was especially cranky when he was hungry.
Keene took over, cycling through the cameras on the thirty-sixth floor, spending barely a second on each office. In the conference room, the boss was still on the floor, the blood around his head looking like an oddly shaped pillow. The corpse of his faithful employee, McCrane, was situated across the room. Kurtwood’s dead body was still in the hallway of the abandoned section of the office. The still-alive DeBroux and Wise were in the head office. But no Girlfriend.
Where could she be?
Keene hoped she wasn’t dead. Otherwise, McCoy would be insufferable for weeks.
Girlfriend was doing her hair.
She had no choice. Six shots had been fired, and she had twisted and rolled and managed to avoid every single one … except one. A lucky shot, most likely fired when Nichole Wise really started to lose control, and was firing blind. Because there was no possible way that had been intentional. That kind of shot was the stuff of military snipers, not workaday Company watchdogs. Wise didn’t have the precision.
The bullet had sliced through the air, then the glass, then more air, and then her cheek.
It had gouged a bloody trail high across her cheekbone, and it had carried enough ground glass to make it hurt.
The pain didn’t matter, though. Her appearance did.
After cleansing her face and the wound, she reached behind her head and pulled the clips from her hair. Her hair was quite long. Paul had liked it that way. She kept it up and away from her face during the workday. Home, alone with Paul, she let it down. Home alone with Paul, she’d often wander around the house without clothes. It left him quite powerless, even if he thought he was in control.
Now she let some of her hair fall down in a wedge over the right side of her face; the rest was clipped up behind her head. She used hot water to smooth out her hair, tease some of the drywall dust and blood and ground glass out of it. After a minute of grooming, it looked passable. This was not a look she’d ever used before. Perhaps this was a good thing.
At the end, she was going to have to look presentable.
That would be the final exam.
Boyfriend would see it.
And, God willing, Boyfriend would give her the promotion she so desperately craved. No.
Good thing Boyfriend couldn’t see her now.
She had wanted him to see the pain she endured—that was part of the interview. But not the aftermath. A good operative was super-resilient, able to bounce back from any form of punishment. Most American operatives didn’t have much of a threshold for pain.
This would distinguish her from much of her competition.
She kept bandages and liquid skin in her right bracelet; tweezers and a simple stitching kit in her left. She used them now, working quickly and efficiently. Time was against her. She’d already wasted a minute on her face and rearranging her hair.
Her black skirt was fine—the color masked the blood—but her pantyhose were ruined, sliced open in a dozen places by the sharp glass. They had served her well. The pantyhose weren’t ordinary; you couldn’t buy them in a plastic egg in a department store. They were a special order, reinforced by woven Kevlar. Her legs had scratches and cuts, but no major gashes.
Her blouse was similarly reinforced. The worst damage she’d taken had been to her left forearm. She had rolled up her sleeve to access her bracelet.
Perhaps she should have rolled her sleeve back down.
Like the pantyhose, the blouse had to go. She wore a sleeveless shirt over her bra, one that didn’t look strange when paired with a skirt. It would do for the remainder of the interview.
Her legs and feet were bare, but she could easily recover her shoes before she departed.
Her hair now covered her face.
Glass had been plucked out; flesh taped, bonded, or sutured; clothes wiped clean.
Girlfriend was ready for the remainder of the morning activities.
She allowed herself the luxury of staring at herself in the bathroom mirror for a few moments. She was deep within the offices of
Now she looked at herself, and was stunned by the passage of time.
Ten years ago, a much scrawnier, timid version of herself would have been looking back from the mirror.
A little girl, so eager to please.
Now she was different.
She was a young woman, much stronger, much bolder.
But still, eager to please.
Some things cannot be beaten from your soul.
Girlfriend spoke to herself in Russian. Mumbling, really. Nonsense rhymes. Things she would say to herself when she was a girl.
That was enough now. No more indulgences.
Number three was still missing. He had never shown up to the meeting, yet there was evidence he had arrived at the building.
Number three might still be hiding on the floor.
Or, Ethan had been clever enough to find a way out of David’s traps.
BACK TO WORK
Well slap him and call him Susan. Weren’t security guards supposed to keep an especially keen eye on the fire towers? You know, as a potential security risk? Glad to know the Department has been in such safe hands all these years. Then again, that was probably the point. A heavily armed, man-heavy, hard-core, SWAT-style building security team would be kind of a red flag to the enemy. And what was the use of running a cover business if something like that blew the cover?
Still, Ethan knew there were fiber-optic cameras up and down the friggin’ tower. Even the lowest of the low- rent skyscrapers had ’em. He waved, then saluted each with a middle finger, on the way down. Hello, asses. Notice
