Severance Package

of an attraction. He wanted to stay here and linger for a while.)

Naked Alpha Chi guy said to her, “Want a poke before my meeting?”

Ethan felt true panic. He didn’t know what Amy was going to say. To his relief, her reply was friendly—

Tempting as that sounds, you have a meeting to attend, she said, in his dream.

—and curt.

Then Alpha Chi guy disappeared, and Amy was on the bed, and her towel was now slipping off again. She looked at Ethan. Ethan looked at her breasts, which sloped to perfect pink tips. He’d never seen them before—yet, in dreamworld logic, they seemed as familiar as the front door to his apartment.

She put her hand on his face, and said to him: “Look at me lovingly.”

In the real world, somebody was touching his face, then his wrist.

Ethan knew what it was; he wasn’t delusional or in some kind of fugue state. Somebody—probably a building security guard—had found him passed out and bloodied in the stairwell. The guard probably saw the pen and freaked, and was trying to find a pulse.

But Ethan wanted to keep thinking that Amy was still touching his face, imploring him to look at her.

Where was Amy?

Was she all right?

“Buddy! Are you awake, man?”

Oh yes, I’m awake. I’m back in my chemical-nerve-agent-dosed body with my bargain-basement tracheotomy. I could be spread out on a bed with Amy Felton, sans hotel bath towel. But no, I’m here. Trying to resist the urge to reach up and feel your tits.

Ethan even opened his bloodied eyes to confirm it.

I’m here, dude.

Molly flipped and twisted until all of reality was reduced to a simple series of events: concrete slapping her naked palms, concrete slapping the bottom of her bare feet. Again. And again. Somewhere, in another part of her mind, she ticked down the floors as she completed them. She didn’t focus on the numbers. She knew her mind would warn her when she was close. She focused on the concrete.

If the security guards beat her to Ethan Goins, and they’d already moved him, all was lost.

She would have let an employee escape. Operation failed.

And her mother was as good as dead.

The elevator arrived and Vincent Marella stepped in and started to push 16. But his finger hung in the air, the slightest bit of space between the tip of his index finger and the white plastic square that would light up if he applied enough pressure.

C’mon. Push it.

C’mon.

Okay, fine. He was willing to admit it to himself. He was stalling.

He knew the call was completely different from the one he’d taken over at the Sheraton a year ago. There, it was like: Calm down a domestic disturbance. This was: dude down in the stairwell, pen in his throat. Completely different.

But the terrors were back.

With, as they say, a vengeance.

“This is stupid,” he said aloud. He pushed the button.

As the elevator descended, he felt like his stomach was already a few floors below it.

Molly landed on the security guard. Or more precisely, on his back. Her feet jackhammered into him. The guard’s face smashed up against cinder block. His eyes fluttered. The rough surface of the wall gouged at his cheek as he slid down. Molly quickly regained her equilibrium. The judges may have dinged her a few points, but it was still a competitive dismount.

Ethan couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Molly Lewis. David’s quiet little assistant, flipping down a concrete staircase and stomping a guard into unconsciousness.

Then again, look at him. He could endorse a check with his throat.

Molly checked the guard, made sure he’d gone bye-bye, and then turned her attention to Ethan.

My God, she was here to rescue him. Who would have thought.

He tried to let his eyes do the talking: Look, Molly. You see the pen. You probably know my deal. So you’ll need to kick-start the conversation.

Ethan had once sat next to Molly at an impromptu lunch; David had discovered this new Indian place down Twentieth Street and dragged whoever he could to try plates of biryani and seafood korma and chicken tandoori. Ethan had made exactly three attempts to initiate a conversation with Molly, and all three were about as welcome as the seafood korma was to Ethan’s lower intestinal tract. (Sue him; he had a sensitive stomach.) Molly just wasn’t about talking.

Apparently, she was all about flipping down concrete staircases and knocking out security guards.

“We’ve had a security breach upstairs. You were locked out when it began; David is dead. He placed me in charge before he died.”

David? Dead?

But wait. Amy was second in line.

Ethan put his hand on Molly’s forearm. He needed to find a way to ask about Amy.

It was as if Molly could read his mind. “Normally, Amy Felton would be in charge, but she’s the one who killed David. Right now, she’s missing.”

No, no. That just wasn’t possible. Amy? Killing David?

“The entire floor is on lockdown, but when I realized you were missing, I made it past the sarin bomb—which I believe was planted by Amy Felton to keep us trapped—and made my way down to you.”

Amy? A traitor?

No. No way.

I was just out with her last night, drinking French martinis, doing our usual dance of sexual frustration. I would have seen it in her eyes.

Ethan was suddenly bursting with questions. It was maddening that he couldn’t articulate a single one of them.

He needed to take Molly to a quiet room, away from building security, grab a legal pad and a pen—one with actual ink in it, unlike the one sticking out of his throat—and grill her. Gather the facts before acting. One thing was clear, though. They needed to operate privately. No outside interference.

The world was crashing down around the company, and if Amy was out of commission, he had to take the reins.

“Building security must not be involved,” Molly said, as if reading his mind. “David was explicit about that.”

On cue, there was a short and sharp rapping sound. Coming from the door at the top of the staircase. The entrance to the sixteenth floor.

Somebody knocking.

Building security, getting involved.

Vincent should have just opened the door right away, but the fear was back big-time. C’mon, Vincent—your goddamned partner is behind that door, guarding some loser who broke a window and tried to stab himself in the neck. Do your job and relieve him. Relieve him now.

But Vincent was still worried about the ape.

That ape was going to follow him around the rest of his days. Cage the ape. Do your job.