Severance Package

“Do you mind?” David asked.

“What kind?” Jamie heard himself saying.

“Anything but a Chessman.”

Of course.

Chessmen were for losers.

The conference table was frozen in time. Napkins with cookies stacked on top. Moisture-beaded bottles of champagne. Notebooks. Pens, some uncapped. Molly’s white cardboard bakery box—the one that had been holding doughnuts and a gun. Snipped string.

Jamie fished a Milano from the bag and carried it over to David, whose eyes were closed. Jamie knelt down next to him. His head swam with options. He had to proceed carefully.

If you give a boss a cookie …

“I have your cookie,” he said.

David’s eye fluttered open. “Thanks.”

“You want it?”

Jamie dangled the cookie above David’s open mouth. His boss looked, somewhat absurdly, like a baby bird, waiting to be fed a worm.

“Yes.”

“Well, not yet.”

David’s eyes narrowed. “Really.”

“First you’re going to tell me how to disable the lockdown so I can get off this floor.”

David smirked. “And then I get the cookie?”

“Then you get the cookie.”

Jamie felt like he was engaged in a real estate deal with a toddler. Maybe he could throw in a sippy cup, sweeten the offer.

“I like you, Jamie, I really do. You’re unlike anybody else in this office. I didn’t want you to come in this morning, but my bosses insisted. Said you had to go. I couldn’t understand it.”

“Then help me.”

“I still don’t understand it.”

“If I can get out, I can call an ambulance for you. You don’t have to die.”

“Especially with you having a newborn baby at home.”

“Goddamn it!” Jamie cried. “Tell me how to get off this floor!”

“I wish I could. But the answer is no. You’re going to die up here, just like the rest of us.”

Jamie felt his blood burn. He was overcome with the urge to smash his fists into David’s face, force him to cough up the secret code or pass key or the friggin’ Omega Project—anything to help him leave this building. Now.

Instead, he tightened his fist and pulverized the Milano. The crumbs rained down on David’s face. Some of the crumbs landed in the streaks of blood and hung there.

Jamie opened his hand. It was smeared with chocolate from the center of the cookie.

Here he was, trapped on a floor, faced with certain death, and his hands were smeared with blood and chocolate.

Oh, was life absurd.

“That was mean,” David said, then flicked his tongue out and caught a cookie crumb that had landed near the corner of his mouth. “Mmmm.”

Jamie stood up and walked back to the conference table. The champagne bottles were still lined up, beaded with moisture. Maybe he should force-feed David a mimosa. Shut him up permanently.

Uh-uh.

Everything else had gone to hell.

But he was no killer.

Besides, Nichole had kept David alive for a good reason: information. If there was the slightest chance they could beat an escape plan out of him, it would be suicide to throw it away.

But he couldn’t stay in here with him any longer. Because he would kill him.

“You’re not going to leave this floor alive.”

“I’ll find a way,” Jamie said.

“No, you won’t,” David said. “Even if you could, trust me, you don’t want to leave. You think you can just walk away from something like this? You think there aren’t people out there who want to make sure you’re dead? Along with your family?”

“It would be the last thing you’d ever do.”

“Tough talk from a tough guy,” David said. “No man wants to ever admit he’s powerless to protect his family.”

“Oh, suck it.”

“Whip it out, faggot.”

Jamie took the gun from his waistband and aimed it at David’s face.

“Oh, oh, please. Do it. Pull the trigger. Show me how tough you are.”

Nichole had said there were only two bullets left in this gun. But at this range, it would be a sure shot.

“Pretty please.”

This is what he wants, Jamie thought. Just like the cookie. The freak wants to die here on this floor. Why are you so eager to please him? He’s not your boss anymore. You don’t have to listen to him.

“With sugar on top.”

Jamie threw the gun on the floor, and headed for the conference room doors.

“Hey.”

David was clearly not happy. But Jamie didn’t care. He was almost at the doors.

“Hey! Come back here!”

Through the doors.

“I’m going to put the word out!” David screamed. “I’m going to make sure they rape your wife nice and good! They’ll skin your son alive! Right in front of her!”

Out the doors.

“They’ll like doing it! They live for this!”

The wall collapsed far easier than Amy would have imagined. The space around them swirled with atomized plaster dust. It was hard to tell the ceiling from the floor. But Amy trusted her hands. Which were wrapped around Molly’s neck and slowly, steadily crushing the air out of her. Her hands were the only thing that mattered now. Her strong hands. They had to be strong for Ethan.

The hallway to the conference room was long. Ridiculously long on elbows and knees and smelling your own cooked flesh. Nichole might as well have been crawling to Harrisburg.

But she just needed to make it to David.

And she would.

If she endured the searing agony of the electric range to stop the bleeding, she could endure the rest of this.

She longed for David in the most physical way possible.

Jamie tried the elevator button, simply because he had to, because wouldn’t it be hilarious if all this time David had been lying about the bypass?

He hadn’t been lying.

He pressed the button again, mashing his thumb into the plastic key as if he could override the bypass by sheer strength.

Damn it!

The fire tower doors were the only other option. He walked to the one closest to their offices, and was surprised to see a hook and wire hanging from the door handle. Had someone already opened this door and