Severance Package

dismantled the nerve gas bomb?

Did he want to take that chance?

Only now, lying on the carpet and being strangled to death, did Ania realize her miscalculation. She’d thought the sight of Ethan’s corpse would incapacitate Amy. But it had the opposite effect. It had energized her. For the first time since childhood, Ania thought she might actually die.

Her left hand, attached to her left arm and damaged shoulder, was completely sapped of strength. Her right hand alone was not powerful enough to overcome the concrete grip of Amy’s hands. The awful press of Amy’s thumbs into her trachea. The tips of Amy’s manicured nails hooked into the back of Ania’s neck, as if probing for the place where the brain stem met spinal cord.

Her light-headedness was real now. Reality was being washed away in waves of gray. Not the plaster dust. Ania saw the gray when she closed her eyes.

Ania held her breath and squeezed Amy’s wrists with her one good hand. It wasn’t much of a defense.

This was not something she had anticipated.

How was Amy doing this?

By thinking of her true love.

It was something out of fairy tales, and Ania loathed fairy tales—at least the few she’d been allowed to read. But perhaps there was true magic in thinking about your true love.

So she thought of Jamie.

Jamie put his hand on the gleaming silver door handle. If he pushed it down, maybe he’d hear the click of the bomb in time. He could jump out of the way, find another way.

But there are no other ways, are there, Jamie?

Andrea, if you can hear me, know that your dumb husband tried the best he could, and this was the only way he could think of to make it back home to you….

On the floor, David heard a noise.

He couldn’t turn his head to see, but knew the sound well enough. The swishing of the conference room doors. Ah, Jamie was back. He must have seen the futility of his escape. Now was back to kill his boss.

Thank Christ.

“You left your gun here,” David said.

“I know,” said a voice.

It wasn’t Jamie.

But David, from his supine position on the floor, couldn’t see anybody. Was he now hearing things? Wouldn’t surprise him. He had been shot in the head and was completely starving. Nothing to eat all morning but the crumb of a Milano. Cruel tease that was.

“Hello, David,” said the voice.

A female voice.

Nichole.

He turned his head, and it hurt. But he could see her now. Crawling toward him, with red paint covering her hands. David couldn’t even see her hands, there was so much red paint. Why was she nudging the gun with her face? Pushing it toward him. Nosing it so that the barrel was pointed at him? Why didn’t she pick the goddamned thing up and get it over with already?

He just wanted to finish his mission and go home.

When Ania was Molly, she thought herself immune to America. And she was. Except for Jamie. He listened. He truly listened. He didn’t see her as a disposable part of a larger machine. He didn’t see her as a life support system for a pussy and a pair of tits—not that she showed them at work. For some reason Jamie put her at ease so much that she had to be careful not to slip into Russian. Jamie felt that much like home.

She wanted to touch him, just hold his hand, ever since the moment she met him.

The only distraction this morning was the thought of Jamie, and the opportunity to hold his hand, even if it meant giving him pain.

The pain would teach him, and serve as a reminder to her, as well.

Everything beautiful can be destroyed.

She was thinking of Jamie, but no surge of adrenaline followed. Only a strange melancholy.

She could be strangled to death here, and Jamie might not even know or care.

Jamie.

With his mangled fingers.

There she found the answer, and knew it was time to simply let go.

Jamie pushed down on the door handle.

For a moment, there was nothing.

No telltale click.

Or hiss.

Or beep.

He pushed the door open a few more inches.

Nichole was straddling him now, and David saw that it wasn’t paint on her arms at all. She had bloody stumps where her hands should have been. Okay, there was one hand, kind of just hanging there. Her skin smelled like Chinese food. The sickeningly sweet aroma distracted him from the fact that Nichole wasn’t wearing a shirt, and that her pussy was pressed up against his chest. Clothes separated their flesh—and there were those mangled hands—but still, she aroused him. David never thought he’d experience this kind of intimacy with Nichole, who’d been out to destroy him ever since she’d started working for him. Which was a shame. He’d always found her deliciously screwable.

“You have one chance,” she said, a tiny bead of blood hanging from one corner of her mouth. “Tell me how to get off this floor.”

“I could so eat you out right now,” David said.

Nichole’s eyes widened, and then she leaned forward. For a moment there, David thought she was going to give him a little kiss. Right there on his forehead.

But she was reaching too far up and behind.

Nichole pressed her elbow against the grip of the gun that she had positioned next to David’s head. She stuck out her tongue.

I quit, she thought, and thrust her tongue hard against the trigger.

David Murphy died not knowing his mission had been accomplished.

He was still thinking about what Nichole’s pussy would look like. He was thinking well-trimmed, but a little loose. Used. He’d heard she’d been messing around with the mail guys for years. Which she had been. He’d watched some of it. Got off on it.

David wore a waterproof watch he never removed, even during sex or masturbation. Lovers would tease him about it. What, are you going to time me?

He had worn it ever since he first rented the thirty-sixth floor of 1919 Market Street, and installed detonating devices on the thirtieth floor. And installed the trigger in his wristwatch.

The watch was one of those that monitored your pulse. Constantly, quietly, efficiently.

But it wasn’t exactly one of those kinds of watches. He’d had it modified so that it had room for the trigger. If his pulse stopped, a signal would travel to the detonating devices six floors below. If David Murphy was to go, everything was to go.