until finally the body just couldn’t hold itself together enough to fight.
Bryn had no idea if the brain was conscious through all that, or if, mercifully, awareness was the first thing that was burned away. She hoped so.
“How many files?” she asked.
Pansy couldn’t tear herself away from the still image on the screen for a few long seconds, and then she minimized the window and checked. Another soft
“At least three of the Revived have been murdered,” Bryn said. “By fire.”
Chapter 9
Bryn was shaking as she got back in her car, with an unencrypted copy of the thumb drive tucked in her purse.…She felt cold, icy cold, even though the air was still warm and moist. As she drove toward Davis Funeral Home, she couldn’t seem to get warm even with the heater blasting on full. Her skin felt cool, pallid, and damp.
But she couldn’t help the feeling that it wasn’t just the idea of the death of those three people.…It was more. It was something shifting inside her, tectonic plates moving, friction building energy that had to release somewhere, somehow.
Bad things. Very bad things. Pharmadene employees were disappearing.
She knew where three of them had ended up.
Her nerves seemed all on edge now, the bright edges of things as sharp as blades. She had to fight not to flinch when someone blew a car horn at a light; she had an unreasoning, trembling impulse to get out, find whoever had done it, and beat him—or her—to a bloody pulp.
A sudden, tuneless noise startled her into hitting the brakes with a screech, almost causing the car behind to rear-end her. It was her phone. Had it always been that loud? That annoying?
“What?” she snapped as she hit the hands-free call button on the steering wheel. “What is it?”
“Bryn? It’s me.” Patrick. She sucked in a deep breath and tried to slow down her racing heartbeat. “I just wanted to be sure you’re okay.”
“Oh. I’m—I’m fine,” she said. She wasn’t, and she was starting to realize that, but she didn’t want to let Patrick know. “On my way to the office.”
“Did Manny help?”
“Not really, but at least he didn’t shoot me. Pansy did the work.”
“You got the files decrypted. And…?”
“We can talk later,” she said. She really didn’t have the stomach for talking about this, not now. “I’ve got to go, Patrick.” She hung up on him without waiting for another word. She knew he could sense how off-balance she was just now, and she didn’t want his sympathy, or his concern. She wanted to fight back to the place she’d been when she’d left the estate: strong. Energized. Ready.
Three dead. Three. And one she knew, had laughed and talked with. She felt responsible for him, somehow; he’d come to her for help in adjusting to his new unlife, and she’d let him drift away into the hands of his killers.
A horn blasted behind her, and she realized that she’d been sitting at a green light, staring blankly at it for long seconds. She hit the gas and drove too fast the rest of the way to the funeral home, parked crookedly, and had to take a moment to suck in deep, ragged breaths before she got out and went in.
The subdued smell of flowers hit her first; it was more pronounced today because someone had sent those damned daylilies for the main viewing room, and the sweet, musty scent made her throat tighten. The waiting room was empty for the moment, and Lucy looked up from her chair behind the reception desk to smile. “Well, hello, Bryn. I thought you were taking the day.”
“Sorry I’m late. My appointment ran long this morning. Anything I should be on top of?” This was good. Lucy was calm, professional, unemotional; dealing with her was always steadying.
“You had a couple of vendor calls. I put it all in the folder on your desk.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Joe’s out with the Chen burial. Ms. Kleiman is meeting with some new clients down the hall.”
Bryn smiled, just a little. “Isn’t she Gertie yet?”
“Not yet,” Lucy said. “That woman’s going to be Ms. Kleiman until she gets that stick out of her butt.” Gertie Kleiman was an older woman, newly hired, and she didn’t seem to have an informal bone in her body—which was fine most of the time, especially since Lucy steered the elderly clients her direction by design. “And I can’t be on any first-name basis with a woman who calls me ‘that colored girl up front.’”
“She said that?”
“On the phone. Not to me. I just heard it.”
Bryn sighed. “I’ll talk to her. Sorry, Lucy.”
“Not the first time I’ve run into it.” Lucy shrugged. “Oh, and William’s working downstairs. He’s pretty busy.” William was their new, very competent embalmer; all of them could, and did, pitch in, but William had a nearly flawless touch. He was the best Bryn had ever seen, with the exception of Riley Block.
“New intakes?”
Lucy’s voice dropped lower, just in case anyone strolled in. “Married couple sent over from Scripps Mercy. Car accident. The son’s coming over this afternoon; I had Mr. Fideli down for him, but if you want to take it…?”
“Yes, that’s fine. I’ll meet him. What time?”
“Four.”
“Thanks, Lucy. You’re amazing. I’m sorry about Kleiman. Tell her I want to see her before my four o’clock.”
“Okay. But don’t be too tough on her. I just want her to call me by my name, not my skin color,” Lucy said. The phone rang, but this time it didn’t startle Bryn quite so much; the funeral home’s lines were all muted to the lowest possible setting and the most soothing ringtone choice. Lucy turned to attend to that, and Bryn walked down the hall. She’d been hoping today would be a routine kind of thing, but already she had sensitivity training to deal with. The four o’clock would be raw and emotional, and that probably hadn’t been a good decision, either, but she needed to work.
Work kept her from thinking too much about herself.
The folder on her desk had a summary sheet on the top: schedule for the rest of the week, including a conference call tomorrow morning; phone messages from Bates Casket and one of the embalming suppliers; contracts to be signed. Bryn took care of those first and put them in her out-box, followed up on phone messages, and then kept herself busy searching her laptop for e-mails to and from Jason Drake, formerly of Pharmadene, formerly Revived. The last one she had was dated over a month ago, and in contrast to the warmer tone of previous e-mails, that one was a simple notice that he wouldn’t be able to attend her meetings anymore and was seeking counseling services inside the company. On reflection, it didn’t sound like him…but then, she could have been (and probably was) coloring things with her own interpretation, given what she’d discovered.
Bryn toyed with a pen, thinking, and suddenly realized something important. Jason was on Pharmadene shots. That meant he had to check in daily to get them. Unlike her own shots, remanufactured by Manny Glickman, the Pharmadene doses were administered in syringes that were fingerprint-locked to the technicians authorized to give them. Jason couldn’t have stockpiled any and self-injected.
More than that, the Pharmadene shots were regulated so strictly that if Jason hadn’t shown up for a shot, it would have triggered a red flag at the FBI.
Riley. Riley Block must have known about this—or, at least, known three of her Pharmadene addicts were missing. Son of a bitch. Zaragosa had been right not to trust her. She hadn’t mentioned it, hadn’t asked for help about it. Hadn’t given Bryn any indication at all there was something going on out of the ordinary—it had taken the Pharmadene CEO to do that.
