Severance Package

DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI

SEVERANCE

PACKAGE

ILLUSTRATIONS BY

DENNIS CALERO

TO JAMES ROACH,

WHO TAUGHT THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME

WAKE-UP CALL

Pleasure doing business with you.

—ANONYMOUS

His name was Paul Lewis …

… and he didn’t know he had seven minutes to live.

When he opened his eyes, his wife was already in the shower. Their bedroom shared a wall with their bathroom. He could hear the water pelt the tile full-blast. Paul thought about her in there. Naked. Soapy. Suds gliding over her nipples. Maybe he should step into the shower, surprise her. He hadn’t brushed his teeth, but that was fine. They wouldn’t have to kiss.

Then he remembered Molly’s morning meeting. He glanced at the clock. 7:15. She had to be in early. So much for a reckless Saturday morning.

Paul sat up and ran his tongue around his mouth. Dry and pasty. He needed a Diet Coke, stat.

The central air had been running all night, so the living room was dark and cool. On top of the entertainment center sat the two DVDs they’d rented last night: two ultraviolent Bruce Willis thrillers. Surprisingly, they had been Molly’s idea. She usually didn’t like action movies. “But I have a crush on Bruce Willis,” she’d said sweetly. “Oh you do, do you?” Paul replied, smiling. “What’s he got that I don’t?” His wife ran her fingernails down his chest and said, “A broken nose.” That was the end of the DVD viewing for the evening, with about thirty minutes left to go on the first movie.

There were two boxes on the dining room table. One, Paul knew, was for Molly’s boss. What, the man couldn’t pick up his own mail? The second box was white cardboard and tied with string. Probably full of vanilla muffins or chocolate-filled cannoli, picked up from Reading Terminal Market on her way home last night. Molly was way too kind to those stuck-up jerks at the office, but Paul would never tell her different. That’s just who Molly was.

Paul turned the corner and walked into the kitchen. For a second, he was worried that he’d left the Chinese food containers on the counter, and their leftover fried rice and lo mein and Seven Stars Around the Moon had spoiled. But Molly had taken care of it. The white-and-red containers were neatly stacked on the fridge shelves, right below the row of Diet Cokes—he’d been on regular Coke until Molly had pointed out how much sugar he was drinking every morning—and above a white Tupperware container with a blue lid and yellow note taped to it:FOR LUNCH ONLY!!! LOVE, MOLLY.

Oh, baby.

Paul lifted the edge of the lid, and the sweet aroma hit him in an instant. Molly’s potato salad. His favorite.

She’s made him potato salad, just for today.

God, he loved his wife.

Paul had grown up in a large Polish family—before it was Lewis, it was Lewinski, and boy was Paul glad they changed that name fifty years ago—so he ate the requisite Polish foods. His grandmother Stell was famous for a decidedly non-Polish dish: potato salad, which had accompanied every holiday meal since Paul was a baby. But Grandma Stell died when Paul was thirteen, and since then, nobody could replicate the potato salad. Not Paul’s mother, or her sisters, or any second or third cousins. A few months after they started dating, Paul confided in Molly how much he missed Grandma Stell’s potato salad. She said little, just smiled at him and listened, which is what she usually did. But inside, she had been thinking. And in the weeks that followed, Molly Finnerty—later to become Molly Lewis—did some research.

The following Easter, Molly presented her fiancé with a Tupperware container. Inside was a potato salad that defied imagination. It tasted just like Grandma Stell’s, down to the sweetness of the mayonnaise and the sideways cut of the celery. This potato salad was a surprise hit among the Lewis family. Molly was cemented into their hearts, now and forever more.

Today she’d made it for him, apropos of nothing.

Paul reread the admonishment, FOR LUNCH ONLY!!! and smiled. Molly was grossed out whenever she woke up Christmas or Easter morning and caught her husband with a tablespoon inside the Tupperware container hours before company was due to arrive.

Ah, but today isn’t a holiday, Paul thought. No company coming.

He fished a tablespoon out of the drawer behind him, then helped himself to a mouthful of the most delicious food known to man. The moment the special mayonnaise blend touched his taste buds, a narcotic-like rush flooded his bloodstream. It was a taste that reminded him how lucky he had it, being married to a woman like Molly.

A moment later, Paul started choking.

It felt like an impossibly large chunk of potato had lodged in his throat. Paul thought he could just cough once and everything would be okay, but it was weird—he was unable to draw any air. Panic replaced that warm-and-fuzzy potato salad feeling. He couldn’t breathe or talk or yell. Paul’s mouth flopped open, and half-chewed potato chunks tumbled out. What was going on? He hadn’t even swallowed the first bite.

His knees slammed against the linoleum.

His hands flew to his throat.

Upstairs, Molly Lewis was finishing up in the shower. The warm water felt good on her back. Just one more strip of flesh to shave on her leg, then a rinse, and the shower would be over. She wondered if Paul was still sleeping.

Paul’s legs kicked out wildly, as if he were running on an invisible treadmill knocked on its side. His trembling fingers scratched at the floor. No. This can’t be it. Not this incredibly stupid way to die. Not Molly’s potato salad.

Molly.

Molly could save him.

Up.

Must stand up.

Reach the top of the stove, grab the silver teakettle, and start banging. Something to get her attention.

Up.

Gray spots spun wildly in Paul’s vision. His palm adhered to the linoleum, and it was enough to pull him forward a few inches. Then his other palm, already damp with sweat. It slipped. Paul’s nose slammed into the floor. Pain exploded across his face. He would have screamed if he could.

He had only one thought now:

Kettle.

Reach the kettle.

He’d given the kettle to Molly for Christmas two years ago. She loved tea and hot cocoa. He’d found it at a Kitchen Kapers downtown. It was her favorite store.

Up.

Molly turned off the hot water first, then the cold about two seconds later, relishing the blast of icy water at the end. Nothing felt better in August. She then turned the knob that would drain the water from the shower pipes into the tub. The excess splashed her feet.

She opened the curtain and reached around the wall for her towel. As her hand grasped the terry cloth, she thought she heard something.

Something … clanging?

Paul slammed the teakettle on top of the stove one more time … but that was it. He had been deprived of oxygen far too long. His muscles were starving. They required immediate and constant gratification—oxygen all the time. Greedy bastards.

After he fell, and rolled toward the sink, Paul tried pounding his fist into his upper chest, but it was a futile gesture. He didn’t have the strength left.

A potato.

A little wedge of potato had caused his world to crash down around him.

Oh, Molly, he thought. Forgive me. Your life, changed forever because I was stupid enough to spoon some potato salad into my mouth on a Saturday morning. Your sweet potato salad, a mayonnaise-soaked symbol of all the kind things you’ve done for me over the years.

My sweet, sweet Molly.

The kitchen faded away.

The kitchen they’d redone a year ago, ripping out the old metal cabinets and replacing them with fresh-smelling sandalwood maple.

She’d picked them out. She liked the color.

Oh, Molly …

Molly?

Was that Molly in the doorway now, her beautiful red hair dripping wet, a white terry cloth towel wrapped around her body?

God, she was no hallucination. She was really standing there. Looking down at him, strapping jewelry to her wrists. Thick silver bracelets. Paul couldn’t remember buying them for her. Where did they come from?

Wait.

Why wasn’t she trying to save him?

Couldn’t she see him, choking, trembling, jolting, scratching, pleading, fading?

But Molly simply stared, with the strangest look on her face. That look would be the last thing Paul Lewis would ever see, and if there were an afterlife, it would be an image that would haunt him, even if his memories of earthly life were to be erased. Molly’s face would still be there. Perplexing him. Who was this woman? Why did she make his soul ache?

So it was probably merciful that Paul didn’t hear what his wife said as she looked down upon his writhing, dying body, “Well, this is ahead of schedule.”

ARRIVALS

Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.

—PETER DRUCKER

His name was Jamie DeBroux …

… and he had been up most of the night, tag-teaming with Andrea, marching back and forth into the tiny bedroom at the back of their apartment.

What hurt the most, after being awake so many hours, were his eyes. Jamie wore daily-wear contacts, but lately he hadn’t bothered to take them out at night. Without them he was practically blind, and he was too new a father to risk changing a diaper or preparing a bottle of Similac with impaired vision. Bad enough they had to work in the dark, so Chase could learn the difference between night and day.

Sunlight.

Darkness.

Sunlight this morning, which was turning out to be a blazingly hot Saturday in August. Their window air-conditioning unit was no match for it, and Jamie had to get dressed and head into the office. His eyes swam with tears.

Life with the baby was now:

Day

Night

Day

Night

Melting into each other.

Nobody told you that parenthood was like doing hallucinogenics. That you watched the life you knew melt away into a gray fuzz. Or if they did, you didn’t believe them.

Jamie knew he shouldn’t complain. Not after having a month off for paternity leave.

Still, it was strange to be going back on a Saturday morning, to a managers’ meeting led by his boss, David Murphy. Last time he’d seen his boss was late June, at Jamie’s awkward baby shower in the office. Nobody had brought gifts. Just money—ones and fives—stuffed into a card. David had provided an array of cold cuts and Pepperidge Farm cookies, which were the boss’s favorite. Stuart ran to the soda machines for Cokes and Diet Cokes. Jamie gave him a few singles from the card to pay for them.

Being away from that place had been nice.

Very nice.

And now this “managers’ meeting.” Jamie had no idea what it could be about. He’d been gone for a month.

Never mind that Jamie wasn’t a manager.

There was nothing to do about it now, though. What could he do? Change jobs and risk losing medical insurance for three months? Andrea had left her job in May, and with it went the other benefits package.

Besides, David wasn’t so bad to work for. It was everybody else who drove him up the wall.

The problem wasn’t hard to figure out. Jamie’s job was “media relations director,” which meant he had to explain to the rest of the world—or more specifically, certain trade publications—what Murphy, Knox & Associates did. Thing was, not even Jamie was entirely clear on what their company did. Not without it making his head hurt.

Everyone else, who did the real work of the company, formed a closed little society. They put up walls that were difficult, if not impossible, to breach. They were the driving force of the company. They were the Clique.

He was the staff word nerd.

Murphy, Knox & Associates was listed with Dun & Bradstreet as a “financial services office” that claimed annual sales of $516.6 million. The press releases Jamie wrote often dealt with new financial packages. The information would come straight from Amy Felton—sometimes Nichole Wise. Rarely did it come from David, though every press release had to pass through his office. Jamie would drop a hard copy into the black plastic bin on Molly’s desk. A few hours later, the hard copy would be slid under Jamie’s door. Sometimes, David didn’t change a thing. Other times, David would rework Jamie’s prose into an ungrammatical, stilted mess.

Jamie tried to talk him out of it—taking the liberty of rewriting David’s rewrite, and presenting it to him with a memo explaining why he’d made certain changes.

He did that exactly once.

“Repeat after me,” David had said.

Jamie smiled.

“I’m not joking. Repeat after me.”

“Oh,” Jamie said. “Um, repeat after you.”

“I will not.”

“I will not.” God, this was humiliating.

“Rewrite David Murphy’s work.”

“Rewrite your work.”

“David Murphy’s work.”

“Oh. David Murphy’s work.”

So yeah—David could be a tool every once in a while. But that was nothing compared with how the other Murphy, Knox employees treated him on a daily basis. It wasn’t a lack of respect; that would imply there had been respect to begin with. To the Clique, Jamie was just the word nerd.

To be dismissed completely, unless you needed a press release.

Worst of all: Jamie could understand. At his former job, a reporting gig at a small daily in New Mexico, the editors and reporters were tight. They pretty much ignored the newspaper’s controller—the bean-counting cyborg. What, invite him out for a beer after work? That would be like inviting Bin Laden home for turkey and cranberry sauce.

And now Jamie was the cyborg. The press release–writing Bin Laden. No wonder he wasn’t exactly rushing back to the office this morning.

Somehow he pulled it together. The memory of Chase, sleeping, reminded him of why.

The air-conditioning quickly cooled the interior of Jamie’s Subaru Forester. The vehicle was newly equipped with a Graco baby seat in the back. The hospital wouldn’t let them leave without one; both of them had forgotten about it. He’d had to run to a Toys “R” Us in Port Richmond, then spent the better part of a humid July night trying to figure out how to strap the thing in.

He looked at Chase’s seat in the rearview. Wondered if he was up yet.

Jamie reached into the front pocket of his leather bag. Grabbed his cell, flipped it open. Held down the 2 key. Their home number popped up.

Beep.

No service.

What?

Jamie tried it again, then looked for the bars. Nothing. In its place, the image of a telephone receiver with a red hash mark across it.

No service.

No service here—a few minutes from the heart of downtown Philadelphia?

Maybe David had canceled the free office cell phone perk since he’d left. But no, that couldn’t be right. Jamie had used the phone yesterday, calling Andrea from CVS, asking if he had the right package of diapers for Chase.

Jamie pressed the button again. Still nothing. He’d have to call Andrea from work.

His name was Stuart McCrane …

… and his Ford Focus was halfway up the white concrete ramp before he saw the sign. He hit the brakes and squinted his eyes to make sure he was seeing right. The Focus idled. It didn’t like to idle, especially on such a steep incline. Stuart had to rev it to keep it in place.

Weekend rate: $26.50.

Unbelievable.

The Saturday-morning sun blazed off 1919 Market, a thirty-seven-story box of a building. You couldn’t call it a skyscraper, not with Liberty One and Two just two blocks down the street. This was where Stuart reported for work, Monday through Fridays. He had no reason to know the garage rates. He almost never drove. The regional rails carried him from his rented house in Bala Cynwyd to Suburban Station, no problem, all for just a few bucks. But this was a Saturday. Trains ran much slower. And without much traffic downtown, it was faster to drive. Apparently, it was more expensive, too.

You’d think a cushy government job would come with free parking.

Then again, you’d think that a cushy government job wouldn’t haul you in on a Saturday.

Hah.

But really, he had no idea why he was being dragged in on a weekend morning. Stuff he did—erasing bank accounts, leaving your average wannabe jihadist with a useless ATM card in one hand, his dick in the other—could be done anywhere, really. He could do it at friggin’ Starbucks. There was nothing more simple and yet nothing more satisfying. Maybe some guys got off on the idea of picking off towel-heads with a sniper rifle. Stuart loved doing it by tapping ENTER.

Guess he’d find out what this was about soon enough.

Stuart threw the Focus in reverse, gently lifted his foot off the brake. The car rolled back down the ramp. Another vehicle turned the corner sharply, ready to shoot up the ramp and, judging from its speed, over the Focus, if need be.

Brakes screamed. The Focus jolted to a stop, pressing Stuart back into his seat.

“Man,” he said.

He slapped the steering wheel, then looked into the rearview.

It was a Subaru Tribeca. With a woman behind the wheel.

Stuart crouched down into his seat, checked the rearview again. Squinted.

Oh.

Molly Lewis.

Stuart allowed the Focus to roll backwards. The Tribeca got the hint and reversed back down the foot of the ramp and backed onto Twentieth Street. Stuart steered the Focus until it was parallel with the Tribeca. Traffic was light this morning. It was only 8:45. Stuart rolled down his window. The Tribeca did the same, on the passenger side.

“Change your mind about work?”

“Hey, Molly. Yeah, I wish. I’m just not paying twenty-six fifty to park. I’ll find something on the street.”

“Then you’ve got to feed the meter.”

“Then I’ll feed the meter. I’m not paying twenty-six fifty.”

“David told me we’d be here until at least two o’clock.”

“What? I thought noon.”

“He e-mailed me this morning.”

“Man. What is this about anyway? I’ve got my laptop at home. I can do whatever he wants from my living room.”

“Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Stuart watched the Tribeca—fancy wheels for an assistant, he thought—shoot up the ramp. He continued up Twentieth, turned left on Arch, then Twenty-first, then Market down to Nineteenth. He drove past the green light at Chestnut, then hung a right on Sansom. There were no available spots on the 1900 block, or the next. Didn’t look like much farther down, either.

He flipped open the ashtray. One quarter, a few nickels, many pennies.

“Man.”

But then, movement. The red taillights of a Lexus. Pulling back. McCrane pressed his brakes. Slowed to a stop. Watched the Lexus maneuver out of the space.

Even better, it was a Monday-through-Friday loading space. Weekends, it was fair game.

“Yes,” Stuart said.

Her name was Molly Lewis …

… and she eased the Tribeca into a spot on an empty level in the 1919 Market Street Building’s garage. The nearest car was at least ten spots away. She turned off the engine, then opened the suitcase on the passenger seat. Inside, on top of a yellow legal pad, was David’s package.

Molly’s cell phone played the guitar riff from “Boys Don’t Cry.” She put in the earpiece and pressed ANSWER. A voice spoke to her.

She said: “Yes, I remembered.”

And a few seconds later: “I know. I followed the protocols.”

The packages had arrived last night. Paul had asked what she’d ordered now—smiling as he said it—and Molly truthfully replied that it was something for David. She had carried them to the glassed-in patio and sat down on a white metal garden chair. Then she carefully clipped away the masking tape with a pair of blue-handled scissors and then opened the flaps of the first box.

She had put the contents—David’s delivery—into her own briefcase, then gone back to order dinner from the gourmet Chinese place a few blocks away. Paul hated calling it in, and always complained until Molly did it.

Then she went back out to the patio to open the second box. She was staring at the contents now:

A Beretta .22 Neo.

Ammo—a box of fifty, target practice, 29 gr.

“I am,” she said now. “See you soon.”

Molly opened a white cardboard box, dumped most of the doughnuts and cannoli out onto the concrete floor of the parking garage. Let the pigeons enjoy them. She quickly assembled and loaded the pistol, then nestled it between the two remaining doughnuts. Sugar jelly.

Paul used to love sugar jelly.

Her name was Roxanne Kurtwood …

… and they were driving toward downtown Philadelphia.

“We’re closing,” Roxanne said.

She’d been waiting all morning to say that.

“We’re not closing,” Nichole said. “Our kind of business doesn’t close. Not in this market.”

“Then why a Saturday meeting?”

“Whatever, but we’re not closing.”

Nichole and Roxanne had become fast friends three months ago, ever since Roxanne was promoted from her internship. Before that Nichole hadn’t said much to Roxanne, other than to chastise her for forgetting to return the shared key to the ladies’ room. The day the promotion memo made the rounds, though, Nichole sidled up to Roxanne’s cubicle, asked her to go to Marathon for lunch. Since then they’d had lunch together every day.

Roxanne appreciated the friendship, but it was also frustrating. Nichole was like most Philadelphians: cold and standoffish, right up until the moment they’re not.

Even after their friendship suddenly and miraculously bloomed, the office was so secretive. How many times had she walked into Nichole’s office, only to find her quickly hit a key sequence that blanked her screen and brought up a fake spreadsheet? Like Roxanne wasn’t supposed to notice?

“We’re not closing,” Nichole repeated, “but I saw the reports.”

“And?” Rox asked.

“Top line revenue is just awful. Even considering we budgeted under. It’s bad.”

“That bad?”

“Bad.”

“How bad?”

“Rox, you know I can’t tell you.”

“Nondisclosure.”

This was Nichole’s excuse for everything. I signed a nondisclosure. Sorry, Rox, it’s not you, it’s the nondisclosure. I’d tell you who I went home with last night after the Khyber, but you know … nondisclosure. And it wasn’t just Nichole. It was the whole office. The whole city, for that matter.

Roxanne kept her focus on the road. Tried to keep her left wheels the exact same distance from the median marker. Tried not to lose it.

“But I can tell you,” Nichole said. “Without getting into numbers.”

“And?”

“We’re at least 850,000 below projections.”

Roxanne’s Chevy HHR glided down the Schuylkill Expressway. Couldn’t do that any other day of the week, save Sunday. She looked out on the hills of Manayunk, and it looked like the neighborhood was roasting alive in its own haze.

Frustrated as she was, Roxanne was glad to be in one air-conditioned environment and headed to another. Her apartment in Bryn Mawr didn’t have air. After a night of drinking with Amy, Nichole, and Ethan, she gladly took Nichole up on the offer of her couch. She showered and changed at Nichole’s, and was thankful for the AC. Roxanne had grown up in Vermont, where the humidity wasn’t often a factor.

How did Philadelphians live like this all summer long? Maybe that was their problem.

Her name was Nichole Wise …

… and she hated lying to Roxanne, feeding her that crap about “top line revenue.” If Roxanne had paid closer attention to things around the office, she might have seen through it.

But Nichole couldn’t let that bother her. If this morning went as expected, she could be looking at a promotion.

Something big was going down.

Murphy wouldn’t have called this Saturday-morning meeting otherwise.

She wondered if she’d have the chance to deliver a verbal coup de grâce and relish the expression on his stupid face.

You? he’d say, all shocked.

Yeah, she’d say. Me.

Maybe—just maybe—her long nightmare assignment would be over.

And if that were to happen, she’d bring Roxanne back with her.

The United States of America needed bright young women like Roxanne Kurtwood.

Her name was Amy Felton …

… and she wished she didn’t need this job so bad.

But she did, and would continue to do so, especially if she kept making stupid moves like last night—grabbing the check at the Continental, saying it was no problem, she had it covered. Nice one, Felton. Another $119 on the AmEx that didn’t need to be there. Wasn’t even as if she drank very much. Two Cosmos, nursed over a four-hour stretch.

But Nichole and Roxanne and Ethan … oh God, Ethan. He’d knocked back enough booze to curl a human liver.

Damn it, why did she pick up the check? Was she that eager to please people she didn’t particularly like?

Ethan not included.

Thing was, Amy knew she was screwed, because this was part of her job.

David had once told her: “You’ve got to be my public face. It’s not good for the boss to be palling around with his employees. But you can. You’re their upper management confidante. The one who has access to me, yet remains their friend. So keep them happy. Take them out for drinks.”

Sure, take them out for drinks. Pick up the check while you’re at it.

She wanted to ask: Why doesn’t the government pick up the check every now and again?

And this stuff about Amy being the “upper management confidante” was just an easy out for David. He didn’t like socializing with anyone below his rank. Amy was his second in command, and she hardly had any face time with him. It didn’t help that he’d been gone for sixteen days straight and didn’t tell her where. Covert government stuff. Blah, blah, blah. What David didn’t realize was that his impromptu vacations dealt serious blows to office morale. He’d returned this week, but the wisecracks and bitterness hadn’t gone away. Nobody liked the boss being away that long.

Especially in an office like this. Considering what they did.

And now this morning’s “managers’ meeting.” People were going to freak. Especially the people who hadn’t been invited.

David wouldn’t even tell her what it was about, other than it was a “new operation.”

As if what they did on a daily basis wasn’t important enough?

Just get through it, Felton.

On weekends—on scorching summer weekends, it seemed—the Market–Frankford El only ran every fifteen minutes. She made it to the platform to watch the air-conditioned cars of the 8:21 train pull away from the station. The sun was like a photographer’s flashbulb set on “stun.” No breeze to cool her down. Not even up here. Philadelphia was in the clutches of still another heat wave—seven straight days of hundred-plus temperatures. Such temperature spikes used to be unusual in the mid-Atlantic, but for the past four years, they’d become the norm.

At least she wasn’t hungover, which would have been intolerable in this heat.

She’d been afraid to drink too much.

Run the tab up too high.

His name was Ethan Goins …

… and his hangover wasn’t just a condition; it was a living creature, nestled within the meat of his brain, gnawing at the fat gray noodles, savoring them, and, as a cocktail, absorbing all available moisture from the rest of his body. The skin on his hands was so dry, you could fling him against a concrete wall, and—if Ethan’s palms happened to be facing out—he’d stick. His eyes needed to be plucked out of his sockets, dropped into a glass pitcher of ice water. Might hurt some, but he’d enjoy the soothing hissssss of hot versus cold.

Oh, Ethan knew better. Knew he had to report to David Murphy’s Big Bad Saturday-Morning Managers’ Meeting.

It was why he’d stayed up way too late last night, drinking those orange martinis with Amy.

Rebel Ethan Goins.

Stickin’ it to the Man, one French martini at a time.

They’d tasted like Tang. That was the problem. Sweet as a child’s breakfast drink. Now, as Ethan stuffed his throbbing, desiccated, burning, aching body inside an aluminum coffin manufactured by Honda, he knew he had only one chance.

McDonald’s drive-through.

Large Coke, plenty of ice, red-and-yellow pin-striped straw plunged down into the cup.

Egg McMuffin. With a slice of Canadian bacon wedged between the soft marble slab of egg and flour-flecked sides of a gently warmed English muffin.

Hash browns.

Three of them. In the little greasy paper bags. Spread across the passenger seat.

Where Amy Felton sat whenever they met to talk, unwind, stare at each other awkwardly … before he drove her home. Which was like returning a nun to her convent.

Sister Amy had been the architect of his misery this morning—Ms. “Oooh, let’s go out drinking after work.” Ethan never even heard of French martinis until Amy had pointed it out on the menu.

Yeah, she could deal with a greasy butt next time she sat in the car.

Come to think of it, maybe he’d buy four hash browns. Have one on hand, just in case. It was probably going to be a four–hash brown morning, all told.

The infusion of meat and caffeine and carbohydrates and protein was the only prayer he had of making it through this morning alive.

He just prayed that the morning meeting would be a brief one—a new assignment, a new bit of training. Whatever. His role at the office wasn’t central to their mission. He was just the protector. The dude who could be counted on to snap a neck if somebody tried to mess with the numbers geeks. So they could jabber on about whatever they wanted to this morning.

Just so long as he could make his way back home as soon as possible, crank up the central air, pull down the shades, crawl under a blanket, and suffer through the rest of his death in peace.

Ethan paid for his breakfast with a debit card, grabbed the bag, placed the Coke in the drink holder, fumbled with the paper around the straw, and drove away. By the next red light, the Egg McMuffin was unwrapped and headed to his mouth.

The third hash brown was history even before he reached the on-ramp to the Schuylkill Expressway.

By the time he reached the off-ramp to Vine Street, there was a rumbling in Ethan’s belly.

By the time he hit Market Street, there was more than rumbling. There was an escape plan forming.

By Twentieth Street, a full-on revolt was in the works.

Ethan, of course, should have known better: The McDonald’s breakfast hangover cure is a fleeting one. A salve to the brain and stomach for only a short while. It is a remedy on loan. The havoc it wreaks on your intestinal tract can be nearly as painful as the hangover itself. It is like pressing your palms to the beaches of heaven shortly before catching the jitney to hell.

Ethan needed a bathroom. Immediately.

The office. It was his only chance.

His name was David Murphy …

… and he was the boss.

David had been in the office since the night before. Drove in under the cover of darkness, parked on a different garage level. Not that anyone would notice. David had rented a different car a few days ago, switched out the plates twice.

Use misdirection, illusion, and deception.

As usual, he was taking things straight out of the Moscow Rules. Like:

Pick the time and the place for action.

He was going to miss the Moscow Rules. Where some men had a moral compass, David had this loose set of guidelines, developed by CIA operatives at the Moscow station inside the U.S. Embassy during the Cold War. They were good for tradecraft. They were also good for life, in general:

Never go against your gut.

Establish a distinctive and dynamic profile and pattern.

David wished he’d hired one last escort before he holed up here for the night. He could really use a blow job. It would help mellow him out.

But his final assignment beckoned.

Walking toward the parking garage elevator, David had carried two plastic bags, lined with sturdy brown paper bags, along with his black briefcase. That was all he needed.

He should also have hit some drive-through. He was ravenous, and it was going to be a busy night.

Maybe he could sneak out for something later.

Maybe even a warm mouth. Some tasty little piece of Fish-town skank.

As the Moscow Rules said:

Keep your options open.

Upstairs in his office, which was not quite as air-conditioned as he would have liked—the building cut back on the AC at night—David knelt in front of the mini-fridge. He unloaded the contents of his bags: three sixty-four-ounce containers of Tropicana Pure Premium Homestyle orange juice, four bottles of Veuve Clicquot. You always wanted more champagne to orange juice; nobody overloaded a mimosa with OJ.

The cookies were already here. He’d purchased them at CVS the day before. He had the urge to open a bag and take a few, but he resisted. He needed them for tomorrow.

Inside his oversized Kevlar-reinforced briefcase were the elevator codes and schematics to the phone system.

The customer service line at Verizon.

The twin packages, the assemblies, the triggers.

All set.

Wait.

Except for one thing: the fax transmission he had to destroy.

It was redundant, actually; David knew who was on that list. As if he could forget. Or miss a name.

Those names would be burned on his brain forever. However long “forever” would be.

Not long.

“Nothing fancy; just kill them.”

The last set of instructions he’d ever hear or obey.

David scanned the list one more time:

He had to kill them all.

MEETING

To succeed in life in today’s world, you must have the will and tenacity to finish the job.

—CHIN-NING CHU

The conference room table was loaded with cookies. Pepperidge Farm, every conceivable make and model: Milano, Chessmen, Bordeaux, Geneva, and Verona. David had encouraged everyone to go ahead, open the bags, help themselves. Also on the table were two towers of clear plastic cups, three cartons of Tropicana, and four bottles of champagne.

Jamie couldn’t read the labels on the bottles, but they looked French and expensive. The tops on two of the bottles had been popped and removed, but nobody had poured a glass yet. The cookies also remained untouched.

That is, until David reached forward and grabbed a Milano, then everybody decided having a cookie was a great idea.

Jamie had his eyes on the Chessmen, but held back. He wasn’t about to fight the Clique for a cookie. Let them pick over the bags. Chessmen were the least popular. He’d be able to grab a few when the feeding frenzy was over.

“Looks like everybody’s here …,” David said, scanning faces, then frowning. “Except Ethan. Anybody seen Ethan?”

“His bag’s at his desk, and his computer’s on,” said Molly, who’d taken her usual position: the right hand of the devil.

“Did he make it home last night?”

“He did,” Amy Felton said, and then winced, as if regretting having opened her mouth.

“Should I look for him?” Molly said.

David shook his head. There were droplets of moisture on his brow. “No, no. We can start without him.”

“Are you …”

“I am.”

Some boss/assistant drama going on there, Jamie decided.

He hated how David treated Molly.

She had been here only six months, and already working for David had utterly demoralized her. Jamie assumed that was because she was a genuine human being—not one of the Clique.

Out of all his coworkers, Molly was the only one he spent any significant time with. Jamie had once read a story in some magazine about “office spouses”—surrogate partners in the workplace with whom you shared your life. It wasn’t about infidelity. Jamie read that piece and decided that the closest thing he had to an office spouse was Molly. What made it easy was that Molly, like Jamie, was married. And they were united in their thinking that David Murphy was a serious tool.

“Tool?” Molly had asked, trying to fight a goofy smile that threatened to wash over her entire face.

“Yeah, tool,” Jamie had said. “Never heard that expression before?”

She giggled. “Not in Illinois I didn’t.”

“Stick with me, country girl,” Jamie said. “I’ll teach you all about the big bad city.”

Molly, come to think of it, was the one who’d organized the shower for Jamie. She was the only one who saw him as more than just the media relations guy.

The cookie grab ended. Jamie took the opportunity to snag three Chessmen. He stacked them on a square white paper napkin. The cookie on top: a pawn.

“First of all,” David said, “I want to thank everyone for coming up here on a Saturday morning. A hot Saturday morning in the middle of August. The time of year when nobody in their right mind stays in Philadelphia.”

Stuart chuckled. No one else did. Stuart was a brownnosing ass.

But David was right. Outside, the haze blanketed downtown Philadelphia, making it difficult to see any detail outside of a two-block radius.

David paused to snap a Milano in half with his teeth. He chewed slowly. Brushed crumbs from his place at the table. The man enjoyed taking his time almost as much as he enjoyed Pepperidge Farm cookies.

“I know this kind of meeting runs counter to protocol. But we’ve come up against a new challenge. I’ve been tasked with accepting that challenge, and this is why I’ve brought you all in this morning.”

Already, David was being his good ol’ obscure self. Protocol? Challenge? Did anyone really talk like that? Did anyone understand what the guy was talking about half the time?

Jamie eyed the Tropicana. He was thirsty. The Chessmen wouldn’t help that, and they’d probably only jack him up for a sugar crash this afternoon. He had promised Andrea he’d be home as early as possible and take over Chase duty.

“As of right now,” David said, “we’re on official lockdown.”

“What?”

“Oh, man.”

“I came in for this?”

“What’s going on, David?”

“Damn it.”

Jamie looked around the room. Lockdown? What the hell was “lockdown”?

“Beyond that,” David continued, “I’ve taken some additional measures. The elevators have been given a bypass code and will skip this floor for the next eight hours. No exceptions. Calling down to the front desk won’t work, either.”

Jamie didn’t hear the part about the front desk. He was fixated on the “next eight hours” bit. Eight hours? Trapped in here, with the Clique? He thought he’d be out of here by noon. Andrea was going to kill him.

“The phones,” David said, “have been disconnected—and not just in the computer room. You can’t plug anything back in, and have the phones back up or anything. The lines for this floor have been severed in the subbasement, right where it connects to the Verizon router. Which you can’t get to, because of the elevators.”

Stuart laughed. “So much for a smoke break.”

“No offense, David,” said Nichole, “but if I need a smoke, I’m marching down thirty-six flights of fire stairs, lockdown or no lockdown.”

“No you aren’t.”

Nichole raised an eyebrow. “You going to come between a woman and her Marlboros?”

David tented his fingers under his bony chin. He was smiling. “The fire towers won’t be any good to you.”

“Why?” Jamie heard himself ask. Not that he smoked.

“Because the doors have been rigged with sarin bombs.”

Six wadfuls of toilet paper and a vigorous hand-washing later, and a solemn vow to never ever so much as glance at a French martini—or an Egg McMuffin—ever again, Ethan left the bathroom on the thirty-seventh floor and headed for the north fire tower.

Checked his plastic-and-metal Nike sports watch. He was late. What else, right?

Better to be late than to squirm uncomfortably in that over-chilled corner office and have to rush out in the middle of a David Murphy brainstorm.(tm)

Sorry, boss. Got to do the hot squat. Ask Felton for details. She’ll tell you all about the effects of the French martini on the lower digestive tract.

In all the time Ethan had used the men’s room on the thirty-seventh floor, he’d never stopped to wonder about the companies up here. There was more than one, certainly—there was a directory at the end of the hall.

He didn’t stop to wonder now, either.

The air in the fire tower was mercifully warm. Ethan was tempted to take a seat on the cool concrete and savor the varying climes. Breath warm; sweat out the French martini. Meanwhile, let the soothing cool work its way up from the steps, into his buttocks, and beyond, healing the O-ring damage he’d sustained up on thirty-seven.

But the later his appearance on the thirty-sixth floor, the worse off he’d be.

Up, Ethan, up.

Go, Ethan, go.

Down the stairs. Hand on the doorknob. Get it over with.

The cardboard he’d used to prop open the door was still in place.

There were smiles at first, then confused frowns. Was this supposed to be an icebreaker? Jamie thought. Or was this David’s strange way of saying there was going to be a Saturday-morning fire drill?

“Stop it, David,” Amy said. “This isn’t funny.”

“Sarin, David?” Nichole asked. “Isn’t that a little harsh?”

Stuart tried to jump on the bandwagon. “Seriously. Couldn’t you have made do with a little burst of anthrax or something? Let the trespasser know you mean business, but live to tell the tale?”

“Biological agents like anthrax take too long,” David said. “And it’s not as easy to weaponize as you think.”

“Right,” Stuart said. “I always have trouble with that.”

“Plus, you could take a full blast, right in the face, and still figure you were okay for a while. Then you could make your way down the stairs and out to Market Street. I figured the immediate impact of sarin—burning eyes, nausea, constricted breathing, muscle weakness, the whole nine—would be the only thing that could keep you guys on this floor. I didn’t use an extravagant amount, but certainly enough to prevent you from reaching the bottom floor. Your throat would close before you made it down three or four flights.”

Amy’s nose wrinkled. “David.”

“Am I being offensive?”

“Hostile work environment,” Stuart said in a mock falsetto.

“Okay, we get it, it’s lockdown, we’re not going anywhere, ha ha ha,” Amy said. “So what’s the operational plan?”

“Whoa,” Nichole said. “Before we start talking about plans … David, you do know who’s here, right?” She motioned at Jamie.

Me? Jamie thought. Oh, you’ve got to love the Clique. God forbid I sit in on a meeting with any substance. Freaky as it was.

David tented his index fingers under his nose again. Raised his eyebrows slightly, then opened his mouth …

And there was a scream.

Not from David. From somewhere else. Beyond the walls of the conference room. Elsewhere on the floor.

Molly said, “God, Ethan …”

Ethan had glanced up at the weird thing above the door just before it happened. Thing was bone-white, cushy, the size of a fanny pack, and had a keypad and bright green digital display with the word READY. He turned around to look at the wall behind him—maybe there were more? His hand was still on the doorknob. As he turned, the door opened another inch.

He heard a clicking sound. A blast of mist hit him square in the face. His eyes burned immediately. It freaked him out.

So Ethan didn’t care how it might sound. He screamed.

He screamed like hell.

David and Molly exchanged glances, and David said, “We’re going to have to check that out.”

“Wait,” Amy said. “Was that Ethan?”

Jamie stood up. He looked outside, in the haze of the summer morning, scanning for planes. He couldn’t help it. He’d worked in a building in Lower Manhattan on 9/11, right at Broadway and Bleecker. His office window had faced the Twin Towers; he’d been taking a leak when the first plane hit. Jamie had walked back to his office and saw, with a start, that the upper floors of the North Tower were on fire. Someone screamed.

The scream, the blaze: forever entwined in his memory.

He’d tried calling Andrea, who worked uptown. No luck. Circuits were jammed. Jamie called his old college roommate in Virginia, who was able to get through to Andrea. While he was waiting to hear back, the second plane hit. He could hear the roar even blocks away.

The scream reminded him of that morning.

“Sit down, Jamie,” David said.

“I don’t think we’re safe up here,” Jamie said. Only later, as he thought back over the events of the morning, would he understand that he was momentarily gifted with some kind of precognitive blast. A small part of his brain knew what the other parts would slowly come to experience: We’re not safe up here.

“Sit down now,” David commanded.

Amazingly, Jamie found himself sitting back down. What had he planned on doing, anyway? Check the windows for burning skyscrapers?

David cleared his throat, staring at a bag of Geneva cookies that was closest to him.

“I’d hoped to have more time to explain, to set your souls at ease a bit, but I guess that’s not to be.”

He ran his fingers through his hair. Jamie could swear David’s hand was shaking.

“Truth is, I’ve failed you.”

Nobody said a word.

Nobody even reached for a cookie.

This is bad, Jamie thought. He wondered if his most recent résumé was stored on his computer at work, or at home. He just hoped there was some kind of severance package to see them through a few months of job hunting.

“Most of you know the truth about our company,” David said, “but for the two of you who don’t, I apologize for the shock you’re about to receive.”

Someone gasped. Jamie didn’t see who.

“We’re a front company for CI-6, which is a government intelligence agency,” David said. “We are being shut down.”

Jamie found himself locking eyes with Stuart. We are what?

Stuart didn’t look a bit surprised.

“You should be doing to me what I’m about to do to you,” David continued.

“Oh, no.” Roxanne gulped. “You’re going to fire us.”

David gave her a tight-lipped smile, then a shake of his head. “No, Roxanne, I’m not going to fire you. I’m going to kill you. You, and everyone else in this room. Then I’m going to kill myself.”

“David,” Amy said.

“Molly? The box, please.”

It was there in front of Molly—all of a sudden, it seemed. Jamie hadn’t noticed it before. He’d had his eyes on the cookies. Like everyone else.

Molly opened the box, which was a plain white cardboard mailing box. She parted some Bubble Wrap, and lifted out a gun. With something bulky around the barrel.

David put his hand out.

Molly was shaking. Hesitating a moment before she handed over the weapon to her boss.

But she did, like a good employee. Then she bowed her head slightly.

David pointed the gun in the general direction of his employees. With a minor flick of the wrist, the barrel could be pointed directly at any of them. Jamie felt his forehead break out into a sweat. He wasn’t sure he was actually seeing any of this, but of course, he was seeing it. Because it was real.

Unfolding in front of his eyes.

“What I want you to do,” David said, “is mix a little champagne and orange juice together. Each contain a chemical that, when combined, is an extremely effective poison. It is also completely painless. You will lose consciousness within seconds, and that will be it.”

“David, stop this,” Amy said. “This isn’t funny at all.”

“I tried it myself a few nights ago. A very micro dose. It’s totally relaxing. I’ve never had a better night’s sleep.”

Stuart was still trying to play the good soldier. “You want us to have a drink with you, boss? We’ll drink with you.”

David ignored him. “If you choose not to have a drink, then I’ll be forced to shoot you in the head. I cannot guarantee that this second method will be pain-free. You may require a second bullet. It may be worse if you all decide to do something foolish like rush me. Make no mistake. If you do, all of you will be shot. My marksmanship is excellent. Any of you familiar with my operational background will know this to be true.”

Part of Jamie wanted to believe this was a charade, or a movie, or a bad dream, but all his senses relayed the truth: This was real. He also had the feeling that he was really the only one taking David seriously. Everyone else at the table looked like they were still waiting for the punch line, the moral. But Jamie realized: His boss wasn’t telling a joke or a parable. He was offering them a choice.

Drink poison champagne and die.

Or get shot in the head.

Jamie believed it as much as he believed he was sitting in that conference room chair. As much as he believed that outside the sweeping conference room windows, Philadelphia stewed in the humid air of early morning.

“You’re insane,” Jamie said.

David looked at him with pity. “I didn’t want to invite you in this morning, Jamie. Swear to God I didn’t. You’re our press guy. I even said to them, Why the press guy? You’re too good a press guy. You approached your job with zeal. But alas, you looked at some things you shouldn’t have seen.”

“What are you talking about? What things?”

“Your wife and newborn son will believe you died in an office fire,” David said. “They will be taken care of.”

“David, please,” Amy said. “What are you doing? Does anybody else know you’re doing this?”

“Yeah this is so not funny.”

“I’m going to find Ethan.”

The shuffling of chairs.

The nervous exhalation of air.

“I’m going with you.”

“SIT.”

David, commanding.

It worked.

Everyone froze.

“I’ve given you all a dignified way out,” he said. “I suggest you take it.”

No one said anything until Stuart, looking around with a goofy smile on his face, stood up.

“You got it, boss.”

Stuart knew what this was.

At a previous job—a few years before he was recruited to work here—the HR department decided it was worth the money to send some of the sales associates on an Outward Bound trip. Three days in the woods, learning to tie knots and trust each other.

The penultimate activity: backwards free fall. Go ahead, let yourself tilt back. Free yourself from doubt and worry. Your coworkers will catch you.

Stuart did it, but as he was falling, all he could think about were the times at the Applebee’s, when he would try to make conversational inroads, but everyone would look at him like he had a gushing head wound and they didn’t want to get blood on their suits. But he allowed himself to drop backwards anyway, allowed himself to trust.

As the Outward Bound leader—a gruff guy who looked like Oliver Stone—had promised, his coworkers had indeed caught him. When he looked up, Stuart saw that nobody was looking down at him, the human being in their hands. Still, no matter; they had caught him. Stuart received a certificate and a small pin, and he noted the achievement on his résumé.

So that’s what this was. David’s weird version of a trust game. The gun was a prop—probably a flare gun. Maybe even one of those lighters you find at Spencer’s. The talk about elevators and windows was meant to simulate something … like a hostile environment, just like they’d encountered in Outward Bound. There’s no way out. You have nothing but trust. Trust in your coworkers. Trust in your boss.

This was a front company for the government, but it was still a company, and the more Stuart thought about it, the more he knew it was a test of trust. To see who was executive material and who wasn’t.

Stuart took the bottle of champagne and poured three fingers’ full into a clear plastic wineglass.

“Stu,” Jamie said. “Wait.”

Stuart waved his hand, as if he were batting away a fly. Jamie was just jealous he hadn’t taken the initiative.

“Very wise move, Stuart,” David said.

Stuart splashed in some of the Tropicana, and he couldn’t help himself. He was beaming. Passing the trust test. There was nothing to stir the champagne and orange juice—were you even supposed to stir mimosas? Whatever. Didn’t matter. Not for the purposes of the trust test.

“Cheers,” Stuart said, raising the cup in a mock toast.

“Thank you for your service,” David said, which gave Stuart the slightest bit of pause. What did that mean?

Jamie stood up now. “Stu, no. Don’t do it.”

Bite it, DeBroux.

Stuart sipped his mimosa, then looked at David.

But David didn’t say anything. Just stared at him. So did everyone else. Even Jamie, who sat back down.

And the weirdest thing was, Stuart felt like he was having an Outward Bound flashback. He had the overwhelming urge to drift backwards, in the hands of his coworkers. But this time, they’d all be looking at him admiringly. Because he’d won the Trust Game. None of them could say that. Could they?

Was he still holding the plastic wineglass? Stuart didn’t know.

He couldn’t feel his fingers.

Or his legs, as they gave out from under him.

Everyone watched Stuart collapse. The hand holding his plastic cup of mimosa hit the side of the conference table. The drink splashed everywhere. Roxanne, who had been sitting next to Stuart, hopped her chair to the side reflexively.

“Oh God.”

“Stuart,” Amy said. “C’mon, Stuart. This isn’t funny!”

“One recommendation,” David said, holding up a bony finger. “Try to remain seated when you drink this stuff. You might even want to position yourself on the floor, leaning against a wall, so that you can fall asleep without hurting yourself.”

“Stuart?”

“Not that I think Stuart felt anything. The first thing the poison shuts down is your brain.”

Amy ran around the side of the table and knelt next to Stuart, whose eyes were still open. She pressed a finger to his carotid artery. Looked up at Roxanne.

“Double-check me. Feel his neck.”

“No. No way.”

Searching around Stuart’s neck, madly, looking for something that resembled a pulse. You can’t fake that. You can’t just stop your heartbeat voluntarily.

“Stuart!”

David shook his head. “He’s gone, Amy.”

Amy looked up over the table at her boss.

“Stuart chose the smart way out. I hope that the rest of you follow suit. We can drink together, if you like.”

Jamie said, “Oh, you’re going to kill yourself, too?”

“Yes, Jamie. They want us all gone.” David turned to his assistant. “Molly, will you do the honors?”

Molly, who had been silent for the duration of the meeting—including Stuart’s suicide toast—raised her head.

Then she reached into a white cardboard box and pulled out another gun. It looked smaller.

“Hey,” said David. “I meant mixing the drinks. Like we discussed?”

She aimed the gun at David.

He squinted. “Is that a Neo?” he asked.

Molly screamed—a howling geyser of rage that seemed like it had been building up under a mountain of composure.

“Hey, wait a second … Molly!”

Then she squeezed the trigger.

BLAM!

Part of David’s scalp flipped up from his head, like a piece of toupee caught in a breeze.

David saw an explosion in front of his eyes, then a cold, cold sensation on the right side of his head.

As he was thrown backwards, someone pressed PAUSE.

He could see the faces of his employees, frozen in perfect detail. Many of them were slack-jawed in surprise. The others seemed not to be processing it yet.

Then again, neither was he.

Molly.

They’d gone over this. A lot. Offer the mimosas. The easy way out. Not that he thought many people would go for it, but hey, you never know. Then if things got ugly, leave the shooting to David. Bow your head and pray for God’s blessings. Molly was religious. In every e-mail, she put “God bless” or “God willing” or “Faith in Jesus” before her name. Hearty Midwestern stock—made her perfect for this kind of work. Perfect for following instructions.

Except for this one little time.

My God.

Molly had just shot him in the head.

Molly!

David knew she wasn’t supposed to live through this. But she didn’t know that. He’d promised her a way out. New identity. New life. How had she found out the truth?

Granted, he didn’t have the nicest things in the world planned for her. First a shot to the leg that would drop her to the ground. Then, press the gun to her head, tell her to take off her shirt and bra if she wants to live. Check out her tits, kill her anyway.

How had she found out the truth?

David’s body hit the conference room floor.

AFTER THE MEETING

The best way to get started is to stop talking and begin doing.

—WALT DISNEY

Everyone stood up.

“H-H-He was going to kill us all,” Molly said, her voice trembling.

Her hand, weighed down with the gun, dropped to the surface of the table with a hard thud. The barrel pointed at the space where David had been sitting. Smoke curled around it. Then, quieter now:

“He was going to kill us all.”

“I know, Molly. Give me the gun, sweetie.”

This was Amy Felton. Face compassionate yet determined.

In.

Control.

“The gun, Molly.”

Molly nodded but didn’t move.

“I had no choice. He told me he was going to kill Paul if I didn’t do what he wanted.”

Paul Lewis. Her husband.

“Sweetie,” Amy said, her expression softening. “I understand. I’m going to take the gun, okay?”

Amy was able to take the gun. Molly folded her arms on top of the table, then buried her face in them.

“Did somebody check David? Is he dead?”

“Oh, Molly, what did you do?”

“Shut up. Here, take this.”

Jamie looked down. Amy was handing him the murder weapon.

“I don’t want that.”

“I need to check David. Hold this.”

It all felt like another 9/11. The shock of it. Molly, shooting David. Amy, trying to hand him the gun she used. David, on the floor, bleeding out of a hole in his head.

The sense that nothing would be the same again. He wouldn’t be reporting to work on Monday. None of them would. Instantly, he thought of Chase.

“Jamie.”

Jamie took the gun—still warm—and watched Amy trot over to David. The blue-gray carpet around his head was soaked deep purple with blood. David’s lips were trembling.

“I think he’s still alive,” Amy said. “God, I don’t know.”

“Somebody call nine-one-one.”

Nichole made a beeline for the phone in the conference room. Grabbed the receiver. Put it to her ear. There was a confused look on her face. Her index finger stabbed at the hook switch.

“There’s no dial tone.”

“He wasn’t kidding about lockdown, was he?”

“What?”

“My cell’s in my bag,” Nichole said.

Roxanne said, “Mine’s here.” She was already dialing. “Wait …” She looked at the display more carefully. “No service?”

“David had it suspended as of eight thirty this morning,” Molly said, her face still buried in her hands.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It’s lockdown, remember?”

Which is why my cell wouldn’t work this morning, Jamie thought.

Every one of David Murphy’s employees was issued company cell phones, free of charge, to use as they wished. David’s only rule: Keep the phone on from 7:00 A.M. until midnight, just in case he needed to reach you. Agree to that, and you could enjoy unlimited minutes, long distance, you name it. Every one of David’s direct reports—Jamie, Amy, Ethan, Roxanne, Stuart, Molly, Nichole—immediately canceled their private cells and used their company phones exclusively. David had even sprung for models with built-in cameras and texting capability.

But none of that mattered with the service canceled.

“Why did he cancel it?”

“I should have known …,” Molly said, near-wailing. “I saw the signs….”

“What signs?

Amy, on the floor with David, said, “Forget it. I’ve still got a pulse, but he needs an ambulance now.”

“Was he kidding about the elevators, too?”

Molly wearily said, “No.”

“I’m going to check anyway.”

“We should check our offices. Not all of the phones may be turned off.”

“The stairs.”

“David said the stairs were rigged with …”

“What? Sarin?” Nichole said. “Do you really believe that?”

“He wasn’t joking. He showed me a packet. Told me exactly what it was. I think he was showing off.”

“He showed you?” Nichole asked. “When? How long have you known about this.”

Amy said, “We’ve got to find Ethan.”

Ethan didn’t feel so good.

Okay, yeah, maybe he had screamed a bit prematurely. But that puff of whatever that’d nailed him … c’mon, you’d be frightened, too. In his imagination, it was a burst of ultra-hot steam from a chipped pipe. The kind of steam so lethally hot, it scalded the flesh from his face before his nerves had a chance to relay the pain. From here on out, he’d be stuck hiding behind masks, or at the very least, ridiculous amounts of theatrical makeup.

All of that passed through his mind in about two seconds. His fingers explored his face.

Flesh still there. His eyes, too. His burning eyes.

Burning, but not about to shrivel up and drop out of their sockets.

Still, they burned. Worse by the second.

He needed water.

He must have been blasted with wet air that had been circulating throughout 1919 Market Street since the place was built—around the time KC and the Sunshine Band were first huge. That air was carrying every germ and virus that had plagued this building’s inhabitants in years since. Ethan had a feeling he’d be sick the rest of the summer.

Ethan needed the men’s room. Wash out his eyes. His face. His badly burning eyes. Compose himself enough so that when he popped into David’s office, he would be able to say, Screaming? I didn’t hear any screaming, and have it sound believable.

He pulled on the doorknob. The door wouldn’t open. He tried it again. Nothing. Locked.

Wait.

Damn it.

He could see it, even through his blurry, stinging vision. The cardboard had slipped out.

Ethan tugged at it, cursed, then kicked the door. His skin around his eyes was really starting to sting now, too.

“Hey!”

Kicked it again.

“Hey! Anybody!”

He was about to kick again—in fact, his foot was already cocked, ready to deliver the blow, when he heard something

POP!

A car backfiring.

Up here? On the thirty-sixth floor?

“Hey!”

This was ridiculous. Everyone was probably already gathered in the conference room. Probably closed the door, too, for the big secret operational announcement. Which he was missing. Locked on the other side of this door. Eyes burning, face itching. More intense than ever. His throat, suddenly raw.

Nobody was going to hear him yell.

Especially with his throat closing, all of a sudden.

Jamie mumbled something about being right back and walked to his office.

Roxanne gaped at him on the way out, as in: You’re leaving now?

With our boss, shot in the head, lying on the floor?

Jamie was trying to think a few steps ahead. Maybe his monthlong paternity leave had given him a different perspective, but right now, his worry wasn’t David Murphy. He was worried about what David had said. Elevators, blocked. Phone lines, cut. The cell phone thing, if Molly was to be believed, was troubling in itself.

Jamie’s office was the farthest away from David’s, but closest to the conference room. This usually bugged him. Not today. He needed to make it to his office as soon as possible.

He needed a few seconds to think.

Jamie had never been a fan of group decisions. Whatever was happening in the conference room, he wasn’t an important part of it. He was the company’s press guy—the guy who wrote the press release in the event of a new hire or the launch of a new financial product. He wasn’t the guy doing the hiring, and he had nothing to do with the financial products. He wasn’t a member of the Clique. He took whatever the managers said and translated it into something the trade press could understand. There weren’t many trade publications that covered his particular industry; Jamie had been shocked at how small the list was when he started a year ago.

But what had David been saying, right before Molly shot him in the head?

Front company?

Intelligence agency?

I mean … what?

Jamie sat behind his desk and saw the greeting card tacked to his corkboard. He’d almost forgotten about that.

Andrea had given it to him the day Chase was born, a month ago. It was a card from Baby Chase to his new daddy. On the front was a cartoon duck—a little boy duck, wearing little boy pants. Fireworks burst behind him. HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY, DADDY the card said on the back. “You’re just lucky he wasn’t born on Arbor Day,” Andrea had joked. But Jamie loved that card to an absurd degree. It was the little duck, in the little boy pants. His little boy. For the first time, it all clicked. He’d brought it to work with him a few days later as he packed up his Rolodex and notes for his paternity leave. Unpaid, but what the hell. How often are firstborn sons born?

The card was meant to be tacked up temporarily, to put a smile on Jamie’s face as he went through the drudgery of answering last e-mails, setting his voice mail vacation message, gathering up manila folders full of junk he knew he wouldn’t actually touch for at least a month. But in the hurry to leave, the card was forgotten. Jamie wanted to kick himself, but it wasn’t worth showing his face in the office just to recover the card. He’d be sucked back into the vortex too quickly—one more press release, c’mon, just one more …

Jamie put his fingers to the greeting card. Smoothed the imaginary feathers on the head of the little boy duck. Then he tucked it in his back pocket.

He desperately needed to call Andrea, tell her what was going on, and somehow convince her that she didn’t need to worry.

But his office phone, like the one in the conference room, was dead. Jamie looked out his office window, which faced east. If he craned his neck, he could almost see the corner of his block, off in the distance beyond Spring Garden Street. Just two houses down from the corner were Andrea and his baby boy.

Whatever had happened this morning, Jamie knew it would be many, many hours before he would see his wife and son again. The police interrogations alone would probably keep him here—or down at the Roundhouse—until late tonight.

He just wished the police could be called, so they could arrive, so that they could get it all over with already.

Look at me, he thought. The new daddy. Gone for barely an hour, and already nervous as hell.

Nervous daddy.

Wait a minute.

Jamie saw his soft leather briefcase on the desk. Was it still in there?

It would make all the difference.

The remaining employees split up. If they had any chance of calling an ambulance—for Stuart or David or both, even though Stuart’s chances of making it through this without brain damage were next to nil—they were going to have to find their way to another floor. That much was clear.

Nichole announced that they’d be checking the elevators, and it took Roxanne a second to realize that they meant her, too. Jamie had already slipped out of the conference room to find a phone or sit behind his desk and cry or something. Ethan was still AWOL. Molly left a second later, most likely to the bathroom to puke. Amy couldn’t blame her. She had only watched her boss take a bullet to the head, and she felt queasy.

Of course, that left Amy to lock the doors to the conference room, leaving the guns where they were. Let the police sort it out.

It also left her to check the fire escape doors. You know, the ones allegedly rigged with a chemical nerve agent.

Sometimes, Amy felt like the only adult in this company.

There were only two fire escapes in the building; both were accessible only from outside the office. The thirty-sixth floor was a square carved up into two separate offices; their company dominated the floor in a U shape. The remaining sliver was occupied by a local magazine called Philadelphia Living—shopping, restaurants, parties, and all of that good stuff. Amy was a subscriber, even though she didn’t know anybody who could afford the getaways, clothes, and jewelry highlighted in the magazine every month. It was lifestyle porn: You’ll never have it as good as this. Masturbate to the pages, if it makes you feel better.

She walked halfway down the hall that connected the conference room with David’s office, then turned left. A security door opened up directly onto a short corridor. Make a left again, and you’d be staring at the north fire escape door.

Which Amy was doing now.

Staring at it.

Should she chance it?

David had told them some wild things this morning. There was not much she could prove right now, except for one thing: that the orange juice and champagne contained some kind of poison, which had killed poor Stuart. Why would David lie about something like putting sarin in the fire towers?

Because it was silly, that’s why. Poison’s one thing; rigging a chemical bomb is another. This building has security up the wa-zoo. Like somebody wouldn’t notice a bomb rigged to a fire escape door? Somebody leaves a brown-bag lunch on a step in the fire tower and hazmat-suited Homeland Security folks would probably be descending on the scene within twenty minutes.

So if the very idea was ridiculous, why was she nervous about opening the door?

Go ahead, Amy.

Go ahead and do it.

She put her hand on the cool steel, as if she could sense by touch. Oh yeah, clearly there’s a sarin bomb behind this door.

The problem was, Ethan recognized the sensation.

His throat had closed up once before, halfway around the world.

Before coming to work for David’s company, he’d been in the military. Special Forces. Most recently Afghanistan, November 2001, as part of Operation We Think Bin Laden’s Here So We’re Going to Bomb You Back to the Stone Age, and he and his crew had been duking it out with some obscure Afghan warlord in the desert south of Kandahar. A warlord who just so happened to have a few canisters of ricin lying around. A skirmish went wrong; Ethan and his fellow gunmen found themselves tumbling into a medieval-era sandpit, and the warlord—some screw-head named Muhammad Gur—danced around the edge of the pit, throwing in his precious canisters of ricin, cackling.

Ricin, Ethan later read, was manufactured from the waste of castor beans. In weaponized mist form, ricin asks your body to stop making certain important proteins.

Okay, it’s not really asking. Ricin pretty much demands it. As a result, cells die. If not treated, the victim follows suit.

All Ethan knew was that his throat was closing up.

He’d been hit the worst out of anybody. He could have sworn that Muhammad Gur jerk had been aiming for him personally. Luckily, Ethan’s colleagues blasted their way out of the pit and dragged Ethan across the desert, looking for help. But when somebody looked down and saw Ethan frantically pointing at his throat, it quickly became clear that he might not make it to the medical supply tent.

A tracheotomy is a quick but complex procedure. In an emergency situation, you find the Adam’s apple, slide down a bit until you feel the next bump—the cricoid cartilage—then find the little valley between the two. Congrats, you’ve found the cricothyroid membrane. That is where you cut: half inch horizontally, half inch deep. Pinch the sides so that the incision opens like a fish mouth, then insert the tube. Don’t have a tube? Use a straw. Or the plastic tube of a ballpoint pen (with the ink stem removed, of course).

Out in the desert south of Kanadhar, Ethan’s savior had a Swiss Army pocketknife and a plastic straw. Saved his life.

But here, inside the fire tower at 1919 Market Street … Ethan was pretty much screwed.

Suffering from a serious Muhammad Gur flashback, Ethan stumbled backwards and imagined, if only for a few seconds, that he was trying to cling to the side of that medieval sand pit. Actually, it was a set of concrete stairs, leading down to the half landing between the thirty-sixth and the thirty-fifth floor.

Ethan tumbled down them. Backwards.

Every step hurt.

But not as bad as the agony in his throat.

This felt worse than ricin.

Castor beans his ass.

This was something else.

Amy stepped back from the door. She thought she heard something on the other side. The pounding of feet? People? Maybe security guards? Cops? A black bag crew? Someone dispatched to clean up their presumed-dead bodies?

Never mind. It could be help.

“Hello?”

She caught herself before pounding on the door. Just on the off off chance that the door was indeed rigged; she didn’t want to set off any kind of bomb accidentally.

“Hello! Can you hear me?!”

Ethan recognized Amy’s voice immediately. Her sweet voice. He wished he could answer her.

Still, he was strangely pleased that she’d come looking for him. So much so, Ethan was even willing to forgive her the French martini thing.

Hello! Can you hear me?!

Yes, honey, I can.

I wish I could tell you to come on in. But for one, my throat is sealed up tight, and for another, I’m thinking you’d receive a face-blast of the same chemical agent if you walked through that door.

Instead, Ethan found himself scrambling through his bag, searching for a pen.

Amy wanted to open the door, but worry gripped her hard. Even an off off chance was still a chance. She didn’t want her life to end just because she ignored a warning. The warning of a man who—until just a few minutes ago—she considered the smartest guy she’d ever worked for.

But what if help were on the other side?

Help would have answered. Wouldn’t it?

The inner office door behind Amy opened.

Molly stood there, tears streaking down her face. Looks like she didn’t go to the bathroom after all, Amy thought. She must have been wandering around the office in a daze. It was understandable. How often did you shoot your boss in the head?

Amy felt bad for Molly, even if she had been part of David’s plan from the beginning. She’d said it herself: She knew the phone lines had been cut. Their cells disconnected. She even claimed to have seen the packages of sarin.

But who knew what David had done to her? She must have been too terrified to do anything but obey.

She certainly looked terrified now.

“Are you okay?” Amy asked redundantly.

Molly shook her head. No. No, I’m not okay.

“Come on.” Amy opened up her arms.

Whatever was behind the north fire tower door would have to wait.

David Murphy had taken bullets before. Once in West Germany. Another time, the Sudan. Never a head shot, though. And this one felt fairly serious. Just the ricochet effect alone—the slug jarring his skull, transmitting aftershocks to the rest of his skeletal structure—was enough to make him want to roll over and go to sleep. Anything to stop the aching. He just felt … wrong.

Molly was a damn good shot.

Never would have guessed.

When his bosses sent her six months ago, David assumed he was being reprimanded. David loved salsa and wasabi; here was a woman who was plain vanilla yogurt. Nondescript hairstyle, mousy features, no build whatsoever. You could iron a shirt on her chest. David had carried on a bit with his previous charge, and it had gotten in the way—in the opinion of his handlers. It wasn’t as if David had forgotten about the network of hidden cameras throughout the floor; he just thought his handlers wouldn’t care.

David was wrong. They presented him with grainy black-and-white photos of a particularly steamy tryst on a lazy Tuesday afternoon. Dress pants were bunched up around ankles; skirts were hiked; lipstick smeared; hair mussed. His handler told him this was behavior unbecoming someone of his stature. Told him the object of his affection was being moved to a station in Dubai. Molly arrived the next day.

Sometimes, David thought about his previous charge. Thought about Dubai. They had built a fake ski resort right there in the middle of the desert. He wondered if she ever had the opportunity to enjoy it. He’d promised her they’d go skiing sometime.

But Molly didn’t look like she enjoyed skiing.

She didn’t look like she enjoyed much of anything.

His employers had a strange idea about staffing.

David had been brought in during the early, tentative days; his special blend of charm and ruthlessness carried him to the upper echelon of the fledgling intelligence organization—but not to a hiring position. That operation was always performed by other people. People David had never met.

David wished he would, someday. Just so he could slap them silly.

Look at Molly. Okay, okay, subtract the act of gross insubordination where she shot her own boss in the head. Still, she was trouble. David’s charms were totally ineffective on her. She had no discernible sense of humor. It wasn’t clear if her beard of a husband—some paunchy dork named Paul—was a real love interest, or if Molly skipped through Lesbos’s groves. David was totally unable to handle her.

Oh, she listened. Textbook support personnel.

But he couldn’t play her. That vaguely troubled him.

And look how it had all turned out.

David stared up at the ceiling and wondered how much longer he’d be conscious. Maybe it was his imagination, but he swore he could feel the blood throbbing out of the little hole in his head.

Yet, except for the paralysis that had washed over his body, he felt oddly normal. As if he could just snap out of it, and sit up. Which was so not going to happen.

David wasn’t that delusional.

Amy ushered a shaking Molly into her office and closed the door. She needed to calm this one down now, even if Amy ended up calling David’s bosses and had her hauled in for debriefing. Operations were one thing; this was a broken human being here. All Amy knew was that one minute, her boss of five years was threatening to kill everyone in the room, and the next, Stuart had keeled over, and the next, David’s secretary of six months was shooting him in the head. It was too much.

She wished she had somebody calming her down.

Be the adult. Be the adult.

“Are you okay?” Amy asked. “Sit down. Let me get you some water.”

“I’m okay,” Molly said. She continued to stand, but looked around Amy’s office nervously, as if bracing for a wild animal to leap out from behind a desk and pounce.

“Sit down, Molly. Nothing can hurt you in here.”

“I know, I know. I’m okay. I promise.”

Amy wished Molly would sit down and just drink some water already. Her office was hot. It was always hot. The windows faced the north, and the early morning sun always seemed to beat the cool air pumped from the building’s ductwork. Fetching Molly a Styrofoam cup of water would give Amy a few moments in the chilly kitchen, a chance to wipe a paper towel across her forehead and neck and, more important, give her a moment to think. With David gone—and oh, how that was a weird euphemism to use, considering the man was lying in the conference room with a bullet in his head—Amy was technically in charge. And she didn’t have a single idea what to do next.

The Department handbook didn’t cover stuff like this.

She also wanted desperately to find Ethan. While he could act like a schoolboy, he was excellent in crisis moments. Whenever she had an office meltdown, she could walk over to Ethan’s office, close the door, and sink into his blue beanbag chair—a ridiculous holdover since college. Ethan would ask her what was wrong, and no matter the answer, announce that it was time for “creamy treats.” Some guys keep a bottle of booze in their lower right-hand drawer; Ethan kept Tastykakes. Ethan gave her the two things she needed to settle down: a patient ear and a hit of sugar, enriched flour, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.

But there was no time to find Ethan now. Because Molly didn’t want any water, or to sit down.

“We need,” Amy said, “to find a way to call in support.”

Support: the euphemism for David’s bosses. As David’s second-in-command, Amy had been given the phone number and code key to use in case of emergency, such as David’s untimely death. Backup would descend upon 1919 Market Street. Hard drives would be secured. Order would be restored. Only if Amy could find a working phone.

But Molly didn’t seem to be listening. She lowered her face into her hands.

God, this couldn’t be easy for her. She wasn’t a high-level operative. She knew what they all did, to some degree. But Molly didn’t know how dangerous this game could be.

Amy put a hand on her shoulder.

“You’re going to be okay,” Amy said, even though it was a blatant lie. The woman had pulled a gun out of a white box—it may even have been a cannoli box from Reading Terminal Market—and shot her boss of six months in the head. That was decidedly not okay.

Molly surfaced from her palms. “Amy?”

“Yeah, sweetie.”

“I’m going to enjoy you the most.”

Amy watched one of Molly’s delicate hands shrink into a tight little fist. Then it smashed her in the eye.

She staggered back. Confusion set in before the pain. Wait. What had just happened?

Did Molly Lewis just punch her in the—?

Again.

And again.

Left hook, right jab. Classic boxer combo.

Amy’s head buzzed with pain, now, finally, radiating from her skin deep into her skull. Her butt bumped up against the front of her own desk. She needed to keep standing. She needed to start defending herself. That much was sure. But what was going on here? Amy lifted a hand, but Molly slapped it aside and then jabbed her in the throat.

Amy started choking.

She slid to the side and put her hands to her throat, as if she could undo the damage manually. But Molly had done something. Something very bad. Amy couldn’t even scream.

Two minutes before, Molly had been alone in David’s office. Everyone had scattered to the rest of the office, to see if their boss’s crazy talk was actually true. To see if the elevators would come. If the dial tone would be there. If their cell phones would work.

Of course they wouldn’t.

Molly had helped David disable them all.

David, a week ago, promised, “You help me; you and I walk out of here. We’ve got new identities waiting for us.”

Later, Molly had found the memo. The faxed hit list.

With her name on it.

Liar.

So she decided to cut a deal of her own.

Molly walked down the hallway and into David’s office. In the corner, where the south-facing windows met with a solid oak bookcase, was a security camera obscured by the wood and dry-wall. It had been positioned so that it could scan not only the entire office, but the face of David’s computer screen. David knew this. It was company policy.

Molly looked up at the security camera and flashed it a tight little smile. She held up her left hand, palm out.

And raised her index and middle fingers.

It wasn’t a peace sign.

It was an announcement.

THE MORNING GRIND

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

—LEE IACOCCA

Thirty-five hundred miles away …

… in Scotland, near the sea, in a quiet section of Edinburgh called Portobello, a red-haired man in a black T-shirt and neatly pressed khakis crossed the street. He was holding a pharmacy bag stocked with tissues and Night Nurse. He’d felt awful all morning. Maybe a solid dose of medicine would head it off at the pass. Summer colds were the worst.

This summer, too, was the worst. Freakishly warm for Edinburgh. Plus, there was a hot, greasy drizzle in the air, which did little to cool it. By the time he returned to the flat, he reckoned, his T-shirt would be soaked with sea mist and sweat, and he’d have to change. He kept only a small valise of essentials; he didn’t bring piles of T-shirts like McCoy, his surveillance partner, did. The man packed like the Apocalypse was around the corner.

The red-haired man, who called himself Keene, had almost reached the bottom of the road when he bumped into a man walking his dog. Wee thing—the dog, that was. It had only three legs. The owner had two, but looked haggard, if finely muscled.

“Sorry, mate,” Keene said.

The man just smiled at him. And not in a particularly warm way.

Keene stepped out of the way, then watched the little three-legged dog titter and bounce after its master. A lot of work, walking uphill in the drizzle with only three legs.

Upstairs, Keene embraced his partner. His lip brushed against the stubble on his cheek; he could smell the intoxicating aftershave. Then Keene told him about the dog.

“I’ve seen that dog,” said McCoy. He was American. He’d barely turned to face Keene. Instead, he was focused on a bank of computer screens: a desktop and three laptops. “It creeps me out.”

“I’m putting on some tea,” Keene said. “Would you care for a cup?”

Some tea and Night Nurse might make the afternoon tolerable. Keene planned on asking McCoy to take over for the next few hours. Keene had been at it through much of the morning. His eyes felt like there were grains of sand floating around in there.

“No, but you can fetch me a can of Caley.”

“Sure.”

McCoy was a drunk.

“Did I miss anything?” Keene asked.

“You missed everything.”

“What do you mean? Nothing’s supposed to be happening in Dubai for at least six hours.”

“No, not there. Back in America. Remember? The Philadelphia thing?”

“Girlfriend.”

“Right.”

“What time is it there?”

“Half past nine. So far, our girl is doing exactly what she said. You should have seen the look on Murphy’s face. I can run it back for you later.”

“Sure,” Keene said. No thank you.

Girlfriend, who until about thirty minutes ago was just another low-level operative, had contacted McCoy a few days ago with an intriguing proposal: Give me a chance to show you my talents. McCoy had been impressed she even knew how to find him. It was enough for him to kick her proposal upstairs and receive clearance to follow it up.

Girlfriend wanted a promotion. And she wanted to demonstrate how much she deserved it.

The employees in the office were slated to die anyway, she’d argued.

Why not let her try?

McCoy told Girlfriend: You impress us, we give you the way out and a new job. If not … well, nice interviewing with you.

Girlfriend accepted.

Keene, though, was more concerned with Dubai and this summer cold that seemed to be taking root in his head. It was never a good idea to focus on more than one operation at a time. That kind of juggling invariably led to mistakes.

But there was no stopping McCoy, who was enamored with this Philadelphia thing. So Keene had to pretend to be enamored, too. It made things easier.

Keene put on the kettle and took a green earthenware mug down from the cupboard. Wait. McCoy’s beer. He opened the fridge and snatched a can from the bottom shelf. That was the extent of McCoy’s weekly contributions to the pantry. Everything else he consumed was takeaway. Usually Thai or Indian.

He handed the can of Caley 80 to his partner, who was looking at one of the monitors with glee.

“Will you look at that,” McCoy said.

On screen, Girlfriend—who looked a bit mousy, if you asked Keene—was holding up a peace sign.

“Number two, coming right up.” McCoy popped the top of his beer, then started thumbing through a stack of papers on the desk. “You’ve got to love her style.”

“Hmmm,” Keene said. “As in Murphy was number one?”

“Right.”

“Remind me again what this Philadelphia office does?”

“Financial disruption of terrorist networks. Or something like that. Bunch of geeks using computers to erase the bank accounts of known terrorist cells. I’m not too familiar with it myself. I’m a human resources guy.”

“Oh, is that what you do?”

“Shhh. She’s moving.”

They watched as Girlfriend allowed herself to be led to another office. McCoy leaned forward and tapped some keys. A separate fiber-optic feed picked her up on the second screen. They watched another woman—a well-scrubbed, bright-eyed American with shoulder-length hair—try to comfort Girlfriend.

And then they watched Girlfriend start to beat the woman savagely.

“Ugh,” Keene said.

“Oh, she’s good.”

Amy couldn’t scream, but that didn’t mean she was giving up. She pretended to faint backwards, pivoting so she was facing her own desk from the opposite side. There. An orange-and-black Philadelphia City Press mug was loaded with Sharpies, ballpoint pens, and one pair of Italian forged steel scissors with black grips.

Behind her, Molly was closing the door. For privacy, presumably.

So she could kill Amy in peace and quiet.

Amy wrapped her fingers around the cold steel, then lunged out behind her. Molly stepped back; steel whisked against her blouse, ripping the fabric slightly. A smirk appeared on Molly’s face. Amy growled—that was all she could do—and lunged again, but Molly sidestepped it, in the exact opposite direction Amy thought she would. By then it was too late to lunge again. Molly kicked Amy in the chest, which sent her flipping backwards over her own desk. Her fall was temporarily broken by her rolling chair, but it slid away and Amy crashed to the floor.

Run, Amy thought. Run away.

Regroup.

She scrambled to her feet and pressed her palms against her window for support.

The entire pane popped out of its frame.

Amy gasped as the glass fell away from her palms.

Down.

Down.

Down.

The glass dropped thirty-six floors, flipping and coasting and flipping again before shattering in the small street behind the 1919 Market Street Building.

McCoy smiled. “Hah. I didn’t see her do that. I wonder when she did that.”

Keene frowned. “Isn’t that cheating?”

“No, no. She told us she would be doing a few hours of prep work, just like in a normal job. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Smacks of cheating to me.” Keene sipped tea. It soothed his throat, and the warmth—a good warmth—made its way up his sinus cavities. Did nothing for the dull throb in his head, though.

“No, she’s good. Her target is in total shock. That window popping out was the last thing she expected.”

They watched the monitor. Keene sipped his Earl Grey.

“Oh … wait!”

“What?”

“Now I get it. Why she sent me those employee performance sheets.”

Keene took another sip of his tea. He wasn’t about to sit here asking What do you mean? all afternoon.

That was one of the truly annoying things about McCoy. He loved to draw out everything. Instead of just coming out with it, he’d make cryptic statements designed to force you to ask “What?” or “Tell me!” or “Oh, really?” Well, McCoy could play with some other fool. He was either going to tell Keene what was on his mind, or he wasn’t.

This time, it didn’t take too much silence to goad McCoy into continuing.

“A few days ago, she sent me a bunch of paperwork. Résumés for her proposed targets, as well as their employee performance sheets. You know, the stuff bosses use to tell you if you’re doing a lousy job or not, if you’re getting a raise or not.”

Keene said nothing. But inside, a little voice urged: Go on, go on now.

“I couldn’t figure out why she sent me this stuff. I mean, we have everybody’s info, and then some, already on file. This was junk we didn’t need.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mmmm, this tea was good.

McCoy tuned in. “Hey—are you even listening?”

“Of course, love.”

“Anyway, it just dawned on me right now, when that pane of glass dropped away.”

“What?”

Keene silently cursed himself.

“She’s playing on their individual weaknesses,” McCoy said. “David Murphy would do some subtle mind-ops stuff during employee evaluations—that’s what he used to do, psyops—and work it into his evaluation. Girlfriend here picked up on that. She’s showing off.”

Keene sipped tea, then said: “Some people will do anything for a job.”

Amy was frozen; it was all too much to comprehend. The pane, gone. The pane of glass that shielded her not only from the temperamental seasons of Philadelphia—with its snow and humidity and rain and gusts—but also from her darkest impulses.

Amy had explained it to David years ago when he’d asked her what she feared the most. She’d answered honestly: losing her mind for three seconds.

David had tented his fingers, raised his eyebrows. “Care to explain that one?”

Specifically, Amy had said, “I’m afraid of losing my mind for three seconds near an open window. Because part of me might decide it’s a good idea to jump out the window, just to see what would happen.” If that did happen, Amy knew that she would recover her sanity almost instantly. Not in enough time to prevent her from jumping out the window, but plenty of time to realize her mistake as she plummeted at 9.8 meters per second—plenty of time to scream in horror before pounding into the concrete below.

“Interesting,” David had said.

And now she was looking at it. An open window, thirty-six stories above the ground.

Would Amy lose her mind?

And would it be for three seconds, or longer?

Then, at the moment of truth, the moment she thought she may actually do it …

Fingers.

Gripping the back of her shirt, pulling Amy away from the window. Thank God. A hand, reached into the waistband of her pants, holding tight, and guiding her backwards. Deeper into the safety of her office. Away from the window.

“Oh God,” she whispered, even though her voice was barely a murmur, and her savior was the same person who’d been brutally assaulting her just a few seconds ago. Thank you.

“You’re welcome,” Molly said.

Amy felt something tug at her waist. Her leather belt.

Slipping out of her pant loops.

Then she felt something wrap around her ankle.

Molly eased Amy back until her grip was secure, and she had enough room. Then it was time.

She looked up in the corner of Amy’s office, where the camera was tucked away.

Winked.

And then she launched Amy out the open window. Thirty-six floors above the pavement.

At the last second—and oh, how she hoped the fiber-optic camera in this office could capture this, her impeccable timing, reflexes, and strength …

At the last possible second she snatched the end of the leather belt. Grasped it tight, then collapsed down into a ball, wedging herself against the metal radiator that ran along the lower office wall. All would be lost if Amy’s weight were to pull Molly right out the window.

But it didn’t. Molly held the leather firm.

McCoy, eyes affixed to the laptop screen, said, “Wow.”

In that moment, Amy knew she had lost her mind, lost it to the point of imagining that someone would actually throw her out an open window, thirty-six stories up. Because who would do that? Clearly, she had lost her mind. Not to be recovered.

And it was nothing like she had imagined.

In all her dreams, a fall from a great height like this one was a nightmare, but one of only a few seconds. The crushing air, the blur of motion …it was all horrible beyond words. But it was finite. When she smashed into the ground, she would jolt awake.

Not this time. In real life, falling to your death felt like forever.

She felt like she would

be

falling

forever.

Molly didn’t look, even though she wanted to. She used the scissors to secure the leather belt to the metal grille of the radiator; as long as Amy didn’t jolt around, it should hold for a short while.

Taking a peek over the edge of the open window would be unprofessional. Better to seem aloof, as in: I don’t need to watch. The moment Amy Felton cleared the window, and was suspended—frozen—paralyzed—in midair, it was on to the next task. After all, she was being watched herself.

Molly was curious, sure. She wondered about the expression on Amy’s face. Wondered if her calculations had been correct. But she cared more about what her special audience thought.

There’d be plenty of time to watch later.

On playback.

Down the hall, Jamie stared at his two-way Motorola pager. It had sat in a front pocket of his leather briefcase for over a month, unused. As far as he knew, Jamie had never turned it off.

The day before the Fourth of July, he’d received a final page from Andrea:

GET HOME NOW, DADDY

:)

Andrea’s water had just broken. She’d been pulling steaks out of the freezer, hoping to thaw them in time for a little pre-Fourth grilling session. She craved meat—big fat T-bone steaks, specifically—throughout her pregnancy, and damn it, she’d be eating steaks right up until the moment the baby was born.

As it turned out, Jamie rushed home, gathered up Andrea and the emergency baby bag she’d packed a week before, and raced—cautiously—to Pennsylvania Hospital. The steaks ended up sitting out on the counter for the next day and a half. When Jamie arrived home, delirious with joy and exhaustion, he was smacked in the face with the scent of rotting cow flesh. Welcome home, Daddy.

The pagers had been Andrea’s idea. Frustrated that she couldn’t reach her husband at will—whenever Jamie had his cell phone tucked away in his bag, the thing was hard to hear—she went Motorola on his ass. Found a sweet deal on matching Talkabout T900s. Less than a hundred dollars for the two of them. Ran on a AA battery. During the last month of her pregnancy, Andrea suggested that her husband carry the T900 at all times. She suggested it like an umpire suggests to a batter that he’s out.

Jamie’s T900 was a royal blue; Andrea’s hot pink. Totally out of character for Andrea. But pregnancy had done strange things to the woman.

So now Jamie stared at his T900, wondering if it had any juice left. He hit the power button, but no luck. The thing had lost its last volt probably right around the time the steaks had reached full ripeness.

But that was fine. All he needed was a single AA battery. And then he could text-message the cops or an ambulance or something. YEAH, OFFICER? MY BOSS JUST GOT SHOT IN THE HEAD. THINK YOU CAN SEND SOMEBODY UP? And get off this floor already.

Where did they keep batteries around here?

Amy Felton. She was always good for stuff like that.

There was a knock at the door, two quick taps, just as Molly was about to open it. She paused, then placed her hand on the sturdy silver knob. Opened the door an inch, then pressed the lock button. Then she opened it the rest of the way and quickly pressed her body into the space between the door and the frame. Whoever was there would notice the missing pane of glass, and the leather belt hanging over the ledge. The sticky August air was already flooding into Amy’s office.

Molly bumped into Jamie, who took a nervous step backwards. He looked stunned.

“Jamie.”

“God, are you okay? Is Amy in there?”

“No. She asked me to lock her office door while she went for help.”

“She did? Where?”

“Come with me.”

Molly charged down the hall, giving Jamie zero chance to refuse. He followed her, just as she knew he would. He had a crush on her.

She remembered that night a few months ago, when the staff had been out drinking. Jamie had joined them, which was uncharacteristic of him. They talked; they flirted. He offered to walk her to her car. He wanted to say good night. She pulled back slightly, and that only drew him in further. His breath smelled like beer, and his button-down shirt like a thousand cigarettes. It was difficult for her to pull back, but she did. It wasn’t the right time.

But now …

As she walked by one of the security cameras in the hall, Molly held her hands up in front of her chest. Five fingers on one hand, two on the other.

“Look at that,” McCoy said, sitting in front of a laptop screen 3,500 miles away. “Number seven. She’s going out of order. Now why would she be doing that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because the guy knocked on the door moments after Girlfriend hung his coworker out of the window.”

“Yeah, I know that. But someone like Girlfriend could have easily handled this guy. Look at him. He’s a cream puff. I got his file around here somewhere. She was saving him for last. Like dessert.”

“Why?”

“You always take out the toughest targets first. Girlfriend identified the first woman—this Felton woman—as her most formidable target. Despite her fear of heights.”

Keene sipped his tea. He was going to have to get up to pour another cup soon. “I’ve been thinking on that. Seems like a very sloppy move to me. You have the pane of glass shattering on the street below. No telling what that may have hit. There might be six schoolchildren down there, bleeding to death.”

“Not likely. That bank of windows faces north, and there’s nothing down below but a minor street used mostly by delivery trucks. Girlfriend was thinking ahead.”

“Fine, I’ll spot you the glass. But what about the target? Surely, somebody’s going to notice a woman hanging out of a window, no matter how small the street.”

McCoy smiled. “Again, not likely. This is Philly. You ever been there? I have, and the murder rate’s out of control. Plus, the sun’s strong today. A lot of glare.”

“Be serious now.”

“Seriously? I think this is Girlfriend showing off. It was a tremendously ballsy move. Because you’re right—you can’t keep that kind of thing under wraps for long. Somebody’s going to look up and see that woman. It may take a minute. It may take an hour. But you can bet that somebody’s going to spot her and start freaking out, and boom. That’s where the clock really starts to tick.”

His name was Vincent Marella …

… and he was reading a paperback thriller. He’d found it in the changing area. Someone had left it on a table with a few other books, the idea being that other employees of 1919 Market would bring in their old books and get a swap thing going. Of course, that never happened. Only the original guy brought in books. And that was it. Vincent guessed that there weren’t many readers on the security staff.

The book wasn’t bad, actually. It was called Center Strike, and was about a gang of high-class yet tough-as-nails thieves who tried to loot the gold stored in vaults beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center within forty-eight hours of the collapse. Completely ridiculous, Vincent knew. A red burst on the cover promised that the book was BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS. Yeah. Right.

Reading stuff like this was both exciting and unnerving. Exciting because one of the book’s heroes was …wait for it … a World Trade Center security guard, who also happened to be a Gulf War vet who single-handedly saved his platoon from a nutty Iraqi general who had held them captive in the desert.

It was unnerving because … well, Vincent was a security guard in a thirty-seven-floor skyscraper in a major American city.

He wasn’t a Gulf vet—he’d grown up between wars. Too young for Vietnam, too old for the Gulf. And he’d never had anybody hold him captive.

Still, he’d seen some action. Not too long ago, in fact.

Vincent was in the middle of a flashback passage about the hero’s gruesome torture in the Iraqi camp when a disheveled-looking guy dressed in a ratty T-shirt walked through the revolving doors. Guy was white, but his black T-shirt was emblazoned with a fake cereal box advertising CHEERI-HO’S, and the busty woman on that fake cereal box—with oversize lips, hips, and bust—wasn’t exactly a General Mills mascot.

Vincent sighed.

It was Terrill Joe, your friendly neighborhood crackhead.

What was interesting was that this neighborhood—if you could call this corporate canyon of towers a “neighborhood”—had any crackheads at all. Center City West was heavily policed, scrubbed, swept, and kept nice and clean for the business set. It was a far cry from the area forty years ago, when it was full of broken-down storefronts and porno theaters on one side, and a huge monstrosity called the Chinese Wall on the other. Actor Kevin Bacon’s dad was the city planner back then, and he decided to rip out the Chinese Wall—rail lines leading out of the city—and replace it with a corporate playground. By the 1980s, Bacon’s dream had been fully realized. Concrete, glass, steel, and sheer height were the order of the day. If you wanted to see what West Market Street looked like in the 1960s, you had to venture up past Twenty-second Street. But even that was going fast. Condos were moving in, even though nobody was buying them.

Crackheads like Terrill Joe would have loved it back in the 1960s, had there been crack to purchase. Of course, back then, they would have just been hippies.

Vincent had no idea where Terrill Joe holed up at night. Couldn’t be neighboring Rittenhouse Square—too fancy, even though Terrill Joe was the right shade of white. Probably some corner of Spring Garden, which lay to the north.

He thought about asking Terrill Joe where he holed up, but decided it wasn’t worth it. It was tough enough getting him out of the building.

“Mr. Marella,” he said. “You’ve got serious trouble.”

“Every day,” Vincent mumbled.

“Huh?”

“What can I do for you, Terrill Joe?”

“You gotta take a look around back.”

“Do I.”

“You’d better. Otherwise it’s your job.”

Terrill Joe’s skin was a spiderweb network of broken veins. His teeth were like tombstones in a graveyard that had been bombarded with short-range missiles. And the stench rolled from him like a tsunami, engulfing countless innocent nostrils. In short, Terrill Joe was an absolute wreck.

Usually, Vincent’s MO with Terrill Joe was to get him out of the building as soon as humanly possible, lest he disturb the taxpayers. He saw no reason to change his MO now, even though it was a humid, swampy mess outside.

“Show me,” he said.

There were two entrances to 1919 Market. The main entrance faced Market, and across the street was the symbol of Philly financial strength: the stock exchange. The place took itself so seriously, it was pretty much licking its lips after 9/11, thinking Wall Street would migrate southeast by a hundred miles or so. Yeah. Like that had happened.

The other entrance faced Twentieth Street, which faced another corporate tower. Terrill Joe led him out the Twentieth Street side.

“What’s the deal?”

“You see, you see.”

Yeah, I’ll see, I’ll see.

The crackhead led the security guard around the back to the small alley between the corporate tower and the apartment building behind it. It was too small to have a name—it was only ten feet wide. Maybe a real street had run through this spot at some point. Not forty years ago, certainly. Then, the Chinese Wall dominated. Whatever street had existed before then had been obliterated by years of paving and repaving and demolition and construction. The object lesson: If you’re not careful, they can take away your name.

“Lookit that.”

Vincent saw what the crackhead was worried about. Shattered glass, on the dark asphalt of the nameless alley.

Where had that come from?

Vincent craned his neck up, even though he knew it was a silly gesture. Like he’d be able to see if there was a single pane of glass missing from one of the thirty-seven stories.

“You see this happen?”

“See it?” Terrill Joe asked. “Thing nearly cut my head off comin’ down.”

“How far up, about?” He squinted. The sun was blazing this morning.

“Real high up.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He squinted for a little while longer—the sun was bright, shining over the top of the white building—then turned to look at the apartment building on the other side. More than likely, the pane of glass had fallen from that side.

Still, he had to check.

Which meant a grueling floor-by-floor check on this side of the building.

Thanks, Terrill Joe.

“You want a smoke?” the crackhead asked.

“Those things’ll kill you.”

“Like I want to live forever?”

His Saturday, ruined by a crackhead. Typical. But what really pissed him off was that it’d probably be at least an hour or so before he got back to Center Strike, and he wanted to know how the torture thing turned out.

Thirty-six floors above, Ethan Goins was sprawled out on an uncomfortable slab of concrete with a pen tube sticking out of his throat.

He was breathing out of it. And he was thankful for it. Don’t get him wrong.

Pens were wonderful.

He loved pens.

But still: He was breathing out of the plastic tube of a ballpoint pen. Even an eternal optimist had to admit that life for Ethan Goins had taken a serious downturn in the past fifteen minutes.

Once Ethan had heard Amy’s voice, and he’d confirmed that there was actually hope of rescue from this friggin’ fire tower, the decision had been clear. He needed to open his throat.

There was pretty much only one way he knew how to do that.

Granted, his imagination may have been limited by his time in Iraq. Maybe that experience prevented an easier solution from popping into his head. Some quick and simple way of opening up his throat, so that air could make its way into his lungs and bloodstream and muscles and brain.

If there was an easier way, it wasn’t coming to him. Blame his oxygen-starved brain.

Pen to the throat it was.

Ethan worked quickly so he didn’t have too much time to dwell on it. Fished the pen out of his bag, pulled the tip and ink stem out of the pen, yanked the neck of his black T-shirt so it wouldn’t get in the way, and then started feeling for his Adam’s apple, and then the cricoid cartilage, and back up to the cricothyroid membrane. Bingo.

Do it, Goins, do it fast.

He wished he had any kind of blade to make an incision. He wished hard. But he knew the contents of his bag, and there was nothing even close. His car keys, maybe, but by the time he sawed open an incision, it might be too late.

Ethan had dots appearing in front of his eyes as it was. So enough messing around. He knew his target: the valley of flesh on his neck.

He knew there would be no do-overs, no second chances.

He had to strike powerfully and cleanly.

First, though, he had to shatter the tip of the pen on the concrete landing. A flat tube would do nothing to his throat … except hurt.

Ethan jammed it against the ground. The plastic chipped as he’d hoped.

There.

Nice and jagged.

Ready to go.

He imagined the air he’d be breathing through that pen tube. Sweet, cool nourishing air. His for the taking, all for one little stabbing motion—

Now!

That had been fifteen minutes ago.

Ethan was still alive, and breathing sweet, nourishing air through the pen tube in his neck.

At first, the pain had been fairly astounding. It was probably a good thing he’d been unable to scream. But the shock to Ethan’s nervous system was far worse. He’d quickly drifted into a semi-catatonic state, most likely his body’s way of defending itself. It wasn’t every day the body’s right arm decided to do something as foolish as take a ballpoint pen, pull the ink stem out of it, then jab the tube into the throat area. If Ethan’s body were the United Nations, then his right arm had become an unstable terrorist state, one that had lashed out—without warning—against a neighboring country. The right arm could say all it wanted about the stabbing being in the throat’s best interests—It was sealed up, Secretary General; I had to destroy that throat in order to save it—but to the remainder of the body, this was an incomprehensible act of aggression. The body imposed sanctions. The body condemned such violence. The body decided to shut down.

For a while.

Now Ethan was on the concrete slab of a landing, regaining his senses, pondering his next move.

Calling for help: pretty much out.

Climbing back up the stairs and opening the door to the thirty-sixth floor: Um, yeah, right. He’d had enough of the chemical agent for breakfast, thank you very much. Ethan’s luck, he’d figure out a way to disarm the thing, then realize at the last second he was wrong, and then have to spend the next ten seconds scrambling for a spork so he could scoop out his eyes to stop the poison from reaching his brain. No thanks.

He wasn’t even sure what that chemical was. It didn’t taste like ricin.

So that left down. Thirty-six flights of down.

Are you down? Ethan was down.

Down to the lobby, down to a security guard, where he’d have to put it down on paper. Unless a game of charades would be faster. Though it would be tricky to convey the events of the past thirty minutes with a few simple hand gestures.

How do you say “chemical nerve agent” in American Sign Language, anyway?

Worry about communicating later, Ethan told himself. Focus on climbing down this fire tower. One concrete half flight at a time. With a pen tube bobbing up and down in a hole in his throat, like a throat cancer patient leading an orchestra.

Down, down, down.

This, among other reasons, was why Ethan hated working on Saturdays.

Molly led Jamie down the hallway, past the conference room, then down another short hallway and through the main lobby.

A desk of deep oak dominated the room, along with a brass-plated logo of Murphy, Knox & Associates affixed to the wall. Jamie never walked through the lobby. Never had any reason to, really. The side entrances led him straight to the hallway closest to his office.

“Did you say Amy’s down here?”

Molly said nothing. Kept right on walking.

That didn’t surprise Jamie. Molly had always been an odd duck. Her social awkwardness put him at ease, actually. Whenever they were gathered in a meeting, Jamie could count on Molly to make some kind of weird nervous mistake, or refuse to make eye contact with any other employee, save David. This was good, because it made Jamie look like less of a geek. It was probably why they got along so well. Two fellow inmates on the corporate island of misfit toys.

“Look, Molly,” Jamie said. “All we need is a double-A battery, and we’re pretty much saved. No matter what Amy has in mind.”

Jamie had no idea why Amy would be down this end of the hall. It didn’t make sense. This part of the floor was populated by empty offices and cubicles, a remnant of Murphy, Knox’s gogo years. Or that was the way David had explained it. The company had been buzzing during the dot. com boom, only to succumb to postmillennial downsizing. Now, the only people who ever used this side of the office were the occasional auditors who passed through from time to time, and building inspectors, who insisted on updating it with the latest in OSHA requirements, even though nobody used it.

Without warning, Molly stopped. Turned to the left. Opened a door. Ushered Jamie inside. Closed the door behind them.

Then she did the strangest thing.

Molly looked into his eyes, with a soft, almost doting expression. It wasn’t a sexual look—no C’mere big boy and I’ll show you a good time. It was more, Come here, my sweet friend, and let me give you a hug.

It reminded him of a night a few months ago. A night after a long drunken evening …

“Um, Molly?” Jamie asked. “Why are we in here?”

Molly didn’t reply. She held out her hand. It was small and pale, with thin, elegant fingers. Her breath smelled good. Pepperminty.

Before Jamie knew what he was doing, he reached out and took her hand, as if to give her a handshake.

He felt her fingers slide against his skin. Molly’s fingers danced over his, searching. Then she latched on, and—

Jamie fell to his knees, crying in pain.

His thumb and middle finger were on fire.

What was she doing?

OH GOD.

More pressure now, more agony, nowhere to hide.

STOP OH GOD PLEASE STOP.

Jamie may even have thought he said this out loud.

Keene fixed himself another cup of tea.

He heard McCoy in the other room: “Will you look at this!”

McCoy, again with his Philadelphia people.

They should be focusing on Dubai.

Keene and McCoy shared operational space, and more often than not, operations. But this Philadelphia thing was all McCoy. As a “human resources man”—his words, not Keene’s—he liked to dabble in new talent, build his little network within the larger networks. Having “his” people in various places all over the organization increased McCoy’s power exponentially.

This was how Keene paired up with McCoy in the first place. A series of e-mails, sent back and forth between San Diego and Edinburgh, hinting around the edges. You never come out and say what you do. You sense it in each other.

A few months later, a chance meet-up in Houston had worked to their mutual benefit. Similar adventures in Chicago, and then later, New York City, had been successes as well. So when it came time for a series of operations that needed special attention, it was McCoy who had suggested Keene to his bosses, and from that, thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment had found its way into a Portobello flat.

The primary operation, as Keene saw it, was this Dubai deal. It was still in its infancy, but needed coddling.

Philadelphia was little more than a distraction, but McCoy was engrossed with it.

“C’mere and look at this. Check out what our girl is doing.”

“Aye.”

If Keene didn’t, McCoy would only continue to pester him.

Might as well engage him.

Would do him good to pay attention, probably. If McCoy were to be believed, they could be working with Girlfriend in the near future.

The pain was so blinding, Jamie found himself detached from his surroundings. He was aware that Molly was moving behind him, sending fresh waves of agony up his arm and into the hot pain centers of his brain. Jamie’s hand and arm felt like a thick mass of rubber, alive with agony, able to be bent any way his torturer wished.

His torturer—his friend Molly.

His office spouse.

Suddenly, he was being lifted up. Jamie was startled to discover that his legs could support some of his weight.

Molly had positioned herself behind him. He could feel her body heat, her chest pressed up against his back. The long sleeves of her blouse brushed against his bare forearms. They’d never touched before, except for the occasional handshake or shoulder pat. If he wasn’t in so much agony, he might have been aroused by the touch of her unfamiliar body.

She was a lot smaller than Jamie, but that worked to her advantage. She could tuck in behind him, do what she wanted, and Jamie would have no prayer of reaching around and stopping her.

Not that he knew how to do something like that.

Molly nudged him to the left, left, left, pointing him to a corner of the empty office.

“That’s it, Jamie,” she whispered.

“Whyareyoudoingthis,” Jamie said. His voice was raspy. Wheezing. Desperate. It startled him to hear it.

“Shhhhhh, now. The pain will stop soon.”

Keene said, “What’s she doing?”

“Holding him up for us to see.”

“Like a slaughterhouse employee showing off the chicken.”

“That’s exactly right.”

“She going to slice his throat, hang him up by his feet now?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Does it matter that I’m vegetarian?”

“I don’t think she cares.”

Molly hurled Jamie to the floor.

Jamie caught himself on one hand—the numb one, unfortunately. His arm was too weak to support his body weight, so his face hit floor. Sucked in air and dust from an industrial carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed in at least a month.

He saw that Molly was slipping off her shoes, delicately sliding them into a corner of the office, where they’d presumably be out of the way. But for what?

What was she doing?

Jamie pushed himself up to his knees, then reached out his good hand to the desk. He’d pull himself up, bolt, and leave it to the guys with the cozy white jackets with the buckles and straps to figure out. Molly had lost her mind; that much was clear. Had she lost it after she shot her boss in the head, or was it a good while before that? Who cared? Jamie needed to get out of this office. Off this floor.

Home to his family.

But as he reached out his hand, Molly grabbed it. Yanked it toward the ceiling a few inches.

Then pressed two of his fingers backwards in such a way that it paralyzed him completely.

She did this with one hand.

“Ow,” Jamie said, more out of surprise than pain.

Molly looked at him and smirked. She mouthed something to him, and applied more pressure.

Okay, now it really, really hurt.

“Oh God please let go. I can’t move.”

She mouthed something again.

Maybe Jamie was losing his mind, because he could have sworn she mouthed: “Just play along and don’t pass out.”

But aloud, she said: “Tell me everything you know about the Omega Project.”

“What?!”

And now Molly pressed her fingers against Jamie’s, and Jamie found himself making a hideous sound that tried to accomplish three things at once:

Suck in air.

Express pain.

Beg.

He’d never made a sound like that before, never thought his vocal cords were capable of such an animalistic cry.

“Tell me,” she said loudly, as if announcing it to the whole office, “about the Omega Project.”

“I don’t know …what you’re … talking about.”

Molly shook her head, as if she were disappointed.

Then with her free hand—again, Jamie couldn’t believe his entire body was incapacitated by one soft, slender hand—she reached over and unbuttoned the cuff on her blouse. She was the only one in the office, aside from David, who wore long-sleeved shirts in the humid Philadelphia summer. As Molly rolled up her sleeve, Jamie saw why.

A thick silver bracelet was strapped around her wrist. It looked like a series of metal dominoes linked together, side by side, enveloping her delicately muscled forearm. Molly tapped one of the silver dominoes, then flipped open a compartment on the bottom. She pulled something out.

Then she showed it to him.

A silver blade. Nothing too long. It was shaped like a triangle, with one long end wrapped in black electrician’s tape.

Jamie recognized the blade. It was an X-Acto blade. Common office supply, especially in the newspaper business. He’d done paste-up at his college newspaper for a few years. Nicked his fingers with X-Acto blades endless times.

Now Molly pressed the sharp edge of the blade to the pad of his thumb, like a teacher touching a piece of chalk to a blackboard.

“The Omega Project,” she repeated.

Keene asked, “The Omega Project?”

“No idea.”

Keene turned a laptop around, closed the video feed, opened up a new window, and started typing. One window led to another in a furious progression, with Keene typing a series of keywords and passwords and search terms.

“Nothing,” he mumbled.

“Strange. I’ve never run across anything with a name like that. It’s so … 1970s. We wouldn’t give an operation a groaner like that.”

“Bloody strange.”

Then McCoy’s face lightened. “Wait, wait,” he said. “Hold off on that search.”

“Why?”

“I think she’s messing with his mind.”

“And ours, too. So there is no Omega?”

“Remember, she’s auditioning. Maybe she’s just showing off her interrogation techniques.”

“Even if her subject knows nothing?”

“Even better. She has to take it all the way.”

“She’s sick, mate,” Keene said.

“She’s awesome. Hand me that file, will you?”

Jamie tried to squirm away, but each movement yielded fresh agony in his arm.

“What are you doing?” Jamie asked. He could feel the tip of the blade on his thumb. Maybe it was his imagination, but the blade felt like it was sinking into his flesh, deep enough to scrape bone. God. Was she actually stabbing his thumb?

“Tell me about the Omega Project,” she said aloud.

Then Molly squinted and whispered: “I know you don’t know anything, Jamie. Don’t pass out.”

“Why the hell are you asking me then?”

“Wrong answer,” Molly said.

Then she cut him, dragging the blade down the length of his thumb, across the thick muscle at the base, and out before she reached the vulnerable veins of the wrist.

Jamie howled. He tried to move, but couldn’t. He couldn’t see the damage to his thumb, because his palm was facing Molly, who was now placing the bloodied tip of the blade to his index finger.

“Tell me about Omega,” she said again.

Then she whispered: “Stay awake.”

Stay awake? Jamie couldn’t see his thumb, but he imagined a Ball Park Frank on the grill, skin burst and curled open, exposing the meat beneath.

God, what will make her stop?

Jamie tried to move. Bolt forward. Knock her off balance. Anything.

But he was paralyzed.

She pressed the blade deep into the tip of his index finger.

Only now did he realize that Molly was holding his left hand. Jamie was left-handed. He held pens with his thumb and index finger. He grabbed the adhesive strip on Chase’s diapers between his thumb and index finger. He ran his fingertips down Andrea’s chest, feeling her soft skin and bumpy edges around her nipple, and it was one of his favorite sensations, and now lost to him forever because—

—because Molly was ripping his index finger down to the palm.

She asked him more questions. Maybe it was the same question. The Omega Project. Whatever that was. The Alpha. The Omega. Omega Man. Early Man. Dead Man. But Jamie couldn’t hear, because he was in shock by then—dazed and incoherent and searching for some other part of his body where he could hide out for a while. Away from the pain of his burst hot dog fingers, and the warm blood—his blood—running down his forearm, racing around, dripping from his elbow.

Maybe she was on his middle finger now. He thought she might be. Because it felt like she stopped halfway down. Because one of her own fingers pressed down at the base of that finger, which was partly how she’d paralyzed him, and maybe she was going to finish off the hand and slice off the tops of his fingers and put them in a little Ziploc baggie for later and ask him again about the Omega Project on the way to the ER….

“I guess you don’t know anything after all,” she said, or maybe Jamie fantasized it.

Molly let him collapse to the carpet again.

He could move again, if he wanted.

He didn’t want.

“I’m proud of you,” she whispered. He watched her stockinged feet walk around his body, trying to avoid stepping in the blood.

He didn’t want to listen to her voice anymore.

“But we’re going to do just a little more,” she continued. “Try not to pass out.”

He heard Molly’s words but tried not to extract any meaning from them. But that was difficult. Words were everything to him. He had been a writer—was still a writer, even if it was toiling over meaningless press releases for financial services that made absolutely no sense to him.

It was impossible to deny her words had meaning.

Try not to pass out.

Which was an incredibly frightening statement. Because “Try not to pass out” meant there was more pain coming. Probably a great deal of it. And that didn’t sound good. Jamie thought they’d explored his personal threshold for pain quite thoroughly. It was exactly one thumb, one index finger, and half of a middle finger.

So when Molly lifted him to his feet again, wrapped a well-muscled arm around his torso, and rested his weight on her own body, he thought:

I’m in for more pain.

And we’re going to work on that together.

But then the blade was in her other hand, and this time she had a fist curled around the taped-up part, and the blade was pointed down like a dagger. Her supporting arm loosened, and Jamie slipped down a bit. Her arm caught him under his right armpit and extended around his neck—tight. Almost choking him.

The blade touched Jamie’s chest, right through his shirt. Pierced the skin like it had pierced his thumb.

And then the blade whisked down his chest.

Oh God.

This time she was going to kill him.

“Ugh,” Keene said. “Not sure I’m in the mood for an evisceration. It’s almost supper.”

“Shhh,” McCoy said.

“What is she doing?”

“Don’t know.”

“She’s not cutting his chest. Not that I can see.”

“No, she’s not.”

“What, is she pretending?”

“Hang on a sec.”

McCoy had the Girlfriend file on his lap. Which showed how much he was engrossed in this operation. Usually, he’d store his can of Caley between his legs. He flipped through a few pages.

“She flashed me a seven, right?”

“I believe so, mate. I can roll back the recording if you like.”

“No, no. We both saw it. Seven is this guy. Jamie DeBroux. Media relations director. Formerly, a journalist. He received the lowest risk assessment.”

“Which explains the fingers.”

“Yeah … hey, you’re right. I didn’t think of that. That’s brilliant.”

“Look. She’s still slicing at him.”

“Still no blood?” McCoy asked, but slid himself closer to the laptop nearest him and punched in a few numbers. The same scene popped up on his monitor.

“No,” said Keene. “Either she’s playing around with him, or she has the worst aim I’ve ever seen.”

“What the devil is she …”

Then McCoy smiled. He was like a kid at a birthday party who’d blasted apart the piñata with one whack of the stick. Candy and toys rained down all around him.

“I love this girl! Oh, man, I want to be her baby daddy.”

Keene looked at him. There was no way he was asking “What?” again. He stone refused.

“When we meet, I will fall to my knees and worship her blood-caked feet. Oh man, I am crushing so hard right now!”

Keene wasn’t going to do it. Not dignified.

On screen, Girlfriend continued to feign stabs at her quarry. Only now she had him on his knees, and was swiping her hooked blade across the space directly in front of his throat. His eyes. His abdomen. His genitals. Vicious, sharp little movements, leaving little margin for error. If the quarry were to so much as sneeze, he’d be ripped open in a flash.

The quarry, this DeBroux guy, was trembling. Hard to tell if it was fear or spasms of pain. His injured hand hung limply at his side, and blood dripped from his savaged fingertips in a Jackson Pollock pattern.

McCoy slapped Keene on the arm. “You know what she’s doing?”

No, I don’t, Keene thought. He’s waiting for me to say it. He wants me to say it. He needs me to say it.

Oh, this is childish.

“What?” Keene asked.

McCoy said, “She’s running us through her résumé.”

Jamie was in the strange position of being close to death, expecting death, and slowly coming to terms with death, but unable to actually die.

The moment he saw the blade again, he knew it was going to enter his chest. An atom bomb of fear detonated in his heart.

He thought of Chase.

Chase and that cartoon duck in little boy pants.

Although he imagined it did, the blade didn’t seem to be cutting his chest. It whipped over the surface of his shirt above ever so slightly, then slipped away and plunged toward another spot on his chest. This failed to enter his body, too.

A flurry of motion followed, almost too quick for Jamie to comprehend, but with every stroke he expected that this would be the one, the blade would penetrate his flesh and his life would rapidly come to an end.

Even on his knees a few moments later, the blade dancing across his throat and face now, so fast, he actually felt the wind from Molly’s frenzied movements.

But the blade never penetrated.

This, more than anything else that had happened this morning—the gunshot, the sliced fingers—broke Jamie De-Broux’s mind a bit.

McCoy pointed out what he could. Keene was still a little mystified.

“That’s right out of the Solthurner Fechtbuch,” McCoy said. “And oooh. A little jung gum in there, too.”

“Why isn’t she taking him out?”

“Because he’s number seven. She doesn’t need to.”

“So why go after him at all?”

“To show off. She already lost one of her targets—number five, that McCrane guy. The one with the champagne?”

“Right.”

“That means she needs to make it up somehow. She promised that she’d demonstrate a full array of her techniques. She promised they’d be surprising yet economical. Wants us to know she could tear people apart any countless number of ways, from the undetectable to the flashy. First, she did a straight-on interrogation. Now, she’s being flashy.”

They continued watching the monitors for a while.

“Won’t they find evidence of these … mutilations?”

“Nah. Bodies were to be burned up anyway. Doesn’t matter.”

Keene sighed, then turned away from the screen. “Aye, she’s overdoing it.”

“Maybe, but I like to watch her work.”

“She should just kill him.”

Jamie DeBroux wished she’d just kill him already.

And then a funny thing happened.

She stopped.

For the third time that morning, Jamie collapsed onto the carpet. Through Molly’s legs, he could see that the door to the office had opened.

And there was another pair of legs standing in the doorway. Bare legs. Black flats.

“Busy, Molly?” a voice said.

He tried to see past Molly’s legs, but his view was obscured.

The voice sounded familiar, though.

It sounded like

“Nichole Wise, code name Workhorse.”

“That’s interesting,” Keene said. “I didn’t realize we did the whole gay nickname thing.”

“We do.”

“I was being facetious.”

“But you know who else does?”

“Well, the CIA.”

“The motherloving CIA.”

“Interesting. They send her to monitor the Philadelphia operation?”

“No. They’ve got a crush on Murphy, and they’re jealous he left them. In fact, I don’t think they’re aware we’re behind his operation. Probably better that way.”

“Does Girlfriend know about her?”

“She hasn’t said as much. If she’s figured it out, it’ll be all the more impressive.”

“Murphy’s office is full of wonders, isn’t it?”

“It’s what makes this line of work so much fun.”

Keene could see why McCoy got wrapped up in this sort of thing. The people assets. It could become as addictive as an American soap opera. Not that he watched those things. Who was screwing who. Who had a secret alliance with who else. You could work for a company—or the Company, as it were—for years and not unravel every sticky web.

“Think your girl can handle it?”

“From the looks of it, she can handle everything.”

“Care for a little wager?”

“Stop talking. I think Girlfriend is about to kill Workhorse, and I don’t want to miss it.”

ONE-ON-ONE

If you’re attacking your market from multiple positions and your competition isn’t, you have all the advantage

.

—JAY ABRAHAM

Nichole Wise, code name Workhorse, had been waiting for this moment for, oh, a little less than six months. One hundred and seventy-eight days, to be exact. Ever since “Molly Lewis” started working as David’s assistant. The snotty little priss. Nichole knew she wasn’t a civilian, as they’d all claimed.

That little demonstration in the conference room only confirmed what she’d suspected for months.

She was one of them.

One Murphy didn’t tell the other operatives about, for some reason.

Nichole had been recruited a year after 9/11. Those were heady times. Let’s scramble up some terrorist nest eggs, David had said, and in that moment, Nichole could be suckered into believing he was a patriot. But she knew better. She knew David Murphy was up to something else, and used this line about an “ultrasecret wing of the intelligence community” as a ploy to dupe other wise good people into doing his bidding.

Some agents may have seen this as a babysitting gig, but not Nichole. She was keeping tabs on one of the most notorious operatives the Company had ever known. One who had suddenly retired a few months after 9/11, then opened up a “financial services” corporation.

We can smell a front company a mile away, Nichole’s handler had told her. We want to know who he’s fronting.

Nichole had nodded.

We want you in there, and we want you to stay in there until you find out.

Whatever he had cooking on the side—and Nichole’s bosses were fairly sure David Murphy had something cooking on the side—she would be there to assess and act, if necessary.

So when Murphy had called them in here on a Saturday morning, she knew something big was breaking. But it frustrated her to no end that she had no idea what it might be.

And that would be a failure.

Whatever Murphy had going, she should have been on it from the beginning. This completely blindsided her.

She’d installed an undetectable key logger on Murphy’s machine a few days after she started, and changed the gear every month. She knew every e-mail he sent, every Web page he browsed.

She’d recorded every closed-door conversation Murphy ever had.

She used compressed air, a digital camera, and many long nights with Photoshop to read his sealed mail.

She’d collected every shredded bag of crosscut papers and reconstituted them in her suburban apartment, one bag at a time, one long weekend at a time. She’d used tiny paperweights to hold them in place and worked one piece at a time. Many nights she’d dream about strips of paper.

She entered into a clandestine, sex-only relationship with the mail guy—and every mail guy henceforth—even though many of them had a devil-may-care attitude toward personal hygiene.

She’d even burned through countless cheap wristwatches, placed under the back tire of Murphy’s car—oh how relentlessly old school that was—to fastidiously track his movements.

Over three years of clandestine operations, she’d earned the sobriquet “Workhorse” a dozen times over.

And nothing.

“Keep watching him,” her bosses told her.

She did as instructed, only occasionally pausing to conduct other operations now and again. She was too valuable to waste on David Murphy full time.

That was when Nichole began to grow paranoid. Perhaps she was missing something when she was conducting her other ops.

Maybe Murphy knew about her, and conducted his other business when she was otherwise engaged. Just to make it look like he was being a good corporate choirboy, heading up a successful private business.

Maybe he had a way around her key logger.

Maybe he switched out her surveillance tapes.

Maybe he purchased bags of shredded nonsense from another company, and switched out his own shredded documents for a ringer.

Maybe he was on to the watches. An old-head like him probably would be.

Maybe he was just messing around with her head.

If that was the case, one thing was for sure: For six months now, Molly Lewis was helping him.

Her surveillance of David Murphy had become increasingly frustrating during the past six months, and it was too much of a coincidence that Murphy had hired Molly right around the same time. The moment Nichole first shook Molly’s hand, the bad juju alarms went off in her head. She immediately hunted for evidence, had the Company screen Molly’s background hard, but nothing came up out of the ordinary. Born in Champaign, Illinois, to a conservative Catholic family. Attended a year of UI, agricultural college. Dropped out to marry an actuary named Paul.

But the only evidence she could find of any kind of intelligence background: the slightest hint of a Russian accent.

Which would be kind of weird coming from the lips of an Illinois farm girl with a maiden name like Molly Kaye Finnerty.

But Nichole swore it was there.

She wished she could confide in someone, ask if they heard it, too.

The only other evidence: her surveillance tapes. Pre-Molly, Nichole’s secret recordings of Murphy’s offices yielded innocuous office banter, phone conversations. But post-Molly, the tapes yielded literally nothing. Blank hiss. It was as if someone had waved a high-powered magnet over the tapes. Nichole switched to digital recording devices, but the result was the same. Even though she knew Murphy wasn’t sitting in his office all day in silence. The man loved to talk on the phone. Nichole had listened to countless hours of voice, piped through her ATH-M40fs Audio-Technica headphones.

So why dead air?

Molly listened to the blank tapes in search of an audio clue. An electronic pop or spike. Something to indicate the device that had wiped them clean.

And then she heard it.

Or she swore she heard it: Zdrastvuyte.

Impossibly faint, at the edge of human hearing.

Zdrastvuyte.

Formal Russian for “Hello.”

The more she listened, pumping up her playback equipment to maximum volume, the more she swore she heard two more syllables after the greeting.

Nee-cole.

Zdrastvuyte, nee-KO-ool.

It was all beginning to prick at Nichole Wise’s mind … until the day David Murphy made his next civilian hire: intern Roxanne Kurtwood. In Roxanne, Nichole saw a clear path to sanity.

Murphy’s organization was strange in that it blended operatives and civilians. Operatives ran the joint; civilians supported them.

Roxanne deserved more than “support” status. She was smart, versatile. Ivy League. From a family of Pakistani doctors. She had a flexible moral code. All that good stuff that makes for a good op. And not a trace of Russian in her speech.

Nichole decided: Roxanne would be her girl.

Nichole decided to recruit her slowly, bring her into the ocean one inch of water at a time. She hadn’t given Roxanne a hint of this, but quietly laid the groundwork. She hadn’t proposed this to her CIA handler yet, either. But he knew they were always looking out for new talent. She suspected they’d approve. Then they’d have two sets of eyes on Murphy. It would be hard for that snake to wiggle around two sets of daggers plunging into the grass, trying to pin him down.

Roxanne: her partner-in-training. Her savior.

And something even more important—something Nichole hadn’t known for years.

A friend.

Of course, it figured that she was dead.

After Murphy was shot in the head, and everyone decided to split up, Nichole had taken Roxanne by the wrist. “This way.”

“But …”

“Trust me.”

Nichole told Amy they’d check the elevators to be sure, but that’s not where she led Roxanne. First they headed to Murphy’s office, because whatever was going down, a burn of his office was probably next. It was the tradecraft thing to do. Molly’s betrayal was something Nichole had not seen coming. Every theory Nichole had about the Illinois farm girl went spinning down the toilet the moment she pulled a Lee Harvey on the big boss man. Molly hadn’t been hired to cock-block Nichole. She had wormed her way into Murphy, Knox, and was in the process of her own little hostile takeover of the company and all its assets.

But whom did she work for?

David’s own bosses?

Another intelligence agency?

Another country?

It killed Nichole that she didn’t know the answer.

“Where are we going?” Roxanne asked.

“Toward the elevators,” Nichole said.

Sure, they were headed to the elevator bank, but only as a shortcut to Murphy’s office. Out one side entrance and in another, a quick left, and they’d be in. Nichole would bar the door—no, wait.

First she would recover the pistol she’d stashed here and moved periodically over the past five years. Her Heckler & Koch P7. Eight 9 mm rounds. Not the most desirable weapon in the world for a firefight, but it would do its job here.

Because she was going to give the HK P7 to Roxanne, and then barricade them in Murphy’s office.

Nichole would instruct Roxanne to shoot anything that tried to come through the door. Use all eight rounds if you have to. Then Nichole would rip apart the office, gather what she needed, then do a burn herself. She’d get Roxanne out of there, make it outside, call for Company extraction. Pray she wouldn’t lose her job for missing something this catastrophic.

What if, after three years of undercover investigation, it came out that David Murphy was working for foreign terrorists?

“Nichole, the elevators are this …”

“Never mind. I’ve changed my mind. There’s something …”

But when she opened the door, she saw a blur of Molly Lewis shooting down the hallway, headed right for Murphy’s office.

So much for mourning the boss.

Okay, change of plans. First, map out an escape plan. Then go back and deal with the Russian farm girl.

“Follow me, Rox.”

“What? What now?”

Poor Roxanne. She’d seemed so carefree last night at the Continental. Bummed out about having to report to work in the hot city in the wee hours of a Saturday morning—for members of Roxanne’s generation, 9:00 A.M. was indeed the wee hours—but still, able to separate herself from that and have a good time anyway. Cosmos and tapas. Flirting with boys. Laughing about people at work.

Now she woke up to have her boss threaten to kill her, a coworker die, and another coworker shoot her boss in the head, JFK-style.

And now her best friend (Nichole hoped, anyway) was leading her willy-nilly through the halls. She needed Rox to keep it together.

“You have to trust me,” Nichole said. “I know what’s going on here, and I know how to get us out of it.”

Rox, God love her, looked her in the eye, like a Girl Scout reciting an oath, and said, “I trust you.”

“We’re going to the other side.”

The half of Murphy, Knox that had lain fallow since 2003.

“First, the kitchen.”

For the past few weeks, Nichole had stashed her HK P7 in a white casserole dish in the kitchen on the other side of the office. Hardly anyone used the refrigerator over here. Even if someone did use this fridge, nobody was desperate enough to open up someone else’s casserole dish.

“You’re not seriously going to eat that, are you?” Roxanne asked.

Nichole pulled out the dish, peeled off the plastic top. A layer of cold peas was on top of a watertight Ziploc bag. Her fingers found the edge of the bag, and the cold peas went racing over the kitchen counter as Nichole unearthed the HK P7.

“Oh my God.”

Nichole removed the pistol from the plastic, yanked back on the slide, slapped a round in the chamber, tucked the pistol in the back of her waist. She wore her capris with just enough give for moments like these. It had been far too long since she’d had a moment like this. The adrenaline felt good cascading through her blood.

“Oh my God, you’re going to kill me.”

“No, darlin’,” Nichole said. “I’m one of the good guys, and we’re going to get ourselves out of here.”

Murphy had said he put the elevators on bypass, and rigged the fire tower with nerve agents. Murphy was certainly capable of such things. But what about the air-conditioning ducts?

Ah yes, air-conditioning ducts. Favorite of action movies everywhere across the land. When you’re trapped in a room and need to escape in a hurry, simply yank off the metal register—it wouldn’t be screwed in tight or anything—and shimmy on up in there, even though modern air ducts are designed to carry air, not adult human beings, so even if you were able to fit yourself into the duct, you’d probably fall right through the bottom at some inopportune point, probably land on a cubicle and impale yourself on a No. 2 pencil. But that’s why we love action movies, right?

Life isn’t an action movie, though.

And Nichole didn’t want to use the air ducts to escape.

She wanted to use them to call for help.

Nichole moved down the hallway until she found what she was looking for. The air-return vent, which was about the size of a hardcover novel turned on its side.

“Give me your purse.”

“Why?”

“Rox, please.”

“Okay, okay.”

Roxanne never went anywhere without her bag—even 9:00 A.M. Saturday morning meetings. And she never went without a full-size bottle of her signature scent: Euphoria for Women by Calvin Klein. Roxanne had been trying to convert Nichole for weeks now, offering her wrist for a sniff often and irritatingly. Nichole didn’t do perfume. She preferred a clean, freshly scrubbed scent. Irish Spring, if possible. Fancy scents make you easy to track.

But now, Nichole was glad for Roxanne’s perfume.

Because she was going to spray an ungodly amount of Euphoria into the air-return vent.

Nichole had read about a lawsuit years ago: In a nine-story law firm, a junior partner decided to play a prank on a coworker who had been caught going to a strip club. He bought a bottle of cheap perfume from a street vendor, then sprayed it all over his buddy’s office. On his seat. On his desk. On the carpet. In the corner. Enough to make the place smell like a lap-dancing stripper for at least a few days. Then the junior partner closed the door.

The problem was, the building’s HVAC system picked up the cheap perfume and redistributed it all over the building. The air-conditioning system wasn’t enough to strip away the scent, and soon, the building was overcome with eau de stripper.

A secretary was allergic. Her throat closed up on the way to the hospital.

The junior partner’s career ended with a one-two punch of criminal and civil lawsuits.

Nichole didn’t want to kill anybody with Euphoria, but if it attracted the attention of building security, they’d have a better shot of making it off this floor alive.

She uncapped the perfume and felt something brush up the base of her spine.

Her HK P7.

God, Rox, no …

“Don’t move,” Roxanne said, hands trembling. She backed away from Nichole slowly. She had the pistol pointed at Nichole’s head.

“This is not what you think,” Nichole said. “I’m CIA. Listen to me, Roxanne: I’m CIA.”

“David wanted to kill us all, and now you’re going to poison us all.”

“Rox, you’re making a huge mistake. Please put the gun down.”

“I’m not stupid! I heard him talking about nerve agents!”

Nichole showed her the perfume bottle. “This is yours, Roxanne. Your Euphoria.”

“I slept over last night! You could have switched it!”

“Honey, you can’t put a chemical nerve agent in a perfume bottle.”

Well, you could, actually. But Nichole needed to calm Roxanne down. Tell her what she wanted to hear. Get her gun back. “Then put the perfume down.”

“This is our way out of here.”

“God, Nichole, don’t make me do this. Please don’t make me do this. But I’m not going to let you kill us all. I’m not! I don’t want to die in here!”

Everything positive that Nichole had seen in Roxanne—her initiative, her resilience—was now distorted in a fun house mirror. How could she have thought about recruiting someone who could snap so easily, who’d abandon rational thought in a matter of minutes?

Roxanne was still her friend, but she was all wrong for this line of work.

Now Nichole had to do something regrettable. She had to incapacitate her best friend. It would hurt Rox, and it would kill Nichole to do it, but she needed Rox safe and out of the way for now. She could be stashed in one of the empty offices until this was all over. Maybe then they’d have a chance of repairing this breach of trust.

So Nichole pretended to put the perfume back into the purse, but snapped her arm up and blasted it right in Roxanne’s eyes, then slapped the gun down, wrapped her fingers around it, pulled the gun away, dropped the perfume, and then followed up with a chop to Roxanne’s face, right between her nose and lip—an incredibly painful blow that would bring her to her knees. Nichole would use the opportunity to cut off her air and render her unconscious for at least an hour.

But Nichole had misjudged the chop.

And she had kind of, accidentally, sent fragments of bone into her best friend’s brain.

Nichole sat there for a while, crouched down next to her friend’s dead body, pondering her next move.

Pondering how she was going to piece together the broken shards of her career as an undercover intelligence operative, which had shattered spectacularly—and quite possibly irreparably—in the past thirty minutes.

That’s when she heard footsteps, way on the other side of the room.

Somebody was walking into the dead wing of Murphy, Knox.

Some bodies.

A male voice said, “Look, Molly. All we need is a double-A battery, and we’re pretty much saved. No matter what Amy has in mind.”

“You busy?” Nichole asked now.

Molly turned. She had a twisted little smile on her face. She parted her lips, the upper one beaded with perspiration. She’d been having fun in here with poor Jamie. There was a lot of blood on the floor. God knows what kind of torture she’d inflicted on him. Then she saw his hand, and had a pretty good idea.

Nichole should have charged in sooner. That would have been the nice thing to do. But those harrowing minutes she’d spent, crouched down next to Roxanne’s body, listening to Jamie scream and beg—they’d been essential. Nichole Wise wasn’t one to strategize on her feet. She needed a few minutes to get her game on.

And now she was ready for the Russian farm girl.

“Zdrastvuyte,” Molly said.

Formal Russian for “Hello.”

It was her on the tape.

But Nichole didn’t let it shake her. She replied: “Kak delah?”

How are you?

“Kowaies Kateer,” Molly said.

Ooh, Arabic now. Little Russian farm girl got herself an edu-mah-cation.

Nichole asked, “Min fain inta?”

Molly ignored the question, and shot back her own: “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

“Natürlich,” Nichole replied. “Mirabile dictu, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Quam profundus est imus Oceanus Indicus?”

“La plume de ma tante.”

Jamie didn’t know what Nichole and Molly were talking about, everything sounded like gibberish to him—but he knew one thing. Nichole had no idea what she was facing.

“Nichole,” he gasped. “Run!”

Then he started to crawl forward, using only his right hand, skin burning on carpet, his eyes scanning the empty office for anything remotely resembling a weapon….

There were many ways to go about this, Nichole thought as they bandied about the languages. She had run through two different scenarios while crouched down next to Roxanne’s body.

Molly Lewis had the slender frame of a Russian gymnast—short and skinny. She was probably well trained in various forms of hand-to-hand combat. Now Nichole saw that Molly had this cute little X-Acto blade with a taped-up handle. She was probably like a surgeon with that thing. She’d certainly done a number on Jamie DeBroux’s hand. It had to go.

Nichole, meanwhile, was built like a WNBA player, or at least a decent guard on a women’s college team. She also had her fully loaded HK P7 shoved in the waistband of her capris.

Option #1: Pull the gun, blow the Russian farm girl into the back of this wall, soak the drywall with her blood.

But then she wouldn’t have the chance to gather some potentially career-saving intelligence. So an instant execution was out. Sure, she could shoot Molly in the leg, but the woman could go into shock very easily. No intelligence there, either.

Option #2: Sudden blinding force.

Pummel the Russian farm girl until her eyes blacken and her spine nearly snaps in half. Smash her ribs so badly that every breath becomes a session of exquisite agony. Cripple her, but hold her back from the brink. Nichole needed her conscious. Pliable. Only then would Nichole have a chance of keeping her job, dim as that prospect may seem at the moment.

Nichole liked Option #2 the best, but it wasn’t as if Molly gave her a choice.

She was already charging with her baby blade.

On screen, Girlfriend jabbed her blade forward.

McCoy smiled. “Look at that.”

Her opponent, a tall big-boned blonde whom the paperwork had identified as Nichole Wise, slapped the blade aside with her right hand, then followed up by smashing the heel of her palm into Girlfriend’s nose. Girlfriend was visibly stunned. She dropped the blade. Took a few steps back.

“Ah,” Keene said, sipping at a fresh cup of tea. “Will you look at that.”

“Shut up,” McCoy said.

Nichole was surprised how fast Molly dropped the blade. She thought it would be more of a fight. But so what.

Nichole wrapped her left hand around Molly’s throat and used her right to grab the material of her skirt. She pushed hard, slamming Molly’s head against the doorframe. Nichole pulled her back, then pushed forward even harder, aiming higher up the wall. Molly’s head ricocheted off drywall again. Then Nichole hurled her across the room, smashing her compact little frame against the opposite wall. Some drywall shattered on impact. Dust exploded from the surface. The floors seemed to jolt beneath her feet.

On the return throw, Nichole put Molly through the window overlooking the office, shattering glass and wrapping Molly’s body in the aluminum slats of the venetian blinds.

The Russian farm girl rolled ten feet through glass and bent aluminum before coming to a dead halt.

Eat it, Molly Kaye Finnerty, Nichole thought. Her arms were already sore. It had been a while since she’d gone to the gym.

On the floor, Molly didn’t move.

Oh hell.

She didn’t do it again, did she? Accidentally kill someone?

This would not be good.

Nichole thought about her cousin Jason, who was four years older, and liked to inflict all manner of playground tortures on any younger cousin he could catch at family gatherings. That is, until the day Nichole—all of eight years old—grabbed Jason’s wrist, twisted his arm behind his twelve-year-old back, locked the elbow, then pushed. She pushed up hard, hard as she was worth, dislocating Jason’s shoulder.

Nichole’s father said, “Sweetie, you’ve gotta learn to control that temper of yours. You’re stronger than you think.”

I hear you, Dad.

But any concern was short-lived. The moment Nichole stepped through the shattered window, glass crunching beneath the soles of her black flats, Molly came to life.

She sprang up, like an unbreakable industrial coil had been fused into her spine.

She stood erect, like nothing was wrong, even though she sported cuts over her arms and face, with some glass still poking out from the flesh. But Molly acted as if the shattered glass, broken drywall, and bent aluminum didn’t exist. Hands at her sides. Hair still parted in place. Lips still deep red, glistening with moisture.

She smiled at Nichole. Raised her eyebrows, as if to say, What else you got, big girl?

McCoy let loose a “Hooo-hah!”

Which annoyed Keene. He’d seen, hated that Al Pacino movie.

“Big deal. She’s standing up.”

“Uh-uh,” said McCoy. “My baby is Cool Hand Luke.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Nichole instantly decided that her dad had been exaggerating that day, that her cousin was nothing more than a little pansy.

Because Nichole thought she’d given that Russian farm girl a serious pounding, and yet there she was. Standing. Grinning. Taunting.

But that didn’t stop her from charging forward, grabbing Molly by her throat and crotch, and starting the punishment all over again.

The floor plan of this unused section of Murphy, Knox was relatively simple. Closed-door offices lined three sides, with a series of supply closets along the fourth. In the middle of the floor were drywall sections that divided the space into cubicles and, toward the middle, a space for two photocopiers and four printers. Five years out of date. Unplugged. Unsupported.

What interested Nichole were the closed office spaces. Each with their own window, reaching from two feet from ground level up to the ceiling. Privacy granted with aluminum venetian blinds mounted on the inside.

Nichole smashed Molly’s body through the closest available window.

The crash was spectacular; the force behind the throw was so great that Molly took glass and aluminum blind with her as she rolled across the carpet and bounced off the opposite wall.

Nichole stepped through the broken window.

“How you feeling today, Molly,” she said. “Everything okay?”

Nichole heard the sound of spitting. Russian farm girl was finally feeling it. Good. She needed answers, and Nichole was already tiring of throwing her through plate glass windows.

“Just relax down there. We’re going to do some talking. Whatever language you prefer. We could even do Farsi.”

Molly planted both hands on the carpet, then pushed down against the floor and snapped up into a perfect standing position. Facing Nichole.

Smiling.

No hesitation this time. Nichole wrapped both hands around Molly’s neck and slammed her back against the wall.

“You want to talk, puta?” Molly said, curling her lips into another hideous smile.

Nichole would admit it. She lost her mind for a moment.

She screamed and hurled Molly through the window again. Molly tripped over the bottom frame of the window and rolled across the hall and into a cubicle. Within a second, she had popped up again. But this time Nichole was ready. She hopped through the jagged window frame, planted her feet, pivoted, and leveled a roundhouse kick at Molly’s face that—if Nichole’s training sessions were any indication—would fracture her skull upon impact. Nichole was through screwing around. She needed to hurt Molly.

But Nichole’s foot never had the chance to connect.

Because Molly launched up in the air, flipping backwards over the wall of the cubicle like a dolphin at a waterpark.

Nichole’s foot slammed into drywall instead.

McCoy was practically orgasmic. “Oh! Did you see that? Oh!”

Keene had a difficult time containing his surprise. That was an incredibly impressive move. And he had watched a lackluster video feed. Imagine what it must have looked like in real life.

The audio, however, was crystal clear. Murphy had equipped the office with omnidirectional mikes in pretty much every corner. The man clearly wanted to hear if his operatives tried to stifle a fart. So Keene heard the thud of the kick slamming into drywall, and it was like a wrecking ball accidentally dropped on a slab of sidewalk.

“I’m so in love,” McCoy said.

“Want me to pull it out of your pants for you, give it a few tugs?”

“Would you?”

“Pervert.”

“Tired old queen. Okay, quiet now. This is getting interesting.”

McCoy tapped a few keys. The view on two of the monitors—McCoy’s laptop and a freestanding monitor in front of Keene—flipped to a new vantage point. Within an office, looking out a window missing a blind.

Girlfriend’s back was to the camera.

Nichole leaped over the drywall. No fancy flips. She just swung her legs over, eyes forward at all times. Molly was waiting for her. Still smiling. In the six months that Molly Lewis had been employed at Murphy, Knox, Nichole couldn’t remember a single time she’d seen Molly smile. Perched behind her big cluttered oak desk, she’d appeared to be perpetually overworked, nervous, or constipated.

A smile on Molly now was unsettling. Kind of like seeing a comatose patient spontaneously curl her lips into a rictus of imaginary bliss.

“Going to throw me through another window, Nee-cole?”

Nichole responded by kicking her through another window.

Sometimes, the best thing in a fight is to resist the urge to get creative.

This time, though, Molly caught herself before plunging through the stress-fractured glass. She regained her balance in a second, curled her right hand into a fist, then drove it into Nichole, just below her left breast.

The moment she took the punch, Nichole knew something was wrong. A single blow shouldn’t hurt this bad. It shouldn’t send her heart racing. It was the first punch Molly had thrown, and it threatened to send Nichole to her knees.

Wait. Update on that. It did send Nichole to her knees. Why couldn’t she catch her breath? What was wrong with her?

Suddenly she was aware of Molly’s face in hers.

“Does it hurt?” she whispered in a heavy Russian accent.

It wasn’t going to end now.

Not like this.

Because Nichole still had a fully loaded HK P7 tucked in the waistband of her capris.

Nichole reached behind, wrapped her hand around the grip.

Molly either guessed or knew what was coming. She executed another perfect back flip—both palms up and over and planted on the carpet—and then smashed her feet through the already spider webbed glass, her body following behind.

Nichole swung the pistol around and started firing.

BLAM!

BLAM!

BLAM!

Glass shattered completely.

Drywall burst into chunks.

The recoil knocked Nichole back, off her knees and onto her butt, but she continued to blast away.

BLAM!

BLAM!

BLAM!

That was it, because Nichole felt a sledgehammer blow to her chest, and then she stopped breathing.

Jamie jolted when he heard the gunfire. Three bursts of gunfire, followed by another three, then a barely audible gasp.

Forget about the blood. Forget about your burst hot dog fingers. Get out there. It might be Nichole who’s hurt. She saved you. You need to return the favor.

It wasn’t the most dignified thing in the world, but Jamie had little choice. He crawled out of the empty office on his elbow and knees. Standing up would make his head a bobbing target above the cubicles. He’d heard gunfire, but had no idea who was taking the shots. Last he saw, Molly had a gun in the conference room. The one she’d used to shoot David. Jamie wasn’t going to survive having his fingers carved up by a psycho secretary only to catch a stray bullet in the head. That would be anticlimactic.

He took some comfort in knowing that he hadn’t completely lost his sense of humor.

Jamie crawled down the short path to the edge of the cubicles. The plan: Stop there, poke his head out, look down the long hallway.

He made it there, holding his sliced-up, burst–hot dog hand away from his vision as much as possible. He couldn’t look at it. Not yet.

He looked around the corner.

He saw legs.

Bare legs, terminating in a pair of flat black shoes. One of the shoes was half off, hanging from the toes.

God, that was Nichole. She wore capris, no pantyhose. It was the psycho Molly who had dressed up for a hot August morning in the conference room. Long-sleeved blouse and everything. Nichole was bare-legged.

So Nichole was down for the count.

Crap.

Where was Molly? Did she still have that gun?

Think, Jamie, think. Because as much as your hand kills, it’ll be nothing compared with the guilt over letting someone die. No matter that it was Nichole Wise, who’d probably looked at him only once in his year of employment, and dismissed him as a nonentity. Nichole was innocent. And no matter how much of an ice princess she’d been, she did distract Molly. She’d saved him.

Was Molly still down there? Waiting for him, with either a gun or her blade?

Nichole’s foot twitched. Her shoe fell off completely. Rolled to one side.

Screw it.

Jamie used his elbows and knees, braced against the floor and the side of a cubicle wall, to make it up to his feet. He limped down the hall as fast as he could. “Nichole,” he said aloud, figuring if Molly was waiting for him, perhaps she’d be lured out at the sound of his voice. And he’d have a prayer of ducking into an open office or empty cubicle. Not that he knew what he would do after that. Not against someone who could paralyze him with two fingers. But he was making this up as he went along anyway.

“Nichole,” he repeated.

Jamie reached her, and leaned his back against a section of drywall next to the shattered window.

There was no sign of Molly.

But Nichole was unconscious.

Maybe even dead.

“Nichole!”

Jamie walked over and dropped to his knees, felt the side of her neck with his good hand. No pulse in her carotid artery. He put his ear to her mouth. Nothing. He wasn’t sure how he was going to do this without it being agony, but he knew what he had to do. CPR. He’d learned it in a class, a month before Chase was born. Andrea had insisted. Now, he was faced with the real thing.

Jamie ripped open Nichole’s blouse with one hand. Saw that she wore a white lace bra, low-cut. He reached under her neck, tilted her head back. Pinched her nose. Pressed his lips to hers. Pushed air down into her lungs. Her mouth tasted like cigarettes. Pumped her chest—yes, using his bloodied, shredded hand, and her bra was soon stained with red. Breathed into her mouth. Pumped her chest. Felt for a pulse. Breathed in her mouth again. For such an intense act, it was devoid of all sensuality.

The third time around, he revived Nichole.

Her eyes fluttered open. She saw Jamie, but seemed to have trouble focusing on him.

For a moment there, Jamie could have sworn she was about to hit him.

“Are you okay?”

Nichole’s chest rose up and down, working hard to suck in air.

“Fine.”

Her fingers danced over her stomach, looking for something. The sides of her blouse. She found them, and covered herself.

Jamie leaned back against the wall of the cubicle. His mouth tasted like cigarettes.

Thirty-five hundred miles away, McCoy frowned.

Tapped some keys. The view changed on the second screen. Tapped more keys. The view changed on the third screen. Then the laptop.

He cycled through as many cameras as he knew, fanning out from that unused part of the office.

“Where is she?”

MIDMORNING BREAK

(WITH PEPPERIDGE FARM COOKIES)

Your best teacher is your last mistake.

—RALPH NADER

Vincent Marella hit the floors one by one, starting with twenty-three, focusing on the north side. Vincent knew he wouldn’t be that lucky and find a pane of glass missing on twenty-three. Or twenty–four. Or twenty-five. Twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight. Nahhh. Because then, it would be a quiet weekend, and heaven forbid something like that actually go down on his watch.

Weekend staff at 1919 Market was kept to a minimum. Just four guards—three on at all times, while breaks and lunch were rotated. There wasn’t much downtime. Somebody always needed help. Not much difference there between corporate security and hotel security—always undermanned and underfunded. Often, Vincent could barely read a page uninterrupted. He did most of his reading on breaks, which never lasted long enough. Three up, one down. At all times.

To check out the shattered-glass thing, Vincent put Carter on the desk and had Rickards check floors eight through twenty–two, starting with twenty-two and working his way down. Floors one through nine were lobby and garage, so that meant there were only twenty-eight floors to check. One at a time.

By the time Vincent reached twenty-nine, he had settled into a rhythm: Punch STOP on the elevator control panel. Pray the floor had a single tenant. If so, pop the master key in the double security doors, enter through the lobby, and make a counterclockwise sweep of the floor, checking every window on the north side.

On one floor, it was easy; there were no offices partitioned off, just cubicles. But the other floors used their prime window space to reward employees with private offices. Some had large windows covered with aluminum blinds. Very few people kept their blinds up—most preferred privacy on the job. Which meant he had to key into every single office. Sometimes the lock would stick, which would piss him off.

Ah, weekend work.

He knew he shouldn’t complain. He was lucky to have this gig after flaking out last year. In fact, he’d been out of work from Halloween through Presidents’ Day of this year, trying to get his act together. A few prescriptions, a couple of sessions with an occupational therapist—not fully covered on his insurance, by the way. Nothing helped.

His teenaged son, whom Vincent saw only on weekends, gave him the best advice of all, “Just chill, Dad.”

So he tried to chill, best he could.

After a good long while of chilling, Vincent saw some improvements. His heart stopped racing for no reason. He stopped hearing phantom noises. His dreams weren’t as horrifying as they used to be.

A year ago, he’d been employed as a security guard on the night detail at the Sheraton, a reasonably expensive hotel on Rittenhouse Square, the richest slice of real estate in Philadelphia. The Sheraton had since closed. But one hot August night, a year ago to the month, Vincent had been called up to the seventh floor to check out a suspected domestic dispute. These things happen, even in a nice hotel. Before he reached the door, though, some ape in a suit tackled him, pounded the crap out of him. Vincent put up the best fight he could—he fought mean and sloppy, and this kind of approach had served him well in bars over the years. But it didn’t matter to this guy. Next thing he knew, there was a big fat ape arm around his neck, and he was plunging into darkness.

Vincent woke up in bizarro land. His kid read these Japanese manga things, which you flip through from back to front. That was how life felt after he had been assaulted. Back to front. Nothing made much sense. Maybe it did to others. Other people who knew how to read this stuff.

As it turned out, the ape who’d attacked him was believed to be part of some terrorist cell—I know, right? Vincent would say whenever he told friends this story, which wasn’t often. The DHS guy who showed up, somebody with a Polish name, thanked him for his bravery, slapped him on his back, and disappeared into the night. Vincent checked the Inquirer and Daily News, but never saw any follow-up. The hotel manager gave him a few days off, told him to shake it loose.

Vincent had a hard time “shaking it loose.”

Eventually, the Sheraton shook him loose.

You go through life thinking you know your place in the natural pecking order. You know which creatures are easy pickings, and you know which ones outweigh you. Keep your head down and beat a steady path between the two, and you’ll make it out all right.

Problem was—and this was a first for Vincent—somebody who seriously outweighed him had broken him.

Forget outweighing him—the thing that attacked him was of a different species entirely.

All of a sudden, the universe seemed way too friggin’ whimsical. The threats too great. The chances for failure too large.

It had taken him until Presidents’ Day to work up the courage to apply for another job. Security was all he’d known for fourteen years; it wasn’t as if he could go and open a flower shop in Manayunk. A pal recommended 1919 Market: all corporate tenants. Whiny, self-absorbed people, but no crazies, like you get in a hotel. Even swank ones like the Sheraton.

By Easter, Vincent Marella was on weekend-day and weekend-night detail.

So now here he was, on a miserably hot August day, checking every single window on the north side, all because a crackhead saw broken glass in the alley behind the building.

Up on thirty now.

Hit STOP. Go to the double security doors. Pop the mas—

Wait.

What was this on the door? Looked like a small dent, right near the handle. And a black friction mark. Vincent felt a cold tingle in his spine. He had a feeling he was going to find himself a broken window on this floor.

He couldn’t help himself. Before he unlocked the security door, Vincent put his ear to it. Listening for another ape.

David Murphy was thinking about popcorn.

This August marked the fifth anniversary of Murphy, Knox, and he wanted to let the whole building know it. To be perfectly honest, he didn’t care who in the building knew it. But a gift needed to be sent anyway. After consulting with the right tech guys—a team of chem-lab geeks he’d worked with back in Bosnia—he’d cooked up the perfect gift. A five-gallon tin of popcorn, divided into three sections: salt and butter, cheese, and caramel.

David was looking up at a row of those tins now. He had even more in his office, and at least a dozen stacked behind Molly’s desk.

He’d sampled some of the popcorn. The cheese was a bit too orange, and a bit too cloying—not to mention vaguely reminiscent of a foot. The caramel stuck to his teeth, and wasn’t so much sweet and caramelly as it was dark and syrupy. The salt-and-butter variety … now that was something he could get into.

Not that he did. He sampled only a few handfuls to convince himself that yes, this tasted like the kind of popcorn office denizens would get into, keep around the office for a while. They’d probably skip the cheese and caramel, though. But what was it Meat Loaf once sang? One out of three ain’t bad? Something like that.

David hired a company to insert the popcorn and trifold cardboard divider; he supplied the tins himself.

The exterior of the tin featured a wraparound skyline of Philadelphia, with the text in a hunter green oval on two sides:

MURPHY, KNOX & ASSOCIATES

PROUD TO CALL THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE HOME …

… 5 YEARS RUNNING!

Molly had written that. She had been good at those things.

Before she shot him in the head.

Yesterday, dozens of popcorn tins were delivered to every single tenant of 1919 Market Street, from floors thirty through thirty-seven. This included three law firms, an accounting office, a local lifestyle magazine, the private office of a state supreme court justice, two philanthropic concerns, and a few other random businesses that didn’t mean much to David.

If any tenants in floors twenty-nine or lower were to have felt slighted, David was prepared to cheerfully reply: Ah, you see, the delivery service could only do so much in one day. The rest were to be delivered on Monday. Hope you don’t mind waiting!

There were no more popcorn tins to be delivered, though. He’d ordered only enough for the eight floors at the top with some left over for special clients.

Was this a loose end? Would a nameless researcher for a congressional investigatory commission check the order later?

Like it really mattered.

Even though David was paralyzed, lying in a pool of his own blood in the conference room, he imagined himself smiling at the stack of popcorn tins on the small table against the wall. Six little popcorn tins. The one part of this morning that hadn’t completely gone to hell.

Whatever Molly had planned, David hoped for her sake she was going to finish it up quickly.

Maybe she’d come back and do the right thing. Finish him off.

Which would be perfect.

There was no ape on the thirtieth floor.

Nothing even remotely simian. And more important, no broken windows or missing panes of glass. Vincent enjoyed a few deep breaths of relief. The scuff on the security door had been nothing. Probably a late-night FedEx guy, banging his steel dolly into it.

Nothing to worry about.

He knew he was probably still freaked out by his little adventure at the Sheraton. Being choked into unconsciousness could do that to a guy. But he also knew it was partly his boy messing with his mind. His fifteen-year-old conspiracy theorist.

For weeks now, the boy had convinced himself that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center were actually the work of the U.S. government—an elaborate stage show that cost thousands of lives, but won those in power a blank check to protect their business interests in the name of “the war on terror.” He told his boy to get the hell out of here, but the boy, as usual, had a way of chipping away at his old man, one piece of evidence at a time. He’d be sitting there at Vincent’s home PC, watching something intently, and of course, he would have to check it out, because what if it was porn? It was his paternal obligation. He would walk over to the monitor, though, and the boy would be pointing excitedly at the screen. “Watch this, Dad,” and before Vincent knew it, he was watching one of the two towers fall. He didn’t know which one—north or south.

The boy pointed at the side of the falling building. “Did you see that?”

“No—what? And hey, what are you watching this stuff for?”

“Look closer.” The boy rewound the video a few seconds, then clicked the little triangle. “See that?”

“See what.”

“The puff of smoke, shooting out of the sides as the building pancakes down.”

“I guess.”

“That’s a sign of a controlled demolition, Dad. The government brought those buildings down on purpose. They knew a plane hitting the top couldn’t do the job, so they put in a little insurance.”

“Get the hell out of here.”

Vincent heard himself speak those words, and realized that they were coming straight from his own father. Only his father would not be finding his boy Vincent poring over a conspiracy video on the Internet. He’d find him in the back shed with a copy of Swank, and his ironworker dad would curl it up, beat Vincent with it, and then say “Get the hell out of here,” before confiscating the magazine for personal use.

If only it were that easy.

So he had been hearing a lot of this crazy stuff recently—every weekend, when his boy came to stay. He got interested despite himself. Poked around a few articles the boy had printed out for him. It’s what made him grab that copy of Center Strike from the tiny book collection in the security lounge.

It also made him think way too much about the building he was paid to protect.

There were taller, more important buildings in Philadelphia than 1919 Market, that was for sure. Any terrorists thinking about attacking a building would most likely shoot for Liberty One and Two, Philly’s gleaming blue answer to the World Trade Center. Or City Hall, which at one time actually was the tallest building in America … for about seventeen minutes. Or the obvious symbols of American freedom: Independence Hall and, right across the street in a shiny new pavilion, the Liberty Bell.