Severance Package (8 page)

“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:

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.