“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.