She swallowed. The night felt dark, deep, and icily empty; she was fifty feet from the bus stop, but the shelter was empty at this hour, and although there were cars going by on the road, they weren’t going to notice anything happening here. Running seemed stupid. At best, it would let him know she suspected something was going on inside; at worst, at least Joe Fideli was somewhere nearby, with his gun.
She wasn’t sure why, but she felt that she trusted Fideli more than the man who’d hired her. The man she’d admired so much for his compassion and composure just this morning. Standing here in the chilly dark, watching his face, she thought he might be more of a killer than the guy with the gun.
The thought of lying cold on one of those trays robbed her of the will to run—not that there was anywhere to go; the bus wasn’t even in view. She stayed where she was as Mr. Fairview descended the steps and came toward her. He took her arm and escorted her back into the mortuary.
“Nothing to worry about,” he said, still using that soothing professional tone. “I just want to explain about some of our procedures, Bryn. You’re in no trouble, I promise. If you’d wait in your office for a bit, I have to meet with someone else first. I’ll come right up, and after we’ve talked I’ll give you a ride home. I hate making you wait out there in the dark. It’s just not safe.”
“Okay,” she said. This was a really bad idea, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do except go along with him. Mr. Fairview hustled her, quietly and irresistibly, back into the mortuary and down the hall to her office. She fumbled with the keys and opened it, and Mr. Fairview gave her a reassuring smile.
“Just a few minutes,” he assured her, and closed the door. She listened, but couldn’t hear a thing … and then she heard his footsteps on the stairs leading down to the basement.
I really need to get out of here. Whatever the hell was going on, it wasn’t her business. Not at all. In fact, Bryn decided then and there that she was officially quitting. She could get another job, and she could get it at some big-city mortuary where there were lots of people coming and going.
Someplace sane.
She was heading for the door when the bell rang, and a new person came in the front. Bryn ducked into the shadows, holding her breath, and a man and woman she didn’t know walked into the foyer. The woman didn’t look well; she was sweating, trembling, and had to be supported as she moved. Terminally ill? Maybe a late-night consultation?
The couple went straight for the basement stairs. Bryn frowned, watching them, and then looked at the front door. It was like Grand Central; one more bell ringing wouldn’t matter now, right? And she could just run. Run like hell, flag down a car, get out of here …
Except now she was curious. Deeply curious. Was Fideli right? Were they running some kind of drug lab down there? Fairview had talked about how trade had fallen off. She supposed he’d do almost anything to keep the family business going.
She walked over to the basement door and eased it open a crack. Just to listen. The problem was, although she could hear voices, they weren’t very loud, and she missed more than half of what was being said.
She came out onto the landing.
Down a couple of steps, very quietly.
Then all the way down, drawn by what the voices were saying.
“… need it!” a man’s voice was saying. Not Freddy or Mr. Fairview, or even Joe … She was hearing the man who’d come in with the sick lady, Bryn guessed. “I know that’s not the amount we agreed on, but it’s all we have; please, she needs the shot right now….”
“This isn’t a charity hospital, Mr. Jones,” Mr. Fairview’s voice said, rich with regret and sympathy. “I’m afraid that miracles are, by their very definition, rare—and rare means expensive. The terms were spelled out for you clearly, weren’t they? Ten thousand up front, and five hundred dollars cash per shot?”
“I can get it for you; it’s just … it’s thirty-five hundred a week….”
“Thirty-five hundred a week to keep your beloved wife alive,” Mr. Fairview said. “I have to believe that you value her life more than the money, sir. And I must urge you to act quickly. She’s clearly missed at least one dose, possibly two, and she is looking very distressed. After four days, the skin begins to slip; muscles loosen. It’s a very nasty process.”
Bryn couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. Joe Fideli had been right: her boss was selling drugs—bad ones. And they were extorting money from sick, desperate people.
It was horrible.
“I’m very sorry,” Mr. Fairview continued. “But I really must have cash in hand before I can give her the shot. This was made clear to you from the very beginning.”
“I lost my job,” the man said. It sounded like he was crying. “I can’t … We already had to give up our house. I can’t afford to pay you this much. Please. Please don’t let her die! We’ve got kids!”
There was a second of silence. “I’m afraid that even though we talked about this, you still don’t understand. She’s dead, Mr. Jones. We haven’t made her living. I explained to you that you were simply delaying the inevitable dissolution, and now it appears that the inevitable is upon you.”
Not only were they selling some hard-core drug; they were bilking people. How could Fairview possibly be telling people he was bringing back the dead? Who’d believe that? Maybe the drug induced some kind of coma, then woke up the addicts…. It didn’t really matter. Bryn felt deeply sickened. She’d been trained to help people in their darkest, worst moments, and this was an obscene, horrible perversion of what she’d believed. A betrayal of the worst kind.
She turned to go back up the steps, but a shadow blocked her path at the top of the stairs. She had a moment of déjà vu, but it wasn’t Joe Fideli.
It was, unfortunately, Freddy Watson.
He descended the stairs faster than she could scramble backward, and grabbed her by the arm in a crushing grip. She tried to knee him in the groin, but he was obviously an old hand at that one; her patella caught the meaty part of his thigh instead, and then he was shoving her off balance, turning her, and locking his arm around her throat. She tried to stamp on his feet, but her Payless heels weren’t that sturdy. He just laughed in her ear and dragged her, off balance, through the double doors into the prep room.
“Surprise visitor,” he said, and it obviously was, to the three people standing there. Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and Mr. Fairview.
Mr. Fairview looked wearily disgusted. “I left her upstairs. And, Freddy, I thought you were supposed to scare her off from snooping around down here.”
“I did,” Freddy said. “I played the Big Bad Wolf as hard as I could, but she’s tougher than she looks. I caught her listening on the stairs.”
“Really? What did you hear, Bryn?” Mr. Fairview asked.
“Nothing,” she said, and tried to jam her elbow back into Freddy’s ribs. That worked well enough that he let up on the grip, and she slipped away and put the prep table between them. “He attacked me!”
“Yes, well, he does have impulse-control issues,” Mr. Fairview said. “It’s the reason I can’t have him doing intakes. He doesn’t inspire confidence in others. And I don’t believe you, Bryn.”
“You saw—”
“Not about the attack; about what you overheard. You did hear something. The question is what, and how much you understand.”
On the second prep table, Mr. Fairview had a leather case open, with a small bottle of some injectable drug nestled in padding, along with a syringe.
Mr. Jones was taking advantage of Bryn’s entrance to edge closer and closer to it. Now he grabbed the case, ripped the cap off the syringe, and quickly filled the chamber from the vial of liquid.