And Bryn hadn’t seen it coming.
“Bryn? Still with me?”
“Yes.” She stood up, feeling unnaturally calm and focused. “When do we leave?”
Joe cleared his throat. “That’s just it. We don’t. McCallister says it’s better to keep you out of—”
“Give me the phone, Joe.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Joe.” She held her hand out, staring into his eyes. “She’s my sister. Give me the phone.”
He shook his head and handed it over. “His number’s in the call list.”
Bryn dialed, listened as it rang on the other end, and heard McCallister’s voice say, “Bryn. I thought you’d call.”
He sounded tense, but there was a kind of animal comfort to hearing him again, hearing him say her name. She shoved all that aside and said, “I’m going to the meeting.”
“You can’t do that. He’s already got too much leverage over—”
“He asked for me, specifically. You know him; you know how ruthless he is. If I don’t show up, I’m signing Annie’s death warrant,” she said. “I’m getting her back, one way or another.”
“You’re emotionally involved. Let me negotiate this. He will work with me. He doesn’t have a choice.” He paused for a bare second, and then continued. “You have to trust me to handle this for you. He could be setting us up, and I can’t have you complicating things.”
“I do trust you,” Bryn said. “But I’m still going. Either you tell Joe to drive me or I will find a way to contact Mercer myself. I’m not letting you shield me anymore, McCallister. Not from this.”
That brought an even longer silence, and finally, “Put Joe back on the phone.”
“No. You tell me where this meeting is. If I let you talk to him, you’ll probably tell him to drive me around for a while and knock me out when I’m not looking.”
McCallister’s laugh was dry and humorless. “You know me too well already. All right. Here’s the address.” He read it to her, and she burned it into her memory; no chance she’d ever forget it. “Leave Joe out of it. He’s putting on a good front, but he’s hurting, and I don’t want to be responsible for landing him back in the hospital. Or the morgue.”
“Just you and me, then,” she said. “That sounds right.”
“Bryn?”
“Yes?”
He was quiet for so long that she thought she’d lost the connection, and then he said, “I wanted to get you out of there myself. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do,” she said. All the fight went out of her, and she clutched the phone hard, wishing she could see his face. “You told him to kill me if it went wrong. Thank you.”
“I keep my word, Bryn. Always. And I promise, we’ll get your sister back.”
She hung up the phone and slipped it into her pocket, then held out her hand, palm out. “Keys, please,” she said. “You’re staying here. If you don’t believe me, call him back and ask.”
Fideli looked at her for a few seconds, clearly trying to decide whether or not she was insane, and then fished the keys out of his pocket and handed them over. “Go in heavy, and go in hot,” he said. “You understand what I’m talking about?”
She remembered the same conversation, back on a sweltering afternoon as she labored under the weight of body armor, ballistic helmet, weapons, and the stare of her commanding officer. We’re going in hot. It hadn’t ended well that day. Too many IEDs, too many snipers on the rooftops taking out their supply convoy. She could almost taste the grit of blown sand. “I understand,” she said. “Rest. I’ll be back.”
He reached in his pocket and took out a silver tube. “Don’t forget this,” he said. “This one’s not coded to a particular administrator. You can give it to yourself if you need to.”
“Thanks.”
She saw him at the window as she drove away into the night, and wondered whether she’d ever see Joe Fideli again. Wondered whether he’d ever see his family, too.
So much had been torn apart, and she still had so far to go.
Going in hot and heavy.
That pretty much described her entire relationship so far with Patrick McCallister, come to think of it.
Chapter 12
Bryn made a fast circuit of the immediate area around the address McCallister had given her; it was a residential area, which made her worry. She’d thought these types of potentially explosive things went on in deserted buildings, vacant warehouses, open lots … not on a street with brightly colored playhouses and Big Wheels parked in yards.
There was no sign of McCallister, and she had a horrified thought…. What if he’d deliberately given her the wrong address? And she’d been dumb enough to fall for it? No, he wouldn’t do that. He’d known I was serious. And that I needed to do this.
Parking the van behind a closed convenience store two blocks away seemed the best option; Bryn locked it and stepped out into the cool predawn darkness. It was misting, and threatening to rain, but the hoodie that Pansy had given her was enough to counter that. The thin shoes were a pain, though. It was hard to feel badass in Payless.
At least she had the gun she’d stolen from Pharmadene, and a supply of ammunition, thanks to Joe. Not as well stocked as Manny Glickman in his fortress, wherever it was now, but it would do …
She pulled up short after a few steps, because someone was standing in the light of a street lamp twenty feet away, watching her.
Patrick McCallister.
The damp had matted his hair down in a sleek cap around his head, but she’d know him anywhere; if nothing else, nobody she’d ever met had that quality of coiled stillness to their posture. He was wearing dark clothes and a loose Windbreaker that wouldn’t have looked odd if it came with big reflective governmental-agency letters on it, but this one was unmarked.
“How’d you know?” she asked him, not coming closer. He shrugged and put his hands into the pockets of his dark jeans.
“Where you’d park? It was tactically the smartest choice,” he said. “So I thought you’d find it.”
That spoke volumes about what he thought of her … and made her ask, “So where did you park?”
“Someplace not as tactically sound, but unexpected,” he said. He pushed away from the streetlight and walked toward her, taking his time. “You look good.”
“You should have seen me a few hours ago,” she said. Without conscious decision, she was also walking toward him. I should have my gun out, she thought. I really don’t know what he’s going to do. Maybe he’d knock her out and put her back in the van and go do the meeting himself. That would be typical McCallister.
“How bad was it?”
“Ever seen Night of the Living Dead? Like that,” she said. “Only you’re right. I wasn’t craving brains.”
“At least that’s a bright side.”
And then he was right there, a foot away, in her space, with only the gently drifting mist between them. His eyes were wide and dark, and she thought, He’s going to do it now; he’ll strike, and she was ready for that, ready to block a punch….
... But not, as it turned out, a hug.
She stiffened for a second, then relaxed into the embrace. “I’m sorry,” he said. “By the time I found out they’d taken you, they already had you inside Pharmadene. I didn’t have a chance to intercept. When you didn’t come out, I knew they were going to let you …”
“Decay,” she said, very quietly. “I have to face it. I’m dead. I’ll always be dead. This, all this feeling and looking alive, it’s just … just cosmetics.” She pulled back and stared at him. “You can’t really feel anything for me, can you? Because I’m not really here. Underneath, I’m … that.”
“Underneath, we’re all that,” McCallister said. “Everybody’s dying, Bryn. You’re just maintaining it better than most people—that’s all.”