“You know how it’s working out. Pharmadene constantly monitors its own employees—computer activity, e-mails, phone calls, physical surveillance. I’m no exception to that. Harte will be suspicious today, after Bryn and I drop out of sight for a few hours and it’s clear that I’ve covered my trail.” Manny opened his mouth, but McCallister bulled straight ahead. “I planned for that, Manny. It won’t lead back to you.”
“The fuck it won’t!” Manny said, and stood up to pace around the room in agitation. “All right, that’s it. You’re my friend, and I owe you, but I’m not getting in over my head with Pharmadene. Not with them. You take her and you go. Don’t bother to come back. I’m moving the lab.”
“Manny.”
“No!” Manny swung around on him and pointed a shaking finger in his face. “No! You know how I feel about this. I do not take chances with my safety, or Pansy’s. Not anymore.” He left the room and slammed the door so hard the entire clear plastic structure of rooms rattled uneasily.
McCallister watched him go, and took another bite of his sandwich, which he chewed and swallowed before he said, “Pansy will calm him down.”
“Is he always like this? Or is this just a really bad day?”
“Actually, it’s a fairly good one.”
“God. And you trust this guy?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
McCallister glanced at her, then went back to watching Manny stalk around the lab, randomly touching things as if it were a calming ritual. “Manny had a very bad time a few years back. He worked with the FBI.”
“One of those profiler people?”
“No. He was a rock star in the lab. A genius, but a pure science geek. He never wanted to be out in the field, not for any reason.”
“But something happened.”
McCallister loosened his tie and sat back with a sigh. “He put a puzzle together, a serial killer’s messages to the agents who were hunting him That brought him to the killer’s attention. As soon as Manny identified him, the killer grabbed him at his apartment, gave him a paralyzing agent, and buried him alive in a graveyard, with one air tank.”
Bryn shivered. That was one of her nightmares now—being sealed in a body bag alive, being buried alive and conscious. That was all too possible a future for her, and she could well imagine the terror. “He got out.”
“No,” McCallister said. “He was found. The tank had run out.”
“You found him, didn’t you? That’s what he owes you for.”
McCallister looked away. “I helped find him. I provided information, and led the FBI to him.”
“God, that must have been … How long was he down?”
“Two hours. One hour breathing from the tank, one hour breathing the foul air in that coffin. He had to force himself to take slow, calm breaths, and he didn’t know whether anyone would find him.” He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know how he did it. I would have died before help arrived. But … he came out different from the way he went in—there’s no question about that. He was always OCD, but now he’s completely off the reservation about personal safety. He quit the FBI, took up private practice, and he moves around. A lot. He’s got patrons. I don’t even know how many, but enough to keep him funded.”
“That’s … kind of horrible.”
“It’s a reasonable reaction,” McCallister said, very quietly. “The coffin was already occupied. He was trapped in there with a body, in the dark, dying alone for two hours. It’s a miracle he’s sane at all.”
Manny had stormed off into some private sanctum with what looked like a panic room door. Pansy came back instead. She opened the door and looked in at them, eyebrows raised. “Should I even ask what brought that on?”
“He thinks Pharmadene will trace us here.”
“Does he have a point? Don’t bullshit me, Pat. Even paranoid people are right sometimes, and I’m not risking his life. Not again. Not even for you.” Pansy, Bryn realized, might look sweet and gentle and practical, but she had a core of steel that even McCallister might envy. “I will toss your ass out to the wolves before I let him go down. I’ve worked hard on this relationship.”
“I know,” McCallister said, and put all the warmth and conviction he could into the words. “I swear to you I will protect him. And you. They won’t get to you through me, or Bryn.”
She stared at him with such intensity that even Bryn felt the burn, and then slowly nodded. “All right. I’ll talk him off the ledge, but if anything happens, swear to God, I will go nuclear-option on you, McCallister. He may owe you his life, but I’m more interested in preserving it.” She swung the door all the way open. “Go. He won’t come out until you leave, and I can’t make him see reason until he’s calmer.”
“Pansy, I need him to keep making the inhibitor for her. It’s important.”
“I get it.” Pansy met Bryn’s eyes briefly. “And I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you. I wish we could help you more, but I’ll do what I can to keep that going, at least. Manny’s good at this. Very good. But he’s fragile, you understand? And this Pharmadene thing—it’s bad. You know that.”
“I do. I woke up dead. I understand … a little of how that feels.”
“Yes. Yes, I think you do. I’ll do what I can for you, I promise.”
That was the end of it. Bryn retrieved Mr. French from where he’d been snoozing in the corner of a very empty plastic-walled room, and five minutes later they’d negotiated the spy-quality security and were driving out into the sunlight. Mr. French wiggled into the front seat, onto Bryn’s lap, and gave a pointed whine as he put a paw on the door.
“Oh—ah, we need to stop somewhere,” she said. “Time for a walk.”
McCallister was frowning, very inside himself, but that startled him into an even deeper frown. He said, “Do you trust me?”
“I hate it when you ask me that, because it means you’re about to do something I won’t like.”
“Bryn.”
“It depends.”
“That’s … not what I was hoping for.”
“Look, could you please just stop the car?”
“Not yet. We have an alibi to establish.”
“Which is …?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
It took fifteen minutes for him to finish his drive and arrive at the destination, and he was entirely right: she didn’t like it.
“Seriously,” she said, as he parked.
“Take Mr. French for a walk. I’ll check us in.”
Bryn opened the door, and Mr. French hopped down and ran, loose skin flapping, for the small, straggly strip of brush and grass at the rear of the parking lot. “Wait!” she called, and hurried after him as McCallister headed in the opposite direction. “Stupid dog.”
Well, it wasn’t exactly his fault; he clearly had needs. So did she, as a matter of fact, and standing out here fidgeting from one foot to the other reminded her of it. Not that she was looking forward to exploring the bathroom facilities of the Hallmark Motor Court Inn, which looked like it had last seen any kind of upgrade in the 1970s. It was faded pink stucco, flat roofed, built in an L shape around a parking lot and a fenced-off, trash-filled dry pool that insurance issues had probably long ago rendered useless. There were six cars in the parking lot, mostly beaters, and it didn’t look like a place anyone stayed for more than a couple of hours unless they were seriously down on their luck.
She was starting to get a sense of what McCallister’s alibi would be, and no, she didn’t like it at all.
When she blinked, she had an image of utter darkness, of being trapped in a coffin, like Manny Glickman; of gasping for each trembling breath, knowing that each one was one closer to the end. That would happen to her, too, when she missed a shot. How long would it take for the invisible little machines that kept her breathing to slow, drift, shut down? How long would it take for the toxins to build up and poison her? God, how long would she be able to feel it?