“Well, at least you rated someone getting paid to do you. That’s a compliment, right?”
“Not really.”
Joe was quiet for a second, then said in a different tone, “And what else happened?”
She told him about the recordings, the disappearances, Riley’s threats, everything. The only time she saw a reaction in him was when he heard Riley’s threat to round up his family. Good thing he hadn’t been there within grabbing distance of the agent’s neck. It would have been over in seconds.
By the time she was done, though, he was back to his usual easygoing self. “Eventful,” he said. “So. I guess we’re not backing off.”
“If you want to move Kylie and the kids…”
“To where, exactly?”
“There’s room at the castle.” That was how the two of them always referred to the McCallister estate—half a joke, half envy. “The kids would love it.”
“If it comes to that, sure, but I’m not uprooting my family over it yet.”
“I just want them to be safe.”
“Kylie’s all grown up, and you do not want to mess with her kids. That safe room in the back of my house has enough firepower to take down a medium-sized country, and she’s checked out on every single piece of it. Relax. How do you want to go at this Chandra thing?”
“Patrick has a plan,” she said. “You’re not going to like it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I don’t like it. You still have some access to Pharmadene, don’t you?” Joe had been an independent contractor for Patrick—someone nominally off the books, but he had a great deal of familiarity with the Pharmadene world nevertheless.
“Not like I used to, but yeah, some. Friends on the inside, all that crap. Why, what do you need out of them?”
“Remember the trackers that Pharmadene put on their early Revival subjects? The ones that bind into bone? I need one.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. You want a tracker, I’ve got—”
“Nothing that can’t be gotten rid of,” she interrupted. “If they make me change clothes, drop my purse, I’ll lose the chip. If you put it in subcutaneously, they’ll find it. These are pros, Joe—you said it yourself. They’ll be looking for a trace. Anything that isn’t deeply embedded, they’ll find it fast.”
The Pharmadene tracking device was composed of nanites specially modified to lock to bone, link together, and broadcast. It was undetectable in terms of searches, and it broadcast on such a tight, specific wavelength that even a thorough scan probably wouldn’t pick it up. Ingenious. Also deadly to anyone who wasn’t Revived…The nanites themselves created a toxic by-product that only someone who’d had a dose of Returné could survive.
“Okay.” Joe finally nodded. “I get the tracker; you’re marked so we can keep eyes on you. What then?”
“Then I wait,” she said, “because they want me. They want to know what I know. They’ll be coming for me—soon.”
“You’re right. I really don’t like any part of this at all.”
“Oh, that’s not the part you won’t like,” Bryn said, and smiled. “It’s the part where you have to lose a fight if you’re around when they come for me.”
“Fuck. Bad enough I managed to actually get my ass kicked by Fast Freddy Watson; this ain’t doing anything for my image.” Joe tossed back the rest of his coffee. “Whatever happened to the nice, calm death business where all we did was cuddle sad people and polish caskets? It used to be so…restful.”
“Glad you think so, because you get to deal with the gang funeral today. Watch out for drive-by tributes.” In truth, gang funerals were pretty much like any other kind, only quieter. The gangs never stinted on their memorial services: always top dollar. It had unnerved her how calm and watchful everyone had been at her first one, but to her surprise the gang members had been more polite than the average country-club darling’s friends, who were often drunk and weepy, not to mention entitled brats.
“You give me the best presents. Hey,” he said, as she refilled her cup. “How much of a fight should I put up on your behalf, exactly?”
“Your call.” Her smile faded as she considered how long this might take. Days, maybe, before her attackers felt comfortable enough to come at her again—and she’d have to go down hard to keep her credibility. This time, she felt, they wouldn’t try such a straightforward abduction. It would be something else.
Something worse.
She hoped like hell she was wrong.
Chapter 12
The day dragged by, hour by stunningly normal hour. The sun shone nicely outside, the groundskeepers came and tended the grass, and around the city, as everywhere, people died. Most of those deaths were standard, peaceful, natural-causes events that were sad occasions, nothing horribly traumatic.
Bryn and Joe worked a service together that morning, from church to burial, and although she was alert for anything odd, she saw nothing.
At noon, Joe came in and gave her the usual shot, which burned. “We’ve got another week’s supply of Manny’s latest batch,” he said. “After that, we’re back on Pharmadene standard formula plus the inhibitors. We’ve got enough of that to last maybe three months before we’re out of the inhibitor.” She sat still until the worst of the shaking and pain rolled off, and saw he wasn’t finished. He held up a second syringe. “Tracker nanites. It’s going to take about twenty-four hours for them to form the chains and start broadcasting. After that, you’re golden. We can track you anywhere.”
She expected that to hurt, too, but it didn’t. The shot did, but she’d gotten so used to the sensation of a needle that it hardly even registered anymore. I have a solid career path as a junkie, she thought, without much humor. She couldn’t even get high; the nanites would burn it off within minutes.
Sucks to be me. But at least Patrick and Joe could keep an eye on her, virtually, once the trackers came online. There was probably even an app for it. Hell, she’d met a sniper in Iraq who’d had an app on his phone to calculate windage for distance shots. Amazing what they could do these days.
The afternoon was the gang funeral, which she’d assigned to Joe. Bryn stayed in the office, doing paperwork, then went downstairs to see if there was a backlog of work in the prep room. Their principal embalmer, William, was finishing the last stitches in the mouth of Mrs. Gilbert. She’d passed in her eighties, and the infusions had given her back a faint flush of color through the crepe-soft skin. She looked peaceful. “Hey,” he said, and clipped the thread neatly. If you didn’t know the thread was there, you’d never even suspect it. “Want to put the caps in for me? It’d be a big help.”
She nodded, gloved and gowned up, and slipped rounded plastic caps under Mrs. Gilbert’s eyelids. It was one of the few things that bothered her, this cosmetic touch that kept the face looking more like someone sleeping than deceased, as the eyes were the first thing to start drying and losing their firm shape. Bryn did it quickly, and tried not to think about it.
William added a few finishing touches, gently adjusting the skin on Mrs. Gilbert’s lips for best possible effect. “I hear you added another green funeral option.”
“It’s popular,” she said. “No embalming, simple winding-sheet, burial in a biodegradable coffin.”
“Ah, hell, no. I’m not rotting in some recycled cardboard crate; that’s just not dignified. Just stick me in a wood chipper and blow me over the flower beds. Does the same thing,” William said. “Okay, Mrs. Gilbert, you look fabulous. Time to put on your clothes.”
Together, they dressed the body, which was harder to do than it looked—living bodies cooperated, even unconscious, but the dead had no such consideration. Bryn was always struck, when it came to this, how careful William was, how gentle his touch. He treated the dead like his own—no hesitation, fear, or callousness. It was one of the things she liked best about him. He took the time to get it exactly right, straightening the woman’s dark blue dress until it fell just so around her body.
“Did you have time to finish the reconstruction on the Lindells? The husband and wife?” Bryn asked, as he settled the sheet back over Mrs. Gilbert.
“Yeah. It’s not going to look as good as I’d like, but there’s only so much you can do when the bone structure’s broken like that. You can take a look if you want—they’re in the cooler. Hey, I heard there was some kind of robbery last night. Broken window, right? Was anything taken?”
“They never got inside,” Bryn said. “The cops were here in minutes. Nothing to worry about.”
“Good. I hate those assholes who come in to steal body parts and shit. Drunken jerks. My buddy took classes at the body farm on situational decomposition, and he said that kind of thing happened all the time out there. Had to have guards patrolling. Imagine that, armed guys to look after fields full of dead people. What’s the world coming to, eh?” He rolled Mrs. Gilbert back toward the large walk-in refrigerator. “Would you get the door?”
“Sure.” She held it back for him, then went inside with him and inspected the reconstruction work on the Lindells. It was solid work, but there was no way it could look completely natural; still, she thought the kids would appreciate the opportunity to see their parents one more time. “This looks good, William. Thanks for the extra effort.”
“I think that’s the last for today,” he said. “The service for the Lindells is tomorrow afternoon. Mrs. Gilbert is in the morning. I’ve got nothing much until they start bringing in today’s customers—I heard there’s four coming, so OT in the near future. Mind if I take an early day?”
“Not at all,” Bryn said. He smiled sunnily. “Got plans?”
“Movies,” he said. “And pizza with my buds. Maybe some beers, try to meet a girl. The usual. You know.”
