Fletcher would have sworn Brian said, “Come on. Bertram will have our heads if she gets away.”
Almost like he hadn’t been aiming for Molly at all.
Intention didn’t matter. A syringe the size of her forearm still jutted out of the side of Molly’s neck, and the injection must have been taking hold quickly. Molly’s left arm drooped to her side and dangled there. Her face followed suit, skin sagging drastically, like a botched Botox job.
The eye that wasn’t fast asleep, rolling around in its socket, burned with rage. All of it was guided toward Fletcher, which felt a little unfair given she hadn’t been the one to shoot her with a tranquilizer dart.
The real culprits raced down the staircase, flinging the gigantic gun around like Rambo wannabes.
Fletcher had to get out of there. Now.
Shooting out of the foyer, she aimed toward the executive suites. Molly pried the machete out of the wall and lurched after her. Or tried to. Her lopsided Frankenstein gait wasn’t built for running. Everything after that happened in slow motion:
Molly’s numb foot snagged on the embroidered drapery.
Her body sloped forward, falling—and falling—and falling.
The arm holding the machete hit the ground first. Blade up. Still clutched in her good hand.
And in the fraction of a second that followed, Molly crashed to the floor on top of it. The machete speared through her chest, ripping between rib bones. Fletcher couldn’t look away fast enough.
There was asquelchand agaspand awheeze, a whole symphony of horrifying onomatopoeia. Black film edged the corners of Fletcher’s vision, like she’d slapped a terrible Instagram filter over her eyes.
“Oh my god, Molly.”
Molly, of course, didn’t respond. She had a packed schedule of Bleeding Out on the Parquet Floor, followed shortly by Not Getting a Proper Burial Because Her Coworkers Were Lunatics.
And, unfortunately, Fletcher’s calendar was also filled with back-to-back agenda items. First on the list was getting the hell away from the Brians.
12
Fletcher’s only solace was how painfully clear it was that neither Brian actually knew how to operate a tranquilizer gun. They spent their days neck-deep in Google Analytics and their nights debating the ethics of tracking user data. It wasn’t like they were actually going to—
Another red-fletched dart whizzed past her ear, missing her by just a hair, and embedded itself into aJet-Settercover from 1978 featuring a fair amount of corduroy and freed nipples. Fletcher jolted, eyes wide, and her gaze caught on Brian’s as he barreled down the stairs.
“No, no, no. Hold on a second.” She thrust her staff toward them. Forcing distance. “Whatever bullshit assignment Bertram gave you, you don’t have to do it.”
The curtain rod épée wasn’t going to cut it. She needed something bigger, sharper.
She needed a…
Machete.
“We aren’t trying to kill you,” Other Brian said.
This was bad. So bad. “Oh yeah? Like you weren’t trying to kill Molly?”
Brian scoffed. “Weweren’t. That was all her.”
On the ground between them, Molly was heavy, limp, cold. Fletcher tried not to think about how quickly the air had left her lungs as she wedged her foot underneath Molly’s stiff torso and rolled her onto her side. The blade had inserted itself beneath her sternum in the soft between bones.
Molly’s blouse was ruined, stained the darkest red. Her head lolled, eyes fixed on the Brians, like even dead she could hold a mean grudge.
As Fletcher grabbed the knife’s hilt, the outrageous amount of adrenaline in her body was the only thing that stopped her from truly registering the difficult way the blade slid out, slick with Molly’s blood. One day, this fucked-up vacation would be a big black blur in her memory. Like getting a concussion and forgetting the crack of your skull against the pavement. Unreachable in the depths of her mind.
But, for now, it remained all too real.
Wielding the blade with both hands, Fletcher needed to put as much distance as possible between her and the Brians.
