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She appreciated it, but she no longer really believed it.
Bryn stepped back, and he unlocked the stall door and stepped out, then gestured for her to go ahead. She moved fast, and heard him locking the stall back again as she reached for the door handle.
A man pushed it open, and she scrambled away, feeling a surge of panic that heated her face. “Oh, God,” she said. “Wrong room. Sorry. ” She hurried past him and directly into the women’s room, opposite, where she lingered for a few minutes checking her hair, makeup, washing her hands, and wishing she’d put on more concealer to blot out the dark circles under her eyes. Sleep. I need sleep.
First, she needed food.
As lunches went, it was unremarkable right up until the front entrance bell jingled, and two men in business suits walked up to her table to loom over her. She looked up, frowning, and one of them produced a Pharmadene ID in a fancy flip wallet, like a police detective would carry. “You’ve got an appointment,” he said. “We’re your drivers. ”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. It was a busy restaurant—waiters everywhere, diners, cooks, and a maître d’ who was currently smiling at a large group of women who’d entered together. “I’m not going anywhere. ”
“Ma’am, Ms. Harte wants to see you. Right now. Let’s not make this a scene. ”
“If I scream—”
“If you scream,” he interrupted her, and bent closer, “we will turn around and walk away, and you will be cut off, do you understand? Completely cut off. No one will be able to help you. It’ll take a long time before you stop feeling what you’ll be feeling, Bryn. ”
“Screw you!”
The look in his eyes turned even colder. “Do you want us to walk away? Because we can certainly do that. Ain’t nothing to me, lady. ”
Ah, that closed, choking feeling was her leash being yanked. Bryn stared him down for another few seconds, then reached for her wallet.
The Pharmadene man smiled and said, “Oh, it’s on me. ” He dropped a twenty on the table. “Let’s go. ”
They took her gun as soon as they had gotten her outside. It happened without a fight only because the larger of the two pulled his own weapon first and held it steady on her as his partner searched her. Bryn fumed, but there didn’t seem to be any point in trying to go hand-to-hand with men who were obviously very serious about their jobs.
The Town Car they put her in was a duplicate of the one McCallister normally drove, but there was no sign of him. Once they were on the road, Bryn said, “This isn’t right. I’m a Pharmadene employee, and I work for McCallister. Call him. ”
Silence. Neither of them even turned to look at her. “Hey!” she said sharply. “Either you call him, or I do. Your choice. ”
“Try it,” one of them said. He sounded smug, and as she checked her phone, she found it dead. “You’ll get service back when we want you to have it. Now shut up. You’re not a person. You’re a proprietary lab rat. ”
A plastic barrier went up between her and the two in front. Bryn tried the door handles, but without much hope, and she was right: they controlled the locks. Kicking out the window was an option, but
she didn’t know whether she was desperate enough to try it. Besides, they were right: where was she going to run? It wasn’t like she had a lot of choices.
The ride to Pharmadene left her time to think about what she’d do, what she’d say, but in truth, she had very few plays to make. The goons in the front seat were right: she wasn’t a person, not once she was in their custody.
“I’d like to call Ms. Harte,” she finally said, leaning up against the clear barrier that separated her from the men in front.
“No need for that,” the one who did all the talking said. “You’re on your way to see her. ”
“I need to tell her—”
“Doesn’t matter what you want to tell her. Paperwork’s been signed. You’re done, sweetheart. ”
An ice-cold panic formed in the pit of Bryn’s stomach. She was going to disappear and never be seen again. Like Sharon. She didn’t want to vanish like her sister, without a word; she didn’t want her last minutes with Annalie to be angry. She didn’t want her mother to spend her last years agonizing over what had happened to yet another daughter.
She’d given Annie the perfect explanation. Bryn got involved with drugs. That’s probably what happened to her.
They’d be sad, and they’d be sorry, but she’d be gone. Completely, utterly gone.
I have to get out of here. Better to be on the run than be hauled in there, to die trapped. Maybe Manny Glickman could help her. Maybe Joe Fideli. Running was her only hope.
Bryn twisted and kicked. Her heel connected solidly with the window next to her on the first try, with an impact that rattled all the way up to and through her brain, but she got nothing to show for it, not even a hairline crack in the surface. She kicked again, and again, until the barrier between her and the two thugs in front rolled down, and one of them pointed a gun at her.
“Easy,” he said. “You’re going to break something, but it won’t be that window. Bullet-resistant glass, all the way around. This is our VIP car. ”
