Read Online Two Weeks' Notice by Rachel Caine - Free Book Online

syringe and injected Lynnette with that, too. Lynnette’s eyelashes fluttered, and her eyes rolled up to show the whites, and she stopped breathing.
    Dead, again.
    Riley nodded to her subordinate. “Get her stripped and in the shower. I’ll get some clothes for her. We have about ten minutes before she comes around again, and I want her clean, dressed, and in the car by then.”
    “What the hell are you doing?” Bryn blurted. The other agent pushed her out of the way, scooped Lynnette up, and took her into the bathroom. “Riley!”
    “She can’t stay here,” Riley said. “She’s going back to Pharmadene, where she can get the treatment she needs.”
    “And the bodies? You called off the cops, didn’t you?”
    “This will all be handled, Bryn. Now, you both need to go. I don’t have to tell you that this is a national security matter, do I?”
    “You can’t just cover this up and make her disappear! You can’t—”
    “I can,” Riley interrupted her, “and I have. This entire neighborhood is being evacuated right now for a gas leak. In twenty minutes, this house is going to blow sky-high. The only casualties will be the Renfer family.”
    There was a moment of silence, and then Patrick said, from the doorway, “You mean, including Lynnette. Right, Agent Block?” He had that flat, cold look in his eyesBryn knew meant trouble. “She’s an inconvenient survivor, and you can’t depend on her to keep her mouth shut. What’s her future—quick decapitation? Fast-burning furnace? Or just let her decompose in the white room so you can chart her process?”
    If he was planning to ruffle her calm, he was disappointed. “She goes back to Pharmadene,” Riley said, without much emotion. “And you’re right. She can’t leave there again; she’s too high a risk. If she decides she wants to end her drug regimen, or chooses another method of…termination, that is entirely her choice; it’s one we give all the addicts. Frankly, if it was me in this situation, I wouldn’t want to go on.” She looked up then, but not at Pat—at Bryn, who felt a chill ladder up her spine. “Would you?”
    Bryn didn’t reply, but she knew if she’d been forced to do so, she would have had to confess that dying, however horrible, might have been better than living the rest of an immortal life with the burden of this on her conscience.
    The shower cut off in the bathroom. Riley went to the closet and combed through clothes ( How do you choose an outfit for a time like this? Bryn wondered) and handed underwear, pants, and a shirt off to her colleague. “You should leave,” Riley said to the rest of them. “The clock’s ticking. You should be able to go without any questions being asked, but if you’re stopped at the cordon, give them my name.”
    Bryn said, “You can’t just—”
    “Can’t just what ?” Riley snapped, and for a moment her shell of calm cracked through to white, furious rage. “Can’t clean up this mess? That’s all I do, Bryn. It’s my fucking job . Day after day. Night after night. I see the wreckage that Pharmadene left us with, and I get to sweep up the broken glass. So either get out of the wayor grab a broom.” She paused for a second, shut her eyes, and then looked at Pat. “McCallister, get her the hell out of here. Now.”
    He stood still for so long that Bryn was convinced he’d do something , stop what was happening, try , but instead when he did move, he only crossed to Bryn and took her hand. “We need to go,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do.”
    “We can’t let them just abduct her—”
    “Bryn, we’re on thin ice as it is. You can’t fight this. Listen— listen to me !” She was trying to pull free of him, and get to Lynnette, and he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. Hard. “You exist on the government’s sufferance, and that can end anytime they want. Don’t fight them on this. Don’t. There’s nothing we can do for her!”
    “There should