Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski Read Free Book Online

something the trade press could understand. There weren’t many trade publications that covered his particular industry; Jamie had been shocked at how small the list was when he started a year ago.
    But what had David been saying, right before Molly shot him in the head?
    Front company?
    Intelligence agency?
    I mean …
what?
    Jamie sat behind his desk and saw the greeting card tacked to his corkboard. He’d almost forgotten about that.
    Andrea had given it to him the day Chase was born, a month ago. It was a card from Baby Chase to his new daddy. On the front was a cartoon duck—a little boy duck, wearing little boy pants. Fireworks burst behind him. HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY, DADDY the card said on the back. “You’re just lucky he wasn’t born on Arbor Day,” Andrea had joked. But Jamie loved thatcard to an absurd degree. It was the little duck, in the little boy pants.
His
little boy. For the first time, it all clicked. He’d brought it to work with him a few days later as he packed up his Rolodex and notes for his paternity leave. Unpaid, but what the hell. How often are firstborn sons born?
    The card was meant to be tacked up temporarily, to put a smile on Jamie’s face as he went through the drudgery of answering last e-mails, setting his voice mail vacation message, gathering up manila folders full of junk he knew he wouldn’t actually touch for at least a month. But in the hurry to leave, the card was forgotten. Jamie wanted to kick himself, but it wasn’t worth showing his face in the office just to recover the card. He’d be sucked back into the vortex too quickly—one more press release, c’mon, just one more …
    Jamie put his fingers to the greeting card. Smoothed the imaginary feathers on the head of the little boy duck. Then he tucked it in his back pocket.
    He desperately needed to call Andrea, tell her what was going on, and somehow convince her that she didn’t need to worry.
    But his office phone, like the one in the conference room, was dead. Jamie looked out his office window, which faced east. If he craned his neck, he could almost see the corner of his block, off in the distance beyond Spring Garden Street. Just two houses down from the corner were Andrea and his baby boy.
    Whatever had happened this morning, Jamie knew it would be many, many hours before he would see his wife and son again. The police interrogations alone would probably keep him here—or down at the Roundhouse—until late tonight.
    He just wished the police could be called, so they could arrive, so that they could get it all over with already.
    Look at me, he thought. The new daddy. Gone for barely an hour, and already nervous as hell.
    Nervous daddy.
    Wait a minute.
    Jamie saw his soft leather briefcase on the desk. Was it still in there?
    It would make all the difference.
    The remaining employees split up. If they had any chance of calling an ambulance—for Stuart or David or both, even though Stuart’s chances of making it through this without brain damage were next to nil—they were going to have to find their way to another floor. That much was clear.
    Nichole announced that they’d be checking the elevators, and it took Roxanne a second to realize that
they
meant her, too. Jamie had already slipped out of the conference room to find a phone or sit behind his desk and cry or something. Ethan was still AWOL. Molly left a second later, most likely to the bathroom to puke. Amy couldn’t blame her. She had only
watched
her boss take a bullet to the head, and she felt queasy.
    Of course, that left Amy to lock the doors to the conference room, leaving the guns where they were. Let the police sort it out.
    It also left her to check the fire escape doors. You know, the ones allegedly rigged with a chemical nerve agent.
    Sometimes, Amy felt like the only adult in this company.
    There were only two fire escapes in the building; both were accessible only from outside the office. The thirty-sixth floor was a square carved up