TWO
Nadine scrubbed at her face as she stared at her computer screen, wishing she’d had the backbone—and the accrued time—to call out of work that morning. But her boss, Darren, had harped on and on how important the reports for the quarterly meeting were. She had to suffer through the day as long as humanly possible, get them done, and turn them in. If I drink any more coffee, I’m going to throw up, she told herself firmly, pushing the temptation aside. Her headache had done nothing but get worse since she’d gotten up that morning. At first, Nadine had been optimistic that the usual jolt of caffeine and a couple of Aleve would fix the problem—but three hours into her work day, she was certain it was going to keep getting worse until her head exploded under the pressure.
“How’s it going, Nadine?”
She barely glanced at her boss as he paused at her desk, on his way to yet another meeting with the “higher ups.”
“It’s coming along,” she said as brightly as she could, sitting up straight in her chair. “Some of those assholes in accounting must have been high when they were putting in the figures.”
Her boss tsked—not at her expletive, but at the poor quality of accounting’s numbers, based on the sympathetic look he gave her.
“Do what you can with it. You’re the best we’ve got.”
Nadine gave him a smile for the compliment.
“I think I might leave early once I get this done, if that’s okay,” she said, looking at Darren intently.
He shrugged. “As long as your work is done and we’ve got the reports finished.” He shrugged again. “Let HR know that you’re leaving early and CC me on the email.”
“Will do,” Nadine said.
Darren turned away from her desk and she sighed as quietly as possible, wishing the throbbing in her temples would subside for even thirty minutes—just long enough for her to be able to make sense of the huge mess of figures and details she’d been given to turn into a coherent report.
Nadine reached blindly for the bottle of water on her desk, finding it by a mixture of touch and muscle memory. “You can do this, Nadine,” she murmured to herself quietly, looking at the screen. “Get it done and you can go home.” She took a deep breath and swallowed a few gulps of water, hoping against hope that it would put a dent in the headache making her so miserable.
She worked away at the reports her boss needed so much, focusing on the screen in front of her. Nadine had been working at the agency in Analytics for eighteen months. She had taken the job in spite of not being particularly enthusiastic about data analysis because after spending her college years bouncing from one part-time job to another—and after racking up considerable debt to go to college—she had been happy to take the first decently-paying job that came up. Over time, she’d found herself somewhat stuck, partly because she had fallen into the trap of making friends with some of her coworkers, and partly because she was just starting to make enough money to both pay off her loans—and to pay her bills—and to have something like a social life.
As the rest of the office departed for lunch, Nadine continued working, putting headphones on and sipping water to isolate herself in a world of her own creation. All she wanted was to make sure she had the reports finished and polished well enough to pass muster. Once she had that done, she could go home, crawl into bed, and sleep off her headache. Hopefully, the next day she’d wake up feeling better, and everything would be back to the way it normally was.
After what felt like hours, Nadine sat back and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly as her fingertips moved on her mouse, scrolling through the finished report. Her head was throbbing so much that her eyes watered, but as she forced herself to carefully read through what she’d written to go with the graphs, spreadsheets, and graphics, she thought she had managed to pull the whole mess together with something like skill.
“If it sucks, it’s not going to be my fault,” she murmured to herself, nodding slightly as her gaze trailed over a few of the cogent points she had made in the report. To the best of her knowledge, as well as she could tell, there weren’t any glaring typos. Nadine yawned, blinking a few times as she came to the end of the last report, and told herself that even if there were one or two things that were wrong, someone else would be looking over the reports before they went live in the meeting—they would catch it if she didn’t, and if whoever proofed her work didn’t catch it, the people reading the reports at the end of the line wouldn’t notice them either.
Nadine saved them all one final time, checked to make sure that they were aligned properly and nothing was out of place, and sent the reports to the printer. People had started to come back from their lunches; if she was lucky, she could get the whole thing over with and on Darren’s desk, and be out of the office before anyone could ask her to stay “just a little while longer” to finish another project. I’m not even sure that I’m safe to drive, she thought wryly, shaking her head as she carefully stood up and started to walk towards the communal printer for her department. Pages upon pages of her reports slid out and into the tray in a torrent of paper and ink. Nadine watched them, almost hypnotized by the sight, breathing in the smell of toner and brittle ozone radiating from the big, old printing station.
She gathered up the reports, sorted them out into their individual packets, and grabbed an armful of binders. Glancing around to make sure no one was descending on the printing station, Nadine snatched up the hole punch and carried it with her back to her desk. The quicker I can get this done the sooner I can get in my car and drive home. Nadine set down the hole punch and the binders and began assembling the reports, moving more quickly than she had managed for most of the morning, fueled by the hope of freedom to go home. She checked over the binders and their contents one final time and carried them to her boss’ office, tapping on the door to make sure he hadn’t managed to somehow slip back in while she was distracted.
Darren’s office was empty. Nadine went in, deposited the binders on his desk where he would see them as soon as he sat down, and left, pausing at her desk long enough to retrieve the hole punch. She put it back where she’d found it at the printing station, and hurried to take care of the last few details she would need to cover before she could gather her things and go home. Nadine wrote a quick email to Darren explaining that she’d finished the reports. She attached the documents to the email in case he wanted to make changes to any of them himself—or refer them to anyone else to make changes. She sent that message and opened a new one, tapping out an even briefer email to human resources to let them know she would be leaving early, putting her paid leave time to use; she added Darren’s email address to the recipient field and sent it.
Nadine gathered up her things and shut down her computer, setting her desk phone to “overnight” before she strode away from her desk. She tried to appear to be confident—not sneaky—but she worried, as she walked to the elevator in the lobby, that if someone saw her, they might think she was leaving because she simply didn’t feel like working. Try to look sick enough to merit going home, but not so sick that people think you’re disgusting, she thought, frowning as one of her temples throbbed particularly viciously. She made it to the elevator—blissfully, blessedly empty—and pressed the button for the first floor of the building, where her car waited.
Nadine leaned against the rail in the elevator, pressing her forehead against the cool metal wall, and shifted as it went into motion, moving down the floors with agonizing slowness. I need to make one stop on the way home—I need to get something better for this stupid headache than Aleve. Maybe Excedrin would do it. She shook her head slowly from side to side, fearful of making the throbbing ache worse, trying to remember what had worked in the past when she’d gotten one of the truly terrible headaches.
The elevator chime cut through her head, making Nadine wince, and she stirred herself to look at least marginally presentable in case anyone was on the other side of the door; when she saw that no one was, she took a deep breath and reached into her purse for her keys. Nadine walked through the hall and turned at the corner, nearly colliding with the wall before she rebounded and straightened. She stepped out into the parking structure attached to the office building and winced at the heaviness of heat and humidity that washed over her.
Nadine wove her way through the parking structure to find her car, thinking longingly of her apartment: the cool of the air conditioning, the softness of her bed sheets, the fact that once she arrived she could close all the blinds and pull all of the curtains shut, and in moments she would be asleep. With any luck, after a few hours she would wake up and the headache would be a thing of the past, banished to memory and no longer a constant, thudding presence in her skull. She found her keys at last and fumbled with them as she reached her car, a sun-faded Plymouth Neon. Nadine unlocked the driver’s side door and climbed in, throwing her purse into the passenger seat and closing the door behind her quickly.
In moments, the car was on, the air conditioning running, and Nadine pulled out of her parking spot, turning to navigate out of the labyrinthine parking structure. She reached into the passenger seat as she came out of the structure, wincing at the eye-watering brightness of the day. Nadine found her sunglasses by touch and managed to get them on as she maneuvered onto the street proper and turned towards the intersection that would lead her away from the office and towards home.
Her headache receded somewhat as she drove home; not enough to make her feel guilty about leaving early, but enough that she was capable of stopping at a pharmacy on her way. She bought a jar of Excedrin and wandered around for a few moments, trying to decide if she needed anything else. She carried her purchases to the register and waited behind an older woman to finish her argument about whether a particular brand of supplement was on sale or not, and then finished her transaction with as little conversation as possible, managing a wan smile when the cashier asked if she was feeling okay.
“This headache might actually kill me,” Nadine told the woman.
“I know what you mean,” the cashier said, smiling sympathetically. “I get terrible migraines myself. Get yourself into a nice, cool, dark room and wait it out.”
“That’s the plan,” Nadine replied, gathering up her bag and turning away with another wan smile.
She sighed and climbed back into her car, thinking about the rest of the day at home. “I can’t get there fast enough,” Nadine muttered to herself as she got back on the road, stopping at the light that stood between her and her apartment building.
She told herself firmly that she wouldn’t check her phone for the rest of the day—the temptation to check her emails, to make sure she wasn’t missing anything important from work, would be too great. She had taken the time off, and she was going to treat it as true time off; that meant not worrying about anything, and not finding reasons to do more work when she was supposed to be resting.
As she turned into the entrance of her apartment community, Nadine frowned; something about the area seemed off, somehow, though she couldn’t say specifically how. She shook off the impression and found the spot she preferred to park in. The complex didn’t offer assigned parking to its residents, and sometimes if she had to stay late, Nadine spent more then ten minutes wandering the area, trying to find a spot that was close enough to her building. She parked the car and grabbed her shopping bag and purse from the passenger seat.
Nadine heard a growl as she climbed out of her car. That sounds pretty big to be a dog, she thought, confused. If someone else has violated the damned pet policy and their stupid mastiff or whatever keeps me up the rest of the afternoon, I swear I am going to report their ass. Nadine grumbled, holding her purse more tightly as she started towards her building. Two months before, one of her neighbors had gotten an enormous dog—Nadine couldn’t remember the name of the breed, but when she’d seen the neighbors walking it, it had looked more like a bear than an actual dog. The beast had spent half the night, every night, barking up a storm, responding to whatever little sound it heard, or to something it had imagined. It had been absolute torture for Nadine, who had barely managed to sleep four or five hours a night while it was there. Someone had eventually complained—but only after two weeks of incessant barking had driven half the building insane. The neighbors had moved out rather than get rid of their new dog.
Another growl, followed by sounds of movement, and Nadine decided that whatever was going on in the complex, she didn’t want to be part of it. She hurried towards the entrance of her building and looked around quickly, her grip tightening on her purse. In her peripheral vision, Nadine saw a blur—someone running. Nadine froze for just a moment, trying to understand what it was she was seeing. She tried to convince herself to keep going, to get into the building and go upstairs to her apartment and put the whole situation behind her. It wasn’t her business, and it wasn’t her problem. But instead she stood a few yards away from the entrance of her building, watching as a man in jeans and a black shirt ran across the complex.
The man moved surprisingly fast. Nadine watched in confusion and fear as he leaped over a decorative hedge that she thought had to be at least four feet tall as easily as if it had been less than half that height, bounding onward—and towards her building. Her heart began to pound in her chest and for the moment at least, Nadine’s headache became the least of her worries.
Her confusion and fear deepened when she saw what was coming after the man: one of his pursuers was a tall, gangly-looking man with dark curling hair, dressed in faded, worn jeans and a white tee shirt already spattered with blood. Right behind that man, to her stunned astonishment, Nadine saw a bear; she rubbed at her eyes and shook her head, but when she looked again the vision was the same: a tall, lean, angry-looking bear with mottled brown and tawny fur, caroming after the first man in pursuit.
“I have lost my mind,” she said, her mouth going dry and her heart stuttering in her chest.
Finally, as her brain filtered through the sight she’d seen, Nadine’s body caught up, propelling her forward; she turned and began to run. But she had forgotten the fact that she’d worn heels to work that morning. After three fast steps, one of the heels caught on a sprinkler head and down she went, tumbling to the ground with a thud that knocked all of the air out of her lungs. She barely heard the growling roar behind her before she felt the thundering of footsteps approaching.
“Get up! Get up you bitch, you’re my insurance now.”
Rough hands grabbed at her waist and Nadine gulped down a breath, the oxygen exploding into her lungs painfully. She started to scream and one of the hands clamped over her mouth, stifling the noise. She felt a sharp prod at her throat and her whole body went cold. Without even needing to see it, she knew the man—the one she’d seen running—had a knife, and that the knife was pressed right up against the pulse point in her neck.
“Stay calm and I won’t have to hurt you,” the man growled in her ear.
“You asshole,” Nadine heard someone say. She carefully turned her head, cringing away from the knife, and saw the other man skid to a stop a few feet away; to her astonishment, as if on cue the bear stopped also, glowering at the man holding her pinned to his body. “Let her go—you aren’t going to get out of this by taking a hostage.”
“You got a car, babe? Point it out to me.”
But Nadine’s arms were frozen at her sides. Her heart pounded in her chest, her blood roaring in her ears as she stared at the man and the bear that were apparently working together to pursue the man who’d snatched her up.
“Let her go,” the dark-haired man said. “You kill her and that’s just another crime you’re going to have to answer for.”
“Please don’t kill me,” Nadine whispered, ashamed at herself for having been grabbed in the first place. All I wanted was to go home and climb in bed and get rid of my headache, she thought mournfully. Her headache was gone—at least for the moment—but Nadine thought she might have actually been better off in the office.
“I got no interest in killing you unless I have to,” the man holding her said. The knife point wavered against her throat. “You help me get out of here and I’ll let you go, no questions asked. You believe me, right?”
“No,” Nadine admitted, shaking her head carefully. “I—I don’t really think I can trust someone who’s holding a knife to my throat.”
The bear, a few yards away, let out a sound that was strangely like a laugh.
“Alex, let her go. You’re already marked, you’re already bleeding, and if you kill her you’re only going to make things worse for yourself.”
“You’re not grabbing me,” the man pointed out. “You don’t want another bystander taken out—so as long as she’s between me and you two, I feel pretty safe.”
The bear let out a low, menacing growl, and Nadine trembled. Why is there a bear involved in this? Who trained a bear to chase people on command?
“Another bystander?” Nadine glanced at the small slice of her assailant that she could see in the corner of her eye.
“It was an accident,” the man said quickly. “You don’t want to be an accident, do you sweetheart?”
Nadine looked at the man and the bear that had her assailant cornered. She couldn’t think of any way that anyone involved in the situation could solve the problem; at least, not without her death. If the two pursuers made a grab for the guy holding the knife to her throat, he would certainly kill her.
“Let’s get to your car, sweetie,” the man said.
Nadine looked at the two pursuers. To her shock, the bear seemed to be shaking its head. Okay that bear is a little too well trained. This is getting incredibly weird.
“I don’t really…feel comfortable moving…while you have a knife at my throat,” Nadine said quietly, keeping as still as she possibly could. “If I move wrong…you’re going to end up killing me.”
“Just let her go, Alex,” the dark-haired man said. “You’re not going to be able to get away from us anyway. The minute you try and get into the car, we’ll take you out.”
“You’re supposed to negotiate with people who take hostages, asshole,” the man—presumably named Alex—holding Nadine said. “Do you want me to kill her?”
“Can we not kill me, please?” Nadine looked at the two pursuers, desperation seeping through her brain. “I know you guys obviously have some kind of situation going on…”
“Let her go,” the dark-haired man said again, firmly. “Killing her or not killing her isn’t going to make any fucking difference.”
“Obviously it makes a difference right now or you’d have been on me already,” Alex said.
Nadine’s fear began to shift around inside of her. All she had wanted was to go home and go to bed to sleep off her headache and now because of two people and a bear, she was potentially going to end up killed. She looked at the bear, which was acting surprisingly un-bearlike, standing on all fours and simply watching, growling occasionally. The bear’s gaze locked onto hers, unblinking, and Nadine’s anger began to blossom.
Acting on impulse, she lifted her foot and thought about the position of her attacker’s body against hers. She brought her heel down where she hoped the man’s instep would be, and felt the sickening jolt of pain as the blow landed, reminding her that she had twisted her ankle only moments before, tripping over the sprinkler head. The man yelped, and the pain in Nadine’s leg evaporated as she felt the sharp slice of the knife at her neck. She elbowed the man in the sternum and barely saw the two pursuers launch themselves forward as she took advantage of the break in her assailant’s concentration to pry herself free of his grip.
Nadine tumbled to the ground, feeling hot, sticky blood sliding down her neck, onto her blouse. She heard growling, a defiant roar—one that didn’t sound like it could have come from the bear—and as she curled in on herself, reaching up to press her fingers against the searing, burning pain of the cut at her neck, Nadine heard the unmistakable sounds of struggle going on a few feet away but her ability to react had deserted her. She lay there listening to the fight in shock until she realized that the noises had come to a stop.
“Check on her,” someone said. Nadine heard a groan, the sounds of some kind of thick, viscous liquid churning, a growling noise, and a moment later she opened her eyes to see a naked man crouched over her, looking down.
“You did good, sweetheart,” the man said, smiling.
Nadine stared up at him in shock and wonder. There were no naked men here like five minutes ago. What is going on? The man before her eyes had a boyish face, eyes that somehow looked both gray and green in the afternoon light, and a broad, skinny chest, marked with a sparse patch of hair in the shape of an almost diamond in the center.
“We’re going to get you some help—but I need you to keep quiet right now, okay?”
“Here, knock her out,” someone said—it sounded like the dark-haired man from before.
Nadine saw a flash of a white piece of fabric, and then felt the wet, rough bunch of it against her nose and mouth. She opened her mouth and took a breath to try and tell the two men—whoever they were—to explain themselves. A cloying, throat-slickening sweetness filled her mouth and nose, and then everything went away in a flood of darkness.