Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski

object of his affection was being moved to a station in Dubai. Molly arrived the next day.
    Sometimes, David thought about his previous charge. Thought about Dubai. They had built a fake ski resort right there in the middle of the desert. He wondered if she ever had the opportunity to enjoy it. He’d promised her they’d go skiing sometime.
    But Molly didn’t look like she enjoyed skiing.
    She didn’t look like she enjoyed much of anything.
    His employers had a strange idea about staffing.
    David had been brought in during the early, tentative days; his special blend of charm and ruthlessness carried him to the upper echelon of the fledgling intelligence organization—but not to a hiring position. That operation was always performed by other people. People David had never met.
    David wished he would, someday. Just so he could slap them silly.
    Look at Molly. Okay, okay, subtract the act of gross insubordination where she shot her own boss in the head. Still, she was trouble. David’s charms were totally ineffective on her. She had no discernible sense of humor. It wasn’t clear if her beard of a husband—some paunchy dork named Paul—was a real love interest, or if Molly skipped through Lesbos’s groves. David was totally unable to handle her.
    Oh, she listened. Textbook support personnel.
    But he couldn’t play her. That vaguely troubled him.
    And look how it had all turned out.
    David stared up at the ceiling and wondered how much longer he’d be conscious. Maybe it was his imagination, but he swore he could feel the blood throbbing out of the little hole in his head.
    Yet, except for the paralysis that had washed over his body, he felt oddly normal. As if he could just snap out of it, and sit up. Which was
so
not going to happen.
    David wasn’t that delusional.
    Amy ushered a shaking Molly into her office and closed the door. She needed to calm this one down
now,
even if Amy ended up calling David’s bosses and had her hauled in for debriefing. Operations were one thing; this was a broken humanbeing here. All Amy knew was that one minute, her boss of five years was threatening to kill everyone in the room, and the next, Stuart had keeled over, and the next, David’s secretary of six months was shooting him in the head. It was too much.
    She wished she had somebody calming
her
down.
    Be the adult. Be the adult.
    “Are you okay?” Amy asked. “Sit down. Let me get you some water.”
    “I’m okay,” Molly said. She continued to stand, but looked around Amy’s office nervously, as if bracing for a wild animal to leap out from behind a desk and pounce.
    “Sit down, Molly. Nothing can hurt you in here.”
    “I know, I know. I’m okay. I promise.”
    Amy wished Molly would sit down and just drink some water already. Her office was hot. It was always hot. The windows faced the north, and the early morning sun always seemed to beat the cool air pumped from the building’s ductwork. Fetching Molly a Styrofoam cup of water would give Amy a few moments in the chilly kitchen, a chance to wipe a paper towel across her forehead and neck and, more important, give her a moment to think. With David gone—and oh, how that was a weird euphemism to use, considering the man was lying in the conference room with a bullet in his head—Amy was technically in charge. And she didn’t have a single idea what to do next.
    The Department handbook didn’t cover stuff like this.
    She also wanted desperately to find Ethan. While he could act like a schoolboy, he was excellent in crisis moments. Whenever she had an office meltdown, she could walk over to Ethan’s office, close the door, and sink into his blue beanbag chair—a ridiculous holdover since college. Ethan would ask her what was wrong, and no matter the answer, announce that it was time for “creamy treats.” Some guys keep a bottle of booze intheir lower right-hand drawer; Ethan kept Tastykakes. Ethan gave her the two things she needed to settle down: a patient