Severance Package Read Free

weekend morning. Stuff he did—erasing bank accounts, leaving your average wannabe jihadist with a useless ATM card in one hand, his dick in the other—could be done anywhere, really. He could do it at friggin’ Starbucks. There was nothing more simple and yet nothing more satisfying. Maybe some guys got off on the idea of picking off towel-heads with a sniper rifle. Stuart loved doing it by tapping ENTER.
    Guess he’d find out what this was about soon enough.
    Stuart threw the Focus in reverse, gently lifted his foot off the brake. The car rolled back down the ramp. Another vehicle turned the corner sharply, ready to shoot up the ramp and, judging from its speed,
over
the Focus, if need be.
    Brakes screamed. The Focus jolted to a stop, pressing Stuart back into his seat.
    “Man,” he said.
    He slapped the steering wheel, then looked into the rearview.
    It was a Subaru Tribeca. With a woman behind the wheel.
    Stuart crouched down into his seat, checked the rearview again. Squinted.
    Oh.
    Molly Lewis.
    Stuart allowed the Focus to roll backwards. The Tribeca got the hint and reversed back down the foot of the ramp and backed onto Twentieth Street. Stuart steered the Focus until it was parallel with the Tribeca. Traffic was light this morning. It was only 8:45. Stuart rolled down his window. The Tribeca did the same, on the passenger side.
    “Change your mind about work?”
    “Hey, Molly. Yeah, I wish. I’m just not paying twenty-six fifty to park. I’ll find something on the street.”
    “Then you’ve got to feed the meter.”
    “Then I’ll feed the meter. I’m not paying twenty-six fifty.”
    “David told me we’d be here until at least two o’clock.”
    “What? I thought noon.”
    “He e-mailed me this morning.”
    “Man. What is this about anyway? I’ve got my laptop at home. I can do whatever he wants from my living room.”
    “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
    Stuart watched the Tribeca—fancy wheels for an assistant, he thought—shoot up the ramp. He continued up Twentieth, turned left on Arch, then Twenty-first, then Market down to Nineteenth. He drove past the green light at Chestnut, then hung a right on Sansom. There were no available spots on the 1900 block, or the next. Didn’t look like much farther down, either.
    He flipped open the ashtray. One quarter, a few nickels, many pennies.
    “Man.”
    But then, movement. The red taillights of a Lexus. Pulling back. McCrane pressed his brakes. Slowed to a stop. Watched the Lexus maneuver out of the space.
    Even better, it was a Monday-through-Friday loading space. Weekends, it was fair game.
    “Yes,”
Stuart said.

Her name was Molly Lewis …
     
    … and she eased the Tribeca into a spot on an empty level in the 1919 Market Street Building’s garage. The nearest car was atleast ten spots away. She turned off the engine, then opened the suitcase on the passenger seat. Inside, on top of a yellow legal pad, was David’s package.
    Molly’s cell phone played the guitar riff from “Boys Don’t Cry.” She put in the earpiece and pressed ANSWER . A voice spoke to her.
    She said: “Yes, I remembered.”
    And a few seconds later: “I know. I followed the protocols.”
    The packages had arrived last night. Paul had asked what she’d ordered
now
—smiling as he said it—and Molly truthfully replied that it was something for David. She had carried them to the glassed-in patio and sat down on a white metal garden chair. Then she carefully clipped away the masking tape with a pair of blue-handled scissors and then opened the flaps of the first box.
    She had put the contents—David’s delivery—into her own briefcase, then gone back to order dinner from the gourmet Chinese place a few blocks away. Paul hated calling it in, and always complained until Molly did it.
    Then she went back out to the patio to open the second box. She was staring at the contents now:
    A Beretta .22 Neo.
    Ammo—a box of fifty, target practice, 29 gr.
    “I am,” she