The Operator

  “I don’t know. I didn’t stick around to find out.”

  Her pulse slowed. They hadn’t escaped together, then, and she found strength in that. Damn it, I can’t go on not knowing like this. “I want you to make a call.” Her knee was starting to throb, the dissipating adrenaline leaving behind an ache that was growing harder to ignore.

  Jack slowed as she fell behind. “You said you weren’t shot.”

  “How would I know if I was shot or not, Jack,” she said bitterly, stopping to pull her pant leg up. Together they looked at it in the dim light, a frown growing at the swollen mess that was slowly but surely leaking. Another scar I won’t remember getting.

  Motions fast, Jack ripped a strip of cloth from his already tattered shirt. The sound of a chopper warming up was growing. It wouldn’t be long before they started walking the area with dart guns and flashlights.

  “What. Now?” she said as he crouched down and jerked her pant leg up higher.

  “You want to bleed all the way to the parking lot?” he said tightly. “We can be out of here in five minutes, across the border in a few hours, and from there, wherever you want.”

  It was tempting, more than he knew, but even if Jack was telling the truth, Bill would never let her go. “I want you to call Michael,” she said, thinking his fingers felt familiar as he probed her skin to see whether there was a bullet in there. “You’re going to tell him that after Bill got me hooked on Evocane, I accelerated myself. I want you to tell him Silas can’t duplicate the Evocane, and I’ll be defecting to Bill when it runs out. And I want you to tell Michael that Bill used him and that he never had any intention of moving him forward in the program.”

  Jack looked up, his confusion obvious in the faint light. “Why would I do that?”

  “You owe me.” Her knee hurt as he tied the strip of cloth around it, but it was swelling too much to have a bullet in it.

  “I owe you?” he said, but then he squinted up at her, his lips parting. “Shit, you’re serious. Babe, what’s the goal here? To piss Michael off?” His expression cleared. “To turn him against Bill?” He stood, the motion achingly familiar as he tucked his torn shirt in. Even disheveled and in need of a shower, he was gorgeous, beautiful, capable . . . and angry. “Why am I making a rift between Michael and Bill?” he asked. “You think he’s going to kill Bill for you? Bill’s the only reason Michael hasn’t offed you already. The man is nuts.”

  Disturbed, Peri checked her Glock. “Let’s go. You can call him in the car,” she said, beginning to limp forward.

  “Or are you trying to kill Michael?” Jack guessed, tight beside her. “You think Michael is Bill’s new boy and you need to reclaim your spot? You don’t have to go through all this bullshit. If this is what you want, I can have a chopper pick us up in two hours, though to be honest, I’d rather run and keep running.”

  Liar. There was no running. The only way out was through it. “I am not going back,” she said, but her face was cold and she couldn’t look at him. It would be so easy. He is not my partner, and this is not what I want, she told herself. “I’m not job hunting. I’m just hunting. Michael wants me dead. You know it. I know it. But if he kills Bill first, then all the better.”

  “Oh my God,” Jack whispered. “Once Michael is done with Bill, he’s going to come after you. Babe, this is a stupid plan.”

  “Stop calling me that,” she threatened as she stumbled. Jack caught her arm, and she jerked away. The nearest building was just ahead, a few late-model cars parked outside.

  “Sorry.” He hesitated. “It’s just that we’re good together. You deserve more than some pathetic government task force that doesn’t even know what to do with you.”

  “No, you were good,” she whispered, thinking she could hear voices behind them. “I was your doll. Yours and Bill’s.” She stopped at the edge of the parking lot, frowning at him in the new light. “I’m smelling what you’re stepping in, so shut up.”

  He made a huff of exasperation. “You don’t remember it, but I wanted you to run. Almost a year ago,” he added bitterly. “Away from Opti with me. I wanted to go, but you wanted to prove there was corruption.”

  Her eyes squinted; she didn’t remember it. They probably hadn’t run because the same things that made her good at her job made her easy to find. But that wasn’t so anymore. Shelve it, Peri. Deal with it later.

  But he was right. They had been good—had to have been with the amount of confidence that was sifting through her along with her anger. She might not remember it, but it was there, undeniable and heady. He knew her. She knew him—trusted his limitations or lack thereof, maybe. And as she looked back at the distant WEFT gate, she realized the danger of this wasn’t getting caught by WEFT, but rather not getting caught. Jack was bringing everything back that she was trying to forget, and it was . . . uplifting.

  That’s why Bill sent him. Mother-sucking Bill.

  “Pick a car. Let’s go,” Jack finally said, and she sent her eyes to the outskirts.

  “Brown Gremlin,” she said, and he started, looking at the Firebird at the back of the lot.

  But then his eyed darted to hers, his coming complaint vanishing. “I hear voices!” he hissed.

  “I know the feeling,” she muttered, scrunching deeper behind the tree. “Gremlin, or I’m not going.” Damn it all to hell. Why am I trusting Jack? He’s just another perfect mistake.

  “Son of a bitch . . .” Jack whispered, hunched down, his useless rifle in his hand as the chopper rose up, spotlight playing over the building beside them, the winter-dead grass sharp in the harsh light. “We’re not getting out of here.”

  “Yes we are,” she insisted, and then she gasped, stifling her shout of affront when he picked her up and boldly strode into the lot. She froze as a memory surfaced, of them together in the depth of the night. “Put me down,” she said, not liking how right his hands felt around her.

  “You’ve got the Glock. Keep them off us,” he said, walking fast. “You can’t run.”

  “Neither can you while you’re carrying me,” she insisted. “Put me down!”

  “No. Deal with it.”

  “Gremlin,” she insisted as he angled to the Firebird, and sighing, he shifted direction. His breathing had taken on a harsh rhythm that was both familiar and somehow intimate. His arms around her were the only spot of warmth in the January night, and she hated that she relished it. The scent of two-day-old sweat tickled her memory, and it was gone.

  The jarring became harsher as he picked up the pace. Behind them, shouts rose up. Peri turned, firing six shots at nothing over his shoulder. More voices rose in alarm. “We’re not going to make it,” Jack huffed.

  “Put me down,” she demanded. “Run ahead and start it. I’ll catch up.”

  He didn’t argue, and Peri gasped in pain when her feet hit the stony pavement and he raced ahead. He never looked back, but nowhere in Peri was there the thought that he wouldn’t wait for her. Where is this trust coming from? she wondered as she limped after him, Glock in one hand and leaving bloody prints on the cars with the other. But she knew it wasn’t him she trusted, but his abilities. No one was better. Angry, she quashed the feeling.

  The chopper swung close, and when the spotlight hit her, she stopped, hair whipping into her eyes as she shot at it. Immediately it angled away, but not before she took out its light.

  The puttering roar of the Gremlin never sounded so good, and Peri limped faster, fumbling for the door and almost getting it in her face when Jack leaned across the seat and shoved it open. “Let’s go!” he shouted, and she lurched into the brittle-cold vinyl, her knee flashing into agony.

  The door hit her calf on the bounce, and then she made it, glad it hadn’t crushed her foot as she settled into her seat, fumbling for the seat belt while Jack wove in and around the parked cars for the exit. She braced herself as he took a corner fast and they found the road.

  “Interstate,” she breathed, pointing it out, and her eyes closed agains
t the pain as he skidded around the corner. The car roared ahead, the jostling finally easing as they found a street.

  Her eyes cracked in the new smoothness, and she took a careful breath. Jack sat beside her, hands gripping the wheel tight as he wove the ugly car through the few vehicles on the road at this hour as if they were standing still. Opti was going small behind them, and she began to wonder whether they just might have done it. For the moment, she thought as she turned in the seat to look behind them.

  “A Gremlin?” Jack said. “You wanted a Gremlin?”

  She looked at the gearshift, deciding she’d chosen poorly. “Firebirds are shit on ice,” she said, feeling her pockets for the guard’s phone. It was humming, and she looked to see it was Steiner. Allen was caught, then, and had told them she had the man’s phone. But he’s alive.

  “Okay. I’ll give you that. But I’m picking the next car,” he said, clearly curious when she set the phone on the seat, screen side down. “Border?”

  “Downtown,” she said, not liking having to show him her comic-book apartment. It had been her safe spot since she was eighteen and had bought the entire building for five hundred dollars and a promise to renovate. But in hindsight, she’d probably already shown it to him, and she slumped when she turned the car’s heat on and it only blew cold air.

  Clearly not liking her choice of destinations, Jack inched the speed up to a hundred, pushing for more but hardly getting the needle to move. He zipped around the night-driving semis as if he were playing a racing game. “You going to answer that phone?” he asked when it buzzed again.

  “What’s it to you?” Blood was soaking through her pant leg, and she looked over the car for something else to wrap it in, finding nothing.

  “Will you cut me some slack!” he exclaimed, fingers tightening on the wheel. “I’m trying to make it up to you. If you would just let me render something back, I—”

  Let him render something back? “You could what?” she interrupted, the pain from her knee fueling her anger. “You honestly think I’m going to let you into my mind? Ever again?”

  “I can’t pretend those three years didn’t happen,” he said. “They did. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” She was angry, and it was all she could do to not shoot him right then and there, but he was driving. “You erased my memory,” she said bitterly, not believing he was bringing this up here and now. “Years of it. To keep me oblivious and dumb. You touch my mind again, and I will open your throat and walk away. Got it? I have one thing I want you to do, and we’re done.”

  Jack looked at her. His face, lit from the glow of the dash, was hard to read. “Your complaint is valid,” he finally said.

  “Don’t try to make me laugh.” Her foot was cold, and she tugged her pant leg down again to deal with later. “I’m not going back to Bill. We get out of here clean, you make the call, you go your way, I go mine. Actually, there’s no reason you can’t make the call right now.”

  “This is stupid,” Jack said. “We could be over the border and gone in an hour.”

  It was an overly generous estimation with her knee bleeding like this. “Drive,” she said. “I’ll hold the phone to your ear.”

  “Now?” Jack stared at her. “You’re serious about this? Peri, Bill doesn’t even like Michael. He’s going to retire him the same hour you come back. I promise you.”

  Promise. She doubted he even knew what that meant beyond a way to convince people to do what he wanted. And she doubted that Bill would permanently “retire” Michael. He’d always be a threat, stuffed away in some cell in case Bill ever needed his talents again.

  “You promise me?” she said as she held the phone for him to punch in Michael’s cell. “I’m not coming back,” she added as it rang. “If he’s this side of the sod, I’m forever looking over my shoulder. Tell Michael I’m hooked and accelerated. That as soon as I run out of Evocane I’m coming in, and that Bill never intended to accelerate him. Make it convincing so he comes after me.”

  “Babe.”

  “Call me that one more time, I’ll break your kneecap.”

  He snuck a glance at her, lowering his speed as she held the phone to his ear. She heard the connection click open, and she put her free hand on her Glock, sitting on her lap. Jack’s eyes pinched at the corners as he remembered something. Probably her shooting him in the back. Yeah, she’d pull the trigger, and he knew it.

  “Michael,” he said when someone said hello. “Can you talk?”

  Shit, my hands are shaking, Peri thought, not liking that it made the phone jerk against Jack’s face.

  “Yes. Where are you?”

  Jack looked at Peri for confirmation, and she nodded. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “I’m in Detroit. Peri took me out of WEFT. She’s accelerated herself. Silas doesn’t have a prayer to reverse-engineer it in time and she knows it. Soon as she runs out of Evocane, she’s coming in.”

  Her grip on the pistol tightened.

  “That wasn’t the plan,” Michael said bitterly, and Jack stiffened.

  “Me taking your place in Detroit was Bill’s idea. I didn’t have a choice. Look. I’m going to wipe her the first chance I get, then bring her in as Bill told me. But Michael?” Peri’s finger tightened on the handgun, and Jack stared at her, eyes virulent. “I don’t think Bill had any intention of accelerating you. Remember who told you that when you need someone to watch your back.”

  Peri’s finger eased up, and a drop of sweat trickled down Jack’s neck.

  Michael laughed. “You tricky bastard! Where are you?”

  “No. I can’t risk Bill thinking I’m screwing with him.”

  “Jack—”

  Peri took the phone from his ear and hung up. Her fingers were still shaking as she rolled her window down. The wind whipped in, and she flung the phone out, the assault on her hair slowly vanishing as she cranked the window back up. I’m so cold I could pee ice cubes.

  “I wouldn’t wipe you, Peri. I only said that to give us some space to think.”

  She fiddled with the heater controls, giving the dash a smack when nothing changed. Sucking on the fatty part of her hand, she glared at him. She didn’t believe him, but she wanted to. “There is no us, Jack,” she said softly, but memories were creeping back.

  Jack stared straight ahead, his hands tight on the wheel. “He’s going to kill you.”

  “Not if I kill him first.” But Jack was right. If Michael went for Bill first—and survived—he’d come for her next.

  “Tell me you know what you’re doing.”

  She turned in her seat, surprised that she was comfortable with him doing a hundred down a night-black highway where deer were known to cross. “I know what I’m doing.”

  But as she searched the glove box for a flashlight to look at her knee, her doubt crept out, black and ugly. She was with Jack and a part of her felt at peace. The pain of being lied to, used, and scrubbed like an Etch A Sketch was being layered over by a calm relaxation that she hadn’t felt for over a year. It was more than the peace instilled by a successful task. She hated it even as she basked in it. It didn’t matter whether it was Opti conditioning or not, it was real. She’d enjoyed breaking out, doing something no one else could. Besting Steiner before his own men. It felt good, and not much had in a long time.

  Maybe this was who she was after all.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  Silas leaned back from his calculation, rubbing his aching eyes before reaching for an open reference book. He’d gotten the first chemical assay back on the Evocane, and it was like trying to balance an octogenarian’s pharmacy list to make sure the multiple compounds weren’t coming together into a lethal combination. He still didn’t know why half of what was in there was in there, but he had a suspicion that most of it was to make it criminally addictive.

  Four sixteen, he thought, looking at his clock and feeling tired. He was never much of a night owl, but rumor had it Steiner had gone out after Peri
, and he couldn’t sleep.

  Thumbing to the index, he looked up the compound in question.

  But then a curious, inside-out feeling ripped through him, and he blinked as the light pooling from his desk lamp shifted blue, and then flashed clear. Someone just drafted.

  Silas stiffened. The book he’d been referencing was back where it started, out of his reach on a pile with the rest. He set his pencil down, his gaze going to his clock. It was four fifteen, clicking over even as he watched. Standing, he pushed his rolling chair back.

  He had been under loose house arrest since Steiner had found Peri’s old Opti apartment empty. Rumor had it a ping from a search engine had pulled the distasteful man out from behind WEFT’s walls, but that had been hours ago. By the sound of it, he’d found her.

  Pace fast enough to furl his lab coat, Silas strode out of his temporary office. The familiar scent of electronics and floor cleaner wafted up, and he followed the sound of men shouting. His brow furrowed in worry. If Steiner had figured out she was hooked on Evocane, she’d do anything to keep from going into a cell.

  The rolling sound of a gurney pushed him to the edge of the hallway, and he slowed, his expression vanishing as three bodies rolled by, their slow pace saying they were going to the morgue, not the emergency medical floor. The men were covered, but they were in combat suits, blood seeping past the drapes.

  Jesus, Peri, he thought, looking for her lithe frame among the bulky bodies and not seeing her. Relieved, he broke into a jog, following the commotion to the back door. Leaving bodies was not Peri’s style. It was too noisy, too drastic. Bodies smacked of Allen.

  His fast pace slowed as a man ran down the hall toward him. “Where is Agent Reed?” Silas asked, but the man never saw him, heavy in his combat boots and a demand for the chopper to get in the air coming over his radio.

  Silas hesitated, torn, until he heard Steiner yelling. His expression hardened. Hands fisted, he ran forward. He didn’t like how he always felt helpless when it came to Peri. She was so capable and inventive. But she got herself into trouble trying to be delicate when a quick bullet would be more efficient. Even so, he wouldn’t want her to change.