The Operator

  How cooperative of you. “If you like. I’m in no hurry.” He stood to force Michael to stand as well. He wanted him out. Out and gone so he could put his own plan into action. “Sean is bringing up Denier’s info. It might help narrow her position down.”

  “Sounds good,” Michael said, but the usual cocky man was hunched slightly, and Bill’s jaw clenched. Son of a bitch. Helen had Denier as well. If Peri didn’t take care of this in twenty-four hours, he’d be dead in forty-eight. But he didn’t think it would come to that. He was betting his life on it.

  “Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow,” Michael said, jerking Bill out of his thoughts. “I’ll be on the road if something comes up between then and now.”

  “Thank you, Michael. Leave the door open, will you?”

  Bobbing his head, Michael left. Bill stood at his desk, unmoving as he listened to the two men in the outer office exchange a word, and then Michael’s shoes on the imported tile. Finally the hermetically sealed door in the outer office hissed shut.

  “Sean!” he shouted, making a fist when he realized his hands were trembling.

  “Sir, I’ve got the first of Denier’s info,” the small man said as he hustled in. “And Chang’s is on the way. I’ve got an ETA for dinner of forty minutes, but I promised them a twenty tip if they could make it in thirty.”

  “I want you to shred this,” Bill said as he gathered up Peri’s info. “Shred the office. Everything. We are out of here in twenty minutes. You’re driving.”

  “Sir, what about Chang’s?”

  Bill hesitated. “Thirty, then. Start with these,” he said, handing him Peri’s info.

  “Yes, sir.” Juggling the papers, Sean turned and calmly walked out of the room.

  The adrenaline tingled down to his toes, and Bill went to stand before the window, smiling when the shredder whirled to life. Helen was cutting out the middle man. Thank God Michael was as simple as a four-year-old when it came to office politics. Thirty minutes was a negligible risk; chances were good that Michael wouldn’t tell her of this meeting at all since he was probably thinking of betraying her himself.

  Money, he thought, running through his own checklist as he twisted his Opti ring, working it over his thick finger to try to get it off. Resources. Places I’ve cleared but never used, and one kick-ass assistant who knows the power of a cup of coffee and blind obedience. A smile began to grow, and he spun, anxious to wipe the room and shut the door for the last time. Tomorrow he would be free of Michael and have Peri back at his side.

  It’s going to be a good day, he thought as his Opti ring finally worked over his knuckle and he set it on the empty desk as if it were a resignation letter. And the best part? He didn’t have to do a thing but sit back and watch.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SIX

  It wasn’t the first time Jack had been cuffed and thrown into the back of a panel van with no seats, but it was the first time fear, real fear, had been a part of it. He and Peri had never been caught outside of a few training tasks where the odds had been intentionally stacked against them to see how they’d respond. Now, in the middle of the night with nothing between him and the cold metal wall of the van but a wrinkled Armani suit, he knew the meaning of doubt.

  He could hear Harmony breathing in the far corner, see the darker slump her body made. Neither had said much after the first few minutes of being bundled inside, and the silence had held as they spent by his reckoning at least an hour on an expressway, the turns so gradual that trying to figure out their final destination was chancy at best. He figured they were going to their deaths. Clearly their usefulness was done, meaning Peri was likely dead.

  Jack found he was more troubled about that than he ever expected he would be.

  The hum of the van muted, and he felt it slow. Harmony stirred. His pulse quickened, and he shifted his hands, fingers swollen from the tight band of plastic. There was no whoosh of passing traffic, meaning they were on a deserted stretch, or more likely, it was just because of the late hour.

  “Harmony?” he hazarded, knowing the proud woman was likely more inclined to kick him than talk to him.

  “This really sucks,” she said, her voice resigned. “I had always hoped I’d be buried next to someone I actually, you know, liked.” She sighed, adding, “What do you want.”

  It was flat and emotionless. Much better than the hysterics he half expected. But then again, Peri liked her, and Peri was a great judge of character.

  Usually, he thought, surprised at the flash of guilt.

  He gathered himself, training and a steadfast refusal to simply give up demanding he do something. “Hey, don’t hit me. I’m coming over.”

  “Why?” she asked, but he was already moving. “What is your problem!” she exclaimed when his shoulder knocked hers as the van turned and he fell into her. He settled himself, awkward because of his bound hands. Peri would know what he was doing right off. Hell, Peri would have asked him.

  “I’m going to try and get your cuffs off,” he said, and she snorted, not moving.

  “I’m not cuffed,” she said, and he jerked upright.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I snapped it an hour ago,” she said. “Come on. Show me.”

  Jack stared at her in disbelief, her shadowy silhouette showing her confident amusement. “Why didn’t you say something? It’s been over an hour.”

  “Because you’re a tool and I don’t like you,” she said, finding his hands in the dark and jamming what looked like a hairpin into the workings of the cuff.

  Immediately it released, and Jack freed himself, rubbing the circulation back into his hands as he scooted to the opposite corner, not believing she’d left him like that.

  “Hey, if you’re going to pout about it, I’m sorry,” she said, and his mood worsened. “You didn’t say anything, and I assumed you had gotten yourself free.”

  “Yeah, okay.” But it sounded sullen even to him. Frustrated, he thumped his head back against the van, little more than an uncomfortable, rolling box. He had known he wasn’t going to die in bed, but he’d thought he’d have more time. What rankled was that he hadn’t gotten sloppy; he’d gotten replaced by a chemical soup.

  “They’re taking us to a big field, aren’t they,” Harmony said softly.

  “Or a short dock.” He looked toward the front of the van, the partition between them and the driver nothing more than a thin piece of metal. “It’s quiet, though. No conversation. Only a driver.” Which was curious in itself.

  Harmony’s laugh was bitter. “How many people does it take to put a bullet in someone’s head?”

  Jack scratched his bristles, estimating it to be about one in the morning. “They usually have two for this kind of thing. Easier to move the bodies.”

  “Nice to know there’s an SOP.” Harmony stretched only to fall into a dejected slump. “I never thought I’d be on this end of a murder investigation. My brother would laugh his ass off.”

  They both stiffened as the van slowed, turned, and stopped. Jack’s pulse hammered, and he flexed his hands, trying for more mobility. He’d have maybe three seconds, tops, but they’d probably go for him first, cutting that to one.

  The front door to the van slammed shut. Only one pair of boots paced to the back, and Jack stood. Harmony rose to stand beside him. A pang lifted through him. He appreciated that someone was here with him, even if she didn’t like him.

  Never had he thought he’d die like this, pinned down like a bug. Peri’s ability to rewrite a mistake had given him a sense of superiority that he only now was willing to admit had been borrowed. A fleeting wish passed through him that he could go back and rewrite the last three years. He’d tell Bill to shove it up his ass, or maybe help Peri blow the whistle the first time she figured it out. She deserved better than him. Why hadn’t I loved her back? Had being second best to her abilities been that hard to stomach? It wasn’t as if she rubbed his nose in it.

  They both jumped at the knock at the door.

/>   “I have a gun, but I won’t use it unless you do something stupid,” a low voice said, and Harmony’s lips parted, her eyes wide in the dim light.

  “That’s Michael,” she said, and Jack pushed her behind him, not knowing why except it was habit. Protect your partner, and she will protect you.

  “You’re out of your cuffs, yes?” Michael said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. Peri needs your help. Will you do something for her? Yes or no. Right now.”

  Peri is alive? It shocked through Jack, a slurry of emotion rising up too fast to realize.

  “Yes!” Harmony shouted, and Jack jumped when she elbowed him. “Say yes,” she demanded.

  But his first rush of relief had vanished, drowned out by three bitter years of lies and hidden resentment. “Let me think about it,” Jack muttered, then gasped when Harmony shoved him into the side of the van. He hit with a thump, his shoulder taking most of the force.

  “I’m not dying in the back of a van for you,” Harmony said. Head high, she strode to the van’s back door. “We’ll do what she wants.” Angry, she looked at Jack. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  Jack pulled himself upright, tugging his suit straight and missing his Glock. This didn’t sound like one of Bill’s games, and the thought that Michael was running his own task was chilling. Bill liked his pieces, cherished them and lavished a manipulative love on them like favorite toys. Michael sacrificed with no thought of tomorrow.

  He knew his face still showed his thoughts as the door swung open. Michael was there alone with a bug-out bag in his hand, his lanky, tall outline fuzzy against a black background of light commerce at the edge of an interstate. There was no light in the sky, the stars washed out in the noon glare of the security lights. Here, though, on the weedy, cracked-pavement outskirts, it was dark.

  Jack pulled the chill air deep into him, wary upon seeing Michael’s sour expression. The man was tired, angry, and pushed to the edge, where chancy decisions were made with snap judgments. Dangerous.

  “This is as far as I take you,” he said, and Harmony pushed past Jack, sliding out of the van with a hasty rush. Her bare feet hit the ground hard, stumbling on the pebbles until she caught her balance. Michael watched in cool disinterest, never taking his focus off Jack as he slowly levered himself out.

  “I want to talk to Peri,” Harmony said, her confidence thin and misplaced.

  “There’s a bus leaving for Detroit in twenty minutes.” Michael tossed the bag to Jack. “Be on it. Peri says you know where that vial of accelerator she stole is. You’re going to get it for me.”

  Is that so. The bag was comfortably heavy in Jack’s hands, but not heavy enough to hold any firepower, and so he let Harmony take it. “Bill told you to kill us,” he said as Harmony began looking through it. “What are you doing, Michael?”

  Michael shifted slightly sideways, the tell screaming volumes to Jack. “Actually, his words were to relocate you to a more permanent situation.”

  Jack laughed, and Harmony looked up from the bag of water and food bars. “You’re going rogue,” he said, knowing he was right when Michael frowned. “Why?”

  “He’s leaving Opti?” Harmony asked.

  “No, just Bill,” Jack guessed, head cocked. “Has Peri turned? Is that why you want the accelerator?”

  Harmony went still, all interest in the bag gone. “She wouldn’t.” But there was doubt, and it fed Jack’s indecision.

  Michael’s jaw clenched. “I’m taking what I was promised. That’s all.”

  Jack turned to Harmony, and the woman blanched under their joined attentions. He could almost see her thoughts calculating to a probable end. Lie? Tell the truth? Play along for more information? Had Peri really turned? Without me? he wondered, his own feelings of self-doubt growing. Maybe someone had scrubbed her.

  “Do you know where it is or not?” Michael shouted, and Harmony jumped, catching the bag when it slipped from her.

  “I . . . Yes. I know where it was when I left. There’s no reason for it to have been moved.” Harmony held the bag close. “I want to talk to Peri,” she said, but it was a cautious demand. “I have only your word she’s alive. We don’t do anything until I know she’s alive.”

  Clearly satisfied, Michael watched a woman in a red sports car pull up at the nearby gas station, her car vivid under the full-spectrum light slicing the night into jagged sections. “Making demands?” he asked mockingly.

  Jack’s tension slammed back into him as Michael shifted his coat to show the holstered handgun. “Don’t speak for me,” Jack said, hands up in placation. “She doesn’t speak for me.”

  “You are a prick, you know that?” Harmony said to him darkly. “Am I going to have to babysit you the entire time? Michael, shoot him, will you? Save me the trouble. I’ll get the accelerator by myself.”

  Michael chuckled, seeming to like that Jack was making an impossible task harder. “No. Jack is going to do exactly what I tell him. He knows he’s less useful than a second-hand condom without Peri. He’ll do just about anything to keep her alive,” he mocked, and Jack’s face warmed. “Isn’t that right, Jack.” Michael’s eyes tracked the woman in her holographic miniskirt as she left her car at the pump to go into the service station. “I have one dose of Evocane left,” he added, throwing the keys to the van at Harmony. “So if you don’t want Peri to suffer, be wise with your time. I’ll let you talk to Peri then so she can tell you where to leave it. You can have the van. I’ve got another ride.”

  Jack watched unbelievingly as Michael turned on a heel and headed for the gas station. His mistrust flared, fueled by his indecision and doubt. “I don’t think she’s alive,” Jack said. “I don’t trust you. I want to hear her voice. I hear it now or I don’t go.”

  Michael’s expression was cross when he spun back around. “Fine,” the taller man muttered as he took his phone from a pocket and hit an app. Eyes on the screen, he cleared his throat. “Good morning, Peri. It’s time to prove you’re alive. Say something.”

  Jack’s pulse quickened at her familiar voice, groggy with sleep. “Harmony?”

  Harmony’s brow furrowed, the woman understandably torn by betrayal and wanting to trust.

  “Harmony, I didn’t mean for this to happen. Jack got himself out. It didn’t go like I planned.”

  Michael smiled. “Really? You didn’t plan on being caught, incarcerated, and drugged? But you do it all the time. Say hello to Jack. He’s here, too.”

  “Jack?” Peri’s voice came small over the speaker, freezing Jack’s first words. She sounded annoyed. “Let me talk to him.”

  “No.” He went to end the call, Peri’s voice shouting, “Let me talk to him! I want to tell him where to leave it! Michael, don’t you hang up on me. You want the accelerator, let me talk to Jack!”

  Eyebrows high, Michael looked from his phone to Jack. “She wants to talk to you.”

  Jack’s fingers shook as he took the glass phone. Swallowing, he whispered, “Hello, Peri.”

  There was a short silence, then Peri said, “I had a hundred things I was going to say to you, all of them thought up in the last six hours.”

  He licked his lips and turned away. “I only have one thing to say to you. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said tartly. “Now I remember. One: you are a son of a bitch. Two: if I ever see you again, I’m going to kick you so hard you can use your balls as your Adam’s apple. Three—”

  “You’re right,” Jack said, ears warming as Michael laughed. “I’m scum. Lowest of the low. I could have had everything—I did have everything—and I pissed it away. But you let me do it to you. Admit it, Peri. You’re partly responsible. You let me make you into it.”

  His pulse hammered at her silence. She might hang up, not willing to trust him, her pride not allowing that she had a part in her own betrayal. He was almost afraid of what she might say next. “I know you never loved me,” she said softly, “but if you ever had one ounce of respect, or honor, or decency . . .”
She hesitated, and Jack waved Michael back, sure she was going to tell him. “I swear, Jack, that I will come for you if you betray me again.”

  “Promise you’ll come for me if I don’t,” he whispered.

  His head hurt, and he waited, knowing she’d tell him. She’d trust him. God knew why.

  “You son of a bitch,” she whispered. “Michael thinks I’m telling you where to put the accelerator.”

  “Which is . . .” he prompted.

  “Unnecessary,” she said. “This is a ruse to get Harmony free. Take her and go, okay? Get her to safety. Think you can do that for old times’ sake?”

  Harmony, not himself. He wasn’t the reason for the subterfuge, but an afterthought, an also-ran. I can live with that, he thought sourly. An also-ran was still in the race. “Sure,” he said flatly, ending the call.

  Michael’s shit-grin as he handed him his phone burned to his core.

  “Bill always claimed it was just as easy to condition two agents as one,” Michael mocked. “You hate her, betrayed her, lied to her, and yet you’re not going to bring it to me directly or tell me where she wants you to put it, are you. Pathetic.”

  Angry, Jack flicked his gaze to the gas station. “Your ride is leaving.”

  Michael spun, pulling himself upright as the woman walked out the door, her long legs eating up the pavement. “Twenty-four hours,” he said. “Get the accelerator. If you go ghost, I kill her. If you don’t check in every four hours, I’ll let her go into withdrawal. If you contact Bill, I’ll not only let her go into withdrawal, but I’ll send you a copy of the video. If you get caught by WEFT . . .” He smiled. “Don’t get caught by WEFT.”

  Turning away, he jogged to the woman’s car, hand waving. “Yo! Beautiful! Wait up! Which direction are you going?”

  Jack didn’t move as Harmony came even with him, both watching as the woman let Michael in her car and they drove off.

  “Think he’s going to kill her?” Harmony asked.

  Jack shook his head, not believing how indestructible people thought they were. “No. Unless she reminds him of someone he doesn’t like.” They tracked the red car as it got on the expressway and roared off.