“Promise me you’ll go. You can make it if you go alone,” Silas said even as they hustled down the stairs to Michael.
She gave Silas’s hands a squeeze. “It’s both of us, or neither.” She smiled. “I have a plan.”
Silas’s expression blanked.
Michael’s feet scuffed on the stair as they joined him. “Don’t fall behind, or I’ll shoot you myself.”
Peri squared her shoulders, jealous that in a few seconds, Michael would remember while she’d be left with hearsay and best guesses. And it is going to save my life. “I’m not the enemy, Michael,” she said as she made her methodical way down the last flight of stairs. “Helen tried to dart you so she could put you in a cage. She’s using you like they used me. They made you, Michael, and they know exactly what buttons to push.”
“Why are you still talking?” he snarled, giving her a shove to stay behind him.
“Because you aren’t thinking,” she said as Silas caught her elbow, saving her from a fall. “You saw Helen’s face. She was pissed that you worked around her. As far as she’s concerned, you fucked up. She didn’t want you accelerated because now you’re going to remember, and with that, they can’t lie to you anymore. They’re going to lock you up, Mr. Asshat.”
A door above them blew apart, and they all looked up, pressing to the walls when debris rained down. “Or they could blow the door open and come down the stairs anyway,” Silas said, taking Peri’s shoulder and pushing her toward the door to the lobby.
Vertigo hit her as she stumbled into the empty lobby. The sky past the broken glass door was black with night, and as she watched, it paled, flickered, and flashed clear.
“Go!” Silas shouted, pushing her to the parking lot, and she balked, trying to find herself.
She hadn’t drafted, but Michael had. She was missing the last minute and a half. She was running. Helen was here. They’d made it out of the lab. Someone had pulled the fire alarm by the sound of it.
“Run, Peri!” Silas was at the door, gesturing for her to go. “I’ll catch up.”
But she wasn’t going to leave him. Not now. Not ever. “Where’s Michael? Is he accelerated?”
Silas tried to drag her to the lobby’s shattered door. “He’s in the stairwell. I gave him your fix, not Evocane. He’s going to MEP. We have to get out of here.”
But they both jerked when a gun popped and a slug buried itself in the door before them.
“Stop right there!” Helen demanded as she strode out of the stairwell, her security and a dazed Michael behind her. “That was a warning. The next puts you down.”
“Three seconds too short,” Silas swore, turning with his hands high and wide.
Peri shook her head; the Amnoset Michael had given her at the gas station was still holding force. She tried not to look at the blood splattered on the wall behind the desk. That wasn’t her fault. Michael had done it. But it still felt as if she’d failed somehow.
“Someone turn that alarm off,” Helen said irately as two men grabbed Peri and Silas, cuffing Silas and pushing her into a corner.
Did it work? Peri wondered, cursing her missing memories. Will I survive if it did?
Grimacing, Helen scooped up the receptionist’s scarf. The fire alarm finally ceased hooting, and, heels clicking, she walked to where Michael sat in a glass-covered chair. Snapping the scarf out, she used it to stanch the blood flowing from Michael’s shoulder. “The live trials were suspended,” she said as she roughly tended him. “I told you to stay away from Denier,” she muttered, clearly angry. “Look at you. This is going to take weeks to heal. What am I supposed to do in the interim?”
Does he remember? Breathless with the need to know, Peri tried to tug away from the man holding her. “Michael,” she said, not caring whether her quavering voice gave her away. “Do you remember? Michael! Do you remember!”
Someone jerked her back, and Helen gave Michael a little pat before rising and turning to her. “You, Agent Reed, are astounding. I don’t know how Bill managed you. The amount of damage you can inflict in your ignorance is breathtaking. If Michael fails to metabolize the Evocane well, I will have no choice but to wipe you and start over.” She frowned. “You are apparently more valuable when you can’t remember. Bill will be so pleased,” she finished sourly.
Fear swamped her jealousy that Michael might have what she wanted, but she couldn’t move, fixed by the need to know whether it had worked. His face pale, Michael had begun to shake. “Did you hear that, Michael?” she said, hoping he hadn’t gone too far to reason. “I’m valuable because I forget. She doesn’t want you anymore.”
“Did you really think he was going to let you walk after you gave him the accelerator?” Helen said as she checked her watch and brusquely motioned for her security to take care of the body behind the desk. “Michael said what was needed to get what he wanted. Lesson one.” Her amusement faltered when she noticed Michael was trembling, white-faced and shaky. “Get them out of here. All of them. Put Michael in my car. We need to talk.” She frowned at him. “Don’t we, Michael?”
“He deserved to know,” Peri said over her shoulder as a nameless guard pulled her to the door. Two more men had the body of the receptionist. “You were never going to accelerate him, and now that he is, you’re going to shove him in a box with no windows. Tell him!”
It took the remaining security to get Michael upright, the drafter muttering incoherently. They didn’t know he was struggling to reconcile two timelines, but Peri did, almost feeling sorry for him as she remembered the chaos, the confusion, the simple one-plus-one not equaling two anymore.
“Put him in a cell?” Helen said, waiting for them to get him out first. “Why? He’s my best agent. Or he will be, once we get that shoulder fixed up.”
But Michael was falling apart before her eyes. “He never was your best,” she said. “And he certainly isn’t now.”
“Ma’am?” one of the guards holding Michael said when he began to violently shake.
Helen turned, her irritation shifting to confusion when Michael looked at her, his lips moving slowly as he tried to form words. “You sent Peri to retire me,” he said, voice thready.
“I told you to kill her,” Helen reasserted, and Michael moaned, holding his head. “You’ve really messed this up. Not a feather of patience in you.”
“I see everything. Everything!” he exclaimed, and his security struggled to hold him, their efforts stifled by Helen’s earlier demand to not hurt him. “And now you’re scared.”
“Of you?” Helen laughed, not seeing the death in his eyes, watching her from under his lowered brow and sweat-soaked hair. “I made you. Go wait in the car.”
“Peri,” Silas muttered, his newly cuffed hands before him, the nervous security man holding his shoulder watching Michael, not him. “Get out. Right now.”
But Peri couldn’t move, riveted. He remembered, and it was driving him insane.
“You kept the accelerant from me. Why!” Michael shouted, finding the strength to stand.
Helen looked him up and down, still confident he was her toy. “You weren’t ready.”
“Peri, go,” Silas begged even as he quietly worked the cuff key out of his pocket and got himself free, but she couldn’t move, fixated on Michael.
Michael laughed, the evil sound tripping over the bumps in her spine to make her shudder. “I think you weren’t ready for me,” he said, shuffling toward Helen.
“You have had—” Helen said, and then Michael backhanded her.
The woman fell against the reception desk, crying out in affront. “Don’t shoot him!” she exclaimed when the patter of safeties going off tripped through the air. “He’s worth more than all of you combined. Use your darts!”
“You weren’t ready for me!” Michael shouted, her security too slow when he drew his Glock and fired into her.
“Out!” Silas grabbed Peri and dragged her to the door, but she twisted out of his grip, unable to leave the thunderous sound of three Glocks unloa
ding into Michael.
Falling to his knees, he slowly collapsed onto Helen. Someone rolled him off her, and he lay on his back, forgotten as they clustered around the dying woman. It was too late.
“Peri . . .”
Pulling free of Silas, she went to Michael. He was still alive, trying to laugh as blood bubbled about his lips. She fell to her knees, awkward with her hands cuffed. “Michael.” She grabbed his shirtfront, shaking him until his eyes focused on her. “Michael. Is it worth it? Is it?”
He blinked, taking a racking breath. “To remember?” he said, shaky hand touching her face, the slickness of blood separating them. “Oh yes,” he said, voice becoming thready. “Don’t forget. If you die . . . it’s your own fault.”
His hand fell from her. The warm smear of blood he’d marked her with quickly turned cold.
The sound of Helen’s security trying to keep her alive had gone frantic. Numb, Peri let Silas pull her away. She stumbled beside him into the parking lot, hardly recognizing it when he took the cuffs off her. She went without protest into her car, and he drove her away.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
Lloyd Plaza was busy with giggling kids running from kiosk to kiosk for their games and activities. At the far corner under the massive monitor, a band was setting up for tonight’s party. The beer tent and dance floor had been in place since last night as the city tried to pull as many people off the streets as possible and into a controlled environment for the last day of Detroit’s yearly music/cabin fever festival. Tonight would be capped off by coordinated fireworks at the casinos as local and international bands “broke winter’s back,” but right now the kids held sway in the plaza, enjoying their January candy-fest under the faultless blue of a late winter sky.
Peri lingered at the outskirts, clearly not a parent and feeling out of place as she scanned the large square with its permanent tables and benches bolted to the cement tilework. It was hard to get a good fix on anyone with the kids milling about, and she forced herself to relax when Silas eased up beside her, handing her a hot coffee that smelled of warm milk and caramel.
“Thanks,” she murmured, her cold fingers appreciating the heat as she took it.
“This is a weird place to pick up your cat,” he said as he fidgeted beside her, and Peri glanced at her glass phone, thinking the same thing. Cam had never left her a text before—the man preferred the intimacy of a call—but maybe he was trying to distance himself. The coffee shop had a Realtor sign in the window when she and Silas had driven past it earlier today. Her chest hurt every time she thought of the peace she’d had there. She kept telling herself it hadn’t been false, but why couldn’t she make it last?
“Maybe,” she whispered, remembering Silas had said something.
“I mean, why an open plaza?” he insisted. “In the middle of the afternoon? Surrounded by kids? Is the guy a perv, or paranoid?”
“That’s why,” she said, nodding at a familiar hefty figure in a suit sitting alone at a canopied table, a cat carrier conspicuously on the table.
Silas followed her eyes, going still when he saw Bill. “God bless it,” he whispered, taking her elbow and trying to draw her back. “He’s just a cat. Let’s go. Now!”
Peri jerked out of his grip, sure there were other sets of eyes already on them. Jack’s perhaps. She hadn’t seen her illusionary partner since he’d spun in a circle and vanished, but she wasn’t taking any chances and would unload her Glock into a shadow if she thought it was really him.
“Carnac is not just a cat,” she argued. “He’s my cat. And what about Cam?” Worried, she dropped her gaze to her phone, scrolling to find Cam’s number. She hit connect, and sure enough, Bill shifted to reach for his phone. Peri ended the call before it could complete.
“Watch my back,” she said, pushing her hot coffee into his hand and starting over.
“ ‘Watch my back’?” Silas echoed, jerking her to a stop. “Peri, this is nuts.”
She sent her gaze to the children running amuck, to the benevolent-looking but heavy police presence enjoying the day as much as the kids. “I want my cat, and I want to know he didn’t hurt Cam. I promised him he’d be safe.”
But Silas’s frown only deepened. He wanted her to turn around and walk away, but she couldn’t. “I have to do this,” she said, and he let go. “Watch my back,” she said again, forcefully. “Jack is probably somewhere. If you find him, you have my permission to kill him.” She hesitated in thought. “As long as no kids are watching.”
“I can do that,” Silas said, voice low and threatening, and she smiled.
But it faded as she wove her way between the running kids and the store-themed treats being handed out like the advertisements they were.
Warned by her incoming call, Bill had pulled himself up to his full, considerable height, casting about until he spotted her. His somewhat water-fat face widened in an honest smile, and he stood, knowing better than to spread his arms wide for their usual hug.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said, gaze warm and inviting. “I’m glad you decided to come over.”
She stopped before him under the shade of the canopy, hand on her hip as she took him in. He’d lost some weight, gained some muscle, and his finger was bare of his precious Opti ring, showing a faint lighter band of skin that had yet to darken. Otherwise, he looked the same in his thousand-dollar suit that could never quite hide his thug background. “Whatever you did to Cam, I’m going to do to you twice, and unlike me, you’ll remember it.”
Bill chuckled, gesturing for her to sit down. On the table, Carnac meowed for her attention. “Cam is fine,” he said, reaching his thick fingers through the grate to give the cat something to rub up against. “I left him a note in your handwriting. Have a seat. Let’s talk.”
She didn’t move to sit, crossing her arms in front of her and feeling as if scopes were trained on her. “No,” she said, then extended her hand. “Give me his phone so I can return it. He lives on that thing.”
“So I noticed.” Bill shook his head in warning. “I took the opportunity to go through it. He’s a bad man, Peri. No good for you. Don’t let the boyish charm fool you.” His eyes narrowed. “Sit. Down,” he demanded.
She sat as he knew she would. Her head came up, focus landing on Jack clear across the plaza, right in her line of sight. His hands were empty, but she felt better when Silas caught up to him and spun him around, threatening violence. Not illusion Jack, then. “What did you do to Cam?”
“Nothing,” Bill said, voice sounding hurt. “He never even knew I was there.”
He? As in Cam? Her eyes flicked to Bill’s, reading the truth of it.
Bill sighed, settling in and smiling at the trio racing to a display of candy, their mother trailing along behind with a bookseller tote filled with goodies. “Do you know how hard it is to find a good cat sitter? He took good care of our cat, and you’re going to need him again.”
Peri’s eye twitched. “He’s not your cat,” she said as she pulled the carrier closer.
“I always felt as if he was.”
Which begged the question of how many bugs and trackers Carnac had in him now. Her head was hurting, and she put her fingers through the mesh, knowing she’d take that risk. “Thanks for nothing, Bill,” she said, gathering Carnac to her and standing.
“Ah, wait up. This belongs to you,” Bill said as he reached behind his jacket to take out a manila envelope.
Peri looked at it, gauging its thickness. She’d gotten a lot of envelopes from him, and after a quick look around to make sure no one was watching, she took it and lifted the flap with a finger.
It was cash. A lot of it.
Bill smiled up at her, his hands laced comfortably over his middle. “There’s half a mil for taking out Michael and Helen for me. Thank you. Well done,” he said, inclining his head. “Another two hundred thousand that was originally Michael’s cut for procuring Everblue’s carbon tree. I have no use for his share, and you were there. Boo
ks have to balance, so . . .”
Peri dropped the envelope onto the table. “I don’t work for you.”
“Really?” Bill barked, irritation crossing his face for the first time. “You think all that was happenstance? Don’t insult me trying to play dumb. Michael and Helen had outlived their usefulness and I needed them out of the way. I set you on them with the scent of revenge and moral outrage, tempered with blind anger.” His expression softened. “You did good, kiddo.”
Peri rubbed her forehead, not caring whether he knew she was tempted. She needed money to resettle herself, buy a cloak that even death couldn’t find her under. The coffee shop was a loss, and now she had Silas with her. Two people meant four times the cost.
Flushing, she took her eyes off the envelope. “I don’t kill for money.”
Bill pushed it forward. “You don’t kill for kicks, either.”
“I did it to be free of you,” she said, wanting to point at him but not willing to give the maybe-scopes trained on her an excuse. “All of you. Be careful, Bill. Walk away, or you’ll move to the top of my list.”
Still, Bill smiled as he stood and put his sunglasses back on. “You are free. You just don’t know it yet. Is Steiner giving you flack?”
Not understanding, she shook her head, his faint tone of protection familiar. “Nothing I can’t handle,” she said softly.
“Because I’d take care of that for you,” he added. “Let me know if that’s not enough to get you and your new anchor settled. I can float you whatever you need until the next task worthy of your talents comes in.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You aren’t listening, Bill. You got me hooked on a drug that makes me into a tool. You think I’m going to forgive you for that?”
His gaze shifted to the nearby people, silently telling her to lower her voice. “You already have, or I’d be dead,” he said, then softened. “Peri, Peri, Peri, I got you halfway to remembering your drafts. If you aren’t ready, I respect that.”
“Ready?” she said, flustered. “I’m not doing it.”
Still standing over her, he frowned, a worry line pressing into existence over his eyes. “Perhaps it was a mistake. I am sincerely sorry if it was.” He turned to look behind him at Silas and Jack, both of them waiting at the outskirts. The kids had saved his life, but that’s why Bill had wanted to meet here. “How long until you’re off it, then?”