It was hard to tear her down like this, especially knowing how fragile she was, and Silas felt like an ass as he took in her pale face. “If you’re lying . . . ,” she threatened.
His anger was gone, sponged away by her fear. “Where are you staying? I’ll bring all three jumps back. If you like what you see, we can work together. If you still don’t trust me—”
“Trust has nothing to do with it,” she interrupted. “You want to shut down Opti.”
“Trust has everything to do with it,” he said bitterly, and her eyes dropped. “Finding out what happened up there is the only way you’re going to clear your name. What happens after that is secondary. Let’s go.”
Chin lifted, she looked at him. “I haven’t said I’d work with you.”
“Not with your lips, no.”
She grimaced, clearly thinking. “I don’t have a place yet,” she said softly.
He had her, maybe not for anything longer than an hour, but he had her. He stood. “I do.” Feeling light-headed, Silas took up his hat and started for the door. Her Opti conditioning never to be alone would get her moving faster than anything else. Still, it didn’t feel as good as he thought it would when she closed out her session on her borrowed Internet link and got to her feet.
“Why are you helping me?” she asked as she shrugged into her coat, that ugly, man’s hat already on her head.
Silas’s teeth clenched. “I’m not helping you. I’m getting the job done.”
Together they wove through the busy tables, and he fought with himself not to clear the way for her. He wasn’t her damned anchor, and this association would last only until he got what he wanted. She paused at the door to drop her mug in the wash bin, and he leaned over her as he set his mug beside hers, breathing in her scent, almost hidden under stale fear and worry, to whisper, “That, and I’m impressed at how you continue to function with minimal drafts. Not bad, Peri. Not bad at all.”
Blinking, she looked up at him, the slight praise clearly meaning more than it should. “It’s patently obvious you don’t like me, Silas, but I’m not corrupt. And I’m the only way you’re ever going to find out what really happened, so how about lightening up a little.”
He smiled bitterly as he pushed open the door. “I could say the same thing.”
Her head was up as she went out before him, and he belatedly realized he’d opened the door for her, a common enough courtesy, but one he’d vowed he wouldn’t do. The cold wind blew up from the street, and she hunched deeper into that coat she’d stolen. “This is very bad for my asthma,” she whispered.
“Excuse me?” he blurted, the phrase from their past shaking him to his core. She still uses it? Maybe there is something left after all.
But her eyes held only confusion. “Um. I just say that . . . sometimes,” she muttered, her melancholy deepening.
Hunching into his coat, he pointed up the street. Silent, she fell into step beside him, clearly not realizing that she’d lengthened her steps into matching his suddenly slower pace so they would strike the same beat even if she was a good eight inches shorter.
God almighty, he thought, trying to shift his pace back to his normal length and failing. She was beside him, and yet not, missing a man she didn’t remember, one who had lied to her for three years, mourning him even if she had killed him.
And he was going to try to bring that back?
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Silas’s hotel room was in one of Charlotte’s high-rises, twenty-fourth floor, corner suite. The elegance of the elevator alone had made Peri feel like a homeless woman, still dressed in her traveling black slacks and that woman’s borrowed, no, stolen coat, and a hat that smelled of its previous owner. She knew she wasn’t smelling that great either after sixteen hours on a bus. The couple in the elevator with them hadn’t said a word, with their perfume, cologne, and expensive jewelry. No one could make you feel inferior without your permission, but she was usually the one in the upscale fashions, and the knockoff coat wasn’t doing it for her—not when Silas had the real thing, reminding her of black cars and laughter over sparkling wine.
Getting to his room and finding that it had all the niceties did almost as much to relax her as the shower she’d insisted on taking before letting him near her again. She was still hungry, but at least the caked eyeliner was gone and she didn’t stink. Even better, the steam had gotten most of the wrinkles out of her clothes. A real anchor would have gone downstairs to the boutique and purchased something else for her to wear, but washing her underwear and socks in the sink would do—for now.
Clean and dressed, her feet in hotel-supplied slippers, and her wet hair bumping about her ears, Peri sat in a cushy chair away from the window and tried not to think about the thin sandwich she’d gotten out of a vending machine eight hours ago. She was confident that damp clothes weren’t her usual attire when defragmenting memories, but sitting in a strange man’s hotel room wearing nothing but a robe wasn’t going to happen. The blinds were angled to block most of the light bouncing in off the neighboring tower and her head rested on a pillow smelling of new fabric. Silas’s fingers pushed at her temples with firm, professional strength. Clearly his claim to be an anchor was valid.
His comment yesterday about blind trust bothered her. She’d been a fool, not just for walking away with Allen, but for working with Jack for three years and never suspecting they were doing non-Opti-sanctioned jobs, ignorant of enough that she fell in love with the man. Because even though she couldn’t remember him, there was an ache.
“This would go faster if you unclenched your jaw,” Silas said drily, and Peri forced her shoulders down. His touch on her temples was not invasive, but her mind was too full.
“How long has it been since you’ve done this?” she countered.
“None of your business.”
Peri exhaled in a long, slow sound. That he smelled like leather and his fingers felt like a cool ribbon of water somehow wasn’t helping. “I don’t think you were ever in Opti.”
“I was there,” he growled. “How can I be expected to work when you won’t relax?”
“How can I relax when I’m starving!” she exclaimed.
His fingers pulled away and she opened her eyes to see him stomping across the blind-darkened room to the bed. Shoulders hunched in anger, he picked up the bedside phone. “I swore I wasn’t going to do this,” he said, punching a number with savage ferocity. “I was not going to do this!” he added, glaring at her as he brandished the receiver.
Sitting up, Peri finger-combed her damp hair, more peeved than curious.
“Hi,” he said flatly as someone on the other end picked up. “This is Silas Denier in Twenty-four thirty-five. Can I have two strawberry milkshakes and a plate of fries sent up? If you can get them here in ten minutes, there’s a twenty in it for you.” Setting the phone back in the cradle with a dull crack, he sat on the bed and stared at the wall.
I love milkshakes and fries. Guilt swam up, and she shoved it aside. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I don’t have any money to pay you back.”
Wiping a hand over his chin, he said, “I’ve noticed that about you.”
He was angry about things she had no control over. “I didn’t know I was running until—”
“Until what?”
Until I destroyed half the message I’d left myself? Until I found out Bill was corrupt? That I might be, too? “I didn’t actually plan this, okay?” she said, her damp fingers smelling of hotel shampoo.
Silas turned, his empty expression taking her aback. “I’m not your slave. Got it?”
“Slave!” Her headache returned full force. “Is that what you think anchors are? No wonder you washed out.” Ticked, she put her feet up on the coffee table.
He rose and began to pace, his agitation far more than a plate of fries and two shakes deserved. “I’m not going to make your coffee, wait on you, or rub your feet. As soon as I know what happened in that office, we are done. Unde
rstand?”
Sniffing, Peri brushed at her clothes. “You have the personality of an armadillo. You say I’m corrupt—without proof—dangling the truth before me, accessible only if I help you bring down everything I believe in. Forgive me for having a hard time letting you into my mind.”
Hand over his mouth in frustration, he turned to face her. “You’re right. I’m sorry,” he said as his hand dropped. “I have no evidence that you’re corrupt. You’re probably a very nice person. Someone who only kills people who kill her first.”
And his apology started so nicely, too. “That’s as good as it’s going to get, huh?”
“Yup.” Silas bobbed his head, the golden light leaking around the blinds, casting stripes on him. Her gaze, drawn by the glow, traveled up his narrow waist to the hint of hair showing from behind his not-so-pressed-anymore shirt. Her eyes rose farther to his strong jaw—currently clenched in anger. The hint of stubble made him look . . . more than accessible. Familiar, almost.
“You know what I’d really like to know?” she said, watching the way the sun moved around him, catching the stubble on his jaw and making him glow.
“What?” he said flatly, his thoughts clearly on something else.
“If Ridley Scott ever finished his Blade Runner sequel.”
He started, the blank wonder on his face giving her pause. “Ah, yes, he did.” Mood softened, he sat down. “It was really good.”
“Mmmm.” Her focus went past him, distant. “I wonder if I saw it,” she mused.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said, jolting her from her reverie as he came back and pushed her feet off the coffee table to sit right in front of her. “Give me a foot,” he said, holding out a hand.
Suspicious, she eyed him from under her bangs. “You just said—”
He reached for one, taking the slipper off and letting it drop. “I was speaking metaphorically,” he said, and she stifled a shiver at the feeling of his hands around her bare foot. “It’s a relaxation technique that’s helpful with antisocial people who don’t like to be touched, a mix of reflexology and Swedish massage.”
“I like being touched. Just not by you,” she said, but he’d begun twisting his hands around her foot to make it ache wonderfully, and she didn’t pull away, even when he rubbed his thumb along the arch and she had to bite her lip to stop herself from releasing a groan. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“I can get rid of your headache,” he said, head down over her feet. “Promise.”
She hadn’t told him about the headache, but what he was doing felt really good. Not altogether trusting it, she eased into the chair to stare at the high ceiling.
“Okay,” he said as his touch became firmer. “Let’s see where you’re hiding your tension.”
“Ow!” she cried, jerking when his thumb ran along the side of her foot. “Not so hard!”
But he grabbed her ankle and pulled it back. “That’s your back and hips. If I can loosen those up, I’ll have a chance at your headache. Just relax. Deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. Haven’t you ever had a massage?”
“Not like this,” she said, and he actually smiled. It was real, and finding comfort in that, she closed her eyes. The more she relaxed, the better it felt. Slowly the muscles in her back eased, and then her neck . . . and finally her shoulders.
Silas took up her other foot, the expected jolt of pain quickly dulling as the muscles lost their tension. “Thank you,” she said when his pressure-point work shifted to a more relaxing motion. She wasn’t an idiot. She knew everything was connected, and if she was too uptight to let him touch her face and shoulders, this worked.
“Okay.” Silas’s voice was low with a new confidence. “Tell me about your spot.”
Peri’s eyes opened, the lazy lassitude she was drifting in vanishing. “Excuse me?”
His hands kept moving with a firm, decisive motion. “Your safe spot,” he said. “The place you go in your mind to find peace.”
Reassured, she closed her eyes. “Oh. I’ve never had to practice that. My anchors can usually bring everything back without a problem.”
He pinched a nerve, and she jerked. “Ow?” she said, not pulling away because she probably deserved it.
“This isn’t a recall technique,” he said. “It’s to bring you to a centered position.”
He sounded like a psychologist, which was both reassuring and unnerving. “What branch of Opti did you wash out of?” she asked. There was no answer, but his pressure on her foot didn’t change. “Silas, what branch?”
“I didn’t wash out. I quit.” His thumb ran up the outside arch of her foot again to show that all the tension was gone. “Find a spot. Tell me what you liked about it. How you felt there.”
Fine. She was willing to do almost anything if he’d keep rubbing her feet. Her headache was almost gone. “Can I pick a person instead?”
His motion on her foot hesitated. “Ah, no.”
She held her breath, exhaling when she had an idea. “When I was a kid, I spent a few summers at my grandparents’ farm. They had a couple of trees right in the middle of one of their fields where there was an old graveyard. Just a few faded markers. Couldn’t even read them. But it was peaceful, and the wind was sweet.” Peri smiled, and the last of her headache vanished. Maybe there was more to this than she gave him credit for.
“What did it smell like?”
Her reluctance to tell him something so personal vanished at his logic. The triggers of scent and touch were important in making a successful connection between a drafter and an anchor, and so she was willing to give him more and see where it went.
“The earth was both hard from roots and loamy between them,” she said, fingers moving as if she could feel the black soil. “The bark was smooth to the touch and detailed in grays. I could be alone there, just me and the sun and the wind, and like the world, it smelled like dry dirt down low, and like freedom when I climbed into the leafy green.”
She was totally relaxed, even if recalling the scent of the dirt seemed to stick in her.
“Centered and still,” Silas said, no longer working pressure points, but maintaining a gentle touch to tell her he was there, listening. “Peri?”
“Mmmm?”
“Do you want to try to remember the airport?”
“Sure.” She could do that, and she cracked an eye to see the bands of the noon light on the ceiling. The TV had gone on in the room next door, and the drone of sound was comforting.
“You were anxious,” he said, and she closed her eyes to deepen the connection so as to let him in. “Now you’re calm and nothing can touch you, but then, you were anxious.”
Though unable to remember the precise recall technique used by her last anchor, she’d worked with enough professionals through the years to know what to do—and she relaxed.
“You had a coffee and you sipped it to allay suspicions,” he said, and Peri fastened on the memory that she still retained, shoving away the concern that he’d been spying on her even then. “You set it down when the woman you’d marked went to the bathroom. The planes were starting to board. You were ready to act.”
In her thoughts, she was in the sun, but she knew she’d sat in the shade at the airport. She could smell the wind and dirt, taste the caramel from the coffee Allen had brought her, but it mixed with bitter, expensive chocolate. A flight announcement echoed in her memory, and the flash of a white face in the haze of a holographic monitor came and went.
The memories of several events were meshing. Silas’s calming techniques were not mixing well with her last anchor’s, but she could do this, and she focused on the known impressions of the airport, pulse quickening when Silas’s confidence suddenly congealed about her conviction. He had found her fully, his presence in her mind professionally light but certain as they began to share the same vision, each leading the other. He’d found her mind with unusual quickness, settling in with a cool detachment that she appreciated, but if
he had once been an Opti psychologist, he’d have the knack. Satisfied, she slipped deeper into the light trance.
“Safe now,” he soothed as if she might be afraid, “but you were in danger, and you had a plan. A guard went with you.”
A flash of a man’s pale face lit by a monitor came and went again, and Peri shoved it aside in favor of crowds of people and rolling bags. “I went in first,” she said, taking up the narration as she felt wisps of unrealized fragments gathering in the background of her mind. It was almost as if Peri could sense Silas ordering them, seeing them before she did. “I had to wait for a woman to leave, but it gave me time to throw a wad of paper at the camera.”
She caught the scent of the hotel shampoo and the cloying dust from the grove. No, from the carpet. She frowned as the image of the underside of a bed intruded, drawn by the conflicting sensations of clean hair and dirty carpet. The warp and weft was unforgivably matted, but where her fingers were splayed open over it, it was dusty and uncrushed. Her palm lay open in welcome. A crumpled sock lay at the edge of shadow and golden light, a blue button beside it. It was a talisman, and she worried she’d forget it. The fragments didn’t mesh with the fading impressions of the airport. They didn’t fit, and she sensed Silas’s rising concern.
“I knocked the guard into a stall,” Peri said, forcing her thoughts from the contented feeling the image of the sock under the bed filled her with. “I followed her in and hit her head on the pipe.”
The expected empty ache of missing memories thickened, a morass of conflicting images. Instead of a crowded airport, Peri saw a flash of pure gold light from under a door across a matted carpet. It didn’t fit, and her heart hurt as more fragments intruded, scaring her. “Silas . . . ,” she whispered, and she felt him take her hands as his presence in her strengthened.
“This isn’t a draft fragment. It’s just forgotten,” he whispered as he saw it, too. “Peri, where are you?”
“I’m safe!” she half moaned, her chest clenching in grief as she gripped his hands. She was safe. In her lost memory, the golden light fell over her skin. Her robe was almost off and the warmth of a body she knew and loved was above her. Love and a pleasant exhaustion suffused her. It’s Jack, she groaned in her thoughts, and Jack smiled down at her, the glow in his eyes telling her that he loved her.