The Drafter

  “Yeah, from a dart he got protecting you. Walk for me. Didn’t you have a hat?”

  “I threw it away.” Seeing her logic, Peri paced before the sinks.

  “I think I’ll leave out the pained hunch,” Liz said drily. “Where’s the chip?”

  Squirrel had put it in a tiny specimen bag, bloody gauze and all, and taking it, the small woman dropped it into a pocket. “Put on my hat and coat and go,” she said, pointing to the door. “They’re getting antsy. Don’t look at Silas when you leave. You think you can do that?”

  Liz snorted when the doctor helped her into the blue coat, and Peri’s jaw clenched as she put on the rough, knitted blue-and-white stocking cap, thinking the pompom tassel ridiculous. “Thank you,” Peri said when Squirrel adjusted the nylon monstrosity about her.

  “Don’t thank us,” he said, smiling wryly. “We’re trying to close you down.”

  Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Peri didn’t know anymore. Pace slow, she held her head up so she wouldn’t look as if she was hurting.

  But she was. She’d never felt so alone.

  “What do you think?” Peri heard Liz say as she hesitated at the door by the CLOSED banner, out of their sight and not yet in the hallway.

  “I think you need to lighten up,” the man said. “And I think that Silas needs to get over it and do his job.”

  “His job?” Liz scoffed. “What do you expect? He hates drafters.”

  “He does not hate drafters,” came Squirrel’s quick, angry answer. “That woman is half starved and emotionally ready to crack, and much of it’s his fault. He knows the barriers to self-sufficiency that Opti instills in their drafters, and him trying to force her to break them when she has no resources isn’t helping anyone, least of all her. He has a job to do, and if he doesn’t start doing it, we’re going to lose everything, Peri included.”

  Her back against the wall, Peri froze, caught between two worlds on the threshold of a scummy bathroom, Opti on one side, the alliance on the other, both of them lying to her. Instilled barriers to self-sufficiency? Was he saying she’d been conditioned to think she needed someone else to survive? It was undeniable that she was used to being part of a team, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t function alone!

  But then she thought of Silas’s giving her money, buying her food, his room where she’d recuperated. Even worse, the possible MEP that lurked after every traumatic draft if she didn’t have someone to fill in the holes. Heart pounding, she gripped her borrowed nylon coat close about her. If Opti was here, she’d never get into that upstairs office. She had to know what had happened that night, not look at a cleaned-up crime scene. She had to find the button she’d seen in her memory of Jack. It was a talisman, and it held a memory. It held the truth.

  “This is our best shot in five years at bringing Opti down, and he’s blowing it because he doesn’t want to buy her dinner?” the man said, and Peri felt the blood rush to her face. “That’s a load. Tell Silas to suck it up and do his job. He can do this for the week it’s going to take.”

  Angry, Peri pulled the CLOSED banner down, letting it fall to the floor as she left. Head high, she strode quickly into the mall, ignoring everything and everyone. She didn’t see Silas as she passed the Opti personnel more intent on a vid screen and chip than what was in front of their faces. It was a mistake they wouldn’t make twice.

  Her hand was in a fist, hiding the words that would bring them together in case she forgot. She wasn’t going to the dealership.

  She was going home.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  Silas reclined against the hard mall bench, his long legs stretched out and his ankles crossed as he waited for Peri. His head was thrown back, and his hat covered most of his face, allowing him to watch the restroom and front entry without looking obvious about it. It had been only a few minutes, but they all felt like hours.

  Fidgeting, he pulled himself out of his slouch when he saw Liz mince into the bathroom. The three suits pretending to catch a smoke in the vestibule began discussing their options, and his eyes flicked to the arcade, drawn by a burst of realistic gunplay. Hurry up, Howard, he thought, twitching his coat tighter about his shoulders. It might take his old friend longer to get Peri to trust him than for him to take the chip out. Trust was going to make or break everything, and everything was screaming for him to move and move fast.

  Fran had called him while Peri was shopping, tracking him down through his request for Howard, the alliance’s cleaner. The shortsighted woman had told him to cut Peri loose so Opti could pick her up, scrub her down, and start the game again. But the information was there in Peri’s head. All he had to do was convince Peri to let him see it. Fran had given him one more chance, but if this failed, it was done, and Silas’s worry deepened as more agents gathered in ones and twos, pulled in from the outskirts. They were getting ready for a push. Time was up.

  “Thank God,” he whispered when he spotted Peri from the corner of his eye. She was almost unrecognizable in that blue nylon coat and Liz’s white-and-blue-striped knit hat pulled down over her head. She looked smaller, more vulnerable, in the more casual clothes. He could tell she was shaken; every ounce of her usual confidence was gone. The grace, though, remained, and he wondered what might have happened if she had never fallen from that playground swing and had become the dancer she had intended.

  But she is a dancer, he reminded himself. She danced with death, and if she didn’t keep up, the bastard would win.

  Breath held, he watched the men at the door ignore her, focused on a tablet and presumably the tracker. She gave them a backward sniff as she passed them, pushing open the glass doors—and was gone.

  Bold as brass, he thought in relief and checked his watch. He and Liz would lead them through the mall and out the south entrance to leave the tracker on a bus before doubling back. Peri would probably be test-driving the latest model from Detroit. The woman did like her cars.

  Not so fast, he thought, standing when he saw Liz striding through the food court. Peri never walked that quickly even when she was late, firm in the conviction that if you were important enough, they’d wait. Liz’s arms swung too far, her hips swaying not quite enough. The coat Peri had bought hung on her a bit loose; her shoulders weren’t wide enough to carry off the high fashion. The grace Peri held was missing, but no one else seemed to notice. Every single Opti agent was focused on her, and his pulse quickened as he swung Peri’s roller bag around as she approached.

  “My God,” Liz said as she halted before him, beaming up at him in excitement. “The woman is a nightmare.”

  Silas’s jaw clenched. True. “She’s complicated,” he said, hand on her shoulder to point her in the direction of the south entrance.

  Liz flicked a glance behind them, disguising it with a tug to her new coat. “Yeah? You like paranoid, sarcastic basket cases who can kill a man with a ballpoint pen?”

  “I like you, don’t I? South entrance is our best bet.”

  “Where the construction is? Got it.” Liz fell into step with him, and he couldn’t help but notice that her pace was shorter than Peri’s. It took effort to shorten his stride to meet it. Funny how it had never seemed like a chore with Peri. “I can’t believe you’re still carting her luggage,” Liz said, almost obnoxiously cheerful against the weight of his concern. “All the way from Detroit.”

  “She just bought it. It was my idea,” he said, not sure why he felt the need to defend her, when Liz got an Oh my God! look on her face. “She hadn’t seen her closet in two days,” he added, and Liz’s expression darkened.

  “Okay, two days is a long time,” Liz said as they wove their way through the crowd to the south entrance. “But she bought a suitcase. How much did you give her?”

  “Stop.” Silas warmed. Two hundred would have sufficed, but six had made her happy.

  “Howard says you need to start acting more like an anchor and less like a dumped boyfriend,” she said, voice tight. “Persona
lly, I think you need to stop acting like her doormat.”

  “I said, Stop,” he repeated, not liking the number of Opti people at the south entrance: three, and one was on the phone calling for reinforcements. “When it gets sticky, you’re to run.”

  “I didn’t agree to this so I could run at the first sign of trouble.”

  It was all he could do not to give her a shake to wake up. This wasn’t a game. “You will run,” he said tightly. “I can’t keep both of us free.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she said, and his bad mood cracked. It was exactly what Peri would have said.

  “Let me get the door,” he said as she quickened her pace. “Peri always waits.”

  “She is such a princess.”

  Liz rolled her eyes and dropped back, and Silas hesitated. “Yes. She is,” he said, and Liz’s expression went sour again.

  He pushed the door open, and they walked out into the early dusk. Silas scanned the area, wondering if the chain-link-fenced area under construction might hold some promise. Liz was silent, her chin lifting as she picked out the agents one by one.

  “I see three,” he said, the roller bag thumping on the rough pavement.

  “Five,” she corrected. “And more coming. Shit, who do they think she is? Superwoman?”

  “Yep,” he said, pulse quickening. “Incoming at two, five, and eight.”

  “Huh.” Liz’s pace had shortened, and he gave up on trying to meet it. “I thought we would have gotten a little farther.”

  “I’m surprised we got out the door.” Silas met the eyes of the closest three, warning them before the fight even started. “I’ll plow your road. They won’t shoot to kill.” Not her, anyway.

  “Silas . . .”

  “Watch out for darts.” The three closest agents were almost on them. “Run!” he shouted, shoving her forward.

  Crying out in frustration, Liz went. Silas whipped Peri’s luggage around like a hammer throw, grinning madly as he winged it at the man Liz was headed for. It hit him square on, and the man fell, grunting as he fumbled for her foot and missed.

  “Keep going!” Silas shouted, then spun, affronted when a dart hit the back of his leg.

  “God bless it,” he muttered as he pulled it out. His leg was going numb, but he could still stand on it. At least they weren’t shooting bullets.

  “I said no drugs!” Allen’s voice came over one of the agents’ radios, and they warily circled him as if he were a lion, waiting for more backup. “No drugs! I can’t interrogate an unconscious man. Good God! Isn’t there anyone out there higher than a brown belt?”

  Allen, Silas thought, changing his plans. He’d let himself get caught. He wanted to talk to him. His smile grew as the three agents looked uneasily among themselves. Alive and undrugged? He didn’t have any such constraint, and he threw the dart away, flexing his hands in anticipation. “You heard the man,” he said, scuffing the pavement for purchase. “Who’s first?”

  But no one volunteered, and finally Silas bellowed, rushing the smallest.

  Silas hit his middle like a linebacker, stealing his air and sending him flying. He spun for the next, and they were on him, forcing him to the ground. He twisted, but someone had his arm, yanking it up and back in a submission hold. Two more landed on his legs.

  “Cuff him!” someone shouted, and Silas grimaced at the feel of steel ratcheting about one wrist. Twisting, Silas flung the man away.

  “Keep him down!” someone else demanded, and Silas’s air huffed out as two more men fell on him. One got a face full of elbow, but then they got his other arm, twisting it back with the first and fastening them together.

  “Get off me!” he demanded, and in a breath, they seemed to vanish.

  Shocked, he twisted, managing to get himself seated upright. Six men all in black suits ringed him. One had a bloody nose, another a red face as he still struggled to breathe. All of them were angry, their nice black suits mussed with dirt and oil.

  His own nose was bleeding, and he wiped it on his shoulder, staying put when one of them shoved him to stay down. Silas followed their attention to Allen, who was hobbling forward between the parked cars, awkward and slow with his right hand bandaged and a crutch to ease the weight on his damaged left knee. Bound in cuffs, Silas’s hands clenched, and his skull began to throb.

  “He’s got one dart in him,” the tallest man said, almost panting as Allen limped to a halt and looked Silas up and down. “Sorry, sir.”

  Allen’s brow lifted in amusement as he took in the men trying to put themselves back together. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, while Silas seethed. “It hardly slowed him down.” Allen scanned the parking lot, other agents keeping the curious onlookers moving. “Can you stand?” he asked Silas.

  “Fuck you,” Silas said softly, his chin hurting where it had hit the pavement.

  Allen chuckled. “Get him up,” he said confidently, and two men yanked him, stumbling, to his feet. “I want his phone. Wallet. Everything. Where’s the van?”

  Silas stood stoically while they searched him. If they were focusing on him, they were not looking for Peri, and a curious feeling of anxious satisfaction coursed through him as Allen step-scuffed on his crutch to a nearby agent to find out what was taking the pickup van so long.

  “Booted?” Allen echoed, clearly peeved as a shopper tried to get it all on YouTube, complaining when an agent took the phone and snapped it. “We cleared it with the local cops!”

  “Yes, sir,” someone said. “It’s got a VigilantVigilante sticker on it. I have a car coming.”

  “Seriously?” Frowning, Allen shifted his gaze from the mall to the nearby construction trailer. “I don’t want this plastered on the Net. Someone open that up. Denier, move, or we’ll move you.”

  Silas slowly started for the construction office, his hands bound behind him. The chain-link fence door rattled open, and Silas eyed the gun on Allen’s hip. He’d take that when he left, and he waited patiently as an agent darted up the metal steps and into the dirty single-wide.

  “In,” Allen prompted when the agent stuck his head out and proclaimed it clear.

  Silas went, his pace stiff, and he gave the agent at the steps a look to back off as he managed them himself. His mood darkened when he found the ceiling predictably low and the furnishings covered in the expected filth and grime—but his clothes were ruined already.

  “Put him there,” Allen said, and two agents shoved Silas into the rolling chair before the messy desk, going farther to tether his cuffs to an immovable, fireproof file cabinet with a long, plastic-coated wire. Silas leaned back as much as he could, his hands fisted behind him.

  “We’re tracking the woman,” one man said, and Allen sighed as he rested his rump against the top of the desk. “She’s heading east,” he added, showing him on the tablet. “Mobile, and moving fast.”

  Allen glanced at it. “Don’t bother,” he said as he got his phone from a back pocket and started flicking through the apps. “It’s not Reed.”

  Shit.

  “Sir?” the agent asked, his tablet drooping until Silas could see it was a map of the city.

  “It’s not her,” Allen repeated, smug as he met Silas’s eyes. “Is it.”

  Which means Peri is still free, but his elation quickly reverted to worry. How long would she wait? An hour? The trailer was only a short walk from the dealership.

  “Out,” Allen demanded as the trailer shifted when two more men tried to come in, and they retreated. “You.” Allen handed one of the remaining three agents Silas’s phone and wallet. “Go thank the mall security. Tell them we have our suspects and we’ll be out of their hair in five minutes.” Brow creased in pain, he turned to the remaining agents. “You two go find the car and make sure it gets here in five minutes!” he shouted. “Not ten. Not six. Five!”

  They headed for the open door, and Allen clicked open his radio. “I’m in the construction trailer on the south end,” he said sourly. “Give me a forty-foot pe
rimeter around it. Now.”

  Eyes fixed on Silas, he pulled his handgun from the holster and set it on the desk, sighing in relief. Still the agents hesitated, and Allen waved at them, shooing them out. “Go on,” he demanded. “He’s cuffed and tied to a five-hundred-pound cabinet.”

  Slowly they retreated, talking even as they shut the door behind them.

  “You slimy son of a bitch,” Silas intoned, not liking the changes in his old friend.

  “Shut up,” Allen said as he turned off his radio.

  “How could you do that to her?” Silas whispered, leaning as far forward as he could. He’d almost blown it when Allen had walked into Opti’s med building, posing as her anchor. He might look the part, with his lanky, athletic body, but Allen’s defrag techniques weren’t good enough. How he’d worked himself so high in Opti’s ranks so fast was more than suspicious.

  “I said”—Allen set his phone where Silas could see the live, hijacked mall security video focused on the trailer—“shut up a moment.”

  Silas was silent, his pulse throbbing against the new scrape on his face, and they watched the men surrounding the trailer fall back to a comfortable forty feet. The changes in Allen went deeper than the bandages. There was a little more maturity across the shoulders, and his black curls were cut shorter. Pain had made his long face even longer, but he was as fit and scar-marked as ever. The safety glasses were the same black plastic. Silas knew he used them to keep women away—birth-control frames, he called them. Not that Allen didn’t like women, but he treated them like his next big hill to be conquered—at his preference.

  “Seriously, are you okay?” Allen said, shoulders slumping to show how much he hurt. Clearly he was avoiding the pain meds, a reasonable precaution seeing as they interfered with the ability to recognize drafts. “They didn’t hit you too hard, eh?”

  Wet and filthy from the parking lot, Silas eyed Allen, gaze lingering on his Opti pin. “You are . . . a son of a bitch.”