“We can’t go to Canada. Peri needs her talismans,” Taf complained as she took Howard’s new ID and passed it over. “And what about the list? It’s our ticket back into the alliance. We can do this. Peri is fine!”
“Fine” was a relative term, but compared to the comatose, confused state she’d been in last night, yes, Peri was fine—and not happy about Silas’s argument because it made her feel vulnerable and she was tired of feeling like a porcelain princess. She, Taf, and Howard had already come up with a rough plan to access her apartment. It had evolved in the scant hour when Silas had been arranging their new IDs. It didn’t involve let’s-do-nothing Silas. Slipping him was step one.
Silas squinted down the street. It was noisy with early-morning deliveries and pedestrians, and he pulled his hat lower when a harmless, low-Q drone hummed over the parked cars. “Opti is camped out at her apartment,” he said as he handed in a second package. Taf took it, glanced at it, then handed it to Peri in the back. “We can try in a few weeks when they aren’t as attentive.”
Sara Washington? Couldn’t he come up with something better? Peri thought sourly as she eyed her new ID. Getting the pictures off their phones turned into passable IDs had been more difficult than it needed to be, since Silas had insisted on the enhanced driver’s license that functioned as a passport for ground travel between Michigan and Canada. All the better to hide you, my dear.
“Who put you in charge?” Taf protested. “It’s over ’cause you say so? Bull cookies! We need to do this before Opti finds the list themselves.”
Peri kicked at the back of Taf’s seat. In the front, Howard leaned across the center console. “Peri needs some time to recover,” he said, squinting meaningfully. “You’re going to hurt her feelings if you don’t shut up.”
Taf hesitated, then exhaled. “Fine. I like snow. Canada might be nice.”
“You’re coming with me,” Silas said, and Peri exchanged a worried look with Howard through the rearview mirror. “Howard can get Peri settled.”
“Whoa. Wait a moment. Where are you going?” Taf protested as Silas opened her door.
“We are going back to the alliance to try to clear up a few misconceptions,” he muttered. “They don’t like that I’m withholding you from them.”
Scooting across the long backseat, Peri rested the flats of her arms on the open window and leaned out to the curb as Taf shut her door, jerking it right out of Silas’s grip. “You’re going to the alliance?” Peri asked as she looked for a lie. Explaining to the alliance what had happened wasn’t a bad idea, but it might just be a ruse allowing him to search her apartment without her.
“I am not going back,” Taf muttered, a flush creeping up the back of her neck. “My mother can just eat green eggs and fart. She was going to give you to Opti,” she said, locking her door when Silas tried to open it again. “My mother!”
“So come back with me and explain to them why that was a bad idea.” Silas’s dress shoes scraped the salt-rimed sidewalk. “Out. Come on. Time to do the grown-up thing and talk to your mom. Howard can get Peri across the bridge.”
It was a good plan, but Peri’s eyes narrowed as she read Silas’s tells: the slight hunch to his shoulders, the tightness of his lips, the way he was swallowing his words. Damn it, Silas knew. He knew she was going to make a play for her apartment with or without him and was chipping away at her resources.
“Silas . . . ,” Taf complained.
“Just go,” Howard grumbled, and after a long moment, the young woman got out in a huff. Peri tried to find a neutral expression so as not to look as if her plan was coming apart.
“I’m sorry for having put your mental health at risk for a chance to bring Opti down,” Silas said, and she snorted at his apparent sincerity. “I have to talk to the alliance before they start coming for us. Me. But don’t hesitate to call if you have any issues with, ah, your intuition. I’ll contact you in a week. It’s not over. I’ll be back.”
“I don’t know why you think me being there is going to help,” Taf said as she zipped up her leather jacket and stuffed her hands in her pockets. “I pointed my daddy’s rifle at her.”
“But you didn’t shoot her,” Silas said, almost smiling.
“True.”
Peri jumped, startled, when Jack, coming straight from her subconscious, lifted the handle of the backseat door on the street and slid in next to her. “Silas is a good liar. Almost as good as me,” Jack said as he slammed the door and settled himself behind Howard—which was really weird, since the car door never really opened and the wind never truly gusted, even if she had a sudden chill and had to tuck her hair back. It was her mind inventing a way for him to be there, and it was kind of freaking her out.
“Thanks, Howard.” Silas extended his hand into the car, and Howard leaned to take it. The two shook. “Get her across the bridge. I’ll call you when I know something.”
“Will do. Thanks.”
Silas put his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched and neck red. “I’ll call you in a week, okay?” he said to Peri, eyes pinched and asking for forgiveness. “We need to work on a more permanent solution. I just need to take care of this. I’m not abandoning you.”
But it felt as if he was.
He waited for a moment, and when Peri said nothing, he reluctantly turned away.
Her heart thumped and she reached out after him. Embarrassed by her impulse, she pulled herself back, clenched hands jammed in her lap. She didn’t need Silas’s help. Taf would be sorely missed, though.
His hands still on the wheel, Howard sighed. Scooting to the middle, Peri leaned over the console. “This is going to be harder without Taf.”
“Don’t worry about Taf,” he said, his words slow. “She’ll get four hours down the road and ditch him.” He put the car into drive. “She’ll be back.”
“You sure?”
Howard nodded. “She got out of the car way too easy.”
Not only that, but she’d left without much of a good-bye. Yep, she’d be back—if she could. Still unsure, Peri watched Silas and Taf cross the street ahead of them to reach the bus stop. Silas’s long, slow pace looked odd next to Taf’s fast click-clack in her boots. “Run him over, Howie. Just run him over,” she said. “He’s right in the middle of the street.”
“Ah-h-h, he means well.” Howard pulled out, sighing when Taf enthusiastically waved and turned away. It felt wrong leaving her to make her way back to them, and Peri slumped in the backseat to watch the shopfronts and foot traffic slide by. It bothered Jack, too, seeing as he was cleaning under his nails with the camo knife she had picked up at the airport. She hated it when he did that, and she fought the urge to tweak the imaginary knife away and throw it out the window.
I’m not depressed because Silas left, she told herself. His reasoning to wait was sound, but she couldn’t help but feel abandoned. He was an anchor—and she was adrift.
“You’d better hope Taf doesn’t show,” Jack said, and she checked to see the knife still in her boot sheath. “Even Howard is too much. You’re going to get them killed.”
Guilt swam up, and she sat straighter.
“You think you feel guilty now, wait until they’re dead,” Jack added.
Peri stared out the window, ignoring him. She was in charge of the task, and it was her responsibility to give her team members no more than what they were capable of. But part of her hoped Taf couldn’t make it back. She was too enthusiastic, too optimistic, clearly never having known real loss, and Peri wanted to keep it that way.
“Will you be okay on your own for the morning?” Peri asked as she divided her plan into low- and high-risk tasks. “I need to find out about the men Opti has on my apartment.”
“Our apartment,” Jack said, and she unclenched her hands.
“There’re always empty flats in the building across the street. We can set you up in one of them so you can do surveillance on my building,” Peri added, looking behind them when they slipped through a yellow
light. Howard would be out of sight, out of Opti’s mind. “Do you have enough for a set of binoculars?” she asked, reaching for the bills she’d taken from under her silverware caddy.
Howard’s beads clinked as he nodded, and she settled back. “Good. Even if the blinds are pulled in my apartment, you can watch who goes in the building and make a guess as to how many agents are in there.”
“If you’re watching your apartment, Opti will be too. Once I know their schedule, I can play janitor and sweep the hallways for evidence of monitoring,” he offered.
“Good thinking.” The thrill of the task was bringing her alive, and she leaned between the seats to avoid Jack’s disapproving frown. “Just make sure to cover those dreadlocks. They know what you look like now. Take a right here. I’m going to walk the area to see where they put the foot men. That will keep me busy until about three. Once you get outfitted, find an empty apartment. They’re listed online. Text me the number around three fifteen. If I don’t show up by three thirty, get out and meet me at the coffeehouse where we had breakfast. If you get itchy, just go. If Silas shows up, go. I’ll be fine.”
Jack slowly scratched the stubble at his jawline—a show of nerves, her sketchy memory said. Howard seemed good with it, but she didn’t like Jack manifesting her worry. “I’ll bring dinner,” Peri said, pointing for Howard to take another right into a residential area, quiet on a Monday morning. “I need some paper and a pen. Can you pick some up while you’re out? We’ll need a final sketch of where Opti is, how to avoid them, and where to stash the bodies.”
That last came out of her mouth without thought, her head jerking up to find Howard’s brow furrowed. Jack cleared his throat. “This is a bad idea, babe. You know it.”
“I’m sorry,” Peri said, and Howard flashed her a nervous smile. “I’m doing the prep work to minimize conflict, but—”
“We’re good,” Howard interrupted, but it had been too fast, and Peri’s sense of guilt dampened her mood. Jack was playing cat’s cradle with a string of pearls, the black spheres clinking with the sound of an abacus. She didn’t need him to tell her this was a bad idea, and she threw the gloves Karley had given her at him. They made a soft plop as they hit the seat . . . and he was gone.
Lips parted, Peri cautiously stretched across the backseat of the car to pick them up. “If you have any doubts, tell me now,” she said, and Howard shook his head.
“Taf is not going to let this go,” he said, clearly concerned as his grip tightened on the wheel. “Where she goes, I go.”
So his drive to do what’s right isn’t entirely his own, she thought, then started when she figured it out. “Taf’s the student you were tutoring when you met Silas, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Howard said, his worried smile going wistful.
“Do you love her?” she asked, needing to know before she put either of them in harm’s way, and his smile faded.
“I’m afraid to, but yes. I just don’t want to be the man she uses to punish her mother.”
Deciding they were far enough out, Peri put on her gloves. “You aren’t,” she said, leaning over the seat to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Why don’t you drop me here?”
The car’s brakes squeaked as he stopped, and Howard was smiling when she got out. “See you about three thirty,” he said, and she gave him a little wave and walked away. Howard pulled up to the stop sign ahead of her, turned, and was gone.
Head down, she started for her apartment, vowing nothing was going to happen to either of them.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
It was edging toward midnight when Peri stood at the dark window of the empty apartment across from her building, munching on Chinese take-out as she half-listened to Howard and Taf talking in the master suite. True to Howard’s prediction, Taf had showed up, and she envied their banter as they ate their rice and fried meat. It was obvious that Taf had come back more for Howard than for her. Peri had to keep them both safe.
Her recon to find where the Opti agents were positioned had been successful, and she’d easily spotted the expected three teams stationed around the building in the standard Opti triangle formation. According to Howard’s intel, an additional two Opti agents were wandering the halls as security guards, a third probably in her apartment, since Howard hadn’t seen him since he’d arrived. The agent at the concierge’s desk made four on-site, and there were two in the van at the curb.
It was Howard’s opinion that everyone was wired, which could work for them, with a little effort, especially since Howard had located Opti’s off-site observatory post three stories up from the room she was now standing in, eating cold Chinese food from a take-out box. After three hours of watching the black Opti van almost beneath her feet at the curb, she decided it was worth the risk to try to take out the monitoring room. It would be a grand place to leave Howard—relatively safe and out of the way.
It’s a nice apartment, even with the lousy view, Peri thought as she dug through the vegetables to get to something other than tiny corn and broccoli. Open floor plan, nice fixtures. But most people liked the view of Detroit poking up from the new green spaces, all connected by the visually pleasing, raised magnetic rail. This no-view suite was probably hard to keep rented.
Jack was sitting on the floor beside the ceiling-to-floor window, his back against the wall and his legs stretched out, eyes closed as if waiting for a task to begin. She was getting accustomed to him popping in, but if she ever saw Silas again, she was going to smack him. Seeing her mother there giving her advice in her lordly tone, her hair perfect and her fingers playing with her jewelry, might have been preferable to a sexy man in a Dolce & Gabbana suit who had betrayed not only her, but her love for him.
Digging into a water chestnut, Peri crunched through it, an unexpected pang running through her. She and her mother hadn’t been on the best of terms when she’d left. It was sort of too late to fix, but maybe she could find closure for herself. God help me, but if I survive this, I’m going to visit her, she thought, and Jack opened his eyes and stretched.
Leaning to look down the front of the building, Peri watched two suits leave, the men making eye contact with the black Opti van before getting into their black car and driving off, headlights shining. They weren’t the same two who’d gotten out of it five minutes ago. Shift change, perhaps?
“Howard?” Peri called softly, and she heard him grunt. In half a moment, he came in from the back bedroom rubbing his dreadlocks and moving slow, stiff from the floor.
“Is it time?” he asked.
“Yes.” Her pulse quickened, and she set the take-out box down to shake her hands out. “I’d rather do this at four in the morning, but midnight is close enough. As long as we stay out of the square, we’ll be clear of people.”
Yawning, Taf came out from the back room, her hair mussed. “You sure?”
“Absolutely.” Peri did a double take, realizing only now that Taf’s butterfly tattoo glowed in the dark. Taking the felt pen she’d been using to sketch the apartment, she stuck it in her boot sheath next to that awful camo knife. Mightier than the sword, she thought drily. “This is a quiet neighborhood where gunshots are mistaken for transformers on the telephone poles blowing. That’s why I wanted to live here.” Even before Jack, she thought, then started when she realized Jack was eating from the box she’d set down, picking through the vegetables with chopsticks from Overdraft. The box was steaming now, and he was dressed in task black, looking good enough to pin to the floor.
Unhappy, Peri ran a hand across her jeans. The lack of her usual polish bothered her. An untidy thief was lowbrow. A well-dressed one was classy, ending up in the chief’s office instead of the local lockup with hookers and sullen shoplifters.
Jack pointed his chopsticks at her. “Don’t involve them. They’ll get hurt.”
But what choice did she have? “Okay,” she said, hands clapping once. “Slight change of plan. Taf? Howard and I are going to go upstairs and tak
e out the Opti observatory post.”
“We are?”
Peri nodded. “If everyone is wired, having you there to monitor and misdirect will widen my window tremendously.”
Taf reached for her rifle, her lips pressed tight. “I’m coming with you.”
Jack cleared his throat, but Peri was ahead of him; taking the rifle out of Taf’s hand, she gave it to Howard. “Taf, you’re a crack shot, but a better driver, and you don’t put your driver in a place where she doesn’t have a car.”
“But,” she started, and Peri shook her head.
“I don’t want us caught because we don’t have an exit plan,” Peri interrupted, and the younger woman slumped in resolve. Behind her, Howard exhaled in relief. “Once Howard is set, I’ll go in. Taf, you keep watch on the stairwell. When I turn the light on in my apartment, I want you to leave. Howard, you too. Both of you take the car and park it at the restaurant I indicated on the map. You’ll be able to see my apartment from there, and it will give you a clean run to the front to pick me up when I signal by turning the light off again.”
“Our apartment,” Jack said, and her eye twitched.
Only because I invited you in, you prick.
“I’m not doing anything,” Taf complained, and Peri stretched, enjoying the sensation of her body coming alive.
“That’s why I like this plan.” Peri looked up from her lunge, hoping Taf could see her smile in the gloom. “I say we have a seventy percent chance of getting away clean. Ten if you’re not behind the wheel. I’ll probably be coming out hot. I need you ready.”
That made the woman smile, and Howard gave Taf a relieved kiss and a squeeze, while Jack set the take-out box aside and stood, his dark expression saying he knew her estimation was grossly overgenerous. Why was it harder to listen to her intuition when it had Jack’s face?