The Drafter (18 page)

Fingers shaking, Peri got in line at the coffee hut, hoping her borrowed, off-the-rack coat and black slacks would make her invisible among the businesspeople. She'd seen his wiry strength and scars last night. He was bigger than she was, and she had no doubt he'd use it to his advantage. If she had to fight, she wanted a cup of hot coffee in hand.

“I can help who's next!” the barista called, and she stepped forward, ordering a venti. She had cash, but she turned her phone back on and used it instead, knowing it would pop up on their security in about fifteen minutes. She'd either be in Opti's custody or long gone by then. There was a pen by the register, and she took it, keeping it in her hand to gouge with if needed.

She edged to the pickup counter, going still when Allen's pacing brought him close. Freedom was a glass door away. No matter what happened next, she was gaining that curb. If she could do it without him seeing her, all the better.

“I don't know,
Bill
,” he said into his phone, clearly irate. “She was complacent enough this morning. I grounded everything, but she's gone. I doubt a plane was her goal, but we're watching to see if she tries to exchange it for another flight. I'm at baggage claim.”

Her order came up, and she took her large coffee, wishing he'd look the other way.

“To see if she's going to walk out the front door. Why do you think?” Allen snapped, then abruptly ended the call. “What an ass,” he added softly, and then their eyes met.

Allen's lips parted. “Hey!” he exclaimed, hesitating when she ambled forward to meet him. The world waited behind double glass doors, and she was tired of being afraid.

“This is for lying to me!” Peri shouted, squeezing the cup to make the lid pop off, and then tossing the contents at him.

He ducked, coming up angry as the scalding liquid nicked him, but her foot was already swinging. He blocked the first kick, and screaming, she backed him up onto the door's sensor pad with two front kicks that never landed. Cooler air blew in, smelling of exhaust and icy pavement.

“And this is for making me think I trusted you!” she shouted, grabbing a suitcase off a cart and throwing it at him with a cry of frustration.

Allen shifted out of its way, and Peri lunged forward, grabbing his arm to swing him into the unbreakable glass doors. He hit with a satisfying thud, groaning as he slid down—out cold. Cars had stopped, and she stood over him, breathing hard. “It was a very bad vacation,” she said to the man whose suitcase she'd thrown, and he nervously smiled, clearly trying to stay out of it.

Chin lifted, Peri strode out, crossing the road and making cars stop. A shuttle was leaving, and she swung onto it. She jerked, shocked, at the top of the stairs when she realized there was no driver, then hit the
SAME
key to input wherever the previous passenger had. It pulled away even before she'd found a seat.

“You forget three years and everything changes,” she whispered. The shakes started right about then. She was alone. For the first time in five years, she was completely alone, and she felt the pen in her pocket for reassurance. What if she drafted? She'd never know what had happened. Enough blank spots in her memory, and she'd go insane.

“What are you doing, Peri?” she whispered. But she knew. She was running for control of her life, for the answers to what had happened in Charlotte, for the knowledge of whether she was a dirty operative, or if just her anchor had been.

Fingers trembling, Peri took off her watch and shoved it between the seat and the backrest. She had a feeling that Jack had given it to her and it probably had a tracker in it. Her phone, too, was suspect; popping open the side of it, she took the wafer-thin, glass SIM card out and dropped the phone under the seat. The wallpaper of a desert sunrise didn't mean anything to her, but she was sure she'd taken it.

Exhaling with what sounded almost like a sob, she leaned her head against the cold window, feeling the bus shift and jerk as it worked its way past passenger pickup, gathering people as it went. Someone was
probably going to a hotel, and from there, she could get a bus ticket to Charlotte. That's where the answers were.

But she pulled to a full, adrenaline-pounding stiffness when out the window of the bus she saw a familiar face.

“Silas,” she breathed, and the man in an exquisitely cut brown jacket leaning against the pylon met her eyes, not smiling as he folded up his paper and let it drop to the planter beside him. She tensed, but the bus jerked back into motion, and her heart pounded when he crossed the road and headed into the airport.

He knew about Charlotte—had told her it was her last task. He'd know that's where she was going.

Great.

S
ilas got out of the cab, his hand going to his head when he thought he'd left his hat behind, only to find it right where it belonged. Checking the street addresses against the list of Charlotte's Internet cafés on his phone, he crossed the street, hand raised to stop a slow-moving car.

Electric bikes darted unnervingly around him, and he eyed an erratic, low-flying drone, relaxing as he decided it was a courier and therefore not a threat. He was in university territory, and his high-end coat was getting noticed.
She'll know I'm not a student anyway
, he thought as he took his tie off and stuffed it in his coat pocket.

It had been almost twenty-four hours, and if he didn't locate her soon, Opti might find her first. She'd done a fair job of muddling her destination, but they weren't stupid. Once they ruled out her apartment, they'd realize she'd bucked her deep conditioning against being alone and focus on the obvious: the city her last task had been in. He figured she'd ditch her phone and search for both answers and anonymity at an Internet-access café, but after finding nothing at the three that were closest to the bus station and claimed to have gen-three glass technology, he was starting to wonder if she'd instead gone to the library and their slower system.

Either way, his window was closing. Opti might know her
conditioning, but he knew her soul, and he was counting on that to keep him one step ahead of them.

“University Dregs,” he whispered, feet scuffing to a halt as he looked past the crackling e-board shorting out and into the modern if sparsely decorated café full of students soaking up the free hotspot. “Thank God,” he whispered, seeing her sitting alone at a small glass table, that same black coat he'd seen her steal at the airport draped over her shoulders. Her head was bent low over the glass screen built into the top, a ceramic mug of coffee and that man's hat beside her. Even as he watched, she tapped a new phrase into the search engine and hit the
ENTER
key with enough force to make the screen phase and her coffee ripple. Clearly things weren't going well, and she ran her hand through her short hair in a gesture of frustration as she looked up.

Her expression blanked when she realized two young men across the store were gesturing for her attention. Her model's cheekbones, long neck, perfect complexion, and toned dancer's body had gotten her noticed, and he shook his head in memory when that full sweet smile of hers blossomed with just the right amount of annoyance to convince without ticking them off. Falling against each other, they dramatically pretended to be crushed.

Okay. He'd found her. Getting her to trust him wasn't going to happen, but he knew Peri would risk a lot if she was hungry, tired, and dirty. She looked all three.

Taking a deep breath, he entered, head down as he went to the to-go counter and out of her direct sight instead of ordering from the store tablets at the tables. Peri looked half starved, and he added a muffin to his medium, straight-up black coffee, taking it in a metallic-footed store mug instead of a to-go cup. Turning, he unbuttoned his coat in the warmth and noise. Peri was scrolling through a list of recent local crimes, choosing one before sitting back and sipping her coffee while the screen loaded. She looked frustrated and—so well hidden he almost missed it—scared out of her mind.

What am I doing?
he asked himself as the barista put his paper-wrapped muffin on the counter; peeved, he vowed she wasn't going to
get one bite. She'd made her choice. He wasn't her anchor to coddle her, reinforcing the pap that Opti filled her head with that she deserved it by right.

And yet, seeing her last night, numb and in shock from something she didn't recall, had shaken him. She was so rare, so fragile in her uniqueness—one in a hundred thousand able to twist time, and even more rare in having the skill set and drive to use it. It had been a painful relief when she'd gotten snarky, hiding her fear that she'd been cut adrift again. Even more obvious was that she didn't know him.

Closing his eyes, he exhaled to calm himself, not wanting to add to Peri's mood. She looked as irate as he felt, tapping the store-supplied stylus against the touch screen with a frustrated quickness. She hadn't changed at all—just as moody and irritating as ever. Her paranoia would be in overdrive—for good reason. He couldn't simply walk up to her and tell her they had to work together to end the very organization she depended upon. She'd never believe him.

Silas's jaw clenched when someone knocked into her. And then he stiffened when, with a snap, the room reset and the last four seconds replayed, Peri adroitly shifting in her chair at the right instant to remain untouched. Time caught up, meshed, and he shook himself, a cold feeling slipping through him when Peri, oblivious to the skip-hop, leaned forward to read the screen.

Uneasy, he pushed off from the counter. He'd watched her jump three times to escape the airport. It was doubtful she even knew she had drafted. Her mind was flirting with collapse, and that he felt responsible bothered him. It had been too large a task; too much of her life had needed to be erased.

It was her choice
, he reminded himself, but he still felt betrayed as he came closer, halting just within her range of sight and waiting to be noticed. Power and recognition meant more to her than he liked, but her determined drive had drawn him regardless. Even now, years later, he could feel it, and his jaw clenched.

As if sensing it, she looked up, her hazel eyes and long lashes vivid against the heavy eyeliner she'd used to muddle any facial recognition software. Her shock melted into a quickly quashed panic. She was afraid of him. “You,” she said, eyes
darting to the perimeter for others even as she blanked her screen. “What are you doing here?”

“It's just me. I'm alone. You don't have to run.”

“You're alliance, aren't you?” she asked. Nodding, Silas set his coffee down, the electrical field in the base engaging the table's heating circuits with an audible click. Her eyes were determinedly not on the muffin, but they lingered on his tablet tucked under an arm, and he set it tauntingly on the table between them. Immediately her gaze rose from it, traveling over his pressed shirt tucked into his high-end jeans, then dropping to his leather boots and belt, and finally his coat. Her eyebrows arched in question; he shifted his coat so she could see he had no weapon.

“I do so love the scent of imported cashmere,” she said. “Armani?”

He dropped his hat on the table, annoyed that she'd found the one nerve he had and stomped on it. So he was a clotheshorse. So what? “So you'll understand if you dump your coffee on me like you did Allen why I'll throw mine in your face,” he warned as he took the hard-backed chair across from her. Still she said nothing, staring at him with that assessing gaze, and he ran a hand over his short-cropped hair to smooth it in unease.

“I should have gone to the library,” she muttered.

But she hadn't run, and Silas took a sip of coffee, relieved. “I think this is what you're looking for,” he said, hitting a few buttons on his tablet to bring up a news story. “Go on. Read it,” he said, pushing it toward her. “I'm not stalling. The alliance doesn't know I'm here.”

“No?” Suspicious, she used her stylus to drag it over, and he swallowed hard when she flicked her bangs in a gesture so familiar that Silas felt an unwelcome flash of hurt. Eyes darting, she read the highlights about the security guard and CEO found dead two days ago. It was being called a botched robbery, but it was how the guard had died that he wanted her to see.

Her signature killing style was all over it.

Peri's fingers were trembling by the time she got to the end. “Is there any doubt why the alliance is trying to put an end to Opti?” he said lightly.

Her eyes flicked up, and he spitefully took a bite of muffin,
corralling the crumbs onto the scrap of wax paper. Her stomach growled, and he wondered why he was being so nasty—except that it had been a long, hard year when she'd left.

“He must have killed me first,” she said, her words almost lost in the surrounding conversations. “I don't kill anyone unless they kill me first.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he said.

Peri's eyes narrowed. “Did you call the police? How far behind is the alliance?”

He licked his fingers, elbows on the table as he leaned in close enough that she could smell the sugar on his breath. “I already said I'm here alone. But as for Opti?” He shrugged.

“You're not afraid I'll draft and run?” she said, eyebrows high.

He had to get her out of here. Clearly the enticement of food wasn't going to do it—even half starved as she was—but the lure of knowledge might. “You won't risk forgetting this.” Confident, he took his tablet back and tucked it into an inside coat pocket.

She watched it go, and his pulse quickened as he saw her calculate the risk of making a scene in the busy café. “I could just leave and look it up later.”

He nodded as if considering it, then went cold in the sudden realization that he'd made a mistake. He shouldn't be here. He should have let someone else do it. But no one knew her better, that she was like a wild horse: canny, indomitable—and likely to run at the clink of a stone. “Go ahead,” he said, calling her bluff. “Make both our days.”