The Drafter (24 page)

“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. “Personally, 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 perimeter 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.”

Allen's expression hardened. “We have five minutes. You want to spend it telling me how much of an ass I am, or do you want to figure out how we can fix this?”

“I was there,” Silas said flatly, anger growing. “Ready to extract her. She had everything we needed to end this, and you
scrub
her? Why didn't anyone tell me?”

Allen looked out the grimy window. “Maybe because you drove Matt's van into the Detroit River?”

“Don't get cute with me, you little pissant.”

“I scrubbed her to save her life,” Allen reiterated, his attention coming back to him, but Silas thought there was far too much guilt in it. “You were already in transit before it happened. There was no way to tell you. And there's still a chance to end this. Fran wants you to cut her loose, and I agree. She needs to come back to Opti to finish it.”

“You scrubbed her because you finally had her with you!” Silas accused, satisfied he was right when Allen flushed.

“I had to.” Allen slid from the desk. “Good God, Silas. She was
dying
. Dying in my arms and wouldn't draft. Bill knows she is an alliance sleeper agent. He's probably known since day one. If I had taken less than three years, they would have suspected me.”

Maybe
. Silas eased back as he recalled how low the odds had been when they'd started this five years ago. “Bill doesn't know who she is,” he muttered.

“He does.” Allen carefully stretched his damaged knee. “That's why Jack kept scrubbing her to keep her oblivious and productive.”

“Like you,” Silas said bitterly.

“Not like me.” Allen frowned, eyes drifting to nothing. “The idiot shot her to get her to draft, and with her intuition—”

“She never would have accepted him, scrub or not.” Silas's focus blurred, his shoulders aching from being pulled back too tightly. Peri was a pain in the ass, demanding and particular, but he trusted her intuition more than most people's facts, and there was no one he'd rather have watching his back in a tight spot. Even now.

His eyes flicked up to Allen.
Especially now
.

“So you let her kill him,” Silas accused. “When there was no one else to be her anchor.”

Allen's expression sharpened. “I did it in the hopes that with closure we could play this out to the end.” He pulled himself up stiffly, weight on his good leg. “The government knows Opti is rife with corruption, but they need Opti like bread needs flour. They tasked Bill to find it, which of course he did, using the opportunity to modify the list so as to keep his game going. Peri found out she was on the original and responded in her usual style.”

Silas nodded, the drying blood on his face pulling. And in the aftermath, she'd drafted and forgot everything. “Where does that leave us?”