The Drafter (35 page)

Sandy flicked her hair back. “You always remember, you just don't recall.”

Peri twitched. Memories were returning, dragging the feelings of betrayal and fear with them. Bill had given them a new task right after she'd lost six weeks in Charlotte. They were sending them out the day after they'd come back. Why hadn't Sandy cared? She was her psychologist!

“You're safe now,” Silas whispered. “Nothing can touch you here.”

But fear serrated her synapses when a memory of Sandy rose.
“Life isn't fair. Love is not real. I'm doing you a fucking favor!
” Sandy shrieked.

Her heart pounded, and she felt Silas's confidence as he gathered the memory to him, not fragmenting it but setting it aside as true. A new one took its place of Jack's face, white from shock, his expression bunched in pain as he lay on a yellow scratched floor. She knelt with him, her hands holding his stomach in.
No!
she thought, heartache making it hard to breathe.

She didn't want to see this. Everything spun in a nauseating blur until Jack wasn't on the floor, but standing beside her, the ladder next to them. Relieved, she let herself remember.

“Sandy doesn't care we lost our downtime. Neither does Frank. They're our psychologists, for God's sake.”

Shock darted through her, magnified by Silas's emotions twining
with hers. Frank and Sandy? They were corrupt? Her own psychologists?

“I'm not a mercenary. I don't kill for money,” Peri shouted, wiggling in Frank's grip as Jack levered himself up on the low stage, his middle covered in blood. But he wasn't dying, and Peri stared as the sound of Velcro ripped through the air and he took the body armor off.

“If you're not doing it for money, then you're doing it for kicks,” Jack said. “Admit you like it. The thrill, knowing that you might have to kill someone to survive. The sense of superiority you get from it. Otherwise it wouldn't have taken you this long to figure things out.”

That's not true, she thought. Betrayal was an acidic blanket, burning both Peri and Silas. Bill was corrupt. Jack was part of it. He'd been lying to her. Her entire world was a lie.

But Silas was gathering the memory up, making room for more. It hurt, and Silas's fingers spasmed as Peri clenched in pain. She looked down, focus wavering as she saw she was shot in the chest. Something had happened. She'd been shot.

By Jack . . .

He stood by the door to Overdraft, his Glock in his grip. Peri's fingers were warm and wet when she touched them to her chest, and she coughed, scared when it came out bloody. The floor was hard against her back as she looked up at the ceiling. Not again.

“Jump.” Jack holstered his weapon and stood over her. “Go on and draft. I like you better when you're stupid.”

Peri knew she wasn't dying in Overdraft. She sensed Silas sifting through the swirling morass, frustrated as he tried to organize it. He didn't need to pull the memories from her anymore. They were bunching up on each other, fighting to be realized. Groaning, she slipped out of the chair and hit the floor. Silas followed her down, wrapping his arms around her to keep her connected.

Suddenly it wasn't Silas's arms around her, but Allen's. She could draft and forget for a chance to kill Jack, or die.

“I'm not dying for her,” Jack said, backing to the door.

Allen's lips quirked. “How about it?”

“You'll wipe me down to nothing,” she groaned. “Use me.”

“Someone will. You'll never remember Jack, but I'll give you the chance to shoot him before you forget.”

“No,” Peri moaned as she realized she'd done this to herself. She'd let Allen scrub her for the chance to kill the man she'd loved. What kind of a monster was she?

And then Silas caught and saved the memory as another pushed into its place. She could feel his heartache mirroring hers, building on it, making it hard to think.

“We're in a draft!” Frank shouted. “Twenty seconds and she's done! Sandy, get down!”

Jack backed to the door, his bloody hands outstretched. “Babe, let me explain!”

“There are no words,” she said, and with an unhealthy amount of satisfaction, she pulled the rifle up and shot him in the back as he ran
.

Another fragment layered over it, wrong and out of place, making her dizzy.

“I told you she was verging on one of her epiphanies,” Sandy said as Allen one-handedly caught the keys that Frank tossed him, locking the front door before pulling a chair from a table and sitting, his feet spread wide and stance alert but casual
.

Agony pulsed through Peri as a memory rose from the rest, out of synch and dizzying.
“Love!” Sandy shrieked. “There is no such thing as love!”

Teeth clenched, Peri threw her knife at her. She wanted her to shut up.

Sandy twisted to avoid it, crashing into the mirror behind the bar, shattering it as she fell
.

Peri moaned as Silas destroyed the memory since the mirror was clearly intact, but more memories ran in its place, a confusing blur until Silas fastened on one.

“Hey, I gave her a clean memory,” Jack said, and she hated him more than anyone in her life. “Do you know how hard it is to fragment an entire person? Make a realistic timeline from two?”

Groaning, Peri tried to get away, but it was a trap of her own making, and Silas was failing. He couldn't control it. Numb, Peri existed in a
haze as images passed faster and furious. Silas couldn't catch them, and it was going to drown her in insanity.

But as she sat on the floor and shook, she didn't think she cared anymore. Jack was dying on the floor and she couldn't save him. Then it was her on the floor, Allen holding her head from the scratched boards, and she wanted Jack dead. She wanted him dead!

“Make it stop!” Peri screamed, but nothing touched her ears. Silas's arms around her jerked, and he looked up when the glass in the front door shattered. A dark hand snaked in, looking for the lock. Dazed, Peri stared at it, wondering if she was alive. She was on the floor. Silas was wrapped around her as if he could keep her from falling apart by his touch alone. He hadn't known what to fragment, and now they were both there, two timelines fighting for supremacy, driving her insane.

“Thank God you told me where you were,” Howard said as he tumbled in, the light gray in the parking lot behind him. “Opti is two minutes behind us.”

She was hallucinating again. Howard couldn't really be here.

“Silas!” the imaginary man shouted as he rushed forward and grabbed Silas's shoulder. “We have to go! Pick her up!”

Peri's breath came in with a heave when Silas stood, scooping her up in one move. “Where's Taf?” Silas said raggedly.

“We got a car. Another friend of hers. Come on!”

Peri shook. They'd been interrupted mid-defrag, and she was dying. Howard held the door, and the flush of cool air struck Peri with the suddenness of a slap.

“What happened?” Howard said, pacing beside them to the car.

Silas's lips pressed. “I tried to defragment something I shouldn't have.”

Peri's chest hurt as she felt her breath come and go. Around and around the memories spun. There was nowhere to hide, and she shook, going into shock.

“What's wrong with Peri?” Taf said from behind the wheel as the two of them got Peri into the backseat.

“Just go!” someone yelled, and the car lurched into motion, going
too fast for even an empty parking lot. Dazed and unable to separate reality from memory, Peri breathed in the scent of Silas as he held her in the backseat. She looked at her hands, wondering where the blood was. The sky was gray. The ground was gray. She was gray, stuck between the two. She loved Jack. She'd killed Jack. Everything was all at once. Where there had been a hole in her memory, there was now overwhelming confusion and loss, married to images that made no sense. She couldn't handle two realities. If she could, she'd be an anchor.

“Is she going to be okay?” Howard addressed Silas worriedly.

“I don't know,” Silas said grimly. But as Peri tried to remember how to move her lungs in order to breathe, she doubted if okay was anything she would ever be again.

S
ilas watched Peri breathe, amazed her mind was still fighting even as it was fraying right before him. Both timelines held information they needed: who'd betrayed her and how deep the corruption went. He had fragmented almost nothing, believing he could hold it all until he had the entire two lines. But the memories had come too fast and adhered too quickly—and though the two timelines weren't yet coherent, she had them both now. The more they fell into place, the more unstable she'd become. She was trembling, full into a memory overdraft, which was a nice way of saying he'd screwed up, leaving her mind to destroy itself.

“Turn left,” Silas whispered, his voice just louder than the car's engine. They'd been interrupted, and he didn't know what to destroy, what to fix. And she was in agony.
Damn you, Allen. I blame you
. “It's the third one up. Stone walkway,” he said.

“I see it,” Taf said, and Silas held Peri closer to minimize the jostling as Taf drove them through the high-end subdivision. He could feel Peri's thoughts circling as she tried to organize the memories he'd unearthed. Her pain and betrayal resonated in him as if they were his own. It was the pain that was keeping her sane right now, the desire for revenge. She couldn't allow others to believe they wouldn't be held accountable for what they'd done. But it was only a matter of time
until Peri got everything in the right place. Grief wouldn't be a strong enough emotion to hold her together then.

“Peri?” he whispered when he realized her shaking had stopped. “Stay with me.”

“Is she okay?” Howard said from up front, and her eyelids flickered.

“No.” Silas's voice was ragged as his thumb brushed the hair from her cheek. “Peri, can you hear me?”

Her breath came in as a wheezing, pained sound, and he fastened on it. She could hear him, even lost in the twin timelines her mind was stuck on. If he could mute them both to where the present was stronger than the past, he might be able to stave off the inevitable. But for how long? “Hang on,” he whispered, seeing Karley's two-story home, gray in the snow and porch lights. “Concentrate on what you hear. I'm not letting you go.”

His heart leapt when her narrow chin quivered. She'd heard him, and he held her tighter. My God, she was stronger than he'd ever given her credit for.

“Drop me at the curb,” Silas said, scooting to the door with Peri still in his arms. “I don't want a second tire track in the drive. Ditch the car and come back. Karley will be more likely to let me in if you're not with me.”

What am I doing, bringing Peri here?
But he had no choice, ex-wife or not.

“Silas . . . ,” Howard protested, even as he got out to help.

The sudden cold was bitter. Lurching, he got out with her in his arms, her weight hardly anything. Pale and fragile-looking, she opened her eyes, but he could tell she wasn't seeing the gray and white snow above them.

“Stay with Taf,” Silas said, and Howard reluctantly dropped back. “Karley will help me. She doesn't like me, but she'll help me, if only to tell me how stupid I am.”

“You're sure about this?”

He nodded, his desperation growing. Not knowing what to do, he started up the steep drive, staying within the tire track to minimize
evidence of his presence. Howard got back into the car, but they didn't drive away, and Silas frowned as he used his elbow to ring the doorbell. She had to be home. There was only one set of tracks in the light snow.

“I can fix this, Peri,” he whispered. “Hang on just a little more. I'll make it go away.” His fear began to shift to anger. Jack had used her, used her love to blind her, the very man who'd once held her sanity and soul. She'd been right to shoot him.

Her eyes fluttered, unseeing as the door swung in and light spilled over them.

“Karley,” Silas said to the late-thirties woman standing in the glow from inside the cavernous, ostentatious house. She was still dressed from an early dinner out, lipstick faded from the glass of whatever she'd been drinking, heels off, purse on the table by the door. Frowning, she put a manicured hand on her cocked hip, showing off her legs under her professional suit dress. Her brown hair was pulled back in a clip that made her look both severe and elegant. “I need your help,” Silas said when Karley leaned to look past him to the car running at the curb.

“Of course you do,” she said, eyes coming back to Peri.

“They're not staying,” Silas added, and Karley laughed bitterly.

“Neither are you. Opti has already been here looking for you. I'm not doing this again.”

“This isn't about me!” he said as the door began to close. “I tried to defragment something and it got out of control. We were interrupted, and she's in overdraft. I can't take her to Emergency. Opti wants to wipe her, and she's got the end to this buried in her mind. It's not too late to pull her out. I just need a quiet room.”

Guilt kept his eyes firmly on hers. He'd learned the knack of lying to the women he loved early on. There had to be a way to save both Peri and the memories she held. He just didn't know how to do it yet.

“Why do you do this to me?” Karley leaned closer, moved by Peri's dire appearance, if not by his words.

“Please,” he said again, begging. “This isn't about me. She needs help.”

Karley made an ugly sound, but the door was still open. “All right.
Hurry up,” she finally said, looking past him at the car and waving it off. “Get in here. How confident are you that you weren't followed? Are you clean?”