“There you are,” he said, spotting her weaving through the crowd to an exit. He saw her note the two men at the exit gate. They were in suits and lacked the park’s lanyard identification, and she smoothly turned and went the other way.

Shit. She was in flight mode, and he lurched after her, calling her name when he caught up to her so she wouldn’t overreact.

“What do you want?” she rasped as he touched her elbow and she spun, shocking him with her wet eyes. “I don’t need an anchor. I don’t need anyone.”

“You’re right,” he said as he brushed a finger under her eye, and she moaned and turned away. “You don’t need anyone,” he said, pulling her to a stop again. “But that doesn’t mean you need to be alone.”

Lips parting, she let that spill over her, her shoulders losing their tension and her eyes showing her heartache. “I don’t want to be alone. I want to sit in the sun and eat another damn hot dog. I want it to be done, Silas. I want it to be done!”

“We can figure this out.” Still holding her arm, Silas looked over the moving throng as the announcer began his between-inning patter. “Together. Trust me, Peri. One more time.”

She took a breath to answer, but he already saw it in her eyes. And then she jerked, her attention going over his shoulder. “Gun!” she shrilled, shoving him back.

Silas’s arms pinwheeled as he caught his balance. His head snapped up. Peri was poised for flight, and a red-fletched dart skittered on the floor between them.

“Run!” he said, grabbing her elbow and yanking her into motion.

Peri sprang ahead, slipping from him as Silas pounded behind her. The two attendants followed, one yelling into a two-way. “I didn’t know they were here,” Peri got out between breaths, when she’d slowed enough that Silas could catch up. “Opti wasn’t supposed to be here.”

“It’s not Opti. It’s the alliance,” he said. “No, keep going!” he shouted, pushing her to an employees-only door, when she almost stopped.

“Why are we running?” she asked as they spilled through it and into a quiet hallway.

Grimacing, Silas dead-bolted the door, starting at the sudden pounding on it. “Come on. This has to lead somewhere.”

“You told me you were alliance,” Peri said as she jogged beside him. “Are you or not?”

“I am,” he ground out. “It’s Fran, Taf’s mother. She’d rather believe that you bewitched her daughter into believing your lies than that her daughter might be a better judge of character than she is.”

“Taf?” Peri bit her lip as she recalled the young woman. “I don’t get it.”

They turned a corner and Silas eased their pace, looking for an exit. “Fran is the head of the alliance. Taf ran off with you instead of backing up her mother. There was a gun involved, and Fran’s pretty pissed off about it.”

“Swell. I ran off with the daughter of the head of the alliance? They’re never going to believe me,” Peri said bitterly. “Why are you just telling me this now?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Silas smart-mouthed. “I couldn’t wedge it between you cracking my rib and the hot dog.”

The sudden crash of the distant door slamming behind them jolted them into motion.

“Go!” Silas shouted, pushing her.

Peri sprinted ahead for the fire door, hitting it full-force since fire codes would have it unlocked from this side. The heavy door thumped into the wall, and Silas ran after her, skidding to a stop when three men straightened from a car waiting in the sun.

“Get her!” one cried as weapons were pulled.

Silas’s heart seemed to stop as Peri continued to head for the wide square of light and her freedom, going full-tilt off the raised platform to roll upright and running upon landing. Her hat was gone, and her black hair gleamed when she reached the sun and the men at the car.

“You in the black! Stop!” one shouted, and Peri hesitated to look back for him.

“Don’t shoot her!” Silas shouted, knowing the pause was fatal. “For God’s sake, Peri, don’t draft! You might go into a full MEP!”

Two men crashed into him from behind, knocking him down and wrestling his arms behind his back. But his eyes were fixed on Peri, his eyes closing in heartache when she slowly rose from her crouch and yanked a dart from her arm.

“No!” Silas shouted as she staggered … and then … drafted before it could take hold.

Silas gasped, shocked at the breadth of her reach as she yanked everyone in a half-mile radius into a blue haze of hindsight. His mind seemed to expand as time became malleable, and with a sudden pop he could almost feel the world reset with a crystalline clarity of lost chances.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SIX

“Peri! Wait!” Silas shouted as he ran onto the loading dock, and Peri spun, putting her back to the Dumpster and edging deeper into the shadows instead of into the sun and her freedom. She was drafting, and for the first time, a new fear slid between her thought and her reason. Silas thought she was going to go into MEP? If Silas’s tinkering didn’t hold, she wasn’t only going to lose her past, but her mind.

“Stop!” Silas exclaimed as two men fell on him, and Peri backed farther into the alley. “I can talk her in. You’re making this worse.”

“You shut up,” the man holding him said, kicking his knees out from under him, and Peri crouched, reaching for her pen pendant and jerking it open.