The Operator

She forced the thought from her, making her smile brighter. “You haven’t slept at all, have you,” she said, and he dropped their clothes on the couch before sitting down beside her.

“Ah, not really,” he said. “Hungry?”

She nodded. The warmth of his shoulder against hers was heady, and the soft sounds of the silverware as he shifted to arrange the plate of food on his lap pulled her eyes down in guilt. “Thank you,” she whispered, knowing she didn’t deserve it. Not after what she’d done to him, what she was going to do.

Silas’s motions stilled. “Guilt?” he said incredulously. “For what? None of this is your fault. And it’s not like I cooked it. Just put it on a plate.”

“But you got it for me,” she said, eyes down. She’d hurt him beyond forgiveness. She’d willingly forgot the year they’d fallen in love for the chance to bring Opti down. She’d selfishly killed their love for a chance at glory. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, throat closing. “I can’t believe how stupid I was.”

“Peri.” He set the plate aside and took her in an awkward hug. “This isn’t your fault.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said into his shirt, muffled. His scent rose around and through her, and she breathed it in, willing her memory to return. Why hadn’t she made any memory knot of him? Not one?

“Oh. That.” His chest moved as he took a deep breath. “I always figured it was my fault you asked Allen to destroy that year.”

Eyes wet, she looked up at him, seeing the love in his eyes. “Your fault?”

“I could have stopped the whole thing. Maybe if I had been honest with you, you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

“You?” This wasn’t anything in her diary.

His gaze dropped, the twitch in his eye pinging on her intuition. Something had happened between them, something that hadn’t gotten into the pages, had not even been hinted at. She took a slow breath, not willing to delve into it right now. “So here we are.” Hesitating, she smiled up at him as his arms slipped away. “Where exactly are we?”

“In a better place than you might think.” Clearly glad for the shift in topics, he resettled their dinner on his lap. “I checked out LB’s lab. It’s so far out of OSHA standards it’s scary, but making up more withdrawal preventative isn’t going to be a problem. Two days, maybe? It won’t be Evocane, but it will tamp down the withdrawal this time. I promise.”

“Thank God.” She eagerly took the fork he handed her, stabbing one of the ravioli and angling it in. The tart, acidic taste hit the sides of her mouth, and her hunger hit.

“There’s still nothing on Jack in the news,” he said as he unrolled one of the foil-wrapped breads. “But WEFT probably asked the cops to keep it out of the news.”

Her empty stomach growled, and she slowed. Eating spicy tomato sauce so fast might not be prudent. “They didn’t have much of a choice after I tangled them up on the interstate.”

Silas grunted in agreement, handing her the bread before unwrapping the other. She could smack LB for letting Jack go. He was an ass, but what he’d done was almost noble. They never would’ve evaded WEFT and the cops without Jack’s help. If she’d landed in custody, it might have been hours before WEFT gained jurisdiction and she got her Evocane fix—assuming they gave it to her. Jack had given her freedom and the chance to act.

Seeing her brooding, Silas leaned over their shared plate. “He did it,” he said as if reading her mind, “so you wouldn’t make LB lock him up. That’s it. Nothing more.”

“I suppose.” Peri stabbed her ravioli. “He didn’t scrub me, though.”

Silas’s frown deepened. “Don’t do this. Jack is in it for himself. He didn’t scrub you because he wasn’t sure he’d be around to sell you his song and dance.” He pointed his fork at her. “What does your intuition say about him?”

“You mean my hallucination?” she mocked, still not pleased Silas had put Jack there. “He hasn’t weighed in on it.” She ate half a ravioli. “He’s more interested in making Steiner the host of a game show than helping me figure anything out.”

Silas’s smile became odd. “Game show, eh?” he said as if that explained something. “LB put his chemists—and I use the term loosely—on the Evocane substitute. He thinks it would be better to wean you off it compound by compound instead of going cold turkey.” Silas hesitated at her fierce look, then added, “You scared a drug lord, Peri. If he thinks it’s unsafe, then it’s unsafe.”

Mollified, she returned to eating. “And you trust them to get the substitute right?”

There were only three ravioli left, and Silas set his fork down. “LB supplies the I-75 corridor. His crew stinks, farts, smokes, and has a shocking disregard for authority, but they know their product and what they’re doing. Any one of his chemists could work at one of Detroit’s research facilities but they have, ah, issues,” he finished uncomfortably. “Other than the stink, fart, smoke . . . thing.”

“That an East Coast drug lord is cooking my fix makes me so-o-o-o much more comfortable,” she said sourly, but there was a kernel of truth to it. She didn’t want the last three ravioli either, and she set the plate aside, leaning back against the headboard and tugging the afghan over her. “We head out tomorrow, then? Where do you want to go?” A solid day’s sleep might be possible in the depths of a drug lord’s den. Funny how that worked.