The Operator

“I don’t believe you,” Peri said, and Michael nodded, inching closer.

“I don’t need to lie to you anymore.” Bill pushed Michael away with a stiff finger. “You deserve to be your own anchor. I respect you. I always have. I wouldn’t lie to you now even if it was to my benefit. You won’t need an anchor, but someone to watch your back is prudent. Jack is here. Right next to me. You worked well together. He doesn’t have to lie to you anymore, either.” He hesitated. “Or you can spend the next week trying to hide from WEFT that you are a flight risk and liability. Tell me where and when. Michael will bring Allen and a vial of Evocane. Two vials.”

“Detroit. Tomorrow, ten p.m. A casino. You choose which one,” she said tersely.

Bill’s smile widened, proud of his creation. Letting him decide the final destination was to stymie anyone who might be listening in at her end. “Then I choose the abandoned mall at the arena. Say . . . outside the old Waldenbooks? Three a.m.”

Her scoff was laced with a hidden fear. “Midnight. Before I go into withdrawal,” she demanded. With the time shift from St. Louis to Detroit, her withdrawal would set in at about one in the morning, EST, but Peri was never one to take a needless chance.

“Midnight it is,” he agreed, not surprised.

The click as Peri ended the connection was obvious. Michael rocked back, his thoughts clear to Bill. Jack saw it, too, his blue eyes almost black in worry. Not yet, Michael. I will keep you alive a little longer.

“We’re going to snag her, yes?” Michael asked, and Bill gave him a sidelong look.

“To do otherwise would rob us of our test subject,” he lied, but by Jack’s downcast expression, Bill knew Jack at least understood. He didn’t have to snag her. Peri was already his. To treat her with anything other than dignity and respect would be counterproductive at this point. She’d come in when she was ready, and until then, he’d keep her in Evocane.

Michael eased back, his eyes on Allen’s phone as Bill rolled it up around the stylus and tucked it back in his suit’s inside pocket. “And you’re sending me to bring her in?” Michael prompted, and Bill tugged the sleeves of his jacket straight, eager to get a very late supper.

“Because you’re the one she wants.” Bill knocked for the guard to open the door, gesturing for Michael to go first when the heavy steel creaked open. “You won’t be carrying anything other than sugar water. Go take a shower. I’m not flying back to Detroit with you stinking like blood and piss.”

No emotion on his face to give away his thoughts, Michael strode out of the makeshift cell, his steps quickly going faint. The limp, Bill realized, was almost gone.

Jack exhaled long and slow. He gave Allen a last glance before following Bill out. “That was fun,” he said as the guard shut and locked the door behind them. “You do know he’s going to try to kill her the next time he sees her.”

The still air of the warehouse felt indescribably airy after the dead reek of the maintenance closet. “I’m counting on it,” he said, attention rising to the flash of light and boom of sound as the outer door opened and closed as Michael left. “I wouldn’t put him and Peri in the same building right now, much less give him access to Evocane. That’s why you’re going to take it to her, not Michael. If we’re lucky, she’ll chuck it all and come back with you right then and there.” But he knew that was unlikely. Peri had trusted Jack once and had been betrayed. She wouldn’t again.

Even so, Jack’s posture eased, and Bill allowed himself a smile in the dark. He knew his people better than they knew themselves. “Thank you,” Jack almost breathed.

“You’re welcome,” Bill said as he buttoned his jacket closed, but what he meant was, I own you.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The St. Louis med facility smelled like Opti, the air having an earthy, antiseptic, ozone-tainted breath about it. She was fairly certain she’d never been to the St. Louis branch, but the low ceiling and indirect light of the med room made it both familiar and foreboding. At four in the morning, it was all but empty, the argument between Harmony and Steiner in the next bay obvious as the lab tech cleaned a leg scrape she didn’t remember getting. Her good right leg dangled over the edge as she held her left still. It was a good setup with the four bays for outpatient surgery and stabilizing trauma—sufficient to get a bullet out or stop massive bleeding without necessitating a hospital record.

Bill’s “gift” of Evocane and Allen weighed heavily on her. It was a trap, one she had every reason to sniff around but no intention to trigger. She didn’t know how much Evocane Silas had left, much less how she was going to access it by tomorrow night without alerting WEFT she needed it. That withdrawal might give her away had her on edge. She had to get back to Detroit. Now.

“Ah, do you remember your last tetanus shot, Agent Reed?”

Distracted from her thoughts, she looked down as he finished hiding the ugly scrape under a white bandage. Her leg had been swabbed and cleaned, but the rest of her still sported the filth from their failed attempt to snag Michael and Bill, and she felt insufferably grungy.

“I get one on my birthday on the naught years,” she said. “That would make it 2030?” It had been her mother’s idea, the uptight woman trying to find ways for her daughter to hide her spotty memory, blissfully unaware that Peri had more doctors looking after her than the president of the United States. Guilt rose, and Peri quashed it, thinking karma was a bitch. She wouldn’t know or care if I was there wheeling her to breakfast anyway, she thought.