The Operator

Peri brought her gaze back down and inched closer to the truck. “Sorry. Yes,” she said as LB barked orders. He was pretty good. He’d have to be either really smart or have good drug connections to keep a leash on these bad boys.

“Do you think they have Allen and Michael?” Harmony asked, and Peri snorted, not believing the woman was still wanting a play for them.

“Maybe.” Tugging Harmony’s elbow, she began to inch her way backward and tuck into the deeper shadows. “They don’t strike me as having been hammered on already tonight. I’m betting Michael gave them Allen’s phone and arranged for them to take care of us for him.” Damn it. Where am I going to get more Evocane?

The pop-ping of a bullet made Harmony jump. “The profiler said Michael would be here. He wants you dead, and he’s got a deep-seated urge to do it himself.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me that?” Irate, she watched the empty street. “Can I borrow your weapon?” Peri asked, grabbing it when Harmony stared blankly.

“Hey!” the woman exclaimed, but Peri had stood, rattling a battery of bullets into one of the empty buildings.

“Move!” Peri shouted, tossing the pistol back and jogging up the street, deeper into the arena. They couldn’t go back. The only way out was through. Besides, Michael might be up there somewhere, gloating as he watched through night binoculars.

Harmony’s footsteps were loud as she came even, and they picked up the pace, dodging piles of snow and stumbling on hidden potholes. “You had to be a smart-ass and give him your gun,” she complained.

Peri gasped, instinct jerking her back as the pavement sprayed up right in front of her. “Harmony, no!” she cried, but the woman had darted into an alley. Teeth clenched, Peri stood firm as another bullet went ping-whap into the pavement. They were driving them into a tighter trap, and Harmony had fallen for it. “Harmony!” she shouted, torn.

Shouts and gunfire rang out from the black mouth of the alley, and swearing, Peri ran into the dark after her.

Knife to a gunfight, she thought, pounding along until skidding to a halt at the edge of the light. Two men were getting up off the filthy, slush-coated pavement between the buildings, but Harmony was caught in the grip of a third, his bearded face nasty as it pressed up against hers, her head thrown back with his arm tight around her neck and a small handgun shoved into her side. The glare from a flashlight made sharp, ugly shadows.

“Let her go,” Peri demanded, then slumped when the cold feel of a pistol muzzle pressed the back of her neck. Sighing, she realized it was the one she’d given LB.

“Hello again,” he said softly. “Don’t move, or your girlfriend will get it.”

Lip curled, she stiffened as he amateurishly frisked her, taking everything from the wadded-up napkin from that afternoon to her clip, pen pendant, and knife. “This is a mistake,” she said when he tossed her belt pack to one of the arriving men, panting and out of breath.

“Yeah?” LB said, the pistol firmly against her skull. “I’m about to make the same mistake twice. I don’t care who you are. You shouldn’t be here. That’s Detroit’s first rule. Stay where you belong, little girl.”

Peri’s eyes darted to Harmony, almost on tiptoe with that big man’s arm around her neck. Same mistake twice? “You’ve got Allen and Michael?”

Silent, LB jammed the muzzle harder to get her to shut up. “What’s she carrying?”

There were three men now clustered about her stuff, and Peri stiffened when one depressed the plunger of one of the spent injection pens and sniffed the tiny drop. He tasted it and shrugged. “Same stuff, maybe,” he said. “It’s not recreational. Sedative, maybe?”

“It’s mine,” Peri said, pulse quickening. They had Michael, or at least run into him.

“And it appears to be addictive,” LB mused aloud, mistaking her anger for fear. “This is one fucking crazy night. Take them to the pit and shoot them. Did anyone bring a zip-strip?”

Shoot them? Hooking her foot behind his, Peri jerked, her elbow going back into the man’s solar plexus at the same time. The gun went off, deafening her, but it shot wild. Men scattered, and, ears ringing, Peri spun, following LB down and flipping him face-first to the snowy pavement. Kneeling on his back, she wrenched his arm up, putting pressure on his wrist until he dropped the gun. No blood in the snow this time. Keep it clean, Peri.

“Holy shit!” someone exclaimed. “She downed LB!”

It hadn’t been hard, making Peri think it had to be money or drugs that kept him on top of the shit heap.

“Nice try,” LB wheezed, almost laughing as she pulled his wrist higher, forcing obedience. “But they don’t call me Lucky Bastard because the girls like me.”

“Yeah?” Peri said, pulling higher to make him grunt, but she gasped when the thin light from the dropped flashlight went blue. Her mind hiccuped, and the world turned inside out. Vertigo spilled through her, and her muscles went slack as an indigo flood pushed through her thoughts, blanking her vision. He was drafting. It wasn’t her. The little prick was drafting!

And then the world flicked back on, and she was standing with her own gun pointed at her head.

Her pulse pounded as the disconnection ricocheted through her memories of a time that hadn’t happened yet. We’re in a rewrite, she thought, the shock firming through her. I still have my knife, she realized a half second later, and she smiled. LB didn’t know he was doing it. If he had, he wouldn’t have taken them back this far to where she still had a weapon.