The Operator

Allen rose, his lanky athleticism looking disheveled after Cam’s precise business attire. “Why didn’t you try one at the dealership?” he asked as he stacked the coins atop the paper bills.

“Because they check your name against your address, and if I’d given them my real one, they would’ve sent me literature.”

“Peri, why won’t you help me?” he asked suddenly, and her tension slammed into her. “You’re good at this. We need you, if for nothing else than tucking Michael away. No one but you has even a chance at it.”

“No thanks.” She went behind the counter, finding strength there.

“Peri Reed!” Allen exclaimed, clearly frustrated. “You tell me why you won’t come back, and I’ll leave forever. The truth.”

“The truth?” she echoed, not sure her soul could handle any more truth. “It’s too easy to use me,” she added, backing up a step, arms over her middle. “Why do you think I’m hiding over a medical dump? Jesus, Allen. I trust Bill more than some new governmental task force. With Bill, I know it would be all about the profit, sent to assassinate some poor schmuck who invented a new way to make electricity so Bill could sell it to the highest bidder. At least Bill would make me think I’d offed a drug dealer. If I go back to work for the government, even for one job, they will wipe me back to my sixteenth birthday and fill my head with whatever past they want. Either that, or they’ll tuck me away in a cell until they need me again.”

“I wouldn’t let them do that to you,” he said, sounding insulted, but the fear was too real, tingling in her fingertips. Behind him, rush-hour traffic started and stopped, awkward from the rising snow. No wonder Cam had taken a cab today.

Peri reached for a dishcloth, agitated. “Don’t take it personal. I don’t trust anyone. This is not my fight, and I’m not going to draw attention to myself. As long as I don’t play the game, I’m not a threat. Everyone leaves me alone. Right?” Which was debatable, but she was going to stick with it—at least until Bill showed up, a smiling, flirting Jack in tow. But she’d be long gone by then.

Her attempt at pretending she was normal had failed. Normal people didn’t worry about chunks of time being destroyed and replaced by false truths—manipulative and damaging truths.

“You’re afraid?” he needled, and her face warmed.

“Maybe I just don’t care.”

Allen’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. You can keep the change,” he said tightly, pace stiff as he strode to the door, yanked it open, and vanished into the busy street.

Her shoulders slumped as she listened to the door chimes clink and the secondary alarm system click on in the silence. “I generally do,” she said. She didn’t mind lying to Allen; the guilt was because she was lying to herself.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care. She did. But she couldn’t risk going back. The lure was too much, the fear too real. She teased herself with the power she’d once had, existing on the fringes, hoping that with little shots of it she might build up her resistance—all the while knowing it was a lie, that the ache would never go away, waking her in the small hours when only Carnac lay purring to distract her.

The truth was she’d liked working for Opti. She needed the thrill of lives being in the balance of her skills and chance; lived for the fast cars, sexy clothes, rigorous training that pushed her to her limits, and the smart man at her elbow. She liked it so much that for three years she ignored the signs that she was someone else’s weapon until it was rubbed in her face—and as much as she hated it, she still mourned the loss of everything she had once had.

She had become a part of the corruption at Opti without even realizing it. Because of her, people had died—they died so someone she’d never met would have a fraction better profit, or buy an election, or bring virus-carried death to a region another country wanted to exploit.

And even knowing all of that, even steeled against it, she didn’t know whether she could resist the choice if it was put to her again, the risk of being manipulated into something foul aside.

CHAPTER THREE

“He should be out by now,” Latisha grumbled as she looked up from her rifle’s scope, adjusting the night vision before returning to squint at the coffee shop. “If he stays too long, she’s going to spook and run.”

“My princess of paranoia is already running,” Bill said, the faint accent he cultivated to give himself more class at odds with the old van, and Jen, almost unseen in the back doing her drug calculations, nodded in agreement. Her long blond hair was almost white where the glow of the tablet caught it, and her face even paler.

“It’s like a fortress in there,” Jen said, the young psychologist and low-level anchor still in the dress suit she’d been wearing when he’d sent her in to evaluate Peri’s state of mind and get a weight estimate. “The glass is bullet resistant. The doors are reinforced. There might be a way in through the upper apartment. It must have cost a fortune. What is she so scared of?”

“Herself.” Bill fiddled with his ring, the heavy metal sporting a raised Opti logo. Jen thought about that for a moment, then went back to her calculations. Realizing the ring had turned into a nervous tic, Bill laced his hands and looked across the dark, slushy street. Three blocks over, the street zoned to service the surrounding business area was alive with jazz and late dining, but here it was still. Peri would use the front door. She was too intuitive to not know they might be there, too proud to not face them head-on.