The Operator

“That’s what you say, but you did what you did.” Jack tugged her into a run, aiming for thicker trees. “I can help. I know things. Where you stash your car, the safe house that you made and probably don’t remember.”

“You stay away from my Mantis,” she said, making it a threat. The beautiful thing could change color by altering the current running through the solar-panel paint that charged the batteries that ran it. They were illegal outside of Detroit because of the color-changing ability, but most cops didn’t know that.

But Jack only laughed, his pace slowing as they found deeper cover. “You might not need me, Peri, but I have things you do need.”

“No!” She jerked her wrist from his grip and halted. “I’m not going back to Bill. Not with you, not ever.”

“Good God, woman, I’m trying to get you out of here,” he said, but she wasn’t buying it. She could feel time beginning to mesh, the first tendrils of thought and action starting to echo within each other in her mind like two radios a millisecond apart.

“Stay out of my head,” she threatened, bringing her Glock up to bear on him, and he dropped back, hands up. “I mean it!” she screamed, frantic that she was going to lose everything—again. “I should just shoot you right now! You stay out of my head!”

“I’m not going to wipe you!” Jack exclaimed, his expression more angry than scared. “God, woman. I’m not here for Bill. I’m here for me.”

Her arm holding the Glock shook, and then time meshed, mended itself with the quiet hush of feathers falling.

Peri looked up, panic icing through her as the faint light from the distant gate flashed an old-blood red and then cleared. She was on the right side of the gate, her back against an old street tree. It was dark, cold, and she was pointing the guard’s Glock at Jack.

“I didn’t touch your mind,” Jack said impatiently, and she knew he was real, not her imagination. “I’m here for you, not Bill.” His eyes pleaded as he held out a hand. “You drafted to get us free of WEFT. I can explain, but I’d rather get out of here first.”

She lowered the Glock. “I didn’t draft to save your ass,” she said, and he grinned.

“See? I didn’t touch your mind,” he said, and a flash of memory came and went, too fast to be identified outside of a sensation of having done something extraordinary and daring. Her pulse slowed. He hadn’t touched her mind.

Her shoulders eased, and with a sudden realization, everything up to the gate came back with a painful clarity. Steiner knew she was hooked on Evocane. Michael had to kill Bill for her or she’d never be free of him. How she ended up with Jack was lost, but Michael would believe Jack before trusting her. “I need your help,” she whispered, hating herself as much as it was true.

“Damn right you do. Let’s go.”

She was still herself, and the relief of that made her pliant as she fell into old patterns and let him angle them to the bright lights of the nearby manufacturing plant. The sound of a chopper warming up drowned out the calls of men. She had done it. She’d gotten free. With Jack?

She looked behind them. Both vans were before the open gate, one smashed into a tree. “Did you kill everyone in the van?”

“Yep.”

She hated his matter-of-fact attitude. Something told her it was a long-held complaint, even if it had probably saved her life—again. “What about Allen?”

Jack turned to her. “If you wanted Allen dead, you should have shot him yourself.”

“Did you kill him?” she exclaimed, and Jack’s expression soured as he understood her thinking. “Is he alive?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t stick around to find out.”

Her pulse slowed. They hadn’t escaped together, then, and she found strength in that. Damn it, I can’t go on not knowing like this. “I want you to make a call.” Her knee was starting to throb, the dissipating adrenaline leaving behind an ache that was growing harder to ignore.

Jack slowed as she fell behind. “You said you weren’t shot.”

“How would I know if I was shot or not, Jack,” she said bitterly, stopping to pull her pant leg up. Together they looked at it in the dim light, a frown growing at the swollen mess that was slowly but surely leaking. Another scar I won’t remember getting.

Motions fast, Jack ripped a strip of cloth from his already tattered shirt. The sound of a chopper warming up was growing. It wouldn’t be long before they started walking the area with dart guns and flashlights.

“What. Now?” she said as he crouched down and jerked her pant leg up higher.

“You want to bleed all the way to the parking lot?” he said tightly. “We can be out of here in five minutes, across the border in a few hours, and from there, wherever you want.”

It was tempting, more than he knew, but even if Jack was telling the truth, Bill would never let her go. “I want you to call Michael,” she said, thinking his fingers felt familiar as he probed her skin to see whether there was a bullet in there. “You’re going to tell him that after Bill got me hooked on Evocane, I accelerated myself. I want you to tell him Silas can’t duplicate the Evocane, and I’ll be defecting to Bill when it runs out. And I want you to tell Michael that Bill used him and that he never had any intention of moving him forward in the program.”

Jack looked up, his confusion obvious in the faint light. “Why would I do that?”