The Operator

The chopper swung close, and when the spotlight hit her, she stopped, hair whipping into her eyes as she shot at it. Immediately it angled away, but not before she took out its light.

The puttering roar of the Gremlin never sounded so good, and Peri limped faster, fumbling for the door and almost getting it in her face when Jack leaned across the seat and shoved it open. “Let’s go!” he shouted, and she lurched into the brittle-cold vinyl, her knee flashing into agony.

The door hit her calf on the bounce, and then she made it, glad it hadn’t crushed her foot as she settled into her seat, fumbling for the seat belt while Jack wove in and around the parked cars for the exit. She braced herself as he took a corner fast and they found the road.

“Interstate,” she breathed, pointing it out, and her eyes closed against the pain as he skidded around the corner. The car roared ahead, the jostling finally easing as they found a street.

Her eyes cracked in the new smoothness, and she took a careful breath. Jack sat beside her, hands gripping the wheel tight as he wove the ugly car through the few vehicles on the road at this hour as if they were standing still. Opti was going small behind them, and she began to wonder whether they just might have done it. For the moment, she thought as she turned in the seat to look behind them.

“A Gremlin?” Jack said. “You wanted a Gremlin?”

She looked at the gearshift, deciding she’d chosen poorly. “Firebirds are shit on ice,” she said, feeling her pockets for the guard’s phone. It was humming, and she looked to see it was Steiner. Allen was caught, then, and had told them she had the man’s phone. But he’s alive.

“Okay. I’ll give you that. But I’m picking the next car,” he said, clearly curious when she set the phone on the seat, screen side down. “Border?”

“Downtown,” she said, not liking having to show him her comic-book apartment. It had been her safe spot since she was eighteen and had bought the entire building for five hundred dollars and a promise to renovate. But in hindsight, she’d probably already shown it to him, and she slumped when she turned the car’s heat on and it only blew cold air.

Clearly not liking her choice of destinations, Jack inched the speed up to a hundred, pushing for more but hardly getting the needle to move. He zipped around the night-driving semis as if he were playing a racing game. “You going to answer that phone?” he asked when it buzzed again.

“What’s it to you?” Blood was soaking through her pant leg, and she looked over the car for something else to wrap it in, finding nothing.

“Will you cut me some slack!” he exclaimed, fingers tightening on the wheel. “I’m trying to make it up to you. If you would just let me render something back, I—”

Let him render something back? “You could what?” she interrupted, the pain from her knee fueling her anger. “You honestly think I’m going to let you into my mind? Ever again?”

“I can’t pretend those three years didn’t happen,” he said. “They did. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” She was angry, and it was all she could do to not shoot him right then and there, but he was driving. “You erased my memory,” she said bitterly, not believing he was bringing this up here and now. “Years of it. To keep me oblivious and dumb. You touch my mind again, and I will open your throat and walk away. Got it? I have one thing I want you to do, and we’re done.”

Jack looked at her. His face, lit from the glow of the dash, was hard to read. “Your complaint is valid,” he finally said.

“Don’t try to make me laugh.” Her foot was cold, and she tugged her pant leg down again to deal with later. “I’m not going back to Bill. We get out of here clean, you make the call, you go your way, I go mine. Actually, there’s no reason you can’t make the call right now.”

“This is stupid,” Jack said. “We could be over the border and gone in an hour.”

It was an overly generous estimation with her knee bleeding like this. “Drive,” she said. “I’ll hold the phone to your ear.”

“Now?” Jack stared at her. “You’re serious about this? Peri, Bill doesn’t even like Michael. He’s going to retire him the same hour you come back. I promise you.”

Promise. She doubted he even knew what that meant beyond a way to convince people to do what he wanted. And she doubted that Bill would permanently “retire” Michael. He’d always be a threat, stuffed away in some cell in case Bill ever needed his talents again.

“You promise me?” she said as she held the phone for him to punch in Michael’s cell. “I’m not coming back,” she added as it rang. “If he’s this side of the sod, I’m forever looking over my shoulder. Tell Michael I’m hooked and accelerated. That as soon as I run out of Evocane I’m coming in, and that Bill never intended to accelerate him. Make it convincing so he comes after me.”

“Babe.”

“Call me that one more time, I’ll break your kneecap.”

He snuck a glance at her, lowering his speed as she held the phone to his ear. She heard the connection click open, and she put her free hand on her Glock, sitting on her lap. Jack’s eyes pinched at the corners as he remembered something. Probably her shooting him in the back. Yeah, she’d pull the trigger, and he knew it.

“Michael,” he said when someone said hello. “Can you talk?”