The Operator
Page 11

Not likely, but we can play it like that, she thought, shifting her balance when the blond woman vanished into the van, reappearing immediately with two prepped syringes, one blue, one pink.
“That’s not enough Evocane,” Bill said as he took them, dropping the capped syringes behind his coat and in his suit coat’s pocket. Peri stiffened, seeing her diary already there, lost in the fight and now in his possession. “She needs a half cc,” he added, frowning at the men surrounding them, fidgeting at the approaching siren.
“Seriously?” The blond woman’s gaze darted to Peri. “That’s a lot of synapses. I thought she could only draft forty seconds.”
Bill nodded. “It’s not how long, it’s how far she reaches.” His expression shifted as the remaining cars left. There were only the six men surrounding them and the two women. “Give me the Evocane vial, Jen. Go. If we aren’t back in an hour . . .” He smiled, his teeth catching the streetlight as he handed the nearest man his Glock. “We’ll be back in two.”
The slim blond woman reluctantly gave him a vial, and Bill tucked it away. “Come on, Jen,” the woman behind the wheel demanded, and Peri inched forward as their security broke up and let them pass. The men got into the van, and it drove off even before the door rolled shut.
Peri watched it bounce and jostle back onto the road, vanishing quickly. She turned to Bill, listening to the night and feeling the chill through her coat. It wasn’t unusual for Bill to take a personal hand in dealing with his drafters. He’d been her handler since she’d graduated from Opti Tech. But still, it felt odd, just her and him, in the cold, in the dark.
Bill stood before her and waited, wisely giving her a moment to assess the situation. They both knew she couldn’t draft. Bill had her on weight and was as good as if not better than her at hand-to-hand, enjoying hitting things into submission whereas she used it only to evade. The smell of spent gunpowder still lingered, but she’d seen him give his Glock to one of his security. She could run, but the lure of what he hinted at was too much to walk away from—and Bill knew it.
Not to mention he’s got my diary, she thought, the idea he might read about the year she had studied and prepped with Allen and Silas to bring him down intolerable.
“Shall we go?” he finally said as the sirens became loud, gesturing to the nearby bright lights at the corner and the dance club.
I am such an idiot. “You first,” she said, and amendable to that, he turned on a heel, taking a moment to stomp the snow off his shoes when he reached the salted sidewalk. She’d lost her scarf somewhere, and it was cold.
“I want to apologize for darting you with Amneoset,” he said as she came even with him, staying a little behind and to the left. “But you wouldn’t have listened if I had just walked in and ordered a coffee. Besides, I had to find out who was better, you or Michael.”
She said nothing, her eyebrow going up as she looked askance at him.
“Okay, you’re right,” Bill conceded as they passed under a streetlight. “But you have to admit he has skills.”
“Skills? He’s psychotic. You should have thrown him back into whatever psych ward you got him from,” she muttered, knowing that most drafters were found there. She’d been an exception, her wealthy mother overreacting to a small incident, her fuss getting Peri recognized by Opti and brought in before she was labeled insane by well-meaning health-care providers who had no capacity to accept that what she was experiencing was real.
“You, though, are the best,” Bill said as if she’d said nothing. “My best operative I’ve ever had the privilege to train. No, the best I’ve watched evolve, because this is who you are, Peri. You are perfect. Beautiful, deadly, perfect. She wants you for the live trial. To make sure it works before accelerating the rest. I just want you back where you belong.”
She. He had said “she.” Someone else was pulling Bill’s strings, funding him now that the government wasn’t. That van had looked rather tatty for Bill.
“I want to make you into a god,” he said, and she snorted in disbelief, stoically crossing against the light when they reached the corner. But Michael had seemed to believe it was possible, so possible that he had been incensed that she was getting it and he wasn’t. You couldn’t fake anger like that. Psychotic or not. Perhaps Bill was playing them both, though.
Head down and hands in his pockets, Bill paced quickly beside her, his steps totally out of synch with hers. “I know what you’re thinking, but if I wanted to wipe you and start over, I could have done it already.”
“So you say,” she admitted, glancing back at her coffee shop as the cops drove by, slow with searchlights from the car playing over the scuffed snow spotted with blood. She couldn’t go back, but she’d known that before she’d locked the door and threw the cat carrier full of dishes at Michael. They’d let Carnac go. He’d be okay, but it bothered her. “How did you find me?”
Bill chuckled. “It wasn’t easy. I never thought you’d use a medical facility to hide your radiation marker. It was Allen, and let me tell you, it’s been a test of patience, letting him range as he wanted this past year. I knew he’d eventually bring me to you.”
Allen. But she was glad it hadn’t been Silas who’d blown her cover. Hunching deeper into her coat, she thought of her diary, wanting it back. Before them, noise and laughter spilled into the street as they neared the line of cold women with bare legs and men stoically listening to them complain, waiting for their chance to go in.
“I’m going to need to know if you want to work with him again by the end of the week,” Bill said, adding “Allen” when she looked up, confused. “Personally, I think it’s a mistake, but that could only be my wish to beat the hell out of him. Seriously, if you want him, let me know before I give in to myself. Otherwise, Jack is available.”
“I’m not working with either of them,” she whispered, shivering from more than the wind coming in from across the Detroit River. She stopped. They had reached the front door. “You have nothing I want,” she said, his confidence turning her stomach.
“Yet here we are.” With a cool confidence, he handed the doorman a large bill. The velvet rope dropped, and he crossed it as the crowd complained. He turned when he realized Peri was still on the sidewalk. “We broke the memory barrier, Peri. It took almost forty years, but we can do it.” He hesitated, a thick hand extended. She knew how it would feel, curving around her waist, and she frowned. “Are you coming? It’s just talk.”