The Operator Page 11

  “I’m surprised she let you out of her sight,” Allen said, looking over his shoulder when they reached a small fire door.

  “She thinks she’s giving me enough rope to hang myself.” Peri eased the door open and slipped into a dull hallway lined with doors.

  “Are you?”

  Peri sighed. “Probably.” It was warmer, and her pulse was fast. Both ways looked equally unpromising, but she turned to the left and the heavier scuffs on the floor. “You think he’s in the lab?” Allen guessed, looking at his schematic on his phone as they loped along.

  Peri searched her intuition, not surprised when she saw Jack cross the top of the hallway and vanish to the right. He had a yogurt cup in his hand, scraping out the last bits. “Lunchroom,” she said, breaking into a jog. “Call it a gut feeling.”

  Allen looked up, tucking his phone away and lurching to come even with her. “Why would they be in the lunchroom?”

  “Because the walk-in freezers hide heat signatures,” she said, turning the corner to find a double set of doors with BREAK ROOM stenciled on them. She slung her rifle and slipped her new CIA handgun from its holster. Allen did the same. “I ever tell you about the time I got caught by the Russian mob in a dance club in Florida?” she whispered, peeking in past the cracked doors to a silent, shadowed lunchroom. Jack was there, getting a soda out of the machine. “They trusted their technology more than a set of real eyes.” She slipped inside, easing to the wall to make room for Allen, tight behind her. “Believe it or not, I can fit in one of those tiny wine coolers.”

  Jack turned from the vending machine, a bottle of pop in his hand. “She smelled like cheap red wine for a week,” he said, and Allen started, jerking Peri to the side.

  Lips in a wide grin, Jack dropped the bottle to reach for his weapon. Red fizz sprayed the walls, and Peri gasped when Allen shoved a table over to hide behind. There was a muffled pop of Jack’s silencer, and a louder crack of Allen’s slug. “Bill!” Jack shouted, finger to his ear and running for the hall. “She’s in the lunchroom!”

  And then Jack was gone.

  Red fizz continued to spurt and hiss, and slowly the bottle settled until red sugar gurgled in a flood and finally stopped.

  Bill is here. Shocked, Peri peered above the edge of the table. “I thought he was a hallucination,” she stammered, and Allen, busy changing his clip to a magazine, looked up.

  “What?”

  “A hallucination,” she said again. “I saw him in the hallway, and I thought he was a hallucination!”

  Irate, Allen took her weapon and changed her clip to a magazine as well. “You like it here, or you want to move?”

  “Kitchen,” she said, lurching forward when the doors to the hall exploded inward.

  Head down and gripping Allen’s arm, she ran for the swinging double doors. There was no option to stand and fight. There was only trying to find a more secure spot. Bill hadn’t come alone either.

  “Good God, how many people are out here?” Allen said, right behind Peri as they went past the silent industrial kitchen counters. There’d be a service door after the dishwasher.

  They weren’t going to make it.

  Shouts sounded behind them, and the almost inaudible puffs of high-projectile darts. Allen cried out. Peri shoved him into a corner and turned, firing with a rhythmic satisfaction, pushing them back. “You hit?” she shouted, firing off another round, pop, pop, pop, pop. “I said, are you hit bad!”

  “Shoulder.” Allen’s hand lifted from his shirt to show a dart graze. “Damn, these hurt more than a direct lodge.”

  Relief spilled into her, then worry. “If you say so.” Pop, pop, pop. She ducked down, not feeling as secure as she might. It was her bullets to their darts, but a dart could be just as lethal as a slug. Men were shouting, but they were safe for the moment, trapped between a walk-in fridge and a service counter. Between them and the attackers was a huge stove and more counters. Grimacing, she fitted her earpiece back in and thumbed her radio. “Harmony?” she said, not ever going to call her Viper. “We’re pinned down in the kitchen!”

  Allen’s eyes showed his worry when a garbled response came back. There was actual gunplay at her end, and then Harmony shouting “Get out! Get out now!” Peri’s attention fixed on Allen’s, but she froze when Michael’s voice slithered into her ear, icy and clear. “Peri. I’m going to kill your team. Then I’m coming for you.”

  She jumped at the pop of a gun. Harmony . . . But Peri could hear the woman grunting in anger in the background, struggling. It hadn’t been her taking the hit. Not yet.

  Allen jerked his earpiece out. “They knew what they were up against.”

  “No they didn’t.”

  Eyes pinched, he looked at the ceiling. “Upper level is open. If we can get in it, we have free access to the entire complex.” Allen’s attention shifted behind her. “Down!” he shouted, handgun rising as a man in Opti gear sprang from an adjacent counter and shot at them.

  A hammer slammed into her chest, hardly shifting her though her insides felt as if they had exploded. Gasping, she fell back, legs askew. Allen hit the floor, his hand pressed to his chest as blood leaked past his Kevlar vest. It was never meant to handle what had hit it.

  So much for the darts, she thought, fear lighting through Peri as the call went out that they were down. Down and dying. Someone kicked her rifle and Glock away. Men ringed them, afraid to touch her.

  Allen groaned in pain when they were pulled up and apart, his legs sliding across the linoleum. Her vision swam as she lifted her head, the pain familiar as it radiated out, but Peri smiled through it, the blood leaking past her fingers indescribably warm. Her eyes met Allen’s, and at his nod, the slow buildup of pressure in her mind peaked, eddied, and then overflowed.

  With a satisfied, agonized smile, Peri breathed in the rising blue sparkles and shifted the timelines back.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  Bill’s thick fingers waved the scrolling images on the screen to the trash to bring up a new set. His joints were knobby from being broken too many times in his martial arts practice, but wave technology with its holoscreens and light sensors was adaptable, and his hand’s inflexibility didn’t slow him down as it did with the rapidly outdating glass technology.

  Standing against the wall and away from the door, he puffed out his cheeks in thought, glad he’d taken the time to shave on the plane. He was of the same mind as Peri that a poorly dressed thief was a lowbrow thief, and that was not the impression he wanted to give the WEFT force headed his way—even if he was in a tight spot financially.

  Helen’s money had set him up in a shadow of what he was accustomed to. His office was tatty and his hired muscle was only street-rated, easily surprised and shocked into immobility. He missed his combat-ready force. There was a growing need in him to walk away, to start small and grow. But for that, he needed money, money that wasn’t tied to a woman who thought science was her biddable bitch. Good thing he knew how to find it. This one task would allow him to cut his ties with Helen as well as start Peri on the path to bring her home. He did value efficiency.

  The images of St. Louis’s industrial park were hard to decipher in the dusk, but a glint of light caught his attention, and he zoomed the borrowed high-Q drone’s eye onto the building. Satisfaction rumbled through him as he found the WEFT force. Two cars and a van. No movement on the grounds. They were likely already inside.

  “Find them?” Michael asked as he swiped through his phone. “I got word forty seconds ago that they were in the building.”

  Stifling a surge of pique, Bill closed the link and looked up at the five men in combat gear waiting for direction. Michael was behind Everblue’s CEO’s desk, feet on the imported wood as they waited for the download to finish. The scratches from the dish shards across his face were almost healed, but the cut Peri had dug into the man with her knife was red-rimmed and raw-looking under his eye. Bill knew it bothered Michael just by the fact he had refused to c
over it. “Feet off the desk,” Bill said, shoving them off.

  “You’d get there faster if you embraced new technology.” Michael resettled himself, but his feet were on the floor, and Bill’s tension eased.

  “How much longer?” Bill asked, and Michael tilted his phone to check. A curious sensation tripped up Bill’s spine. The sale of the carbon scrubber would set him up in an autonomous building with tighter security and the influence he was accustomed to, but it was the chance that Peri might show that had him here.

  “Still scooping it up.” Michael set his phone down.

  “It would go faster if you would stop checking your email every five minutes.”

  “It’s not my email, it’s a first-person shooter game.” Michael eyed him. “Why am I here? You’re not letting me do anything.”

  “You’re here so you don’t fuck everything up,” Bill said, vowing to stop swearing when Michael chuckled. “You’re like a five-year-old helping Mommy in the kitchen,” Bill muttered, and Michael’s mirth vanished. “It would be easier if you were somewhere else, but then I’d have two messes to clean up instead of one.”

  Frustrated, Bill motioned for three of the five men to do a sweep. They moved out with a relieved quickness, not liking Michael’s cold unpredictability any more than Bill did. He was starting to believe the smart man had realized he wanted Peri not as a test subject but working, and that he had no intention of accelerating Michael. It didn’t matter. As long as Michael believed that playing along would further his goal, he wouldn’t fuck up Bill’s plans beyond repair.

  Bill touched his dart gun, loaded with Evocane. He’d rather be with Jack perusing the building, but he didn’t dare risk Peri killing Michael if their paths should cross. Not yet, kiddo. Timing is everything.

  “Bill!” Jack shouted, his voice excited as it came over the live feed through his phone. “She’s in the lunchroom!”

  Tension jerked him straight, almost painful. His Peri was here. He’d known she’d come.

  Michael rose, stretching to his full six-foot-four height. “About time.”

  “Sit,” Bill barked, not caring whether Michael saw how excited he was. “Finish gathering the data. That’s what you’re here for. That knee of yours she stabbed makes you slow.”

  Silent, Michael eased himself back down, and Bill checked his Glock, shoving it into a holster and taking his dart gun in hand.

  “You two, stay with him,” Bill said, seeing Michael’s dissatisfaction. “He doesn’t move from this room until the data is uploaded,” Bill added, and the remaining security reluctantly dropped back.

  Eager, Bill slipped into the hall and jogged to the kitchen, muscles moving easily and enjoying the rush. He liked the thrill of the field. Missed it. The thought to be Peri’s anchor when this was settled crossed his mind, immediately dismissed with a smile. She was too much the queen bitch, and he couldn’t imagine the two of them in the same apartment, much less the same bed. He’d much rather think of her as a daughter to be disciplined and shaped than as a lover to be discarded at will.

  He turned the corner, twisting to a sliding halt at the burst of gunfire behind him at the CEO’s office. Damn it, Michael. What now? Peri was on the other side of the building. Jack had said so. But then a feminine scream of anger split the dark hallway.

  Peri, he thought, anger blinding him to everything else as he ran back down the hall to burst into the CEO’s office. Two men in CIA combat gear were down, presumably dead in their blood-splattered puddles of red. Three more knelt with Glocks to their heads. Michael stood over a fourth, his knife at a long, feminine throat, his hand pulling her hair back to expose her neck.

  Furious, he shoved Michael off her, only to find it wasn’t Peri. Gagging, the African-American woman shouted, “Get out! Get out now!” into her radio before she was yanked back to a kneel with the rest of her team.

  “You didn’t take her radio?” Bill seethed, looking at the mess they were going to leave.

  “It wasn’t going to matter in five seconds,” Michael said shortly as he snatched up the discarded radio and thumbed the channel open. “Peri. I’m going to kill your team. Then I’m coming for you.”

  “You are so damn melodramatic,” Bill said impatiently, then jerked when Michael pulled his Glock, aiming it at the first man in line and pulling the trigger. The woman gasped as blood and hair made a fantastic pattern on the wall. Jerking, the man fell.

  “Three left,” Michael said into the radio, then threw it from him when he realized the connection was broken. Thin lips pressed together, Michael shifted his aim and twitched his finger. His Glock fired, and a second man died. This time the woman jumped, her lip bleeding where she bit it. Bill frowned, well aware the Glock would turn on him if he didn’t give Michael enough freedom to feel in control. But every shot ate away at his bottom line, and it was frustrating.

  “Has Peri been accelerated?” Michael said as he moved to the last man.

  “You are making a bloody hell of a mess,” Bill protested, seeing the sale of the carbon scrubber turn to nothing, but he was curious himself.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the CIA agent said. Arm extended, Michael coolly shot the back of his head.

  Bill’s breath slipped from him even as his heart pounded. The pop of the handgun sounded ridiculously soft, and the man’s brains hitting the floor made an ugly, sudden splat.

  Stifling a cry of anger, the woman glared at them, her hands behind her head going white-knuckled. Damn it, Bill thought, frowning at the tissue and fluid staining the carpet. There was no way they could clean this up sufficiently fast enough; the information they’d come for was useless. Peri could always get information without the threat of death. She was an artist.

  “Lies are temporary,” Michael said as he checked his chamber. Blood speckled him, hardly seeming enough for the four men dead before him. “I always see through them, and it’s vexing. You’re not going to lie, are you?” he asked the woman kneeling before him.

  The woman was pissed, even as she shook in shock. Michael shoved the man guarding her away, leaning over her so his face was inches from hers, the gun barrel just under her eye. “Is Peri Reed accelerated?” he asked again. “Tell me!” Michael shouted, and she jumped, jaw tight and eyes closed.

  But Michael dropped back, brushing her hair from her eyes and studying her. “Loyalty,” he said softly, but there was no gentleness in his expression. “It’s misplaced. Harmony.”

  Her eyes flicked open, surprised, and Michael almost preened in the attention.

  “Kill her or don’t,” Bill said grimly. “We’re done here.” He turned to go, but the woman gasped, and he hesitated; he’d just about had it with Michael’s uncouth ham-handedness.

  “I know your name, yes,” Michael said, his thin lips inches from her ear, the Glock keeping her unmoving. “Your loyalty is misplaced. Your gut tells you not to trust her. You should listen to it. Peri has done ugly things. The White Plague, the first wave of Asian population decimation, the assassination of troublesome senators.” He wiped a spot of blood from her with the muzzle of the Glock, and Harmony stiffened, pulling back from the warm metal. “She is not a nice woman. You don’t like her. I can see it in your face. Is she accelerated? Is she waiting for her boyfriend to duplicate the Evocane first? How close is he?”

  Bill hesitated, torn.

  “Bring back my team, and maybe we’ll talk,” she said, voice cracking.

  Michael smiled and inclined his head. “Too late. Even the best drafter can only manage ninety seconds.”

  “Good to know. But you can go to hell.”

  “Ladies first.”

  Bill saw the woman’s death in Michael’s eyes before the trigger moved. He heard the hammer click. He saw the puff of smoke as if in slow motion . . . and then the smoke shifted blue as time halted.

  For an instant, sparkles cascaded over him as time reset, and then the world shifted.

  Bill jumped as the gun fired, and he
watched the last man die again.

  They were in a draft, and Bill turned, finding himself again standing beside Michael instead of in the hall. Before them, the woman shook in shock and anger, unaware that they were reliving her nightmare.

  “I didn’t draft,” Michael said, and Bill stiffened. Peri was on-site, and something had pushed her into drafting. Damn it, I told them no live ammunition on her.

  “Time to die, soldier girl,” Michael muttered, then ran out of the room, leaving the last CIA agent alive. The two men Bill had set to watch him followed.

  “Michael, you stupid shit,” Bill whispered, looking at the five dead men and the kneeling, empty-faced woman. “I don’t suppose you’d stay if I asked,” he said, then cold-cocked her.

  The woman collapsed without a sound.

  His hand hardly feeling it, Bill bolted into the hallway. He had to get there before Michael ruined everything.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Her vision shifted blue. The pain in her chest vanished. Beside her, Allen groaned in relief. She exhaled sparkles, and they sucked up the blue until her vision was again crystal clear.

  They were back behind the oven, and she stood, squeezing off a single shot at the approaching man without pity. He fell back, dead before he hit the floor. She turned to the next, finger twitching an instant before recoil. Sometimes forgetting was a blessing.

  Grunts and pained cries sandwiched themselves between the rhythmic pops. Eyes wide open, she took the sting of gunpowder into her nose. She didn’t use darts. She used slugs. Every one of them found their mark, witnessed and remembered from the previous timeline until the two timelines meshed and she forgot.

  And then there was silence. The kitchen was empty. For the moment.

  Bill is coming.

  “We gotta go,” she whispered, turning her weapon upward to fire a rapid circle into the ceiling tiles. Cool air spilled over them behind the chunks of ceiling falling on them.

  Allen got up, choking on dust as he wrestled her gun from her and changed the magazine. “Thanks,” he said, feeling his unmarked chest. “What the hell are they using? It went right through the Kevlar.”