The Drafter Page 13

  Her focus went distant as she pulled the stitches out, her faint grimace deepening as she looked at the black, cheap fabric bags on tiny plastic rollers that she’d bought this morning, Allen patiently walking her through how to do it with her phone. Apparently no one used cards anymore since the system-wide hack in ’28. She was sure she had better luggage at her apartment, something with thick leather and big wheels that turned when she did. She’d tripped on her new stuff twice going from the car to security. Their escorts weren’t happy about having to check their weapons, but her knitting needles went through with no problem—the smug satisfaction of which helped rub out her embarrassment at not knowing how to pay for things.

  They were on their way somewhere warm that required a passport, and she kept shoving her vague unease down. Bill had blamed the alliance as the reason to avoid her apartment, but Peri suspected that Bill knew that she, like most drafters, kept a private diary. They wouldn’t let her in until they found it and ascertained if she was dirty, or if it was just Jack. Sighing, she wrote off finding her past that way. She wasn’t on vacation, she was on paid leave while they investigated her.

  The only thing that had come from her apartment besides her knitting had been a cat named Carnac whom she didn’t remember. He remembered her, though. Bill was watching him while they were gone, though it was likely his secretary who was checking the cat’s food and cleaning the litter pan.

  Her head hurt, and she felt the bumps and hesitations of the knits and purls of one of those odd rows pulling out all the way to the backs of her eyes. Who names their cat Carnac?

  Bump . . . bump, bump, bump, and a smooth patch of knits pulled from the scarf, and then bump . . . bump, bump, bump again, the knots thumping like dots and dashes.

  Shit. Peri froze, recognizing the Morse code end symbol knitted into her scarf. Panicking, she looked at the yarn spilled on her lap like the wasted message it was. She’d knitted herself a message in Morse code in case she drafted, like writing a message on her palm. And like an idiot, she hadn’t recognized it. She’d never done that before. At least, not that she remembered.

  This is wrong. Pulse fast, she looked up. Impatient businessmen and parents wrangling toddlers fought for the chance to preboard. The two security stooges across from her were oblivious, one stretching as he looked for Allen, clearly anxious now that the area was getting busy. Suddenly, she didn’t want to get on that plane.

  Her mouth went dry, but her fingers moved smoothly as she carefully put the needles back on what was left. Three lines. Three out of nine.

  Exhaling, she ran her fingers across the first row of knits and purls, feeling the sporadic purls as dots and dashes.

  HARRY LENORD

  Harry? She knew him. He worked out of the Seattle office.

  GINA TRECHER

  Shit, that was Harry’s drafter. It was a list, and most of it was gone.

  BILL IS CORRUPT.

  Peri’s breath caught, and it was as if the world turned sideways. Bill is corrupt? My God, her world was falling apart, and if she couldn’t trust Bill, she couldn’t trust anyone.

  Slowly Peri pulled the last three lines of the message out and into oblivion. Fingers winding it back on the ball, she sent her eyes over the terminal as options flashed through her. Were they people to contact? Avoid? One thing was sure: she wasn’t getting on the plane.

  Giving her security detail a bland smile, she stuffed the needles and yarn into her carry-on and took out her phone. Her first delight at the new glass technology had waned somewhere between trying to find her address book and the look the saleswoman had given her when Allen had shown her how to use the purchase app. She thought it ridiculous that she could change her car’s color but didn’t know how to access her voicemail.

  Muscle memory would eventually triumph, though, and she scrolled through the dialed numbers to see whom she’d been talking to. Her brow furrowed when she realized her mother’s number wasn’t on it. Allen had said she’d called her Friday. Her frown deepened at an odd exchange, and wondering if her mother had moved, she hit callback, flicking her short hair out of the way as she looked up at her and Allen’s security. They weren’t here to keep her safe. They were here to keep her from running.

  “Top of Charlotte,” a pleasant but recorded voice came through Peri’s phone, and her focus blurred. Silas mentioned Charlotte. “Hours are four thirty p.m. to ten a.m., seven days a week. To make a reservation, please leave a callback number.”

  Pulse quickening, Peri hung up before the beep. Silas had said she’d been on a task. Her black eye put it about two days ago—Jack’s and her last mission. She wanted to retrace her steps without Opti—without Allen. If Opti didn’t know she’d guessed the location of her last task, they wouldn’t look for her there right away. Maybe.

  Peri exhaled, casual as she shoved her phone in a pants pocket, not her purse. She was ditching the bag, but the phone she’d keep a while longer. Her wallet was already in her back pocket. She’d miss her purse, but walking off with it would raise red flags.

  Eyes scanning the terminal, she quickly marked three women. All were her size, traveling alone, and at different gates. And thanks to the airline cramming too many flights into too little space, they’d all be boarding within thirty minutes of each other.

  She wasn’t getting on that plane. Allen wasn’t her anchor. Her anchor was dead. A snarky alliance operative named Silas had more answers than she did. Charlotte might tell her something, but first she had to get them looking everywhere but where she was going.

  An announcement came over the speaker that her flight would preboard in twenty minutes. Peri looked at her clean palm, fingers curling over it. She’d left her necklace pen at Allen’s, at his insistence. The trip was supposed to be downtime, not a task, he’d said. I’m a trusting idiot.

  The security guard chatting across from her brought her head up, and she smiled at Allen as he wove through the scattered luggage, two cups of blessed caffeine in his hands. Allen had been a perfect gentleman last night, sleeping on his couch and making her breakfast when she got up late. He might not be her anchor, but he’d been someone’s—he had the pampering down.

  “Here you go, Peri. Half a pump of caramel syrup. Just how you like it.”

  The cup was warm in her hand, and she took a careful sip. Just how I like it? she thought, deciding that, yes, this was good, making her wonder if Bill had found her diary already and was coaching Allen. The more comfortable she was, the more likely she’d believe their story. And she was becoming convinced it was a story. She’d seen Bill’s thread of anger-driven fear last night. He needed something from her. The names she’d just destroyed, perhaps? Chances were good the original was still somewhere.

  The three security people were getting uptight about the increasing press of passengers, and Peri unclenched her jaw when one of the women she’d been watching suddenly stood. Trundling her luggage behind her, she headed for the bathroom.

  Crap. Why couldn’t it have been the one with the Dries van Noten coat? “Watch my things?” she asked Allen as if they were the best of friends, and he nodded, oblivious. “Be right back,” she added, making a point to set her purse beside him as she waited for the woman guard to stand. There was no way they were going to let her out of their sight, even to use the facilities.

  “Sorry,” Peri said to the female guard, regret almost a pain as she left the jacket and snappy cap beside Allen. “I hate plane commodes.”

  The guard looked to be just out of college, especially in the civvies she had on, but her Opti-boot-camp haircut gave her away. Peri hoped she wouldn’t follow her in. Unless the woman had undergone additional training before joining Opti’s security, her self-defense would be limited. Even so, downing anyone with a single blow was chancy.

  Peri’s gut tightened and she swung her arms as she followed the woman in the blah brown coat into the bathroom. Sure enough, her escort followed her in. Peri scanned the corners to find the cameras, and then turn
ed to go into the first half of the bathroom while the woman in the brown coat wrangled her luggage the other way. She had a few moments to act—that was it.

  Her side of the bathroom had a woman at the hand dryer. Peri grabbed a bunch of brown paper and soaked it into a soggy mess, using it to pat her neck and cool herself. Finally the woman at the dryer left. From the other wing of the bathroom, a toilet flushed.

  Peri moved. With a decisive gesture, she flung the wad of paper at the camera in the corner with a strong sideways throw. It hit with a splat and stuck. Turning a hundred eighty degrees, she tucked her right leg and pivoted on her left. The guard’s eyes widened. She reached for her absent gun, and Peri’s right foot connected with her head. Crying out, the woman fell back into the stalls, legs and arms flailing. Peri followed her in, grabbing her hair and slamming her head down on the metal piping.

  She quit moving. Peri backed up, breathless. A soft splat told her the wad of paper had fallen. Chances were good that no one would investigate if she could get the woman’s legs tucked into the stall in time.

  “Sorry,” Peri whispered as she pulled the guard into an undignified, slumped, seated position, locking the door and rolling into the adjacent stall. Brushing herself off, she shook out her hair and strode boldly out and over to the other side of the bathroom. If she was lucky . . .

  She was.

  “What was that?” the woman said as she primped at the mirror. Her coat was off and draped over the raised handle of her rolling bag. Her purse was on the tiny shelf.

  A pair of feet moved in one of the stalls. She didn’t have time to take care of the camera. “I am so sorry,” she said, grabbing her fist with her other hand and swinging her elbow into the side of the woman’s head. The woman cried out as Peri struck, reaching for the sink as Peri followed it up with a punch to her jaw.

  “Hey!” the woman coming out of a stall exclaimed, but the first woman was down and Peri crouched beside her, feeling her pockets for her ticket. She hated this. These people were not criminals, but she needed the three minutes of disorientation this would give her.

  “Boarding pass!” Peri demanded as she stood from her crouch, the woman’s pass in hand, and the next woman coming into the bathroom changed her mind and fled. “Give me your boarding pass!” Peri said again, and the woman backed up into the stall, her face white.

  “Take it!” she said, throwing it at Peri.

  Peri scooped it up. Now Opti would focus on two flights. Grabbing the handle of the first woman’s bag, she walked out of the bathroom.

  “Stop her!” the woman in the bathroom shouted. “Someone call 911!”

  She had ten seconds—tops. A wash of panic hit her as she realized she was committed and on her own. If they caught her now, she’d be incarcerated in an Opti jail forever.

  I need a coat before I get to baggage claim, she thought, her fast pace fitting right in as she hustled down the hallway. Wadding the tickets up, she threw them away. There was a commotion behind her, an argument between two passengers, and she took a quick right into an open restaurant. Passing a table, she lifted the nearby unattended coat. It was scratchy with nylon, but it was long and the color was right. She picked up a man’s hat at a food kiosk. Five seconds later she was back in the hallway. They’d be missed, but all she had to do was go faster than the uproar, and people usually wasted time trying to get someone to help them instead of taking action. Allen wouldn’t make that mistake. She’d seen it in his eyes last night.

  Adrenaline pounded through her when the “Mr. All-on” page went out, telling airport personnel to check in and watch for anything unusual. That was why she’d taken the tickets. They’d shut everything down if they thought she was catching another flight. Dealing with angry passengers would give her more time to get out of the airport. It was a trap with many holes, and she was going out the front door.

  The woman’s borrowed luggage was of higher quality than hers, holding a straight line as she trundled down the moving walkway, heading for baggage claim. Head lowered, she avoided the electric cart with six uniforms on it speeding past. Her phone hummed from a back pocket, and she shut it down when she recognized Bill’s number.

  But her cool façade was wearing thin. Staring dead ahead, she strode by the security gate. Someone else’s cheap perfume rose from the borrowed coat, sticking in her throat. Clusters of suits and ties were refastening shoes and gathering belongings. She dodged around a family with a stroller. Baggage claim was down an escalator, and from there she’d be gone. She’d probably been on camera since popping that poor woman in the bathroom. The escalator would be one of the first records they looked at, seeing as everything funneled through it.

  And yet she smiled as she imagined Allen, or maybe Bill, jammed into some trashy back room among half-empty coffee cups and wadded-up bags of chips, scanning security tapes to find her. By the time they looked, it’d be too late for anything but figuring out how she’d done it. The hat wasn’t going to help much longer.

  That would, though, she thought as she spotted a family headed for baggage, struggling with two kids in a twin stroller and two more trailing behind.

  “Need some help?” Peri said, and the harried woman glanced up, her suspicion evaporating as she saw Peri’s apparent innocence and free hand. “I can take a bag,” she added, and the woman handed Peri hers.

  “Thank you so much,” the woman said as she grabbed the hand of the smallest child. “I’m not flying again until they have their driver’s licenses.”

  “Where did you come in from?” Peri asked as she tucked in behind them to become part of a family instead of a single woman on her own.

  “Boston,” she said, her accent heavy as she got on the escalator and sighed. “It’s my granddad’s birthday. Maybe his last one. Or I’d never fly out here with all of them.”

  They descended slowly, the kids trying to walk backward while holding on to the moving handrail. At the base of the escalator, a pair of industrial boots turned into a set of thick blue trousers. There was a weapon holstered to the man’s waist, and Peri looked away before she and the family got low enough for the guy in the blue to see a face.

  “Your shoe is untied,” she said, dropping down to the little girl beside her, and the mother badgered her to stand still, worried Peri wouldn’t finish before they got to the end of the escalator. Peri’s fingers fumbled, and the moving steps began to sink level. She could see his boots, and heart pounding, she stood, turning to grab the rolling bag. Looking back as if worried it might catch, she stepped off the escalator in the wake of the noisy family.

  Heart in her throat, she almost cried out when that stupid rolling bag snagged, but the guard was on his cell phone. She’d made it. “Do you have it from here?” Peri asked the woman as she shoved the bag’s handle at her. “My carousel is the other direction.” Not waiting for an answer, she walked away. A quick glance at her watch: she’d been alone for almost four minutes. The glass doors were just ahead.

  But then her breath caught and she made a sharp right turn. Allen. Somehow he’d gotten down here before her, phone to his ear and watching everyone. Damn it all to hell and back.

  Fingers shaking, Peri got in line at the coffee hut, hoping her borrowed, off-the-rack coat and black slacks would make her invisible among the businesspeople. She’d seen his wiry strength and scars last night. He was bigger than she was, and she had no doubt he’d use it to his advantage. If she had to fight, she wanted a cup of hot coffee in hand.

  “I can help who’s next!” the barista called, and she stepped forward, ordering a venti. She had cash, but she turned her phone back on and used it instead, knowing it would pop up on their security in about fifteen minutes. She’d either be in Opti’s custody or long gone by then. There was a pen by the register, and she took it, keeping it in her hand to gouge with if needed.

  She edged to the pickup counter, going still when Allen’s pacing brought him close. Freedom was a glass door away. No matter what happened next, she
was gaining that curb. If she could do it without him seeing her, all the better.

  “I don’t know, Bill,” he said into his phone, clearly irate. “She was complacent enough this morning. I grounded everything, but she’s gone. I doubt a plane was her goal, but we’re watching to see if she tries to exchange it for another flight. I’m at baggage claim.”

  Her order came up, and she took her large coffee, wishing he’d look the other way.

  “To see if she’s going to walk out the front door. Why do you think?” Allen snapped, then abruptly ended the call. “What an ass,” he added softly, and then their eyes met.

  Allen’s lips parted. “Hey!” he exclaimed, hesitating when she ambled forward to meet him. The world waited behind double glass doors, and she was tired of being afraid.

  “This is for lying to me!” Peri shouted, squeezing the cup to make the lid pop off, and then tossing the contents at him.

  He ducked, coming up angry as the scalding liquid nicked him, but her foot was already swinging. He blocked the first kick, and screaming, she backed him up onto the door’s sensor pad with two front kicks that never landed. Cooler air blew in, smelling of exhaust and icy pavement.

  “And this is for making me think I trusted you!” she shouted, grabbing a suitcase off a cart and throwing it at him with a cry of frustration.

  Allen shifted out of its way, and Peri lunged forward, grabbing his arm to swing him into the unbreakable glass doors. He hit with a satisfying thud, groaning as he slid down—out cold. Cars had stopped, and she stood over him, breathing hard. “It was a very bad vacation,” she said to the man whose suitcase she’d thrown, and he nervously smiled, clearly trying to stay out of it.

  Chin lifted, Peri strode out, crossing the road and making cars stop. A shuttle was leaving, and she swung onto it. She jerked, shocked, at the top of the stairs when she realized there was no driver, then hit the SAME key to input wherever the previous passenger had. It pulled away even before she’d found a seat.

  “You forget three years and everything changes,” she whispered. The shakes started right about then. She was alone. For the first time in five years, she was completely alone, and she felt the pen in her pocket for reassurance. What if she drafted? She’d never know what had happened. Enough blank spots in her memory, and she’d go insane.