The Operator Read online

  Bill’s “gift” of Evocane and Allen weighed heavily on her. It was a trap, one she had every reason to sniff around but no intention to trigger. She didn’t know how much Evocane Silas had left, much less how she was going to access it by tomorrow night without alerting WEFT she needed it. That withdrawal might give her away had her on edge. She had to get back to Detroit. Now.

  “Ah, do you remember your last tetanus shot, Agent Reed?”

  Distracted from her thoughts, she looked down as he finished hiding the ugly scrape under a white bandage. Her leg had been swabbed and cleaned, but the rest of her still sported the filth from their failed attempt to snag Michael and Bill, and she felt insufferably grungy.

  “I get one on my birthday on the naught years,” she said. “That would make it 2030?” It had been her mother’s idea, the uptight woman trying to find ways for her daughter to hide her spotty memory, blissfully unaware that Peri had more doctors looking after her than the president of the United States. Guilt rose, and Peri quashed it, thinking karma was a bitch. She wouldn’t know or care if I was there wheeling her to breakfast anyway, she thought.

  “You’re good, then.” Standing, the tech handed her a packet of pills. “For the pain. We can refill it if you want.”

  “Thanks.” Her eyebrows rose as she read the package. They were heavy hitters, enough to down a horse, far more than she needed. Someone wants me out for a while, she thought, pocketing the pills with no intent to use them. She’d live with her scrapes and sore knee rather than risk drugging herself into a state where she couldn’t draft.

  Not yet having a plan to get home, she hadn’t even texted Silas, and an unexpected fragile feeling dogged her, making her meek when she was usually bold, compliant when she’d usually question. She hadn’t been accelerated, and her synapses were functioning as normally as they ever did, but doubt dogged her like a cur.

  “Would you mind if I washed up before I leave?” she asked as the tech gathered his things, and he shrugged, looking at the tiny sink. “I don’t have a room.”

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  “Thanks.” Her intuition pinged as she caught his wary frown when he closed the curtain behind him. Shoes are falling, she thought, not knowing why or what it actually meant. Clearly it was a “Jack” thing. God help her, she’d been so stupid. Things might have gone differently if she hadn’t assumed he’d been a hallucination. Nice going, Peri.

  Peri slid from the exam table, dismissing her leg when it only made a dull throb. Her bag from the jet was on the chair, and she tweaked the curtain closed tighter before pulling her rank shirt over her head and dropping the expensive silk in the trash. Her black pants were ruined, and they went in on top of them. The tiny sink and paper towels were far away from the shower she wanted, but washing up was a good excuse to stay and listen to the evolving argument next door.

  “Swift is not a recoverable asset,” Steiner said, voice tight. “Reacquiring him will not further our goal.”

  “Sir, I already told Reed that we’d find him.”

  “You have no team, Agent Beam. It was all I could do to keep you from being suspended.”

  Surprise, surprise, she thought as she pulled a wad of towels to wash her arms, but Peri wasn’t leaving Allen within Opti. Pretending to go along with Bill’s offer might be her only chance to rescue him. But Bill knew all her strengths and weaknesses and wasn’t averse to using them to his own ends. That he’d hooked her on Evocane and let her flee smacked of the beginning of a long-game ploy. She hadn’t wanted this, and yet . . . now . . . even knowing Bill was manipulating her . . . she was tempted.

  Her motions sponging her arms slowed as she thought of the syringe of accelerator, somewhere within Detroit’s CIA facility. Maybe I should accelerate myself and be done with it. Warming, she continued to wash as she tried to figure out how she was going to get to Detroit when Steiner probably had them returning to Atlanta. It was Steiner’s home office, after all.

  But it was hard to stay focused. She’d lived for so long needing someone to fill in the blanks after a draft that the chance it might work and she’d be normal was unimaginable. The shock of suddenly not knowing where you were or how you got there or why people were shooting at you . . . she was tired of it.

  Across the room, Harmony continued to build up Allen’s importance in hushed, urgent tones. But it was a losing battle, and Peri could guess the end by the time she was dressed in her post-task black jeans and white top. She brushed her fingers along her empty boot sheath, feeling the lack. Her Glock and dart rifle were long gone, too. She looked up, startled, when Jack tweaked the curtain and came in.

  “You gotta go, babe,” he said, his stubble just the right amount and his tie loosened.

  Pulse hammering, Peri forced down the urge to kick him unconscious just in case. It was her intuition, nothing more. “Duh?” she whispered, unnerved that the drape never really moved.

  Jack peeked past the curtain into the main room. “I mean, you gotta go into the lion’s den to get Allen and that Evocane. If you go into withdrawal, Steiner will know you’re hooked and move you into your new cell to keep you from running back to Bill.”

  So I leave before they find out, she thought, that same flush of worry slipping through her. Zipping her leather jacket closed, Peri looked at herself in the tiny mirror, finger-combing her hair as she steadied herself. Jack slipped in behind her, and she closed her eyes, not wanting to see him standing there. He’d once been everything she’d wanted. He’d made her feel strong. It had been so good—until she realized they were lying to her. All of them. “You aren’t any different now from who you were a week ago,” he whispered, and her eyes opened.

  Maybe, but I didn’t like who I was a week ago, either, she thought.

  “We’re done. You’re dismissed,” Steiner said stiffly, and Peri looked at the curtain. Harmony’s shadow was a bare hint behind it, arms swinging as she stalked through the common area and through the med lab’s door. Her limp was obvious, but she was moving fast. She wouldn’t be that angry if she’d gotten her way, and Peri frowned, peeking past the curtain to watch Steiner follow her out, his two aides gibbering at his elbow, unsettlingly wide awake for four in the morning.

  “At least she didn’t lie to you intentionally,” Jack said, and she let the drape fall, feeling the early hour all the way to her bones.

  “But the end result was the same,” Peri whispered as the lab tech yawned over his paperwork. Harmony had been genuinely upset, and it sat oddly with Peri. It had been a long time since anyone had felt outrage on her behalf.

  Head down, she returned to her bag. It smelled like jet, and her nose wrinkled as she sorted through it to make sure her diary was still in there. An urgent need to read it came and went—that she might find a reason why her life was in the crapper if she did. Three pairs of socks and underwear. Another top. Money, she thought as she felt the bag’s strap for the bump of folded bills tucked into the concealed pouch. “What . . .” she whispered when her fingers found a flat rise where it shouldn’t be. “You little snake,” she added, face warming when a closer inspection found the audio bug wedged into the pull tab of the zipper. They’d bugged her?

  “Almost a disappointment if they hadn’t,” Jack said as Peri used her nail to pop it free. The tiny device skittered across the floor, and she stomped on it, hopefully blowing out the ears of anyone listening. The bag hadn’t been anywhere near her when Bill had called, but concerned there might be a second bug somewhere in the bag, she dug deeper. Toothbrush, hairbrush. Tiny mirror for surveillance. Everything looked clean.

  Zipping the satchel shut, she dropped it on the exam table. “This sucks,” she whispered. Jack had vanished, meaning her intuition was as unsettled as she was. That Harmony had fought a losing battle for her held more meaning than it should, that she had sought Peri out to escape with meant more. But the need to get to Detroit was so strong she could hardly bear it. Bag hoisted, she pushed the curtain aside. She had few assets,
but she could pick up more on the way.

  The tech barely acknowledged her as she came out, and she gave him a bland “thanks” and went into the hall. Head down over her phone, she reserved a flight as she wove her way upstairs, copying Silas on the receipt so he’d know where she was. Once in Detroit, she’d call him about her needing what he had left of the Evocane. He couldn’t have used it all in reverse-engineering it—could he?

  Slowly the tiled nothing and long fluorescent lights gave way to fake wood doors and glass walls. The lettering on the hall signs was the same font that Opti used, and she followed the exit signs up the wide stairs, familiar with the layout. It was almost four in the morning, and she saw no one. She began to wonder whether they were really that stupid to leave their front door open.

  Another stairway, this time carpeted, and she rose up, adrenaline making her steps fast. A quiet lobby lay beyond, and past that, St. Louis’s night-abandoned towers and streets. Forty feet was all that separated them, then five. Jiggling her duffel, she fumbled for her building card and ran it, jerking to a halt when a pleasant ding chimed instead of the glass doors opening. This is so bad for my asthma.

  “I’m sorry,” the holographic image said as it wavered into existence above the sign-in, sign-out podium. “Your card has been temporarily disabled. Please see the receptionist.”

  “Well, at least they got their zipper up,” Peri muttered, turning at the sound of someone clearing her throat.

  “Hey, hi,” Harmony said tiredly as she pushed herself away from the wall between the elevators, two coffees in her hand as she slowly approached. “Can we talk? It’s decaf.”

  Peri glanced at the locked door, then the receptionist coming out from a back room, wiping his mouth on a napkin and tucking his white collared shirt into his slacks. “You don’t happen to have a card that works, do you?” Peri asked, shifting her duffel to her other hand to gauge its weight. Not enough to knock Harmony down, but it’d give her an instant of distraction.

  “Yes. Don’t try for it, okay? I’m tired and Steiner already chapped my ass once today.”

  If that coffee hits me, I’m going to be ticked, Peri thought as Harmony halted right before her. The man at the lobby desk was now on the phone, probably calling for backup.

  “I know I said we’d retrieve him, but will you listen to the options?” Dark eyes earnest, Harmony held out a coffee.

  All the better to drug you with, my dear. Peri took it so as to lessen the chance of having it thrown at her. The impulse to lie was strong, but seeing Harmony, weight on one foot to ease her leg, hair dusty and still holding insulation fluff, she couldn’t do it. “I’m done here,” Peri said as surprise flickered across Harmony’s face. “Michael knows he’s a target. It’s over.”

  “There’s a bug in your bandage,” the woman mouthed, and disgusted, Peri sighed. At least it wasn’t in her phone. She’d grown fond of her latest and was tired of ditching them. Why did she warn me our conversation is being monitored?

  The elevator dinged, and Harmony waved off the three suits-and-guns who got out. Peri evaluated their grace as they took up a distant position between her and the night, her eyes lingering on the glass doors and her freedom beyond. Opti glass tended to be bullet resistant—which could be made to work for her if handled correctly.

  “Let me leave,” Peri said as Harmony almost collapsed into one of the postmodern chairs set companionably around a low table. “I like you, and I don’t want to mess up your hair. That must take hours.”

  Harmony gestured for her to join her. “It does, but I don’t have to do it every day. We need your help. You need ours. Allen isn’t lost, he’s just misplaced for a day or two.”

  “A day or two. Do you have any idea how long a day or two is?” Peri dropped her duffel on the table but refused to sit even as fatigue pulled at her. “Steiner has nothing I want,” she lied. “I’m leaving. It’s over. End of story, put it on the shelf.”

  Silent, Harmony sipped her coffee, her attention shifting past the glass doors and to the two cars that pulled up and parked, their headlights shining. Each one had four agents in it, clean, armed, and well rested, their suits looking classy in the bright glare of the headlamps. Seeing them, Peri shifted her weight to her other aching foot. “What are they doing? Waiting for God to say go?” Peri asked, and Harmony rubbed her forehead.

  “I’m sorry, Peri. You aren’t leaving. Steiner finally understands that the chance of you being taken by Opti and wiped is too great.” She looked up, eyes pained. “I was hoping you’d just . . . accept that. We’ll get Allen back, but you won’t be there.”

  “Don’t try to stop me. You’ve only got four beds down in the med facility.”

  Fatigue showed in Harmony’s eyes. “Give me a chance to work the system, will you?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Gaze drifting, Harmony thought for a moment, then caught Peri’s eye and deliberately looked at her bandaged leg. “We’ll get Allen back,” she said deliberately, her gaze rising to Peri’s. “I’m not letting an old white man make me a liar.”

  Peri hesitated, getting mixed signals. “When?” she barked. “Tomorrow will be too late.”

  “Tomorrow we’ll have intel and backing—”

  “Tomorrow he might be dead,” Peri protested, glad everyone was staying back, though she didn’t appreciate the way the agents were circling them, some anxious, some eager. With an irate quickness, she put her foot on the table and rolled her pant leg up to rip her bandage off. Her lips curled upon seeing the bug sandwiched between the layers of gauze. Picking it free, she dropped it into her coffee.

  A smile flickered over Harmony and was gone. Tired, Peri sat down and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. It had been a long time since anyone had fought authority on her behalf. That it had come from someone who had made no bones about disliking her, someone who had survived Michael and come back for her, refusing to leave anyone behind . . .

  Damn it, I’m a fool, she thought, but her gut said to trust her, and that was all she had anymore. “I got a call,” she said, head down to hide her moving lips. If Harmony had a bug, she was screwed, but she didn’t think she did. “I know where Michael will be tomorrow, midnight. I’m leaving. Right now. You want to come? I get Allen, you get Michael. Win, win.”

  Harmony’s lips were parted when Peri looked up. “You’d still work with me? After I lost my entire team?” she whispered, then leaned back into the cushions, gaze going to the distant men when Peri nodded. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” Harmony said loudly. “I don’t want you in a cell. You can do more good out of it.”

  What is she playing at? Peri mused, fighting to keep the confusion off her face when Harmony shook her head.

  “Maybe next time,” Peri said as she stood and picked up her bag, not relishing the eight-hour drive ahead of her to Detroit. Maybe she could bum a ride with a trucker and get some sleep.

  Calls rang out, and outside, the agents quickly arrayed themselves. Annoyed, Harmony stood.

  “Back off! She’s not going anywhere!” Harmony shouted, and Peri spun, fist set to hit flesh when the woman’s hand landed on her shoulder. It never fell as Harmony had jerked back. Peri hesitated, poised on the balls of her feet as Harmony smiled wickedly—suddenly very much awake. “There’re different ways to the same end,” Harmony said, glancing up at the watching cameras. Then softer, “I want Michael, but I can’t get you out of here until we go off high alert. That won’t happen until you’re in a cell. Make it convincing, okay?”

  She wants to put me in a cell? Peri’s breath came fast. “You back off,” she threatened, no longer sure she knew what was going on. Was Harmony helping her or not? “Or I’m going to break your nose and then take your building pass.”

  Harmony nodded almost imperceptibly. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Well, I can.” Peri threw her bag at her, following it up with a palm thrust.

  Pulling her punch at the last mome
nt, Peri stumbled when Harmony shifted sideways, blocking Peri’s strike with one hand and punching out with the other.

  The heel of Harmony’s hand connecting with Peri’s wrist was a quick shock, followed by a sharp blow of her second hand with Peri’s middle. Air huffing out, Peri caught her balance and fell back, eyes watering as she struggled to breathe. “Nice,” she wheezed.

  “You sure you want to do this at four in the morning?” Harmony asked, her eyes bright.

  Behind and around them, bets were being made as the watching agents gave them room. As Peri pulled herself up, her confusion strengthened. It is a ploy, isn’t it? “Very,” Peri said, then feigned a kick, shouting as she launched herself.

  Peri’s teeth clenched at the resounding thump of contact, but Harmony didn’t go down. Instead, the woman spun to slam her elbow into Peri’s ear. Head ringing, Peri dropped back, missing her follow-up strike. Harmony was still smiling. Son of a bitch, that hurt, Peri thought, her anger stirring.

  Teeth clenched, Peri went at her again, in earnest this time: front kick, front kick, side, and crescent, backing the woman up to a thick pillar. Harmony blocked them all. Her arm had to be numb, and with a resounding cry, Peri kicked her coffee at Harmony, right off the table.

  A brown rainbow flew in a beautiful arch. Peri followed it a half second behind, aiming for Harmony’s bad leg. In the distraction, it would land.

  But Harmony stepped into it, not back. The coffee splattered across her, and shock reverberated up Peri’s leg as the woman blocked her with enough force to send her stinging back. Panicked, Peri thrust out, getting a softer blow to Harmony’s side.

  “Damn it!” Peri cried as brown fingers clamped onto her wrist and pulled her off her feet. Gut tensing, she went with it lest she get her wrist broken, and the watching agents cried out in approval as Harmony levered her over her shoulder and slammed Peri onto the tile.