The Drafter (27 page)

Squinting, he rubbed his forehead as if in pain. “Get your squirrel,” he said as he turned to a drawer and pulled out a spool of gauze.

“You'll help?” she asked as he wrapped his hand.

“I don't know yet. Keep your mouth shut and come with me.” He opened the door, looking taller on the threshold.

Peri grabbed the box, tucking it under her arm as she paced after him. But she nearly ran into him when he stopped short, a flustered Anne before him. “Get room three cleaned up,” he said, his words clipped. “Cancel my appointments. I'm going to Emergency.”

The woman's eyes were large. “Are you okay?”

“Just a nip,” he said as he bodily moved her out of his way. “But I want it taken care of now.” Turning, he glared at Peri. “Let's go. And keep that box closed, will you?”

Head down and box tucked tighter under her arm, she followed him.

“Squirrels!” Howard shouted as he grabbed his coat from the rack behind the desk. “Sure, I'll take a look. Susan, take a memo. No more squirrels!”

“Are you okay?” the second receptionist wanted to know, already on the phone.

“Ask me tomorrow.” Howard stiff-armed the glass door open. Hardly breathing, Peri followed him out into the dark. Lights were coming on in the lot, and the nearby traffic seemed to glow from the mist. Howard stood with his hands on his hips as he looked at the green monster she'd driven in on. “You
stole
that piece of crap?”

“You can't hot-wire a new model,” she said in affront. “They have chips and things. If I had taken a Lexus, I wouldn't have gotten ten minutes down the road before getting busted by the cops.” Gratitude filled her, and she hesitated. “Thank you.”

“I haven't said I'll help yet.” He was moving again, and Peri hustled after him. “That's my van,” he said, the vehicle flashing its lights when he pointed a fob at it.

She jogged to the passenger side. The no-windows thing it had
going made her uneasy, and she hesitated, fingers on the handle. “What does your gut say?” she whispered, cold in the mist, and then in a flash of decision, she lifted the latch and got in, squirrel-rocks sliding.

Howard was already behind the wheel, coat in the back, key in the ignition, when she flopped into the seat. The van was cluttered with a mishmash of boxes. Peri tossed the shoebox to the floor with the rest and put her seat belt on.

Distracted, Howard said, “The fact that you trust me does not instill me with confidence.”

Peri nudged a take-out bag away from her foot. “My gut is usually right.” Something felt off, even though everything was going the way she wanted it to.

“So is mine,” he said, starting the van. “Go sit in the back and look at the door, princess, so I don't have to knock you out, or cover your eyes, or anything else dumb like that.”

Seriously?
But he wasn't moving, and she finally undid her belt and picked her way awkwardly through the clutter until she sat on a pile of clean but frayed towels. They were for the animals, she guessed, and her bad feeling grew when he put the van in gear and crept to the entrance, brakes squeaking as he halted for traffic. “Where are we going?” she asked, not expecting an answer.

“Safe house. I'm passing the buck.” His face was silhouetted in the lights from the passing cars as he waited for a gap in traffic. He looked angry, and his hands tapped the wheel impatiently. Muttering under his breath, he slammed the van into park when the light at the corner turned and his chance to drive away vanished. He stared out the window, then pulled the scrunchie from his dreadlocks and tossed it to the dash to sit with the three others. Turning to her, he said, “I want to know something. What did Silas defragment for you that he'd never seen?”

Peri licked her lips, feeling lost in the back of his van. “That I loved Jack,” she said, not knowing if it would help or damn her. She looked away, blinking fast. Government agents didn't cry, even when they were lost, alone, and fighting their own people.

Nonplussed, he turned to the front and put the van in drive,
griping at the car that didn't slow down when he gunned it into the street. Miserable, Peri propped herself up against the rocking van, hating how relieved she was that someone was willing to help her.

“You treacherous bitch!” Howard yelled, and she eyed him, thinking he had some serious road rage, but he was looking at her. “You lied to me, and I bought it!”

“What?”

Peri's eyes widened when she looked out the front window. Cop lights, red and blue, were coming up the road. Instinct made her reach for her pen pendant, but there was nothing to write.

“I should have known!” Howard shouted, dreadlocks swinging. “Silas warned me you were slippery as slime mold.”

“Howard, you took the chip out, and Silas bought me a new phone they can't track. I'm telling you, it's not me.” Cops. Opti wouldn't be so obvious, but they might use the local police to drive them into a trap. “I found your address in fifteen minutes knowing only that you worked as a vet and had a thing for squirrels,” she said calmly. “Maybe Silas let something slip. Or maybe they just
followed
your sorry ass back here, Mr. Janitor. I saved you by getting you out. See?” she said as the cop cars squealed past the van, lights still flashing. “They aren't following us. They're headed to your office.”

Howard's anger was replaced by stone-cold fear. “I can't go back.”

Peri moved into the front seat, scrunching low to keep out of sight. “It sucks, doesn't it.” They had to get off this road. There were traffic lights every block, and they were making zero time in the rush hour.

Howard's teeth clenched, and the glow from the oncoming cars glinted on his beads. “They'll have my address, everything.”

You catch on fast, Doctor
. “We have to ditch this van. They'll put an APB on it as soon as they see it's not in the lot. Mass transit is fifty-fifty as long as it's aboveground. Anything below always has cameras, and I'm tired of face paint.”

“The van.” Howard's grip on the wheel tightened. “They'll be looking for it.”

Peri sighed. “Yep. We need to ditch it. Sorry.”

He glared at her, then back to the road. “If I find out you're responsible for this . . .”

Ticked, she sat up. “If that's what you think, then stop the van right now and let me out. I'll walk away and you'll never see me again.” Damn it, this wasn't going well.

Howard abruptly jerked the van to the right, wheeling into an abandoned tire place and lurching to a halt. Weeds were thick at the edges, and a gully sank behind the building, rising to more weeds. About a half mile back, a big-box store glowed in the mist. Shocked, Peri stared at him. “Come on,” he said as he snatched up his coat. “We're going to have to walk.”

Her relief was so thick, she could almost taste it. He wasn't abandoning her. “You believe me?” she said as she scanned the van for anything useful.

He was already outside, taking his lab coat off to show his brown slacks and a knitted vest over a stark white shirt. All he needed was a bow tie. Squinting at the mist, he shrugged his coat on and pulled his collar up, clearly disliking the rain. “Believe you? No, but Silas trusted you. We'll go through the empty lot and pick up a bus at the superstore. We're skipping the safe house and going straight to the alliance. Someone else is going to have to decide what to do with you. I'm done.”

He slammed the door shut. She didn't have time to search the van for anything to help their flight, so she got out and hustled to catch up. His back was bowed, and his office shoes were already wet and muddy. “I'm sorry,” she said, meaning it, but he never met her eyes even as he helped her down the ravine and across the shallow ditch of water.

It was going to be a long night.

P
eri stood sideways in the bus's aisle, two bags of food in her hand as she waited for the heavyset woman ahead of her to finish draping her coat over her seat back and sit down. It was after midnight, and the chartered bus full of overdressed, excited women had finally settled as the complimentary wine and late hour took their toll. She'd jumped at the chance to make a food run when the BING bus had pulled off the interstate for a fifteen-minute comfort break. The choice had been tacos, burgers, or subs. The subs won, hands down.

Finally the woman put her butt in the seat and Peri edged past. It felt good to get up and move around, but Howard had been sleeping when she'd left, and she wasn't sure how he'd handle waking up and finding her gone.

The bus jerked into motion, and she easily caught her balance. Sure enough, she spotted Howard's horrified expression in the shifting streetlights. Their eyes met and she held up the bags of food in explanation. Relief cascaded over him, quickly followed by guilt.

Swaying with the motion of the bus, she continued past several rows of open, plush seats to get to where they'd retreated to try to distance themselves from the tour group.

“I didn't know what you wanted, so I got you a steak hoagie
on whole wheat,” she said as she sat, her voice betraying her slight annoyance.

Eyes wide, he shifted in the indulgent seat to tuck his phone away. “I thought you'd left.”

She extended him a bag, arm stiff. “I asked for your help, remember?”

Sheepish, he took it, bag crackling as he opened it up and looked inside. “That was before my cover was blown. Thanks.”

“Bottled water . . .” She handed him one that had been tucked under her arm, and he took it, closing out the complimentary Web link and lowering his tray table. “And your choice.” She opened her bag and brought out the chips. “Salt and vinegar, or black pepper.”

Howard smiled weakly, his face seeming to vanish as the bus lurched onto the service road and into a more certain dark. “Black pepper?” he asked, and she handed it over.

That he hadn't trusted her rankled, and Peri sat silent beside him at the back of the bus, lips pressed as she arranged her sandwich and chips on the fold-down table. She left the courtesy light off, but the ambient light from the monitors, currently muted and showing the late news, was enough to see his continued embarrassment. Apparently Asia's borders were closed, anyone trying to break the containment being shot on sight and dragged away by workers in hazmat suits. Peri thought it disturbing that no one seemed to care. Perhaps it was an ongoing thing she'd forgotten. She hadn't been able to find any Twinkies the last couple of days, either.

“I left you a note,” she finally said, and he winced.

“I didn't see it,” he said, clearly lying. “Thank you for the sandwich.”

“Uh-huh,” she said drily, the snap of the breaking seal on her water sounding loud.

Howard seemed to shrink in on himself. “I'm sorry,” he started, and she cut him off, hand waving as she swallowed.

“Don't worry about it,” she said when she came up for air. “I'm the bad guy, remember?”

“I never—” he said in affront, and she eyed him sharply as she recapped her bottle. “Fine, maybe I did,” he amended, looking at his sandwich forlornly. “But can you blame me?”

“Eat your steak, Howard,” she said flatly.

Immediately he picked it up. “Opti is a mercenary task force,” he said around his full mouth. “The only thing keeping them from being classified as a terrorist group is that they're on the government's payroll.” He swallowed. “Among others.”

“I'm taking my black-pepper chips back,” she said, plucking them from his tray.

Howard chuckled, dark hands securely wrapped around his hoagie. “You do what you need to do, but you can't tell me that Opti didn't help that power plant melt down in the Middle East last year.”

“Why on earth would Opti blow up a power plant?” she asked, her voice hardly audible over the bus, roaring to get up the entrance ramp. The bus darkened further, cocooning them.

“To put an end to the religious extremists slaughtering reporters and medical relief workers.” Hardly more than a shadow, Howard hunched over his tray as his sandwich threatened to fall apart. “Millions displaced, thousands dead. Acres of newly arable land wasted. It's a shame. The world lost a lot of history, too. Only so much of it could be trucked out ahead of time under the excuse of lending it to a museum.”

She didn't remember, and for the first time, it bothered her. “Accidents do happen.”

Howard's dark fingers stood out against his hoagie as her eyes adjusted, and he set his sandwich down. “They've done it before. Chernobyl ring a bell?”

Peri frowned and broke a piece of bacon off her BLT. “You're mistaken.”

“Am I?”

The salty bacon tasted flat. Again, doubt trickled through her, her blind loyalty wearing thin. “What about Opti breaking up that credit card–strip hacker ring? Millions of dollars caught before it was funneled overseas. And Stanza-gate. You really think that wack job should set policy? How about finding that plane that went down in the Alps? Rescuing all those people before they started eating each other.”

Howard's brow furrowed in thought. “That was three years ago.”

“Well, it seems like yesterday to me,” she said defensively, and
Howard adroitly snatched his chips back, his faint look of pity-laced understanding irritating her.

Opening the packet, he leaned close. “I hate to break it to you, but the strip fraud was a front, paid for by the Billion by Thirty club to force that nifty new banking app on your phone into play. Opti found the Alps plane because they were the ones who downed it trying to keep a defector from going over to the wrong side. I'll give you Stanza-gate, though. The guy was crazy.”

“Yeah, we should just let the world go to hell,” she grumbled. “Free choice and all.”