The Drafter (52 page)

“Peri!”

Still on the ground, she spit the dirt from her mouth and turned her head.
Silas?
He was in the grip of two men as they moved to get him in a van. He was cuffed and there was a new welt on his cheek. Was it Opti who had her, then? Oh God, how had they known she was lying?

She kicked fruitlessly at them as they hauled her up. Her teeth clenched when they tossed her into the van as well, and she landed on Silas. His elbow jammed into her gut and she lost her breath even as she struggled to find her knees. The door slammed shut, and she fell when the van accelerated fast.

“Peri, stop fighting. You're making it worse. I'm not going to let you go into MEP.”

Peri wiggled until she was off him. There were no windows, and she pressed into a dark corner, trying not to fall as the van rocked. The hum in her ears and the drugs in her system made her nauseated. She knew that she'd set out to talk to Silas and buy her freedom, but she couldn't remember how she'd gotten here or what had gone wrong.

At the other side of the van, Silas slowly got himself upright. “You drafted,” Silas said breathlessly. “Just relax and breathe. It's going to be okay. Opti doesn't have us. It's the alliance. Turn around. Let me get that audio blocker out.”

His voice was soothing, but she mistrusted it. “Alliance?” she whispered as the van leaned into a long curve that said entrance ramp. “Then why are you cuffed? You said
you
were alliance.” She couldn't remember how she'd gotten to the ballpark. The unreasonable fear wound tighter about her heart and squeezed. She couldn't breathe, and she pulled her knees to her chin and dropped her head, trying to relax.

But the harder she tried, the more the panic grew, the unknown hammering at her, eating her alive. It was that patch job. It was falling apart, and when it did, she'd go crazy. She
was
going crazy.

“Look at me.” Silas knelt before her, but she stared at the ceiling, terrified. The van was running full-out on a straightaway. She had no idea where she was going. She wanted to draft and keep drafting, but the drugs in her wouldn't let her, and she hung in a hell of her own making of doubt and panic.

He inched forward, and her eyes shot to his. “Peri, I'm an anchor,” he said calmly, and she recoiled as far into the corner as she could. “You know I am. I was there when you drafted. I can bring it back, and with that, the rest will return. Trust me. At least let me get that earplug out.”

Her mouth was dry, and she couldn't swallow.
Trust no one
. “I can't,” she whispered, confusion swirling through her, muddling her thinking.

“You have to,” he said, inching closer, his eyes showing his pain from his bound wrists. “Listen to your gut. It was a tiny draft, but you're teetering on collapse. Look at yourself. This isn't you. Undo my hands. Let me help.”

“I can't,” she said, almost pleading for him to help her, but he had
turned to show her his back. His fingers looked swollen, the binding too tight.

“Please,” he said, and she saw the bent nail in his grip. “I know you're confused, but I can fix this. You have to trust me.”

Her heart was thudding and she felt sick with the motion both outside and inside her head. “Okay,” she whispered. “But if you make one move I don't like, I'll kill you for real.”

“Fair enough,” he said, and she carefully moved to put her back to his. His fingers felt cold when she touched them, and he hissed when the nail slipped, gouging him. But his sigh was real when she finally got the tab wedged and he pulled out of the zip cuff.

“Your turn,” he said, and she jumped when he plucked the earplug out and the hum ceased. She was freed even faster, and she rubbed her wrists as she backed to her corner, that same unreasonable fear cramping her chest.

Scared, she shook her head, warning him off. “You stay back. Hear me?”

“Do you remember how you got to the ballpark?” he asked as he took her hand, not letting go when she tried to pull away.

“Let go. Let go!” she demanded, her fear hesitating when he turned her hand over and put that nail in it as a talisman. Her breath caught, and she stared at it as half a lifetime of protocol and effect beat on her. She
wanted
to remember. He was an anchor, and she was out of her mind. “I don't remember how I got to the ballpark,” she finally groaned, desperate. She needed to trust him to survive.

“That's okay,” he soothed as he took her other hand, a spot of calm in her chaos. “It was only ten minutes ago. That's within normal tolerance. It's just shock. When you calm down, it will come back on its own. Do you remember shopping?”

“Yes,” she said, the relief enormous as she looked at her clothes, remembering. That had been this morning. She hadn't lost everything. It was going to be okay. And she began to calm—to think.

“Peri, let me in,” he said softly, his urgency a thin thread.

Not knowing why, she closed her eyes and nodded. Exhaling, she
felt his presence slip in behind hers, gasping when his masculine shade of thought colored her memory of her trip to the mall. He was there, with her, and her shoulders slumped in relief so deep it hurt.

“It's okay,” Silas was saying, but she hardly heard him as a thick exhaustion covered her, swimming up from nowhere. “You've only lost fifteen minutes or so. Let me bring it back.”

“Make it stop,” she mumbled, hardly aware of him in her thoughts as he turned her memories that way. “Please make it stop.”

“You were running with me,” he said, and she saw it through his mind. “It was the alliance, and I told you why they were after us.”

A flash of his angry emotion pulled her memory of it into existence, and her feelings of betrayal crowded out his anger until his emotions reasserted themselves and they found understanding. For a moment, they both looked at the memory together, seeing it from the other side, finding common ground, something they could both accept. Perhaps she'd jumped too quickly to a conclusion that was wrong.
Perhaps
, he thought, his emotion mixing with hers,
I should have been honest with you about being on the outs with the alliance
.

“I was cuffed at the loading dock,” he said. “They shot you and triggered a draft.”

Her eyes were shut and her body went slack as the first memory of being darted rose into existence and Silas dissolved it. She saw herself through his eyes: furious, determined, obstinate as she looked for a way to survive. She didn't remember it that way, and she felt him take in her emotions of fear, betrayal, and desperation—and they were as real as his vision of her strength.

“I didn't betray you,” he whispered as he pulled her to him, and she believed him with a certainty as real as the nail in her grip. “I didn't know they were there.”

And as that reality became firm in her mind, her world stopped spinning. Her chest eased and her breaths came and went more easily. She drowsed, the warmth of Silas's arms around her as their memories meshed and hers became real. There was only one draft left in her, the tiny space of double time reduced to one.

She was at peace for what felt like the first time in months, and
like an addict, she hung in a haze, not wanting it to end. “You're good at this,” she slurred, and his hand gentled her head against his shoulder as the van swerved and jostled.

“I used to be,” he said, his breath shifting her hair. “Go to sleep. Let it firm up. When you wake, you'll have your entire morning back. It's going to be okay.”

She doubted that, but she fell asleep right there in the van, confident she would remember everything she'd lost today, holding that nail as if it were a diamond.

S
tomach clenched, Peri did a final pull-up, straining as she hung from the decorative ironwork that had been installed for the sole purpose of making the underground wine cellar look old. It couldn't have been in place more than ten years by the look of the resort-size log house they'd hustled her through yesterday, filthy and cold from her ride in the back of the van.

Tucked away in the Kentucky mountains, the high-tech, expansive getaway mansion only looked rustic, with its highly landscaped indoor-outdoor pool, restaurant-size kitchen, and multiple entertainment areas all connected by an engineered waterfall and subtle, state-of-the-art security system. She hadn't seen anyone when they'd brought her through the first floor, down the elevator, and to the wine cellar, but the three stories of windows overlooking the valley had given her a view of acres of isolation that she could get lost in, figuratively and literally, if she could escape.
But not without Silas
.

She dropped to the floor, Silas's talisman nail stuffed into her boot for safe keeping pinching between her toes. There was a heating duct, but nothing had come out of it in the hours that she'd been stuck down here with the dusty reds and whites, all good but nothing exceptional. She'd checked.

Slowly Peri collapsed to sit cross-legged on the artfully stained
flagstones.
Imported or manufactured?
she wondered as her sweat went cold and she closed her eyes. Silas had given her a top-notch, professional defrag. She'd been lost, but she didn't feel that way now. Even imprisoned, she was still riding the high of that one exquisite return of memory.

Her psyche had been tampered with so badly that what should have been an easily handled draft had pushed her over the edge. She'd been in the first stages of catastrophic memory-eclipsed paranoia, totally losing it, and Silas had not only stopped it dead in its tracks, but returned her memory. He was good. Really good. And she couldn't stop thinking about him and those few moments they'd shared at the ballpark.

Eyes opening, Peri scanned the dimly lit, luxurious wine-tasting den past her iron-barred door. She hadn't seen Jack since Silas's defrag. Maybe she didn't need him anymore. She'd never felt so much at peace, even if her life was falling apart. Again.

The distant sound of the elevator pulled her straight. Dampening the flash of adrenaline, she steadied herself. It would've been helpful to have known that Silas was currently on the outs with the alliance, but even so, she doubted his accommodations were as severe as hers. As it stood, her next move hinged on whether he had told the alliance that she had a radioactive tag, shining like a lighthouse to draw Opti in. That she could hear the muted sounds of people gathering above her made her tend to believe he hadn't.

She had no doubt that Opti was going to track her down through her new radioactive beacon, and she was still trying to decide if she was going to warn the alliance about it or not. Much depended on whether they trusted her. She wanted out, but if they weren't going to give her asylum, she'd be better off with Opti, where she'd have a chance to run.

Another metallic thump, and Peri twitched, cracking an eye as she sat in a lotus position. But her eyes opened wide when she recognized the feminine voice raised in demand as Taf's, the young woman who had been with Silas at Eastown.
The daughter of the head of the alliance
.

“You've checked me twice. Will you back off. It's not like you can bake a file into a batch of muffins. I didn't even make them. Gawd!”

The clatter of heels on flagstone vanished as Taf and two security
suits strode into the carpeted wine-tasting den. Taf had a bundle of clothes in one hand, a covered basket in the other. “Lights up!” she demanded, and the dim lighting brightened against the rich décor, silent black flat screen, and informal seating around a central gas fireplace. “Make yourselves at home, gentlemen,” she said, pointing at the white couches. “Munchies are at the bar.”

“Ma'am,” the one with glasses protested, and Taf jerked to a stop.

“Look, Brian,” she intoned, glaring at them both until they fidgeted in their black suits. “I don't care if you sit or stand, but you will
back off
. I have ten minutes, and I don't want you hanging like vultures.”

Peri could smell muffins, and her stomach growled.

“Yes, ma'am. Five minutes.”

“
Ten
minutes,” the blond woman protested even as she came forward. “She can't eat in five minutes. You tell my mom they can wait. These things never start on time anyway. Someone always forgets about the time zones and they have to be tracked down.”

Still sitting behind the barred door, Peri watched the woman drop the clothes on a nearby table so she could push one of the chairs around to face her. Only now did Taf's bluster falter as she stood before her with the basket of muffins, and Peri cringed inside at her look of hopeful expectation, hope that Peri might remember something they'd once shared, something that was important but that she'd forgotten. “Ah, hi. Are you hungry?” the woman asked hesitantly.

Peri got up, her muscles chilled from the cold floor. “I'm sorry. I don't remember you. It's Taf, right?”

“Don't worry about it. Most of my friends don't remember our nights out, either.” Pinky in the air, she pantomimed sipping wine from a nonexistent glass. “Here. Fresh this morning.”

Taf paused at the bars, then tilted the basket so it would fit between. Peri took it, the warmth through the wicker and linen liner pleasant on her fingers. “Thanks. If it helps, I know that I like you, even if I don't know why.” Her lips quirked at the muffins. “And it has nothing to do with you bringing me breakfast. Emotions linger when events don't.” Chuckling, she took a bite, adding, “Why am I feeling as if it has something to do with my mom?”

Beaming now, Taf sat forward on the plush white chair, the picture of wealth and privilege as her perfectly styled hair bumped about her shoulders. “I can answer that. Both our moms are control freaks. We met at a horse event. You were asking for help to rescue Silas from Opti so he could defrag some information, and my mother tried to exchange you for him instead. Howard and I rammed the van you were in to get you free. I thought that was going to be the end of it, but when you went off to rescue Silas, we came along to help.”