The Drafter (7 page)

Jack nodded. Pushing the half-eaten omelet away, he levered her up, his hands familiarly on her hips. A last bite of egg, and Peri took up the button. It was cold—as if it held nightmares. Jack closed the curtains, and she sat in his chair, the fabric still warm from his body.

A yellowish, amber light seeped through the thin fabric. It was like muffled sunlight, golden and warm. She sighed when he came up behind her, his strong fingers pushing into her forehead. Like a top-dollar massage therapist, he began to work the tension from her, starting at her brow, avoiding her bruise as he found and held pressure points until she exhaled the energy from her. The hot shower had eased her sore muscles, and Jack worked from her eyes to her forehead, to her jaw, to her cheekbones, and back again until Peri's slight headache was gone. She stifled a moan when he turned to her neck and shoulders. There were lots of ways to calm the mind and body, but this was her favorite.

Peri was still holding the button lightly, her fingers flexing around it
as Jack eased her tension. All drafters tied memories to objects to help make them real, but it was only the final timeline that was allowed to remain. In essence, anchors were creating a memory knot, but it was tamed and safe because there'd only be one timeline associated with it. That anchors could remember both was a wonder to Peri. How could there be two pasts? It didn't make sense.

“We ate in the city at sunset,” Jack said, his voice low, almost unheard over the distant traffic. “Champagne, strong cheese, and crackers amid gold and pink light. You flirted with the waiter until he brought you a plate of almond cookies off the menu,” he said, and Peri smiled, thinking that sounded like her. “You drove the long way to the building so you could sing with the Beatles. We were the happy, tipsy couple when we entered, and no one gave us a second look. You timed me decrypting the floor's main door. I was three seconds slow.”

But two minutes better than my best time
, she thought at the memory of burning circuits. Her closed eyes twitched, and Jack's words made her blood hum as the night became real.

“You sat, admiring the view as I worked,” he said, and she breathed easy, remembering the deep purples and shining golds of lights between the street and night sky, her confidence that they'd be back at their hotel by sunrise eating breakfast on their balcony and Jack complaining that she was poisoning him with health food.

“You pointed out the planes stacked for landing,” he said, and she drowsed, recalling her good mood. “You sampled the chocolate, everything going well. Then you heard the elevator, and you were feeling daring, so you left me.”

I left him
. His worry twined about hers, magnifying it. An anchor had to be within a drafter's reach to recognize a jump, and drafting out of his sight might have left Jack unable to bring back her memory at all.
It must have been worth the risk
, she thought, her grip tightening on the button, the holes sharp on her skin.

“It was the security guard,” Jack said, his touch returning to her jawline to work the new frown from her brow. Memories were coming back stronger now. She could feel Jack with her, their mental connection tightening until his emotion in her mind was as real and recognizable as
hers. There'd been lights on the ceiling, doors opening that should have remained shut, a dangerous, aware lifter instead of a cream-puff guard.

Jack's fingers fell away as their connection solidified and her closed eyes began to dart in earnest. Together they saw the man she had killed. She recognized his expression, gave Jack the knowledge that the guard had smelled like whiskey and sweat when they had collided. Jack felt her confidence when the guard opened the door, felt her pain when his fist found her eye. Peri's heart pounded as she recalled the taste of her blood when he shot her, the smell of gunpowder, the shock of adrenaline. She was falling away from a man with gray hair. . . .

And then Jack wrapped his mind around the blood, the pain, the scent of gunpowder, and the image of a confident man in a suit—fragmenting them. Peri's breath came easier as the broken weave vanished, replaced by the memory of fear and the sudden give as her knife scraped on the guard's ribs and found his lungs.

The memories came in no order, with no reason to them, a mixing of the first timeline and the second as Jack, deep into her psyche, burned the first one away—long before the chaos of two realities could linger and drive her insane. Peri's darting eyes slowed in the first hint of release, and at his urging, they ran through the night again, both of them looking in the shadow places of her mind for remnants of the original timeline that could trigger a mental crash.

Peri tensed when they found it, feeling Jack's grip on her mind tightening. There'd been someone else—a man in a suit. Remembered panic pooled from her to Jack, and she gasped when Jack followed her fear deep into her mind and plucked from it the memory of a man eating a chocolate, reinforcing that she'd eaten a chocolate as she sat in a chair.

But she
knew
they hadn't been alone, and an oily voice crying
Bravo!
echoed against the black edges of burned memory. Jack blotted it away, soothing her.

Her hand throbbed as she recalled pinning a man to a chair, the disdain in his eyes, her fear at his confidence.

In her mind, Jack folded the edges of the first-weave memory in on itself, erasing it. It wasn't there. It hadn't really happened.

And then it was gone.

She was left with the memory of Jack standing before the wave screen, cursing the files' lack of organization, his face lit and pale in the glow. It was comforting—knowing this was real—and she basked in it, feeling the night's memories in her unfolding like a crumpled paper, the sequence choppy but structured as Jack insisted that they go over it once more, defining a clean memory from both his and her thoughts.

It was only when she eased into the satiated state of a successful memory defragment that fear bubbled up again, rising through the carefully stacked memories, welling up around the jagged edges and swamping her. An unreasonable fear that she was wrong, that she'd made a mistake she couldn't come back from, took her.

It was from the first weave, the one she no longer had memories of. She had been lied to! She was in danger, foul, loathsome, untrustworthy. . . .

Peri's breath caught as Jack's presence strengthened.
Not you
, Jack said, his unspoken words ringing in her mind as he sponged up her fear, dissolving it with his confidence.
Not you, Peri. You're clean. You are uncorrupt, my dove
.

Her chest clenched as his love soaked into her, hiding the fear behind it, and the trembling of her arms eased. Jack burned the fear to ash, telling her he loved her, trusted her, that anything else was a lie. Slowly . . . she believed. She had to.

“I'm here,” Jack said aloud, and she felt his fingers find hers, both of them touching the button she'd taken from the dead guard. His calm seeped into her as she worked the rough, round edges of the small chunk of blue plastic. Jack had been there, had seen both times, and had burned away the mistake they'd made until there was only one memory, the last.

Peri's bruises ached anew as she remembered last night and they were given meaning. Her almost-death had never happened, and she only knew of it because Jack had told her about it last night. Secondhand knowledge was safe—a real memory deadly. New Year's and their anniversary were still gone, but there were ways around that, too: her diary waited at home.

Her eyes opened. Jack was kneeling before her, and he smiled as their eyes met. Her thumb was catching on the button's holes, and she stopped rubbing it like the touchstone it was. “Thank you,” she said.

Jack leaned forward and brushed the hair from her eyes. “You're welcome.”

His voice was husky, and sweat had beaded on his forehead. It had been a hard one. Peri set the button on the scratched table, accidentally dragging it off, and it hit the carpet and rolled under the bed.

Jack's arms went around her, and she leaned into him, breathing the scent of his hair, her arms tightening when she realized he was shaking. Her eyes warmed with unshed tears. “I almost lost you,” he said raggedly. “I
did
lose you. I don't know if I can do this anymore, babe.”

She parted her knees and pulled him closer, close enough to feel the warmth of him rising between them. He grounded her, kept her sane when the drafts grew too long and the weaves too elaborate. Most people would say he had the easy part, out of the line of fire as she protected him while he got whatever they were after, but the truth of it was that his job was harder. He saw everything, lived everything, relived it again and again until she remembered it, too.

He was still shaking, and Peri tilted his head up. “It's so hard,” he said. “Peri, I love you.”

“I love you, too.” She kissed him, tasting walnuts. “I'm okay,” she said, holding him close and breathing him in. “Let it go.”

“But what if I hadn't been there?” A tight anger eclipsed his grief, his fierce expression hurting her, almost. “What if you hadn't come back and I had nothing to anchor you? You would have lost everything.” He reached up and touched her jawline. “And I'd lose you.”

Peri took his hands, feeling his strength. There was no answer, no sure thing. To agonize over it would leave them both questioning. “Don't do this, Jack. It's part of the job.”

“I don't know what I'd do if you forgot me.”

“I can't forget three years,” she said, pulling him close so he couldn't see her face. It was a wish, not a promise, and they both knew it. A traumatic enough draft could make her do just that.

Heads bowed together, they held each other, and her shoulders eased when he reached behind her robe and ran his thumb down a line of her muscle. Exhaling, she looked at the ceiling as heartache was suddenly pushed out by desire. His hands rose to find her breasts, his motions trapped under her robe, somehow more throat-catching than if she'd been naked under him.

Peri curved her hands around him to feel the strength in his shoulders. Relations between anchors and drafters were expected, as it took commitment and trust to merely do their jobs, but love, real love, was frowned upon for just this reason. How could anyone prepare for the pain of loving someone who might forget them tomorrow?

She knew his frustration was because she was forever losing parts of herself, a renewable distraction with a reset button. He gave, and gave, and gave, but he needed her as much as she needed him. Today she remembered. That was all they ever dared to try to keep.

Peri traced the line of his shoulders, liking the sheen of hazy morning outlining his biceps. With a sigh, he dropped his head to find her breast with his mouth. Peri's breath caught. Wanting more, she wrapped her legs around him and ran her fingers through his hair, following the curve of his head down to his neck and then his smooth chest. One by one, she outlined the defined edges of his abs, teasing as she reached down as far as she could. It wasn't far enough.

Jack pushed her robe open. She shivered as the golden light bathed them. Her eyes met his, her own desire kindled deeper at the need rising in his gaze. With a happy sigh, she pulled him back to her, mildly frustrated that she couldn't take his shirt off without making him stop what his lips were doing.

Her fingers stretched, reached, and finally, unable to resist, she slipped from the chair, sending it toppling over behind her as they knelt together. They kissed, the hint of his tongue sparking through her. His lips tasted of coffee and walnuts, the scent of hotel soap a whisper rising between them as their breaths quickened.

His hands moving, always moving, Jack's kisses spun from her lips to her neck, becoming more aggressive. His grip became firmer, more
demanding. She found his mouth again, and wouldn't let him leave until she reached to pull his shirt over his head, her shoulder aching from her bruise.

But she got it off him. Relief was a flash, followed by wicked desire as she groped for his zipper. His teeth on her neck shocked through her. One hand traced his tight backside as the other unzipped his pants. He sighed as it went down, but she needed two hands for the button, and she teased until she got it undone and reached to find him.

She squirmed as he pushed her panties down, careful when he skimmed over her bruised hip, and she shivered as she met his mouth with hers, stiffening in delight when his hand traced a firm, demanding path up the inside of her thighs, defining her with his touch. He was a beautiful man, sculpted and toned by the needs of fast action and evading death, and her pulse quickened. He was hers. All of him. And she loved him.

Breathless, she sent her hands everywhere, gentle here, demanding there, until he found her breast again, and she gasped, back arched. They needed to reaffirm that they were both alive and that she was here with him and not dead on the floor of an upstairs corner office.

“Oh God. You're going to be the death of me if you don't do something more,” she whispered, almost humming with desire.

His lips lifted from her, and he smiled, reaching behind her to pull the cover off the bed. Her robe had come undone, and he lowered her to the faded bedspread, their passions hesitating as she sent her eyes over him, loving the way he looked, the way he made her feel.

He knelt above her, his pants kicked off and his shirt in a corner. In the rich light filtering through the curtains, he looked like an amber-skinned god. Peri traced the lines of his abs again, drifting lower to make him growl and lean down over her.

“Jack . . . ,” she whispered, pushing suggestively into him, and then her hands on his shoulders tightened as he entered her, first warm, then cool as he withdrew and slipped within her anew. Breath fast, her motions became demanding, the pains from last night forgotten as he moved with her, his hands in her hair, his mouth on hers. She bit his lip, and he tilted his head, lunging into her neck with a motion that was
both loving and aggressive. Her passions began to peak, and her grip on him grew tighter yet, pace quickening with a desperate need.