The Operator

by Kim Harrison

  Peeved, he pushed past them, leaving giggles and requests for his number in his wake.

  His breath quickened as he hustled to catch up. Adrenaline trickled through him, and he sent his eyes to the droneway high at the ceiling, the stream of low-Q drones and their payloads looking like Hogwarts owls. Just below them, the fixed cameras recorded a four-hour loop of happy shoppers before they began to rewrite over themselves. As long as he was quiet, all evidence of his presence would be erased by midnight.

  Still, his pulse was faster than the small task warranted, as if failure here would translate into failure everywhere. His anger slowly grew as justifications began flitting through him. He didn’t need Harmony’s help, but he wasn’t used to working alone, either. A second pair of eyes, the comfort found from two predators as opposed to the solitary hunter—both would be helpful. She’d be the easily sacrificed tail of the team so he might survive.

  He almost missed it when the woman strode confidently into a narrow hallway, a highly monitored, underground shortcut to one of the other buildings and the elevated rail. It might be empty, the break in the weather drawing most people into the skyway and the view of Detroit.

  His pace quickened, his head down to avoid being lured into looking at the main camera when the TV under it blared an attention-getting cartoon.

  Who doesn’t like Tom and Jerry? he thought wryly, taking a tiny EMP button from his pocket and readying it. Peri hadn’t noticed him lifting it, whereas she would have missed the Glock he would have rather taken. The tactical blast would short out anything transmitting within a thirty-foot radius, cameras included, and he checked to make sure his phone was off.

  Her heels clicked smartly, her voice pleasant as she said hi to the woman with two kids in a stroller passing her. Jack slid to the side and nodded, waiting until the kids’ voices vanished before looking up again. There was no guilt in him for using Harmony. If she was after Michael, she was dead anyway, and where Michael and Bill were, Peri was sure to follow.

  Motion confident, Harmony reached for one of the double glass doors that led to the stairway. Jack’s hair shifted in the equalizing pressure, and he jogged to catch up as it swung closed. Her feet were vanishing up the curve of the stairway. Eager, he hit the EMP button and raced up the stairs.

  Instinct screamed, and he ducked as he spun onto the next landing, turning it into a controlled fall as he hit the cement. A stick of wood rapped smartly on the worn iron railing above him.

  “You picked the wrong woman to jump, candy ass,” Harmony said, and he scuttled backward to the cement block wall as she made ready to swing at him again.

  “Wait—” he managed, and then her eyes widened in surprise.

  “You,” she whispered, stepping forward, the whoosh of air from her martial arts baton making him slip down a few stairs. It was padded, but it would still hurt.

  “I’m looking for Peri,” he said, then used his arm to block a kick, retreating a few steps more.

  “Aren’t we all.” Harmony pulled back, her frown deepening when she noticed the little red light was out on the camera in the corner. Lips pressed together, she slipped her bag from her shoulder and gracefully iced down two steps, body balanced and ready to smack his head as if it were a softball on a tee. “Funny us running into each other. Steiner will never believe it. I sure as hell don’t.”

  Jack put his hands up in placation. “She didn’t betray you. She was running. I was running. We didn’t plan it.”

  “I don’t care. You’re coming with me.” With a howl, she lashed out with a front kick.

  Jack lurched back, narrowly avoiding it. “God, woman. Will you just listen?” he complained, all the way down to the first landing. “I need your help, not WEFT’s. Peri wants to kill Bill. Michael will be with him.” Harmony’s anger shifted, tainted with the bitterness of betrayal. “You want Michael?” he said, forcing his shoulders to relax. “I sure as hell don’t.”

  Harmony’s baton drooped. “Steiner didn’t like you escaping,” she said, gaze flicking to the dead camera. “Killing his men. He wants you bad. Maybe enough to put me back on active duty if I bring you in.”

  The hard part was over, and a flash of tension zinged to his groin. He always did like manipulation. “Steiner doesn’t want me.” He risked looking down and away as if unhappy. “I’m just a link to Michael and Bill.” Tossing the hair from his eyes, he glanced up. He couldn’t have planned this better, with her standing over him, justified in her confident strength. “Peri needs my help to finish Bill. She doesn’t want to admit it, but it’s true.”

  Squinting mistrustfully, she looked at the defunct camera again. Slowly the baton rose.

  “You want to spar some more?” he said flippantly. “Can we go back to your dojo and do it on the mats? My back is killing me.”

  That brought a wry smile to her face, and warning him with her eyes to be still, she came down a step, her martial arts stick lowered. “Why would you help Peri?”

  Jack glanced sidelong through the double glass doors, but no one was coming down the long hall. He had time. “She was my partner for three years, and I don’t want to see her dead. Once Bill is gone, she can vanish. She wants out. She deserves it.” Yes, she deserved it, but she was not going to get it.

  “Thanks for the info,” she said, motioning for him to go up the stairway ahead of him, presumably to her car. “You won’t mind repeating that for Steiner, will you?”

  He hesitated as if thinking it over, but he already knew what he was going to do, and, head bowed as if in capitulation, he scuffed his way back up the steps.

  “Smart man.” Harmony reached for him, hand twisted to snap a restraining hold on him with the help of the baton.

  Jack’s hand flashed out, shoving her into the wall. She hit hard, her head thumping into the cement. But it was the breath being knocked out of her that bought him a precious three seconds.

  Smiling, still smiling, he jammed his arm under her chin, forcing her head back. His other hand was on her bicep, pinching a nerve to numb her arm. If he bore down hard enough, it would take days to come back, if ever.

  “Knock it off,” he said, giving a squeeze, and he saw her anger flash into pain as the baton dropped, clattering on the step. “You’re not that dumb. Bringing me in won’t get you anything. You’ve been sidelined by your own people. You took Peri out of custody. You’re why she’s free. You need the entire pie, not the crust. But that’s not why you’re going to help me.”

  “Help you?” she said, strained, eyes flicking from the baton to him. “No way in hell.”

  With a fast motion he let go, retreating to the far end of the step before she could act. Harmony stayed where she was, hand over her arm. He had her. All that was left was deciding whose car to take. “It’s a matter of pride,” he said. “Your pride, your future. Soon as Peri finishes cleaning house, she’s going ghost. I’m going with her. She might have to kill Michael, too, unless you take him into custody first, but Bill . . .” He lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “She won’t let that go.”

  Untrusting, Harmony hesitantly scooped up her baton and tote. Jack turned away and headed up the stairs. “I just want Peri,” he said when she followed. “If that means Bill dies, I don’t care. I want her to be free to live her life. I want to be there with her.” He didn’t say he loved her. He couldn’t say it anymore and sound convincing. “I could use your help.”

  Why couldn’t Peri have just let everything alone? Everything had been perfect.

  Steps slow and methodical, they rose up the stairway, into the brighter light, side by side, together but apart. He watched her eyes flick to the functional camera, then down to the age-gray cement steps. “I’m starving,” she said, and the tension in him evaporated. “You like Asian?”

  “Love it,” he said, lurching to reach the door before her and open it, forcing her to pass within inches of him. She smelled like sweet-woman sweat, and his smile widened. It was obvious by her grimace that she didn’t tr
ust him, but he didn’t need her to for this to work.

  “I’ve just got one question,” she said. “What’s in this for you?”

  He squinted in the bright light, feeing the chill wind scour him to his soul. “Peri asked me to,” he said, remembering her flippant words in her apartment. “Maybe then she’ll believe I love her.”

  Harmony made a rude noise, then looked over him to the horizon. “You don’t love her.”

  Hands in his pockets, he shrugged and pushed himself into motion, sure she’d follow. She doesn’t know that.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Feeling muzzy and slow from her headache, Peri slid the clock on the tiny armchair table toward her, squinting at it in the dim light of a scarf-draped lamp. It was the only spot of femininity in the entire room—apart from her. “Almost midnight,” she breathed as she pushed it back, realizing where her sudden disquiet was coming from. Withdrawal. It had been only five minutes since Silas had left to get some tea. It had seemed like five times that.

  She stood, wavering until she found her balance and shuffled to the industrial-looking three-piece bathroom that LB’s conjugal closet came with. The small suite had probably once been a janitor break room, and between the bed, couch, and the huge TV screen, there wasn’t much floor space.

  “I told you to turn that off,” she said, jerking the TV’s cord out of the wall on her way to the sink as she passed Jack—the hallucination, not the real one. The TV flickered, then held firm; the game show was an illusion as well.

  “You didn’t say please.” His head down, Jack continued to synch his phone to the TV. She knew the flat-screen wasn’t really on. She knew the man in his thief-black suit wasn’t really there. But by God, it sure looked real. She’d begun hallucinating him right about the time Silas had started pushing that herbal tea on her, the delusion voicing the darker side of her psyche as Silas steadfastly adhered to the sunny side of drug addiction.

  Peri splashed lukewarm water on her face, not looking at herself in the cracked mirror as she dried herself and shuffled back out. LB’s digs had been a noisy blur when she and Silas had come down the freezer staircase earlier today. The little hidey-hole just off the big playroom had been a little slice of heaven when LB had shown it to her, telling her she looked like shit and to take a nap while he and Silas talked. After she had assured Silas she’d never blacked out from hitting her head on the Pinto’s roof, he had left so she could collapse on the overstuffed couch.

  That had been hours ago, and instead of waking refreshed, she’d been pulled from sleep by a migraine-like pressure in her skull. The clock said it was withdrawal, not a concussion, and it had swiftly been joined by the twin feelings of nausea and debilitating hunger. She’d gone through drug hangovers before in the course of duty, but this was an unending misery.

  Pulse racing, she collapsed onto the couch, elbows on her knees and head in her hands. “Will you please stop fiddling with that,” she whispered.

  “You didn’t say with sugar on top.” Jack chuckled. His attention went to the steel door that led into the big communal room, and she wasn’t surprised when a light knock sounded, shortly followed by Silas’s voice.

  “Peri? I found some more tea.”

  Great. Her expression scrunched up. “Come on in.” She tried to pull herself together as the door opened, a flush of noise coming in with Silas. He had a thermos in one hand, a bag with a pharmacy logo on it in the other.

  “Here you go, Peri.” The wide-shouldered man closed the door with his foot, pace fast as he came to refill the ridiculous teacup already on the tiny table. “Nice and hot.”

  She sighed, but the deep breath spun in her gut and made her that much more ill. “I don’t care if it keeps me hydrated, it tastes like Chernobyl cardboard,” she said.

  His eyes flicked up, then back down. “I’ll just put it over here.” He hesitated, finally setting the thermos on the bedside table before gingerly sitting on the couch with her. “How are you doing?”

  Jack raised one eyebrow and tossed his phone to the bed. “How are you doing? He asks you how you’re doing?” The game show blared from the unplugged unit. Her mind had even added a glint of light from the bedside lamp, and she marveled that her imagination could invent such detail. “Take the Evocane and get on with your life. You can’t kill Bill if you’re dead, and this is going to finish you.”

  With only two doses? Peri rubbed her pounding head. “I’m fine,” she whispered. Her hand shook as she reached for the cup, and she pulled it back, curling her fingers under to hide it. With a start, she realized the host of the game show was Steiner. Shit, I’m going crazy. “Just fine,” she added as her stomach cramped. Not again . . .

  Peri flashed hot, then cold. Miserable, she pulled the afghan up and around her. It felt as if she had the flu, and she was sure it would get worse before it got better. “I’ve not been accelerated. I can stop taking it if I want,” she whispered, feeling the pain of that broken promise to her bones.

  “I’ll get you through it,” Silas said, and she huddled into herself, feeling the couch shift as he scooted closer, that plastic bag he’d brought in crackling. “I have some stuff that might help take the edge off. Get you over the hump.”

  “Hump? It feels like a mountain,” she said, her hope crashing as he pulled a box from the bag. Nicotine patches? Is he serious?

  Jack ambled out of the bathroom and pointedly set the wastebasket next to her. “Like that’s going to help.”

  Peri’s gaze flicked from the trash can that really wasn’t there to Silas. “At least he’s trying,” she said aloud, then flushed. Silas knew about Jack—hell, Silas had been the one who put the illusion in her mind—but it was still embarrassing. But there was only interest in Silas’s eyes when she met his wondering expression.

  “Jack is here?”

  “ ’Fraid so,” she muttered, closing her eyes and holding herself together as her arms began to tremble. She was glad Silas was with her. She didn’t want to do this alone. By morning she’d either be dead or through the worst of it. The need to do something was growing, making her fidget even as her muscles began to twitch in earnest. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

  “I guess that means your higher functions are still okay,” Silas said, finally getting the box open and peeling the back off a patch.

  Peri pushed her sleeve up. The plastic felt alien against her, and she tugged her sleeve down to hide it. “Maybe I should chew it. What else you got in that bag?” she prompted as a cold sweat broke out on her.

  “Something better than nicotine patches, I hope,” Jack muttered.

  “You can just shut up, Jack!” she exclaimed, pulling her knees to her chest to try to hold in the ache. God, it’s like being pregnant, she thought, then wondered whether she had been once and had forgotten. “I’m okay,” she insisted when Silas leaned to look into her eyes, but when she tried to unclench herself, a new wave of vertigo hit her, and her sight grayed. Her head felt as if it were splitting. Jack’s game show had gone into sudden death, and the colors and spinning lights were making her ill.

  “Will you turn that TV off before I throw you into it?” she moaned, her stomach roiling.

  Suddenly everything cycled down to one point in her gut. “Oh, no. I’m going to puke.” Surging to her feet, she ran to the tiny bathroom. Muscles rebelling, her stomach heaved. “Get out,” she demanded between the harsh gags, and Silas reluctantly left her alone. She was shaking even worse when she finally looked up, hunched under her afghan in a cold sweat. Silas was talking to someone.

  LB. Embarrassed, she flushed the toilet and rinsed her mouth out. The water hurt both her ears and her hands. It was warm against her but made her fingers ache.

  “How long has she been like this?” LB asked, his voice clear over the chattering water.

  “It didn’t get bad until an hour or so. It comes and goes in waves. Each one is worse.”

  Their voices serrated over her nerv
es, but she was more afraid of the silence, and she started when she pulled her face out of the sink and found Jack behind her, cool and collected. He was beautiful, but her eyes were red and her face slack. She looked a hundred years old, and she turned away, unable to believe there would be a tomorrow. She wasn’t going back to Bill. Evocane was a leash.

  “Babe, why are you putting yourself through this?” Jack said. “What does it matter if someone is telling you who you can and can’t go after? You’re still doing what you love.”

  “Go away,” she muttered, pushing past the hallucination to shuffle back out, not meeting either man’s eyes as she listlessly sat down. She hadn’t wanted LB to see her like this, but he probably knew the hell she was going through better than she did. “Welcome to the party,” she rasped, needing two hands to bring that cup of Silas’s tea to her mouth. It still tasted like crap, but she needed something, and she almost spilled it as she gulped it down, her hands were shaking so badly.

  “You look like run-over shit,” LB said, making tears of self-pity prick at her eyes. “Hey, ah, I thought you’d want this back,” he added, setting her tattered diary on the foot of the bed.

  “Thank you.” Miserable, she couldn’t even bring herself to wonder whether he’d snuck a peek in it or not. Her gaze went past him to Jack, anger giving her strength. “Jack, if you don’t turn off that TV, I’m going to kick you in the balls.”

  Peeved, Jack clicked the TV off and sat at the foot of the indulgent bed and sulked. But the shakes had abated enough that she could sit up. It was a breather, nothing more. The next wave was going to be the tipping point—and she didn’t know whether she could take it.

  Confused, LB turned to the TV. “She told me she hallucinates,” LB said.

  “That’s not the withdrawal,” Silas said, his head down over the open bag.

  “No, I’m schizophrenic,” she said. “But Silas says the voices in my head are real.”

  “You are not schizophrenic.” Silas dug in his bag. “I have something stronger. You want it now?”