Peri’s heart clenched in ache when she looked past a dented, modern door and into the auditorium. There wasn’t much left. The musty blue seats were gone, leaving only a massive, echoing space with barren walls, lorded over by the broken balcony. Most of the Neo-Renaissance carvings and relief had been chipped or were missing. Water had damaged the once polished wood, and the white marks where the rot had been cut out of the stage were stark in the bright lights hanging from scaffolding. But her skin tingled as she remembered the power of three thousand people crushed into space designed for half that, all of them living to the same sound for just that moment in perfect understanding.
A card table desk with a metal chair was dead center on the high stage. A laptop was open on it, looking like a prop in an apocalyptic play. The scent of rotted carpet mixed with the clean smell of cut wood. Her eyes rose, and she blinked fast. The dome was intact where the water from the leaking roof hadn’t reached, the colors and gilt looking as bright as the day they’d been painted. Eastown isn’t gone yet, and neither am I.
A scuff pulled her attention and the memory vanished.
It was Silas, oblivious to them as he strode from the backstage area. She hardly breathed as he scrambled up a short ladder with a flexi-glass to make an electronic rubbing from one of the engravings near the balcony. She didn’t see a weapon, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
This is the man who tried to kill Allen? she mused, recognizing his dark hair and muscular, body-building form, but having a hard time reconciling the calm, relaxed pleasure he was taking in restoring the old building with the savage, raging lunatic in her thoughts.
The click of Allen’s safety jerked through her. “I’ll do it,” she said as she touched his arm, and Allen’s brow furrowed. “Keep my exit open.”
For a moment, she thought he was going to argue, but then he nodded.
The snap of her holster was more feel than sound, and Peri pulled her weapon, gut tightening as she strode down the bare cement steps to the front, then levered herself up onto the stage. She slowly stood, and it was there she hesitated as Silas turned, eyes widening.
“Peri,” he breathed, and confusion stayed her—confusion at the relief and welcome in his voice. “You’re all right,” he said, flexi-glass in one hand, wide-faced stylus in the other.
“Don’t move,” she said coldly, and they both froze at the sound of the distant front door crashing into a wall.
“Silas?” a young woman’s voice called, and Peri’s mind fastened on it as familiar. “I’ve told you to lock the main door. We found tire tracks near the on-ramp, so Howie’s going to stay with you tonight. Silas?”
Silas opened his mouth, but stayed silent as he tracked Allen bolting back to the lobby.
“Silas?” the woman called again, and then, “Holy crap! Howard!”
Silas jerked, and Peri motioned him to stay still. “Don’t. Move,” she said as the sound of a fight rose over the droning of the generator. She’d killed people before—some who deserved it less than this man. But it felt personal this time, and … wrong?
“They’re lying to you.” Silas edged off the ladder, hands raised. “Let me explain.”
“Shut up,” she demanded, her confusion growing even as her aim tightened. She wanted it to be over. She wanted the nagging noise in her head to go away. But as she stood on that stage amid the barren emptiness, she couldn’t pull the trigger.
“Peri, wait,” a new voice pleaded, and her eyes flicked to a blond man coming up the stage’s stairs. Tense, she retreated so she could see both of them. It was the man from Overdraft, the one who had sat at the bar and observed, the one she’d thought might be with Opti’s psych unit. Shit. This is a test?
“I can explain!” she exclaimed, her aim never shifting from Silas.
Distracted, she was too slow when Silas lunged for her. The flexi-glass hit her chest, and he had her, twisting her wrist until the Glock went off to blow a hole in the wall. Silas slammed her up against the marble wall. Crap. It had been a test. And she had failed it.
“Taf!” someone shouted, but Peri was seeing stars, her ears numb from the gun’s shot.
“I’m sorry, Peri,” Silas said, his fingers trying to pry the gun away as he pinned her to the wall. “I don’t want to hurt you. If you would just listen.”
“Get … off …,” she wheezed, twisting a foot behind Silas’s and giving a yank.
They both went down. Silas yelped as they crashed into the hard wood, her on top of him.
“Will you hold still!” Silas said, and then suddenly she was facedown on the stage, her arms yanked behind her. “I’m trying to tell you something! Why do you never. Listen. To. Me!”
“You stole my life!” she shouted, hand still gripping the Glock but pinned to the floor. “Everything!” He was sitting on her. Allen wasn’t here, and she desperately didn’t want to draft. Teeth clenched, she struggled, never letting go of the gun even when her grip went numb.
“Remember your rule,” Silas said, sounding more irate than afraid. “You never kill anyone unless they kill you first. I didn’t kill you. I’m trying to help!”
How does he know my rule? “You tried to kill my anchor, you bastard!”
“Jack?” he said, and she gasped when the image of a smiling face, white from the light of a monitor, flashed through her. “I didn’t kill Jack. You did.”
Who the hell is Jack? Cheek pressed to the gritty wood, she puffed the hair from her eyes. “Not Jack. Allen.”