Allen sat down behind her and tucked close. Shifting awkwardly, Silas edged toward the bar. “Ah, I’ll just be over here.”
“No one needs you, piano man,” Jack said loudly, and Peri flushed. He was getting aggressive. He’d vanish for good if they did this right, and the illusion seemed to know it, her subconscious fighting her, lying about who she was. It’s a lie. It has to be.
Peri bowed her head as Allen’s fingers landed on her shoulders, pushing deep into exactly the right places. It was hard to relax with Jack staring at her. I don’t need you anymore, she thought as she closed her eyes, and finally she began to relax.
“Little whore,” Jack muttered.
Tension slammed into her. Sensing it, Allen sent his fingers to scrub at her scalp. “I’m sorry, Peri,” he said softly. “The last thing you need is more holes in your memories, but the only way to be rid of him is to destroy both timelines. I promise you’ll get the straight story, but any direct memories will be gone, along with Jack.”
“Never …,” Jack whispered, and she shivered.
“You’re fighting,” Allen complained. “Let me do this, or Silas will never let me hear the end of it.”
That brought a smile to her. True, Silas was more talented, but Allen had firsthand knowledge of what to remove, and she leaned back into him, even as she pondered the wisdom of letting him into her head. She’d shot at him, beaten him, left him for dead, berated him. Why should he help her?
“You’re blocking again,” Allen said wearily. “I don’t hold you to actions done in the name of closing Opti down. It was your job. We all volunteered for it.”
Crouched with his breath tickling her ear, Jack whispered, “But you hold yourself to them, don’t you, babe. Because you enjoyed it. Even Africa. Admit it,” he whispered. “You liked who you were—or it wouldn’t have taken three years to figure out. Don’t let them steal that from you. You’re alive when you’re bad. Don’t let them kill your soul.”
Peri’s pulse quickened. She hadn’t enjoyed the ugly things she’d done while at Opti. The people she’d hurt or killed were real. The wrongs she’d done were real. To have enjoyed it would make her foul. She hadn’t.
“You did,” Jack whispered, and her eye twitched.
“I’m trying,” she whispered, and as Allen’s fingers eased her into a light trance, a flash of Jack lying on a yellow floor, a blood-soaked scarf pressed to his middle, rose up.
Oh, God, he’d been dying, shot in the gut. Jack had lied to protect her. Bill was corrupt. Sandy and Frank…. They’d fought. She had thrown a knife at Sandy and missed.
“That’s the one, Peri,” Allen said, his presence in her mind becoming clearer. “Remember everything. I’ll take it away.”
Jack’s breath seemed to brush her cheek. “It never goes away. You’re a bad person. You like who you were, and you miss it already.”
He was giving voice to her deepest fear. Flashes of that night came fast and without order. Blood on her hands. Her scarf pressed against Jack’s middle. The sound of breaking glass. Sandy’s long hair flying before her as she fell back to break the bar’s mirror. Peri couldn’t make sense of the disjointed images. Allen scrambled to catch them, but they were too fast and she wasn’t letting him in deep enough to destroy any of them.
“Peri,” he pleaded. “Please. I need to do this.”
Maybe I deserve to be left in the chaos of my own creating, she thought.
“You do,” Jack whispered, his breath sending her hair to tickle her neck. “I’m going to take you there. Right now.”
With a sudden twist, the entire night came back in a flash. Both timelines sparkled in irreconcilable clarity. She gasped, jumping to a stand. Her pulse thundered as she spun to Allen, his mouth gaping as he stared at her from his chair. He wasn’t supposed to be in a chair. He’d been by the bar, throwing Frank’s rifle to her.
“I shot him!” she cried out, staring at the stage where Jack had fallen, his belly punctured. Slick blood covered the floor, smeared where he’d gotten up. Terrified, she looked at her blood-covered hands. But her chest had a hole in it, and she staggered. The mirror was broken, and Sandy’s soft sobs rose from behind the bar.
Scared, Jack ran for the door. In her mind, she lifted the rifle to her unblemished shoulder and blew a hole in his back.
“He’s dead!” she groaned as the memory of Jack slid to the floor, unhelped and uncared for. No one was moving to save him. Not even her.
“Allen! What the hell are you doing! You want her in MEP?” Silas shouted.
“She used the framework you left to twist control from me! What did you do to her?”
Peri turned to the bar. Panic joined her confusion when the mirror was unbroken and Silas stood there instead of Frank. She backed up, eyes darting for a way out.