But Allen threw it. The rifle hit her palm with a solid thud. Confidence flowed, and Peri turned, cocking it with a sure motion.
“We’re in a draft!” Frank shouted, and Sandy went ashen-faced. “Twenty seconds and she’s done! Sandy, get down!”
Plenty of time to take care of business, Peri mused, filing Frank’s anchor status away. He had to be an anchor, otherwise he would’ve been as oblivious to what was going on as Sandy was.
Jack was backing to the door, his bloody hands outstretched. “Babe, let me explain.”
“There are no words,” Peri said, and with an unhealthy satisfaction, pulled the rifle up.
He ran for the door.
She didn’t have a problem shooting him in the back, seeing as he’d been working behind hers for three years.
Peri sighed through the recoil as she pulled the trigger. Jack hit the door, arms splayed as he fell flat against it. He slipped down in a tangle of legs and arms, knocking the floor sweeper upside down, where it beeped for assistance. Sandy’s hands muffled her scream. The shells were spent, and Peri watched Jack twitch and go still.
Jack is dead, she thought, and the sudden shock of that hit her.
She did nothing when Frank wrestled the rifle from her, numb as Sandy ran from behind the bar to kneel over Jack. “Call an ambulance!” she cried, but no one moved.
“You let her kill her anchor,” Frank said as he spun the rifle to the floor. There was blood on his hand gripping her, and Peri wondered whose it was. Hers? Jack’s?
Allen looked at his watch, his expression grim. “I just saved Bill’s best drafter. She needed closure or she’d never forget.”
“In about five seconds, she’s going to need an anchor,” the large man said. “She knows I’m not hers.”
“Not my problem,” Allen said, and Peri blearily looked up, still in shock. “I don’t know how to rebuild memories, only destroy them.”
Peri’s heart thudded as Sandy rose from Jack’s broken body, her face pale.
“It’s not mine, either,” Frank said as he shoved Peri at Allen. “You think you can hold her while I get Jack out of sight?”
She fell into Allen, the sudden motion reviving her. She took a heaving breath, but it exploded from her in pain when Allen twisted her arm behind her, threatening to dislocate it.
“Sandy, some help here?” Frank said brusquely as Allen tightened his grip, and she gasped, seeing stars. “I don’t want to have to explain him when Peri finishes the weave.”
“Don’t do this,” Peri demanded, hating her inability, and then adrenaline flashed through her as time began to mesh. Suddenly, forgetting was too high a price to pay, and she panicked, fighting Allen and sending them both down.
“Get your ass over here and help me!” Frank shouted, and Sandy screamed something in a singsong language, bitter and angry.
“Let me go!” Peri exclaimed, but it was too late, and she seized as time snapped and her head exploded in a red wash.
“Her scarf! Get her bloody scarf,” Frank exclaimed.
“No!” Peri raged as Allen slipped into her mind, the way opened by the meshing of the timelines. Images sped past her, curling up in flame, destroyed: the button from the security guard, New Year’s under the stars, throwing flowers from the bridge in Paris in the rain, a total eclipse of the sun seen from a cruiser in the Bahamas, their toes rising out of a tub of bubbles, their first kiss, a shy smile and introduction as she was given a new anchor. She was going to miss Jennifer, but Jack seemed nice.
Pulse hammering, Peri looked up, confused when the man kneeling beside her staggered to a stand, a hand to his chest as he panted. Heart attack, she thought, and she felt her own chest, not knowing why.
Suspecting that she’d drafted, she lurched to her feet, reaching for the table when suddenly everything hurt. New hurt layered over old. She was at Overdraft, but not the one she remembered. It was closed, with chairs on the tables. Sandy was behind the bar, pale and unmoving as she stared at her with wide eyes, her beautiful hair mussed. Frank was with her, dropping a red towel into the sink and turning the water on full. The smell of spent gunpowder was obvious.
Sandy—always-in-control Sandy—was quietly panicking, muttering in a singsong until Frank told her to shut up. His back was to Peri, and he watched her through the mirror. But it was the mirror with its shelves of bottles that Peri stared at. They looked wrong in their orderly smoothness, and she couldn’t say why.
“Where’s Jennifer?” Peri whispered, glancing at the unfamiliar man. Her hand went to her throat. It was sore, and she was sweating. Confused, she looked at her wrist, red where someone had twisted the skin. Her shoulder felt as if it had been wrenched.
“Call 911,” Frank muttered, and the man beside her jerked his head up. Peri’s eyes widened. Frank was covered in blood!