The Drafter

 

Rain made the nearly empty streets shine under the streetlights as Silas waited in the dry shadows behind the massive pylons making up the grocery store’s front fa?ade. It was a questionable place to be this late at night amid the gum wrappers and empty nicotine caps, but Allen’s car was parked in the nearly empty lot. This was the only place that carried Peri’s cat’s food that was open after midnight. Silas knew she’d sent Allen out for it twenty minutes ago. It was likely she’d wanted some time alone in the apartment to poke around, and a quest for cat food was an excellent excuse.

 

He had to talk to Allen, and though jimmying the door of Allen’s Lexus and waiting there for him would have been less obtrusive, there was a perverse pleasure in lurking in the shadows. They’d have a quiet chat amid the dirt and cold brick. It would get his attention—make him listen. Peri’s mental state was ready to crack, but his terse, one-sided conversation with Fran today had made one thing very clear. Until Allen vouched for her alliance loyalty, she’d be treated as a traitor—and Allen had flatly refused to give it.

 

Silas fidgeted in a slow anger, hands shoved deep in his pockets. Peri was vulnerable—because of her strength and abilities, not in spite of them. Some of this was his fault, but the Jack hallucination shouldn’t have survived Allen’s latest mental butchery. After seeing her shout at empty air and her expression change to horror as she realized her life was a lie, he knew the risk wasn’t worth anything they could gain anymore. The task was over. They’d get their intel another way.

 

Leaning, Silas glanced inside to see Allen flirting with the old woman at the register. Slowly he dropped back, fingering the pistol in his coat pocket. He was having serious doubts about his old friend. Plausible deniability was a sword without a grip, and Silas had never liked the idea of sending her into Opti with no memory of her past, a double sleeper agent. He’d liked it even less when Allen had remained with her at Opti, dedicated to keeping her safe while she found what they needed. It didn’t surprise him that Allen had somehow twisted things so that he would be the one to break the truth. Allen was all about the glory of the job, not caring much whom he hurt getting there. It was what had attracted Peri to him in the first place.

 

Stress pulled his shoulders up as the twin glass doors, their e-boards flickering with the week’s specials, slid open. Breath held, Silas strode out of the shadows. “We need to talk.”

 

Allen’s head snapped up, his brief shock making Silas smile. “Jeez, Silas. You gave me a heart attack.” He pushed his glasses back up his nose. “What are you doing?”

 

“Avoiding the bugs in your car,” he said, shoving Allen to the shadows and pulling his gun out. “And deciding if I should pop you or not,” he added when Allen’s back hit the brick. “She could have killed me!”

 

Unperturbed, Allen looked past Silas’s weapon to the rain-emptied parking lot. “You should get some sleep. You look like hell,” he said, the bag with the cat food crackling in his grip as he started for the lot. Silas shoved him into the shadows again, and Allen looked up, peeved. “If she didn’t shoot you the first second she saw you, she wasn’t going to,” he said tightly.

 

Silas’s lips twisted. “I’m calling it. You’re going to help me pull her out. Now. Tonight.”

 

Allen’s disgust snapped to disbelief. “I wasn’t going to let her kill you!”

 

“This isn’t about her pointing a gun at me,” Silas whispered harshly, his grip on the Glock tight. “You think she’s never done that before? I’m talking about ending this. We can’t win, Allen. She’s too fractured. Tell Fran she’s clear so I can pull her out.”

 

Allen’s eyes slid to the gun. Three feet away, a cold spring rain hissed down, but here it was dry and dusty. “We have a real chance at this.”

 

“Chance?” Silas gestured wildly. “There was never any chance. We’re never going to get what we sent her here for. She needs to be pulled out. Fixed.”

 

Allen’s focus sharpened. “Is that what this is about? Her not remembering you? Peri is not broken.”

 

“You call what you made her into whole?”

 

“Hey! I did what I needed to do for both of us to survive,” Allen said. “Bill trusts me. He doesn’t like me, but he trusts me. I can salvage this.”

 

Dropping back, Silas sent his gaze to his gun, and then he shoved it into his pocket. “She’s falling apart.”

 

“She’s fine.”

 

“She remembers Jack,” Silas said, and Allen’s expression went blank.