“They have Allen,” she blurted, her adrenaline burning. “If we drop down together—”
“Then we die together. Let’s go. I called in air support but it won’t wait.”
Peri jerked her attention from the ragged circle of light and the masculine shouts filtering up. “Not without Allen.”
Harmony crab-walked back. “You’re the only one left, Reed. You were right. It was a trap. Michael is a sadist. We leave now, or I’ll shoot you on sight next time I see you as one of Bill’s brainwashed dolls.”
“But . . .”
“Now!” The whites of Harmony’s eyes were vivid, her determined anger held just in check. “We’ll come back for Allen.”
“Peri?” came Bill’s oily voice in the sudden silence below them. “I’ve got Allen. If you want him dead, you just go ahead and shoot who I send up there for you. You want him alive, you drop your weapons down through the hole. I’m not mad at you, but it’s time to come home. I won’t let you need. I promise.”
For three seconds she stared at Harmony. With a groan, Peri turned away, hunched as she darted around supports and sudden vents. Harmony was a dark shadow beside her, moving remarkably fast. Suddenly Peri realized there was blood splattered on her. I don’t even know whose it is. “Are you okay?”
“I doubt it.” Harmony halted at the shifted ceiling tile she’d probably gained access at. Behind them, the light was eclipsed as men cautiously poked their heads up through the ceiling. “It’s a back office. Out the window. It’s too hot for the airlift. We have to get at least three buildings over. You can run?”
Peri nodded. Her chest hurt. If she hadn’t left, they would’ve killed him. They might kill him anyway, but there was the chance they’d keep him alive. Most drafters were sentimental about their anchors, and therefore they made good leverage. I am a fool.
“You first,” Harmony said, looking at Allen’s watch between Peri’s palm and the butt of his weapon. There were men up here now. A dark shadow shifted where the light from the kitchen stabbed upward, and it jerked when Peri took a shot at it.
“Don’t piss me off, Bill!” Peri shouted, and Harmony smacked her shoulder to be quiet and get through the opening. “If you hurt Allen, I’ll kill you myself!” she added.
“Out. Go!” Harmony said, and Peri dropped through the ceiling and into the shadowed office below. Harmony was right behind her. Blinds fluttered before a broken window like a bird’s shattered wing, and Harmony levered herself through it, not waiting for Peri as she ran across the icy lot and through the solar array to the adjacent building. Grim, Peri followed, not knowing how she could still move.
She’d lost Allen, but more than anger gnawed at her. She had wanted what Bill offered, wanted the power that remembering her drafts would give her. She wanted it even as Silas’s warning that it was a poison echoed in her thoughts. But not like this, beholden to whoever held the keys to the lab.
As soon as WEFT knew she was hooked on it, they’d all start making their demands.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The ceiling of the off-site airport warehouse was lost in shadow, and the air was still and stale as Bill made his way past the organized shipments to the janitor room he had appropriated as a temporary holding cell. Michael was beside him, his steps meeting Bill’s strike for strike despite the hint of a limp from where Peri had stabbed his knee. But Bill felt anything but unity with the tall, swarthy man still in his combat gear, the stink of his excitement at killing an entire team lifting off him like bad cologne.
Bill had taken the hour of downtime while everyone had pulled out to shower and change into a suit. That Michael hadn’t—wanting to prolong the memory by continuing to wallow in another man’s blood—seemed to Bill to be the capstone in what made Michael so unsuitable.
“I got what you wanted,” Michael said, breaking the long silence, and Bill glanced sidelong at him as they wove past a cling-wrapped pallet of water purifiers.
“I told you to stay in the room.”
“You said stay until I got the data. I got the data,” Michael insisted, his calm, precise tone grating on Bill.
“And you still managed to make a travesty of it.” Bill gave up trying to keep his polished veneer in place around Michael. “If I can’t fix this, I’m going to have two major corporations thinking I’m playing them off on each other when what I’m trying to do is salvage something from your clusterfuck.”
Michael frowned as they approached the man standing guard at a locked door, running his middle finger under the cut Peri had given him. “They were in my way.”
Bill stopped, not wanting the guard waiting at the door to hear their argument. “I don’t give a fly’s dick about the CIA agents. I said no live ammunition, and you leave holes, casings, and brain tissue in the carpet.”
“As I recall, it was your soldier girl who opened fire in the lunchroom,” Michael said.
Bill leaned in, not liking that Michael was taller than him in his combat boots. “Everblue is going to know someone stole their information. They’d be fools not to go into production immediately. It’s going to hit the market three years ahead of schedule. Their CEO will be Time’s Man of the Year. You pissed my new building and support staff away, Michael, and for what? Tormenting a woman for information she wasn’t going to give? Information we were going to acquire anyway?”