Frustration pinched his brow. “If you draft, I’ll let you shoot Jack.”
Peri’s eyes flicked past Allen to Jack as the man popped up from behind the bar where he’d been helping Sandy. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “She can’t rewrite a draft. I’d be dead!”
“You’ll give me the rifle?” she wheezed, clenched in pain.
Frank came out from behind the bar. “Ah, Allen?”
Nervous and looking small, Jack backed to the door. “I’m not dying for her.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have shot her,” Allen griped, and he turned Peri’s face to look at him, his thin finger callused and rough. “How about it?”
“You’ll wipe me down to nothing,” she groaned. “Use me.”
He nodded. “Someone will. You’ll never remember Jack, but I’ll give you the chance to shoot him before you forget.”
Revenge wasn’t a good weight in the balance of actions, but right now … she didn’t give a shit.
“You guys figure this out. I’m leaving,” Jack said, and Frank cocked his rifle. It wouldn’t matter, though. If Peri drafted, he’d be right back in here and he knew it.
The pressure to jump was building, and Peri looked at Jack, white-faced with anger. Her fingers felt that awful slick stickiness of blood on the varnished floor. The feel of blood was in her mouth. Pain crushed her as Allen knelt beside her, a wad of napkins pressed to her chest. She squinted at the ceiling, wondering if she could see the ghost of herself up there. Everything was important, and she sealed it all away, trying to make a knot of memory as she panted in agony. She would remember this … but she’d need a trigger. Blood, varnish, slick fingers, the hardness of the floor, the pain of loss radiating through her, betrayal, Sandy’s hair twisted in her fingers. Allen was going to take the last three years from her, but killing Jack would be worth it.
“Deal,” she said, and then … she jumped, and the world flashed silver sparkles that dissolved into blue.
Hunched and hurting, Peri stood on the stage and wiped the blood from her cheek. Sandy rose up between her and the bar, panting as she touched her lip to find she’d bitten it. The woman’s hands clenched into tiny fists.
Peri reoriented herself, knowing that in thirty seconds she was going to be dumber than a stone. She was drafting. Jack had betrayed her. Bill was lining his pockets with Opti’s agents’ efforts. Her own psychologists were working for him. So was Allen, but he’d promised to give her a rifle so she could shoot Jack’s head clean off.
She turned to Allen, watching her from behind his thick glasses and from under black curls. Frank’s rifle was in his hand. It had one shell in it. It had to be enough.
“You spoiled, entitled little girl!” Sandy shouted, still before the bar but her words unchanged from the first draft, telling Peri she wasn’t a drafter or anchor. “I’m sick of you drafters complaining. You have someone waiting on you hand and foot, treating you like a god, and all you do is bitch about it when you lose a little memory. Life isn’t fair. Love is not real. I’m doing you a fucking favor!”
“You got that right.” Peri held out a hand to Allen, her fingers and toes tingling. What if he’d lied to her, too? Why was she so trusting?
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?”