The Drafter (6 page)

She'd needed to play the “I'm hungry” card to get him to pull off at a sad-looking truck-stop restaurant. That had led to the idea of taking a shower at the even sadder-looking adjoining motel while breakfast was being prepared. If she got her way—and she usually did—their
break would extend into a memory defrag. Then Jack would sleep. He wouldn't be able to help it. After three years of saving each other's asses, her trust in Jack was absolute, but her gut said to stay off her employer's radar until Jack returned her memory, especially if a knot was involved.

Jack was right to be concerned, but defragging her thoughts was the quickest way to unsnarl and prevent another knot.
Before I start to hallucinate
, she thought as she squirted cream rinse onto her palm. Though, to be honest, it would take weeks of unattended memory issues before that happened.

Her arms ached as she worked the cream rinse through her straight black strands. Her hair was longer than she remembered, but that wasn't unusual. Unfortunately, neither were unexplained rug burns and bruises. She hated the disconnection that drafting left her. If not for Jack, she'd be adrift. Alone. Lost.

Jack will tell me
, she thought, lingering under the water as she wondered if her mother might have died in the last six weeks. Not knowing how she felt about that, her thoughts turned to her first draft—or at least, the first one she remembered. She'd been ten, swinging too high at the playground. A fall had broken her arm, but it had probably been getting the wind knocked out of her and the accompanying surge of adrenaline that had caused the jump. She'd since learned to control it and could draft at will, but the fear of dying would always trigger an unstoppable draft. She actually thought she had died that afternoon, when she suddenly found herself again swinging, watching a ghost image of herself gasp for air on the ground, her mother frantic.

At least, that was the memory she'd eventually defragmented with the help of Dr. Cavana, a child psychologist she'd been referred to after the episode at the park, teased from her over the span of several months. Stress-induced amnesia, they called it. But when she kept waking from nightmares of suffocation and a broken arm when she clearly didn't have one, her mother had gotten scared, overreacted—and unknowingly changed Peri's life.

Dr. Cavana had been a nice old man, part of the covert government-funded group that found and evaluated potential
drafters and anchors, the same branch of government she now worked for. Far more than a mere anchor, he could delve into a drafter's mind and painstakingly rebuild memories he hadn't witnessed. The skill had made him unique and therefore sheltered, but she'd always harbored the idea that he could kill a man in five seconds if he needed to.

Cavana had been the one to tell her about anchors and drafters, and that if she worked hard and took the right classes, she could join the clandestine, elite government force developed in the '60s to counter the Cold War intel, the drug war, the war on terrorist activity, and any war they felt like in between. Opti agents tweaked the present to set the future, and they had their fingers in everything from the development of soft fusion, to the legalization of replacement organs, to making sure U.S.-financed Finland made a manned landing on Mars before Putin.

Anyone who'd ever experienced déjà vu could be trained to remember altered timelines, but the anchor's ability to mesh his or her mind with a drafter's to
rebuild
those timelines was a rare skill. Drafters were even harder to find, seeing as they forgot both the history they changed and the history they wrote. There was a reason Cavana had been posing as a child psychologist, and even today, recruits were pulled from youth mental health wards.

Cavana made sure she got into the best schools, and she eagerly took the classes he suggested, wanting to be just like him, not minding having to lie to her overbearing, controlling mother, who thought her master's degree in military tactical innovation meant she was in a lab designing weapons, not that she was one.

The two years spent in a special branch of the military were like heaven on earth, both the hardest thing she'd ever done and the best. It was there that she learned how to use her body as a weapon that couldn't be turned against her, how to shoot when she had to, and how to avoid it by using her wiles. The science geeks helped her develop the framework of rituals to keep her balanced after a draft and ease the confusion. Some drafters, the men especially, could draft longer than she, but it was her opinion that the best draft was the one you didn't have to make.

Hearing Jack's footsteps outside the door, Peri turned off the water and got out, trying not to drip on her overnight bag. Wiping the mist from the mirror, she palpated the skin around her swollen eye. It was turning purple already. She jumped at the soft knock, even though she'd expected it.

“I've got your usual on the table,” Jack said, peeking in to hang a robe on the back of the door and set a steaming cup of take-out coffee on the glass shelf.

Still dripping, she leaned to give him a kiss. “You're too good to me.” His lips tasted of coffee, and her eyes dropped. “My mother didn't die in the last six weeks, did she?”

Jack gaped at her. “Good God, no! What brought that up?”

Feeling silly now, she shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Oh, Peri . . .” He awkwardly edged his way in, taking her in a damp hug and pinning her behind her towel. “You talked to her last week. Everything is fine.”

“So am I,” she insisted, not liking the lump in her throat. “But I want to get last night's task back before I get in the car.” His arms eased, and she looked at the guard's button sitting on the shelf. “Can we build the defrag around that?”

He nodded solemnly and took it. “Um, yes. I talked to Bill. He's freaking out. Are you sure you don't want to wait and defrag at Opti?”

“Opti?” she blurted, thinking the request was unusual. But there was a memory knot, and he was tired. “I'd rather do it now if you're okay. You are okay, aren't you?” she said, and he nodded, head down as he backed out and shut the door to leave Peri with a lingering unease.

The six weeks she'd lost wouldn't come back on their own, and there was only so much Jack could reasonably return to her. Sandy, her Opti-assigned psychologist, who'd been with her from the start, said that the larger the difference between the two timelines, the deeper the damage went. Six weeks for saving her life wasn't a bad exchange. Six weeks was manageable. But she had to know what had happened up in that room.

The scent of sausage and egg began to permeate the bathroom,
mixing with the lure of coffee on the shelf. Her stomach rumbled as she reached for the robe Jack had brought in, and it pulled free from the hook to send her pen necklace behind it swinging like a pendulum. Peri brought the cotton to her nose, breathing in the scent of her detergent under the cold, stale smell of luggage, then slipped it on, silently thanking Jack for putting the robe in his bag. If she wasn't relaxed, nothing would come back. That Jack knew her so well made her feel needy and dumb, but patterns kept her sane when the world was jerked out from under her.

Reluctantly Peri tucked the sterling silver pendant pen away in her bag. Most drafters had a way to leave quick, impromptu notes to themselves in case they drafted without an anchor, but wearing it during a defrag would be a show of mistrust.

The quick gulp of coffee hit her like a bitter, welcome slap, and she sat on the edge of the tub and pulled her overnight bag closer. Most of the clothes in it were unfamiliar, but she almost always wore the same thing so she'd never feel lost—solid, bold colors and tailored cuts—and she hung a fresh pair of slacks and new top on the back of the door to unwrinkle in the shower's residual fog.
White panties?
she wondered, the thin cloth sticking as she put them on under her robe. When had she started wearing white? They were so . . . pedestrian.

The boots were her familiar kick-ass style, and she gave them a quick wipe to get rid of a scuff, flushing when the cloth came away red with blood.
That explains my swollen foot
.

Her tight brow eased at the knitting project shoved in the front pocket for the drive there and back.
I've gotten brave enough to try gloves?
she thought as she set the double-pointed needles aside and kept digging. The domestic art was more than an Opti-sanctioned stress relief, and she liked being able to carry spikes of wood through TSA. In truth, it was a big part of why she'd agreed to it when Sandy had suggested she learn the homebody hobby. In a pinch, the needles could fit beside her knife in its boot sheath.

Her phone was next, and she checked to see whom she'd been talking to lately, glad she hadn't forgotten how to work the glass technology. There weren't
many names, and she recognized all of them. An odd exchange gave her pause until she realized it was out of Charlotte, probably the club, a restaurant, or the hotel they'd stayed at.

She found her knife wadded in Jack's handkerchief, and she meticulously washed the blood off with a DNA-destroying wipe, using a drop of oil stored in an unused contact lens case to lubricate the blade before tucking it in her boot sheath where it belonged. The bloodstained handkerchief she threw away, knowing that the maid would dispose of it more surely than she could. She didn't like that she couldn't remember ending a life. She never killed anyone unless they killed her first. Jack, though, wasn't that picky.

Tired, she looked at herself in the mirror as it fogged back up, not liking the shadow of her mother in the slant to her narrow jaw and the upturned curve of her nose. She'd pieced her life back together as much as she could on her own. It was time for Jack's help, and she headed out, coffee in hand.

A sagging queen bed with a faded print bedspread took up one interior wall. There was a large window overlooking the parking lot and interstate beyond, and one small window opposite that looked out at scrub and rock behind the hotel. The maroon carpet was matted, and the furniture was decades out of date. A TV was bolted into a corner at the ceiling. There was an actual rotary phone on the nightstand, but beside it was a universal etherball plug-in/charger that connected any device to the Net—a necessity when catering to truckers. The one spot of high tech made the rest of the room more dreary. It was a far cry from the tech-rich, five-star service she was used to, but it was safe, and that was all that truly mattered.

“Better?” Jack asked as he scooted a second chair to the tiny round table he'd arranged.

“Getting there.” There was an omelet with toast and sausage across from a plastic bowl of yogurt and walnuts. The early sun streamed in, glinting on the button sitting at dead center of the table. Slowly her smile faded as she tried to both remember and forget the face of the man she'd taken everything from, his eyes open as he stared up at her
with his last breath foaming the blood at his lips. Sometimes forgetting was a blessing.

“You, ah, going to shower before we hit the road?” she asked, hearing the whoosh of the interstate traffic leaking in along with the golden sun.

Jack glanced at the bathroom. “Probably. After I eat. I'm starving.”

“Me too.” The sausage smelled wonderful, and though the plastic spork was annoying, it didn't seem to matter when the fatty bliss hit her tongue.

Sighing, Jack flopped into the chair across from her. Peri took another gulp of coffee, freezing when she set it next to Jack's cup—sitting right in front of her.
Great
. Eggs and sausage were apparently not her usual anymore. Six weeks ago they had been.

She looked up to find Jack glumly poking at the yogurt. “Ah, this is your breakfast, isn't it,” she said, and he sheepishly reached across the table to take his coffee.

“Ye-e-e-eah. You've been on a health kick lately, but go ahead. You look hungry.”

“Oh, Jack,” she breathed in chagrin, and pushed the plate to him, getting up and moving to sit in his lap when he protested. His arms felt right as they went about her, his grunt of surprise making her smile. The smell of gunpowder lingered on him, way down under the dry scent of blue chalk and old beer. The bitter odor penetrated deep into her psyche and kindled a tingling desire born of memories of adrenaline and joined danger.

“We'll share,” she whispered, and he shifted her weight. “Here. Take a bite.”

His eyes lit up, and he held her securely on his lap as she angled the spork and sausage between his teeth. “I could get used to this,” he said around the mouthful, and relief dropped her shoulders. She hated it when she made a mistake this obvious.

It was all about routine. Routine wouldn't bring her memory back, but she had to have stability to notice what was out of place—and she was making mistakes.

“Mmmm, good,” he said as he shifted her so he could help himself. “You know, Bill is really not happy about the knot. Wants us back ASAP.”

“Of course he does.” But her gaze went to the interstate. If something deeper than a memory knot cropped up, Opti could handle it. Fix her. Returning immediately was a good option. “What do you think? Back by noon?” she asked reluctantly, still wanting a defrag before she faced the couch warriors with their psych tests and evaluations. But if he was too tired . . .

Jack nodded, picking the walnuts out of the yogurt to eat them one by one. “If you drive. I gotta get some sleep.” He hesitated at her suddenly wide eyes. “I'm good to do a defrag, though,” he added, and Peri exhaled in relief.

It wasn't as if she could force him, and if he had begged off because he was too tired, she would've had to wait. Most people at Opti thought the drafter was the ruling force in a drafter-anchor pairing, but the honest truth was, the anchor held the sanity of his or her partner—and every drafter knew it. “Now?” she asked, feeling as if they were running out of time.