“That’s what I told Bill you’d say,” he said, not at all regretful. “Think about it, Peri. If you run, every cop from here to both borders will be looking for you. You’re not that good on your own. The same patterns that keep you sane will be what we’ll find you with. It’s not your fault. We made you that way. Sooner or later, you’ll slip up and be brought down, tried, and put away as the corrupt Opti agent who killed her own anchor to hide her guilt.”

“You can’t expose Opti,” she said, and he laughed. “The public would demand an end to all of us if they knew what we can do.”

“Which is why your special abilities won’t be hinted at. You are hereby a homegrown assassin, Peri, a member of a government-funded special forces group belonging to a military project that has been alive since the forties, because we say so. We’ve got the paperwork to prove it. Ninety-five percent of it is true. It’s not as if we haven’t had to start from scratch before.”

I am no one’s scapegoat. Frustrated, she pulled her knitted cap off and tossed it aside.

“Opti will survive, but one way you’ll be in jail for the rest of your life, and the other will have you with me, oblivious and happy, doing what you like to do. What you’re good at.”

“I need some time to decide.”

“You don’t have any!” Allen shouted. “I need an answer. Before my pain meds kick in!”

Stymied, she didn’t say anything. She wasn’t going back to be a dog doing tricks for them, wiped to ignorance every time she figured it out. How long? How many times?

Allen’s voice was satisfied as he said, “I’ll take that as a no. See you soon, Peri.”

The phone connection broke, and she turned it off. The car was still sitting in the middle of the dorm parking lot. Leaning to the floor, she pushed through the mess until she found a pen and a yellow receipt from a tire place. She jotted down Silas’s cell number, then shoved the yellow paper in her pocket. She’d ditch the phone when she got on the expressway.

I don’t remember ever driving my Mantis, she thought suddenly and in regret, grimacing at the AM/FM radio and the filthy clutter strewn over the age-torn vinyl seats. According to the literature, she could start her Mantis from a hundred feet away using the fob or her phone. It would cut out if anyone not registered sat in the driver’s seat. It came with a lifetime SiriusXM radio subscription. It could do zero to sixty in three point two seconds. The warming engine went barrummm! when she started it, to make her insides feel good—and she was driving this piece of crap?

Sighing, she put it into drive. Okay, she had a car, but getting to Detroit and that button didn’t seem important anymore. Heart pounding, she headed for the exit. A few miles ought to put her under a different tower, give her some margin of security. She couldn’t allow herself to believe Allen. Her gut said that Silas was too smart to believe him, too.

“Sooneror later I’m going to slip up, huh?” Peri muttered as she swung onto the road, deciding it was better to be angry than afraid. She wouldn’t get caught. She was a professional, damn it. She might not remember everything, but she had skills.

But her greatest asset was also her greatest liability, and she wouldn’t have an anchor to bring her memory back the next time she drafted. She needed Silas.

“Vets,” she said, deciding to stop and eat while she did her research. “I need to find a vet who specializes in squirrels.” Hands shaking, she hit the gas, wanting to see what the big, overindulgent, American-made engine could do.

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

“A squirrel,” Peri said, pitching her voice high and doing a good impression of being panicked as she held the shoebox she’d found in a Dumpster and tilted it to make the rocks it held scrabble like claws. “I accidentally hit her. I couldn’t leave her there, and your ad says you handle exotic animals.”

The twentysomething woman behind the counter dubiously eyed the box, then Peri’s worn but professional attire behind that nasty blue coat and ugly blue-and-white-striped hat. “Yes, ma’am, but domestic animals, like lizards and birds. We’ve never seen a squirrel.”

Peri leaned on the counter, not really having to fake her distress. “You have to help me. Her leg looks broken. Maybe she has babies! She let me pick her up okay. She’s really tame.” Peri shifted the rocks. In the back, dogs barked, and she stifled a shiver. Why don’t I like dogs?

The woman stood, uncertain. “I’ll see if I can find him,” she said, going to the back.

Exhaling, Peri retreated into the reception area, smiling wanly at the second receptionist who was separating the “bring your pet in for a visit” cards the printer was spewing out. The diploma on the wall said Howard Lamms—which would be better than Squirrel, but not much. God save me from amateurs, she thought, her tension returning threefold.

Earlier, she’d grabbed a quick and lonely meal at a sandwich shop, where she’d borrowed an actual phone book—she hadn’t seen one since she was a little girl—to scope out the vets in a fifteen-mile radius. From there she’d prioritized them by how many doctors each had on staff under the assumption that if “Squirrel” was stealing meds, he wouldn’t want a partner around to have to explain things to.

Peri was currently standing with her box of rocks in the third office she’d tried. She didn’t have a lot of hope, but there were six more addresses on her list with multiple doctors if this last one didn’t pan out. She felt naked for having wiped off the anti-facial-recognition smut, but using it outside of large public places garnered more unwanted notice than not. It didn’t help that it’d gotten dark, but what bothered her most was that Allen was filling Silas with lies that were easier to believe than her truth.