“You mean give it to someone?” He flung a hand into the air. “Who? You think Bill could do this on his own? He’s a cog. Someone else is pulling his strings, and if we take it to the wrong person, we’re dead.” His head drooped. “We might be dead anyway. Or I might be. They’ll always need you.”
A new fear slid through her. She was reasonably safe. Rare. One in a hundred thousand. Jack, though … She stifled a shudder as she remembered Bill threatening him. But it all made sense now, and her lingering distrust of Jack vanished: his pensive mood, the conversation with Bill he hadn’t discussed with her, her gut telling her that something was wrong. She stood, frustration replacing her panic. Their only option was to find the root of the corruption themselves. But if they blew the whistle too soon, she’d lose everything. Everyone in Opti knew how to smother the guilt of a cold-blooded killing. That it might be one of their own wouldn’t slow them down at all. Did Nina really facilitate genocide? For money?
“I can’t lose you,” Jack whispered, and she blanched at his heartache. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I should have told you right from the start.”
“Yes, you should have.” Her brow furrowed. “Running is out,” she said, knowing it would be futile. “Bill thinks I’m in the dark, right? Let’s do a few of his jobs.”
“You’d do an illegal task?” Jack said, and she searched his face.
“It will be our cover as we figure out how far this Opti corruption really goes,” she said, heart pounding. Running would be a fast death; staying and ferreting out the depth of Opti’s sickness would be a long game of cat-and-mouse. Same ending most times, but occasionally the mouse got away. “Once we know who’s running it, we can go to the alliance.”
“The alliance!” Jack’s expression held a moment of shocked fear, and then it was gone. It hit Peri like a slap and she fumbled, trying to figure it out.
“They can give us protection if nothing else,” she said, and Jack violently shook his head and pulled from her grip.
“Peri, the alliance is nothing but a vigilante group trying to wipe Opti out of existence. Good and bad. Everything. We can’t trust them.”
Fear. He was afraid, and Jack was afraid of nothing. “They’re made up of drafters and anchors themselves,” she said, suddenly unsure. “They won’t turn us in, and they won’t tell the world about us or they’ll end up as science projects as well. Jack, they’ll help us root out the corruption if we give them the proof. It’s all we have.”
Brow furrowed, Jack looked at the kitchen. It was where he stashed most of his firearms, but they couldn’t fight their way free, and he knew it. “Opti knows everything. They’ll find out.”
Frustrated, she bit her lip. “Then we minimize. You said there was a chip. You didn’t give it to Bill, did you?”
“No, of course not,” he said as he teased a tiny, pinky-nail-size chip from his wallet.
Her hiding things was a bad idea, but his keeping it in his wallet was even worse. Peri crossed the room to her knitting bag, feeling like this whole unfolding mess was somehow surreal. It was as good a place as any, better than most, because if she forgot, she’d eventually find it. As for the list itself? She could knit herself a message tonight in the tail end of the scarf like a modern-day Madame Defarge.
Needles clicking, she found the blue size 8. It was fairly large, and it was unlikely she’d lose it since a half-knitted scarf resided on the second needle of the pair. Fingers shaking, she wedged the cap off the blunt end and dropped the chip in. Unhappy, she gave it a shake until it wedged itself and was unmoving.
“There.” She recapped the needle and dropped it back into the bag. “Hard copy?”
Jack said nothing as she reached for the lighter beside her candles, the quick whoosh of fluid igniting the only sound as she lit the scrap of paper and let it burn in his empty wineglass. The ribbon of smoke was sharp, the scent reminding her of the single memory she had of the last six weeks: her in Jack’s arms as they connected with the universe beside a fire gone to coals.
Miserable, Peri sat on the edge of the couch, her elbows on her knees and her head hanging as she realized how deep in the crapper they were. Jack drew her close, holding her sideways as he took a sip from her wineglass and passed it to her.
Fingers shaking, she drank the last swallow and set the glass down with a clink. It was as if she could feel her world realign as the enormity of what they were up against became real. They’d have to play a very dangerous game, and there was no one they could trust but each other.
“I’m so sorry. This isn’t what I wanted to happen,” Jack said, and she saw the heartache in his eyes, his guilt that he hadn’t told her sooner.
Her hand rose to touch his face, needing to reassure him. “We’ll get through it together,” she said, tilting her chin to find his lips with her own. They met with a soft passion that flashed hot, and need arced through her, more potent because of the danger they’d have to survive. His hands tightened on her, but he pulled away first, even as she reached for more.
A heady emotion flickered over his face, reassuring her that they could do anything together. “We find the key players?” he said, and she nodded. They’d plumb the depths and find out how far the corruption went—or die trying.
And if all else failed—she was a damned special ops agent. She knew how to lie.