One shot.
He’d better make it count.
He croaked once more, and the man took a step forward. “I said, ‘Say what,’ motherfucker?”
Evan closed his eyes, prayed that the flesh and bone of his leg were out of the line of fire, pigeon-toed his foot to clear it, and pulled the trigger. The first shot blew out the bottom of the holster and the man’s shin. As the man screamed, Evan ripped the ARES free. Barely able to lift his head, he smacked the magazine’s base plate against his thigh, hooked the rear sight on the outer edge of the holster, and ran the slide. The case ejected, spitting to the side, a fresh cartridge chambering, the whole tap, rack, and ready drill done before the man’s howl reached its apex.
Evan cinched his finger around the trigger and kept tugging, the rounds going in the same place but catching different parts of the shooter—knee, hip, gut, chest—as he collapsed.
Evan couldn’t see the man beyond his feet, but he listened carefully and knew him to be dead.
No onlookers, no police sirens, no one drawn by the shots. Any second that would change.
“Get up,” he told himself. His voice came out slurred.
He rolled onto all fours and stayed that way for a few deep breaths before heaving himself to his feet. Moving through a fog, he staggered to the car. The grouping of shots in the door panel had been tight enough to result in a single crater that resembled a collision more than bullet holes.
He collapsed into the driver’s seat, risked a peek in the rearview, and saw what he’d feared—his right pupil, blown wide. Big and dark, it seemed to consume the entire eye.
Hunched over the wheel, focusing carefully on the blurry road, he drove away.
He got four blocks before he screeched over, flung open the door, and vomited into the gutter. He leaned half in the car and half out, the pain behind his eyes so intense that he heard himself laughing dryly.
He’d had plenty of concussions.
None this bad.
A blow this severe actually changed the chemical levels in the brain. Usually it took a week for him to stabilize. He didn’t have a week. He needed rest. He wouldn’t get that either. Not with Unidentified Caller out there.
The fog would thicken at every exertion and stress. He’d have to protect his head at all costs. Second-impact syndrome—getting another concussion before the first had healed—could be fatal.
Maybe the rest of this mission wouldn’t have any exertion or stress or blows to the head.
There it was again, that dry laugh, barely audible over the sustained ringing.
The guy who’d done this to him wasn’t better than anyone else Evan had faced.
He hadn’t been damaged by a top-tier operator. He’d been damaged by statistics. Being one of the best assaulters in the world meant a 99-percent success rate. Evan had done over a hundred missions. His number had come up. If he kept this up, someday, maybe even someday soon, he’d draw an even worse number.
Wouldn’t that fit the cliché, taken down as he coasted toward the finish line?
Wiping his mouth, he gathered himself, breathing until his vision regained some semblance of normality, until the glare of the streetlight overhead no longer felt like a needle through the eye.
Then he tugged the car back into gear and headed to Max.
* * *
Evan parked up the block from the Lincoln Heights house and changed his clothes. He kept an extra set in a black duffel bag stored in the trunk but had neglected to pack backup boots.
The stripped-off rags reeked of blood and wet dog. No wonder the vet had mistaken him for a homeless person. He shoved them through a curb drain and moved along a sidewalk that tree roots had rubbled to post-earthquake effect. He was still having trouble with his balance, and the uneven concrete didn’t help.
Duffel slung over his shoulder, he tapped twice on the front door. Max opened it. “I thought you weren’t coming for another day.”
“Let’s go inside,” Evan said.
Max’s eyes widened, beads of sweat suddenly visible at his hairline. They drifted inside. The lack of lighting in here was a godsend, backing Evan’s headache off the red line.
The air hung heavy in the main room, the trash bag taped over the broken window sagging lifelessly. The standing water in the backyard stank. Evan could see up the hall through an open doorway into the bedroom where Max’s possessions were neatly stacked against one wall. It reminded him of a prison cell.
His face drawn and blanched, Max looked Evan over. “You’re missing a boot,” he observed.
Evan said, “Really.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone else emerged. One of his men shot up my car.”
Max’s lips quavered, the strain of the past three days breaking through. “Who?”
Evan could still taste bile in the back of his throat. “I’ll find out,” he said.
“I thought it was just this one problem and we were done.”
“Now there’s a second problem.”
“Okay.” Max nodded a few times too many. Trying to settle himself. “Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate your sticking with me.”
“I’m here until it’s finished. That’s the deal.”
Max crossed to the kitchen counter, where a few take-out containers rested. He’d closed them back up and lined them against the wall. Taking a bit of pride in looking after his space, even here.
Evan watched him in the dim light. Max picked at the edge of one of the containers, his head bent. Moonlight glowed through the fiberglass patchwork on the rear wall, turning his skin amber. A few days’ stubble darkened his face, with some gray flecked in, adding a touch of rakish charm to his hangdog features.
“Think about what Grant did,” Max said quietly. “I mean, he had colleagues and brothers and kids. But he gave the thumb drive to me.”
A few blocks away, a car horn bleated. The house felt small and safe and glum, a carved-out hiding space in a city of four million.
“You’re saying he trusted you?” Evan asked.
“I’m saying I’m the only person he knew who didn’t matter. Who no one would miss.”
Evan thought back two-thirds of a lifetime to an East Baltimore boys’ home. Pent-up energy and quashed dreams, the smell of a dozen boys in close quarters. Bunk beds lined the room like racks on a submarine. As the smallest, Evan slept on a mattress on the floor between the bunks. Most mornings started with one of the kids sliding out of bed, accidentally stepping on him.
The Orphan Program had sent a recruiter sniffing around the Pride House Group Home to check out its wares for a variety of reasons. But the most important was that the kids who lived there were expendable.
He felt an urge now to gloss over Max’s grief, to point out the nearly two dozen electrical shocks that Grant had endured before giving up his name. The crime-scene report had been stomach-churning. Grant hadn’t wanted to put Max’s life at risk.
But he’d been willing to.
And Evan wanted Max to shove the thought away because of how painfully that same reality lived inside him—how little he was wanted, how little his life had been valued. Max’s recognizing it meant that Evan had to recognize it, too, the anguish resonating in his bones like a deep-struck note. But Max was owed more than another voice giving him false assurances, so Evan kept his mouth shut and sat in it with him.
Max dug his thumbnail into a Styrofoam lid. “‘No one would ever think of you.’ That’s what Grant told me. That’s the thing. I don’t really matter. I’m not really family.”
Evan breathed in the dark space. “Maybe they’re still mad at you for moving on from Violet.”
“Moving on?” Max raised his head, the amber light catching half of his face, the other lost in eclipse. “When you love someone like that? You never move on. They get into your cells. They live inside you even when they’re not living with you.” He lowered his gaze again. “This whole mess with Grant, it took me right out of life. But that giv
es me a better view of it, you know? My life. Like I’m outside looking down at it. And I guess my fear is…” His lips bunched. “My fear is that maybe Grant was right.”
“If you don’t like what you see,” Evan said, “change it.”
Max’s laugh died quickly in the small room. “I wish it was that easy.”
“It is. It’s everything else that’s complicated.”
Max didn’t seem to like the sound of that.
“Maybe this will give you a chance to do something different.” Evan noticed that his enunciation was loose, slightly slurred from the concussion, and that once again he was talking to himself as much as to Max.
Max went back to picking at the take-out container. He did not look convinced.
Evan fought to speak more clearly: “You know the two best words in the English language?”
Max shook his head.
“‘Next time.’”
Max blew out a breath. He leaned on the counter, his elbow trembling.
Evan picked up Max’s disposable phone from the counter, dropped it down the disposal, and let it run until the pieces rattled vigorously. Then he took a fresh phone from the duffel bag, peeled it out of the packaging, and tossed it to Max.
“Just to be safe,” Evan said. “Use this now. Same rules. I’ll have 1-855-2-NOWHERE up and running again as soon as I get home. I’ll be in touch.”
“When?”
“When I take care of the second thing.”
Max chewed at the edge of a thumb, his shoulders curled inward. Wrecked with worry. “What should I do in the meantime?”
“In the meantime?” Evan considered for a moment. “Figure out what you want to do with your life when we get it back for you.”
* * *
Detectives Nuñez and Brust sat on the overstuffed couches in the front room of the Beverly Hills house, sipping black coffee out of bone-china teacups. Grant Merriweather’s widow sat opposite them, a frail woman with an expensive haircut and toned rich-wife muscles.
“So Max Merriweather stopped by here on Monday,” Nuñez said. “What did he want?”
“I don’t know.” Jill shook her head, her layered chestnut locks swaying. “He’d heard that Grant was killed. He said he wanted to offer his condolences, but it seemed like he was nosing around.”
“For what?”
She raised her head with a kind of affected dignity, the lines of her neck pronounced. “To see if Grant had left him anything.”
The detectives looked at each other.
“Like what?” Brust asked.
“In the will, I assumed. Money. Something. Max was always…” She reached over to adjust a willow branch rising from a massive vase. It scratched against the crystal. “He was always the family disappointment.”
Brust frowned. “Have you noticed any unusual people hanging around who might be dangerous? Was anyone with Max when you saw him?”
“We’ve covered all this already,” Jill said. “And besides, why all the interest now? Why not when Grant was scared for his life?”
“I’m sorry your husband wasn’t protected from this, Mrs. Merriweather,” Nuñez said. “He was a courageous man who was working on some high-stakes cases, cases other people might not have had the balls—if you’ll excuse my language—to take on. We’re worried he struck a hornet’s nest. And we’re doing our best to make sure no one else gets hurt.”
“Like who?” She snorted. “Like Max?”
“Yes.”
“You think the people who killed Grant would want to kill Max?” Jill said. “Why? Grant was important. Prominent people make enemies. No. No. The only overlap between Max and Grant would be if Max implicated my husband in some dirty business. In which case—”
She caught herself. Resumed adjusting the willow branch.
“You’re saying you think we need to look at Max Merriweather as a suspect in this investigation?” Brust finally asked.
Jill’s face contorted with grief briefly before it hardened back into an angry mask. She glowered at the detectives.
“I’m not going to tell you how to do your job,” she said.
23
The Snack Docent
By the time the elevator opened on the twenty-first floor, Evan was dead on his feet. More precisely—he was dead on one sock and one boot.
He trudged down the hall, squinting against the painful light of the wall sconces, eager for the silent embrace of his penthouse.
He looked up to see Mia, Peter, and Lorilee standing at his front door, waiting expectantly. Peter jabbed the doorbell, and Mia hooked him back against her legs and said, “That’s enough.”
Evan walked up behind them. Cleared his throat.
They swung to face him. “Oh, thank God,” Lorilee said. “Just in time.”
“In time for…?” And then, with horror, he remembered.
The fucking HOA meeting.
“We started fifteen minutes ago,” Lorilee said. “Hugh was worried you forgot.”
“No.” Evan scratched his forehead, hiding the dilated pupil. “I got hung up with a work thing. I just have to run inside to grab the…” He cringed slightly. “Nibbles.”
Mia stared at him. It seemed she couldn’t believe the word had come out of his mouth any more than he could.
He smelled of dog and sweat and vomit, so he bladed through them as swiftly as he could and fumbled the key into the lock. The internal security bars gave a clink as the lugs withdrew from the steel frame.
Peter said, “You’re missing your boot again.”
Evan looked down. “I guess that’s right.”
“This time it’s the other boot, though.”
“You’ve never lost a sock in the laundry?”
“Huh?”
“I’m kidding. It’s a new workout. Calf conditioning.” Evan was inside now, peering out, closing the door as he spoke. “I just need a … Be down in a…”
He closed the door. Put his back to it. Shot a breath at the high ceiling.
Then he ran to the bedroom. He kicked off his boot and grabbed another oversize shoe box from the closet. Pulling on the new pair, he stumbled into the Vault, grabbed a replacement RoamZone, and dumped his ARES into a medical waste bucket. On his way out, passing the bathroom mirror, he froze at the sight of the dark orb of his right eye. In the second drawer, he kept a few sets of specialized contact lenses for precisely this contingency. He popped one in, masking the damage, and immediately noticed two dark lines seeping through his shirt across the stomach.
He ripped off his shirt, exposing the claw marks from the pit-mastiff. Superficial gouges, reopened in his mad dash around the penthouse. He tore open a pack of styptic swabs that he snatched from the medicine cabinet. Grabbing two, he painted over the cuts, the sting setting his nerves on fire.
An annoying level of pain, too high to ignore, too low to take seriously.
“Ow, ow, ow.” Hopping back into the bedroom with one boot raised so he could tie the laces. Pulling on a new gray T-shirt, he sprinted to the front door. He’d just reached it when he remembered: nibbles.
Back to the refrigerator.
It held five saline bags, a jar of pearl onions, several ampoules of epinephrine, and a half-eaten doorstop of Huntsman cheese. The vegetable drawer was filled with vials of Epo, an anemia med that hastened the creation of red blood cells, kept on hand in the event of a bad injury.
Not helpful.
A sleeve of water crackers, a box of jasmine rice, and two types of lentil pasta peered back at him from the roll-out pantry. He shot a desperate glance at the living wall. Nothing there he could readily alchemize into a crudités platter.
To the fridge yet again. At the back of the top shelf stood his collection of cocktail olives. Grand Barounis, Spanish Queens, pitted Castelvetranos. He juggled the jars to the concrete island and then started slamming through the cupboards looking for any sort of serveware, as if he’d unknowingly purchased some in the event he suddenly had occasion to distribute
canapés.
No appetizer bowls had magically materialized on the shelves. Water glasses would have to do.
He upended the jars over the sink, using his hand as a sieve, and jammed the olives into the glasses. All the movement made him dizzy, and he paused for a moment, leaning on the counter to catch his breath.
The freezer drawer held a murderers’ row of the world’s finest vodkas. He grabbed the Syvä because it came packaged in a manageable bottle, short and plump. Encircling the glasses with his hands, the vodka swaying beneath one fist, he hurried out the door, kneed it shut, and rode down to the ninth floor.
As he elbowed into the social room, the conversational hum halted abruptly. Evan turned to take in an array of the usual suspects rimming the oval expanse of the fine-grained conference table. More tenants stood against the walls, Ida’s mugging clearly having escalated the meeting to standing room only.
Hugh Walters was of course installed at the table’s head, a despot’s perch from which he could hold forth at length on topics ranging from parking regulations to chlorination levels in the pool.
“Delighted you could make it, Mr. Smoak,” he said. “Generally a resident makes arrangements to be here early when he is responsible for refreshments.”
Evan blinked away the rising tide of his headache. “Sorry. I got stuck with a work situation—”
“We’re all busy.” As Hugh leaned back and folded his hands, Evan sensed he was warming to a platitude. “We all have jobs and responsibilities. Everything in life boils down to priorities. It’s not like you’re a firefighter or a doctor where you can’t responsibly control your schedule.”
Evan’s grip was slipping, so he held the collection of glasses against his stomach, refusing to wince as his shirt pressed into the scrapes.
Lorilee wiggled in her swivel chair, her eyes lighting up to match her surgically fixed expression of perpetual surprise. For a moment he thought his vision was blurring again, but then he realized that was just her face. “You brought … olives?” she observed.
Evan set down his offerings with a clink. Forty or so sets of hungry eyes lasered to the woeful glasses. It was surprising how inadequate they looked there on the massive wooden table.
Into the Fire Page 13
