The siblings’ heads swiveled as they regarded one another, some unspoken communication passing between them.
“Andreas already told you,” the oldest said. “We’re not here to talk.”
They fanned out, forming a semicircle around Evan. Their hands came up, open, ready to throw.
Evan released a breath, annoyed. “Really?”
He oriented toward the oldest, knowing he’d be the first to engage. He watched the man’s feet shuffle, read the positioning. He anticipated the low, sweeping kick before it came, a test-the-waters first strike, and he simply raised his own leg and pivoted it outward. Evan’s shin shield hammered the driving ankle, sending a painful vibration up his attacker’s leg. The oldest brother skipped back on his good foot.
The lesson would be simple: Every time one of the brothers struck, he would feel pain.
Andreas threw next as predicted, a right cross, but Evan shot his elbow up into a spear and leaned into the punch. As Andreas swung, the soft union of his pec and shoulder impaled on the bony tip of Evan’s ulna, and Andreas gave a cry of pain, his arm dangling numbly at his side.
Reza was in motion already, pivoting into a roundhouse kick. Evan caught the leg softly with both of his hands and slammed it down into the top of his own rising femur, the knee smash bruising the tibia and gastrocnemius, stunning the limb into uselessness.
The oldest had rebounded to attack again, Evan stepping into his punch, driving the heel of his hand hard into a shoulder post before the arm could swing around. The brother staggered back, then recovered, countering with a tight jab. Evan’s hands moved like horizontal buzz saws in a kali deflection, clapping the arm from either side, his palm slap-guiding the fist, his knuckles digging into the soft meat of the biceps. The oldest brother grunted and spun away, Evan letting him tumble into Reza, knocking him over.
Andreas had already wound up for a high kick, but Evan shot his lead leg up and straight out, letting Andreas’s momentum carry his crotch into Evan’s foot.
A clod of air left Andreas in something like a bark. “Ouch!” he said, and sat down next to his brothers.
Evan had responded only with blocks and deflections, making not a single offensive move.
From somewhere behind him, he heard air hiss through Johnny’s teeth.
The brothers cradled various limbs and breathed raggedly, more stunned than injured.
Now Evan stepped forward and offered Reza a hand. Reza looked to his oldest brother, who nodded, and then Reza grasped Evan’s hand and allowed himself to be helped to his feet. The other brothers stood on their own.
“Okay,” Evan said. “Let’s try this again.” He turned to Johnny, who was watching, mesmerized, his mouth slightly ajar. “Johnny?”
No response.
Evan snapped his fingers in front of Johnny’s face, and Johnny reanimated. “Yeah? What?”
“Apologize to Reza for punching him after the whistle. It was a dishonorable thing to do.”
“I’m sorry,” Johnny said. “Really sorry.”
“Shake his hand.”
Johnny held out his hand, and Reza took it.
“That nose has been properly reset,” Evan said. “By a doctor. You will pay all his medical bills. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Johnny said. “I agree.”
Evan looked at the oldest brother. “Are we done here?”
The brother stared at him for a time, trying for implacable, though everyone knew it was already over. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re done.”
Evan gave him a nod, then turned and hustled back for the garage.
Johnny followed at his heels. “Holy shit holy shit holyshitholyshit. How’d you do that?”
They rounded the corner of the building, moving toward the porte cochere.
“I fought some as a kid,” Evan said, giving the valet an affable nod.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Evan halted, Johnny bumping into him from behind. Evan turned, his eyes inches from Johnny’s. “This never happened. Understand me?”
Johnny held out his hands. “I understand.”
Evan slipped through the glass front doors, leaving Johnny in the shade of the drive-through.
42
The Inside of a Conspiracy Theorist’s Mind
Five-twenty and still no ping from Katrin White’s GPS signal.
Locked down in the Vault, Evan raked through the databases, scouring every corner of the universe for trails that might lead to Danny Slatcher or locations he’d used in the past. He dug and pried, trying not to watch the clock.
His mistrust of Katrin might have cost her her life.
With ex-Orphans on his trail, Evan had had to doubt everything and everyone, see the lie beneath every sentence, betrayal beneath every smile. Over the past two weeks, he’d been pulled increasingly into the ordinary world with all its human complications, real people with real problems, and it was harder and harder to tell what was authentic and what was a strategic simulation of authentic. He’d charted connections and coincidences, creating webs of partial logic that resembled nothing so much as the inside of a conspiracy theorist’s mind. Assessing the genuine in the everyday was his particular blind spot, as he had never lived in the everyday. Katrin did. And his inability to decipher the language of the everyday, to read her correctly, might prove to be the tear in the fabric that would unravel them both.
This mission had been a death trap from the start, the foundation caving in beneath his feet, the Commandments crumbling one after another. Only one mattered anymore, the Tenth and most holy Commandment: Never let an innocent die.
He pounded at the keyboard, hacking through files as if forging through brush with a machete. But Slatcher lived up to his reputation. Traceless. Invisible. A ghost.
Six oh-seven and still no ping from Katrin White’s GPS signal.
Evan cocked back in his chair with an aggravated sigh. Only now did he realize that Vera had died. The aloe vera plant, companion through so many adventures and witness to his sins, had turned brown and brittle. He lifted her from her bed of pebbles. The size of an artichoke, she fit neatly in his palm, as light as a bird’s nest. She deserved more of a send-off, but she got only the trash compactor. When he looked up, he saw that the living wall, too, was expiring, a wide swath of the herbs long gone, the floor beneath dusted with fallen leaves and sprigs. The drip system looked to be clogged, another repair to add to the list along with the katana’s scabbard. He stared into the malnourished rise of plants as if it were a mirror.
The wall and Vera were the only lives fully in his care, and he hadn’t even managed to keep them afloat.
Seven-sixteen and still nothing.
He debated reviewing his own past assignments and missions to determine which had given rise to someone seeking vengeance in the form of Danny Slatcher, but there were too many, and every last one had left a contrail of lethal enemies.
Three past eight. Nothing and nothing.
And then he spotted something.
But not on the monitors he’d been focused on.
One of the south-facing outdoor surveillance cameras picked up two men approaching the loading dock where Evan had squared off with the brothers earlier in the day. These men were big specimens in dark, loose-fitting clothes, tattoos showing on their hands and necks. Evan initiated the facial-recognition software, but it was too dark behind the building for a clean capture.