Evan stared at his reflection, a ghostly form in the fogged glass. For the first time in years, he felt a stab of self-pity, wishing that the Mystery Man had never showed up to peruse the offerings of the Pride House Group Home in East Baltimore. The foster home had proven a rich recruiting ground for the Program. The boys used to jostle at the window, hoping for a glimpse of the man lingering by the chain-link surrounding the cracked basketball courts across the street. They were unsure who he was or where he’d come from, but they sensed he was there for them. There were rumors of boys pulled off the street, boys who had gone on to fresh lives. There were rumors of sex-slave operations and stolen-organ rings, too, but those weren’t strong enough to quell their curiosity.
They all had so little to lose.
If the Mystery Man hadn’t chosen Evan — or, more precisely, if Evan hadn’t gotten himself chosen — he would never have had Jack. He wouldn’t have become an Orphan. He wouldn’t have been sent halfway around the world at the age of nineteen to a country he didn’t know to assassinate the foreign minister of a government he cared nothing about. He probably would have died of a drug overdose or in a prison cell. But maybe, just maybe, he might have seen himself clear to a normal life. A life where he wasn’t hunted by the most powerful man on the planet.
A life where he might have met a single-mother district attorney and her nine-year-old son and figured out how to be with them.
He saw himself punching the mirror, spiderwebbing it into a thousand fragments as impossible to put together as his own past. He imagined the blood dripping from his knuckles, the wounds that would slow him, imperfections he could not afford.
He finished dressing and emerged into the hotel room.
Candy faced away, wearing jeans, readying a shirt to pull over her head. The TV was muted, but the news — with its apoplectic hosts, blaring chyrons, and manic breaking-news scroll — seemed to be screaming anyway.
She turned quickly to hide the burned flesh of her back, but he’d seen it already. It looked scraped up, probably from the fight with Wade, the ruined skin cracked and weeping.
The front of her was unmarred. She held the shirt low by her stomach, her breasts exposed.
Her shorn hair accented the shape of her head — beautiful, regal — and the absence of her locks made her curves more pronounced. She looked like a different person and more like herself all at once, as if she’d been laid bare, distilled to her essence.
She locked down a wince of pain, said, “I’ll be fine.”
He said, “Okay.”
She looked over at the news, annoyed. She turned off the screen and threw the remote onto the couch with more force than seemed necessary. Then she stood a moment, breathing, T-shirt still bunched in her hands as if she couldn’t bring herself to pull it on.
“A cool washcloth helps sometimes,” she said.
She did not meet his eyes.
He said, “Okay.”
He returned to the bathroom. When he emerged with the washcloth in hand, she was lying on her stomach on the bed, shirt mopped around one fist.
He stood a moment, regarding the damage that he had wrought. Then he went over, sat next to her, and dabbed gently at the whorled, angry flesh.
She did not flinch.
After a time she said, “The person who called you the other night. Was it a woman?”
Evan said, “I have some gauze in my backpack.”
“Doesn’t help. It just sticks, and then it’s worse when I have to peel it off.”
He folded the washcloth, applied the cool compress to a gouge on her right shoulder.
“What if we’re too damaged?” she said. “For anything … real? Ever think about that?”
He folded the washcloth once more and kept at it.
“All the time,” he said.
He finished blotting her lower back, and then she spun off the bed and pulled on her T-shirt. It was odd to see her move so gingerly. Already the wounds started to spot through the fabric.
She looked over her shoulder, noticing.
“I have a jacket,” she said.
He gathered his stuff and she gathered hers.
They met at the door.
“We did exactly what we needed to,” he said. “I got it from here.”
Her lips softened in a smile that seemed more sad than not. “I’m gonna miss trying to kill you, X.”
They stepped out into the hall and walked away in opposite directions.
Neither looked back.
55
A Social Call
Naomi awoke from a deep slumber fully dressed, flopped facedown into her fluffy duvet like a ditzy lead in a rom-com. The air blanketed her, middle-of-the-night heavy. And yet something felt different, an aspect of the space around her.
She pushed herself up, wiped drool from the corner of her mouth.
Her bedroom door was open.
She never slept with the door open, couldn’t relax with that black rectangle of exposed space staring back at her from across the room.
Like it was staring at her now.
She scrambled across the mattress, dove for her nightstand drawer, came up with her service weapon.
Rolling off the bed, she hit her knees on the far side, aiming at the doorway.
Not a sound aside from her own labored breathing.
Over on his round corduroy cushion, Fenway lifted his head sleepily, offered a curled-tongue yawn, and went back to sleep.
Useless dog.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe a draft had sucked the door open. Maybe having a mortar round dropped on her head had made her jumpy.
Naomi clenched the checkered grip of the P229. It was a highly effective weapon but even so, it felt less than comforting right now.
She waited a full minute, listening, but heard nothing from within the apartment.
Rising with her pistol locked before her, she circled the bed, inching for the door.
Slowly, slowly — and then she sprang into the hall, sighting up its length.
The front door to her apartment was standing open.
It took an extra half second for her to register this simple fact, an undeniable breach of her space. She had to wrestle the image from the realm of nightmares and seat it in the present reality.
An intruder.
Had come into her apartment.
While she slept.
She waited another full minute for her breathing to slow, and then she moved for the front door, letting her shoulder whisper along the wall.
Her Boeing Black phone charged on the table in the entry, emitting a bluish glow. Keeping her muzzle aimed at the door, she snatched up the phone and thumbed a 911 text to HQ.
In the silence of the hall, the whoosh of the sent text sounded like a tidal wave. She cringed, letting the noise recede before stepping into the outside corridor.
No one in the open.
No one by the elevator.
But at the far side of the hall, the window to the fire escape had been unlocked, the pane bumping in the midnight breeze.
Click-click. Click-click.
Swallowing hard, she made her way painstakingly to the window.
Click-click. Click-click.
She reached for the pane, stilled it with her hand.
Nothing on the landing.
Nothing beyond.
She stepped through into the night chill.
Fog rolled over the courtyard below, wisps trailing above the cobblestone with Victorian menace. Flakes of rust poked her bare hand as she gripped the steep rail of the fire escape.
She descended.
She couldn’t see the fountain in the center of the fog-filled courtyard, but she heard its gurgling, like an old man choking.