Into the Fire(103)

The run-flat self-sealing tires hammered across potholes, jostling the two of them in their seats. Max wiped roughly at his cheeks, and again Evan admired how freely he could express emotion.

“I made a choice to protect her. At any cost.” Max cleared his throat. “At any cost to me, I guess. It wasn’t what she would’ve wanted, but I think it saved her life. People talk about love, write poems, songs. But they never say how totally fucked up it is. The positions it can put you in. Doing the one thing a person would least want you to do. Because you can’t bear to not do it.”

Evan exited the freeway. They waited at the stoplight, the click of the turning signal pronounced. The left side of Evan’s head prickled where it had smacked the wall of Cell 24, and he resisted the urge to rub it. The contact in his right eye felt like a disk of sawdust.

“It was my fault,” Max said. “It was my fault. I didn’t make enough money.” He looked away, out the window. “I should’ve chosen a better career. I should’ve done better in school and had enough money to take care of my own wife.”

“‘Should have’ is the enemy,” Evan said.

“Of what?”

“The future.”

“I look at my family,” Max said. “Like Grant, who—sure—could be an asshole. But he took care of himself well enough to take care of everyone around him.”

“He didn’t take care of you.”

“I don’t count.”

“If you believe that,” Evan said, “then it’s true.”

“It is true. It’s how I feel. Broken. I don’t know how to fix myself so I can live an ordinary life like everyone else. Do you know how that feels?”

Yes.

As they neared Max’s street, he straightened up in his seat. “God, listen to me whining. I’m sorry. You told me to figure out what I want to do with my life when you get it back for me. Well, you delivered on your end. And I’m not gonna waste what you’ve done for me. I’ll honor you by being … I don’t know, better than I am. I don’t know how, but I will.”

This was the part where Evan told them that he had one thing to ask of them. To find someone else who needed him. Someone in just as impossible a situation as they were. And to pass along his number: 1-855-2-NOWHERE.

The words pressed at the back of his throat, fighting to come out. The old impulse twitching like a missing limb. But he said nothing, looked dead ahead at the road. It was over for Max. And it was over for the Nowhere Man. How different this was, a new pathway being carved through his gray matter.

“Hang on,” Max said. “Stop.”

Evan screeched the truck to a halt.

They were in the middle of the street a half block from Max’s building. Exhaust from the tailpipe floated past their window, giving the effect that they were drifting backward.

Evan said, “What?”

“That white van,” Max said. “It’s in Mr. Omar’s spot. But that’s not Mr. Omar’s car.”

Evan examined the worker’s van in the front spot. No one in the driver’s seat or the passenger seat. There wasn’t any smog leaking from the tailpipe. But as he looked more closely at the rear of the van, he could make out a visual distortion from the exhaust heat, the pavement giving the faintest mirage wobble.

The van was running. Which meant one of two things.

A worker had run inside to make a delivery.

Or a team was sitting stakeout, keeping the engine on so they could use the heater.

Evan squinted, bringing the license plate into focus. The frame sported yellow lettering: HERTZ RENTAL.

He dropped the truck into reverse.

Before he could stomp the gas pedal, the side door of the van flew open and a dozen operators exploded out, wielding magazine-fed carbines.

They opened fire.





54



Urgent





Evan thought of his Ford F-150 as a war machine.

Kevlar armor reinforced the door panels. Laminated armor glass composed the windows. He’d disarmed the safety systems, removed the air bags, and knocked out the inertia-sensing switches that shut down power to the fuel pump in a collision. A built-to-spec push-bumper assembly up front shielded the vulnerable radiator and intercooler. A special adhesive compound in the tires sealed most bullet holes, a support-ring “second tire” waiting inside the core as a backup.

All these contingencies were required now.

As Evan peeled backward, the tires smoking, divots spiderwebbed the windshield. Max was shouting hoarsely as lead dented the body of the Ford, a deafening series of clangs.

Over the din Evan noted the cadence of the bullets, the muzzle flash, the operators’ SWAT-light attire—golf shirts and khakis.

The bullet-resistant glass would last only so long when confronted with an onslaught of 5.56 rounds, so Evan locked the wheel to the left and fishtailed around in a J-turn, barely slowing momentum.

The rear window went opaque beneath the bursts of rounds. Evan cut right hard and then right again, gunning up an alley and screeching through a red light, slewing for the on-ramp.

He ran the freeway a few exits, Max white-knuckling the passenger seat and breathing hard. And then Evan exited, burying the truck in traffic.

The Ford F-150 was the most common truck on the road, as well as the most stolen. People tended to look past it—when it wasn’t riddled with bullet holes. It drew a few stares now, but not as many as it might in another city, one that didn’t host countless film and TV shoots that required countless stunt vehicles. Even so, he’d have to get it off the street soon if he didn’t want to tempt fate. Pulling up an alley, he coasted to the curb and killed the engine.