Into the Fire(115)

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Anything.”

She went up on her toes and kissed him. Deeply. She tugged at his lower lip with her mouth, then let it go and stayed close, her forehead pressed to his. They were both breathing hard. She was curled into him, her hands on the sides of his face, and he was inhaling her, the scent of her, and one of his hands cupped the back of her neck, and it was so warm, so fragile.

She pulled herself away.

“I have to get back to Peter,” she said.

She took another reluctant step up the hall, and it was as though she were fighting herself away from him, fighting gravity. He felt the same pull but stayed in the doorway. He could still feel the wetness of her mouth on his lips.

“I know you now,” she said. “I really know you.”

He watched her walk away.





63



Tipping Point





In the dead of night, Evan waited in Tommy’s truck beneath the freeway overpass. A half hour passed before Tommy drifted up in Evan’s F-150. The windows had been replaced, and the bullet holes were gone. The body work was superb, the truck as good as new—a whole lot of ordinary wrapped around an exceptional core.

Evan could see Max sitting in the passenger seat, but Tommy mumbled something to him before he got out and Max stayed put.

Tommy ambled over to Evan and opened the door of his dually. “Scoot yer ass over,” he said, and Evan climbed over the center console into the passenger seat. Tommy hoisted himself up with a groan. “Got my money?”

Evan handed him a wad of hundreds, which Tommy thumbed through. He smelled strongly of cigarette smoke and wintergreen tobacco. He gave a nod. “Taggant-free Detasheet ain’t cheap,” he said. “Hope it was worth it.”

“It was worth it.”

“How do you like your Ballista?”

“It was great.”

Tommy cocked his head. “Why the past tense?”

Evan told him.

“Come again, motherfucker?” Tommy said. “You did what to my gun? Bleach? In a garbage bag? Down a trash chute?” He shook his head. “What’d I expect from a mouth-breathing trigger-puller like you. Pearls before swine.” He rubbed his eyes. “Aw, hell. I think I need a drink.”

Evan said, “I could use one, too.”

“There’s a flask of Smirnoff in the glove box.”

Evan laughed and then saw Tommy was serious.

Evan’s head felt significantly better, the worst of the concussion behind him. It seemed that taking a respite from crushing life-or-death stakes hastened one’s recovery. After everything he’d been through, he figured he could risk a sip or two.

He retrieved the bottle, unscrewed it, and took a sniff, doing his best not to recoil. Tommy dug two paper coffee cups out of the console and slapped one against Evan’s chest.

Evan shrugged. “What the hell.”

He poured two shots.

They drank.



* * *



Clark McKenna couldn’t doze off.

He hadn’t slept for shit since his run-in with Max Merriweather at the house. Or—to put a finer point on it—his run-in with Max Merriweather’s friend. A holier-than-thou roughneck brimming with swagger and moral sanctimony.

Who was that guy to question Clark’s choices?

Clark shifted around in bed until Gwendolyn gave a rumble of displeasure, and then he slid from the sheets, wrapped a bathrobe around himself, and headed into the kitchen. It was a cavernous affair, with vaulted ceilings and oversize doorways. The counter space alone was sufficient to seat a basketball team.

The help wasn’t around and the night was past the tipping point to morning, so he brewed up a pot of coffee and sat alone at the island. The room seemed to dwarf him even more than usual. The under-cabinet lights were on, the windows throwing back his reflection.

If there was one thing he didn’t want to look at right now, it was himself.

He’d raised the issue to Gwendolyn already twice, and twice she’d shot it down.

She was a stubborn woman, and that had made him a stubborn man. He supposed she would have argued the reverse.

He sipped his coffee and glared at himself.

For nearly three years he and Gwenny had clutched the secret close to their chests, content in the knowledge that they’d saved their daughter’s life. After the miscarriage he’d gone over to that hovel of an apartment and found his girl curled up on the kitchen linoleum, shuddering. Though it was nearly noon, she was still in her nightshirt and a pair of boxer shorts, her flesh as pale and cold as marble.

His paternal instincts had risen up, fierce as a cornered beast, and he’d vowed then that he would do anything to save her. Gwendolyn had found the treatment home. And later that night, privately in their bedroom, Gwendolyn had set the terms.

Violet was alive. But over these past years when Clark caught her in an unguarded moment gazing blankly out a window or drifting off in a meeting, he understood that a part of her was still lying on that kitchen floor, shuddering and alone, trapped in the knowledge that her husband had left her there.

That he’d found her no longer worth being with.

That was the kind of thing that could kill someone even if they were still breathing.