Into the Fire(41)
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.”