Into the Fire(59)

“To Violet?”

“To anyone.” When his gaze lifted, Evan was surprised by the dread it held. “What happened?”

“I took care of the other thing,” Evan said.

“How?”

Evan pictured Petro lying pinned beneath his bodyguard in the courtyard. That speckling of blood in his silver hair. He hadn’t raised an arm against the bullet like so many did.

Instead he’d smiled.

Evan hadn’t liked that smile. Had it held something knowing? Or was it merely a final show of pride, a refusal to give in to fear? Maybe it was that simple—he hadn’t wanted to give Evan the satisfaction.

Evan said, “They’re all gone.”

Max took a step back, his shoe plunking in the puddle. It pulled free with a sucking noise. Around them mosquitoes whined and swirled. “Am I safe now?”

Evan hesitated, caught a flash of Petro’s dying moment in his mind’s eye. He’d asked about Max. What had Evan said? Now it’s over for him. And then Petro had smiled.

Why the hell had he smiled?

Evan had eliminated Terzian and his crew. Unmasked the laundering ring. Run up the chain of command to the man at the top and left him lifeless on the flagstones of a courtyard beneath a mound of bodyguards.

It was done. Any peripheral players who remained no longer had an operation to plug into. Their leadership was dead, the files blown. They likely had no idea who Max Merriweather was, and even if they did, no incentive remained for them to harm him.

Joey would continue to do her best to match code names from Grant’s books to the bottom feeders in the scheme, but it was time to get the case back into the hands of the authorities, where it belonged.

What was Evan supposed to do? Keep Max holed up in a tear-down house indefinitely? Because of a smile?

“Am I safe now?” Max asked again.

Evan’s head throbbed and then throbbed some more. “Yes,” he said.

“So where … where should I go?”

Evan tossed Max the zip drive onto which Joey had copied all of Grant’s files. “Hollywood Station. Let them finish what your cousin started.”

Max wiped his hands on his jeans and pocketed the zip drive.

Evan said, “You never called me. You never met me. You never saw me. You went to Grant’s office alone, and a guy tried to shoot you. You got scared, went underground. That’s your story. The whole story. Understand?”

Max nodded.

The first thing Evan would do was remove the dried-out contact lens and climb into bed. He’d rest until his head stopped throbbing, the nausea receded, and his vision stopped playing hallucinogenic games with the world. He thought about the row of bottles in his freezer drawer, the world’s best vodkas chilled and waiting. Once the symptoms were gone, he’d go with something smooth and nuanced, like CLIX. Shake it so hard that crystals would mist the surface off the pour. A sprig of basil from the living wall. Maybe a stainless-steel martini glass to retain the cold. He wanted the first sip to make his teeth ache.

A nice reward after a long three days’ work.

But Petro flashed into Evan’s mind once more, interrupting his vodka reverie.

For a dying grin, it had looked awfully smug. As though Petro knew something Evan didn’t.

As if he had a secret.

Evan replayed the conversation they’d had, how readily Petro had deployed his braggadocio: The world, my world, is a much bigger place than you think.

Max said, “Would you mind driving me to my truck?”

Evan resisted a temptation to clench his jaw. He wanted to squeeze the bridge of his nose, dig his thumb and forefinger into his eyelids to stave off that incipient headache. He wanted to put a check next to the mission, deliver Max back to his life, and then—for the first time—start his own. A life of his own making.

But yet. That smile.

“I don’t want you to go back to your truck just yet,” Evan said. “I’ll take you to a random street corner and call you a cab.”

“I thought you said it was safe.”

“It is,” Evan said. But I don’t like how a guy smiled right before I shot him. And my paranoia has no limits when it comes to interrupting a long rest and a good drink.

Was it paranoia? Or was he reluctant to let go? Because once he admitted it was over, then the Nowhere Man was over, too. And without the Nowhere Man, who the hell was Evan Smoak?

Max was squinting at him impatiently.

“We’ll destroy your disposable phone, and I’ll give you a fresh one,” Evan said. “Don’t turn it on unless you’re in trouble or until you’re done talking to the cops. Then call me again. I’ll go with you to your truck. And then to your apartment.”

“Why? Is this over or not?”

“It’s over,” Evan said. “But no one ever got killed by being too careful.”





32



Awful Shit





Alone in the backseat of the cab halfway to the police station, Max had a change of mind. “Hang on,” he told the driver. “Make a U-turn. I need to take a quick detour.”

“Your wish is my command,” the driver said, spinning the steering wheel with the heel of his hand like he was turning around a big rig.

Twenty minutes later they were coasting up a broad street, palm trees nodding overhead. The block was lined with parked cars.