Into the Fire(70)

As Evan adjusted Brust’s belt around his own waist, Nu?ez let go of the pen and lunged for the Glock.

Blood spurted onto the tile, powerful blasts timed to his heartbeat.

Evan shook his head. “Mistake.”

Nu?ez toppled over. His hand pawed the floor a few times and then stopped. He stared glassily at nothing.

Evan smoothed down the shirt, adjusted the badge at his stomach, and freed the handcuffs from the hard leather belt pouch. Then he walked over and tugged the baseball cap from Nu?ez’s head. It fit perfectly.

Max still hadn’t moved. He remained on the floor, breathing hard.

“Look at me,” Evan said. “Look at me. You’re okay. Get up.”

Max obeyed.

“Turn around.”

Max did.

Evan slapped the cuffs on him and started to march him out.

“Wait,” Max said at the door, his voice hoarse with shock. He chinned back at Nu?ez. “The thumb drive. He has the thumb drive in his pocket.”

Evan went to Nu?ez’s slumped body and dug through his pant pockets. As he extracted the thumb drive, a slab of smooth metal slid out and clattered on the tile. Not just any metal.

Liquidmorphium.

Evan glared at the Turing Phone. Then he scooped it up, wrapped it and the thumb drive in his jeans, and tucked the bundle under his arm.

They exited into the corridor.

The bullpen was still empty save for O’Malley, who was just now stirring at his desk. As they passed, Evan paused behind the slender detective. “Apologies.” He picked up the soaked gauze from where he’d dropped it on the desk, pressed it over O’Malley’s nose and mouth once more, and left the detective sleeping on his keyboard.

Gripping Max’s cuffs in the back, Evan steered him roughly out onto the sidewalk.

The uniforms were setting a perimeter, holding off onlookers. By now most of the detectives had clustered around the dumpster, comparing notes and shaking their heads. A few looked up at Evan and gave him a nod.

He nodded back.

Evan manhandled Max across the street, into an alley, and out the other side.

The Ford pickup chirped twice and unlocked when Evan hit the key fob. He released Max’s cuffs and let them fall into the gutter as Max climbed into the passenger seat.

Evan shed Brust’s badge, left it with the handcuffs in a trickle of dirty water by the curb drain, and drove off.





37



Whac-a-Mole





Returning to the Lincoln Heights house felt like defeat.

And yet here Evan and Max were, standing on the splintered floor of the living room, a grim silence filling the darkness between them. They’d barely spoken on the drive here, staring through the windshield, lost in separate thoughts.

“I thought it was over,” Evan said. “I was wrong.”

Max’s posture was clamped down, his arms half crossed, one straight, the other gripping the opposite biceps. His knuckles were bloodless, his hand shaking down by his thigh. It looked like if he let go, he’d fly to pieces.

“Max. Max.”

A focus came back into his eyes.

“You’re safe now,” Evan said. “Right now, in this moment, you’re safe.”

He took out Nu?ez’s Turing Phone and thumbed through recent calls. The directory had been completely wiped.

Except for one outgoing call.

He felt a tickle at the back of his skull, the next threat worming its way to the surface. Three problems had arisen. And he’d dispatched all three.

But if this mission had taught him anything, it was that the next problem was waiting just around the corner, blade in hand. And if his concussion had taught him anything, it was that he was playing Russian roulette. There were only so many dry clicks he’d get before the hammer dropped on a live round. It seemed cruelly fitting that his final outing as the Nowhere Man refused to end, as if the universe itself would not allow him to let go.

The time stamp on the Turing showed that the number had been dialed shortly after Max entered the Hollywood Station and turned himself in. The call had lasted twenty-seven seconds.

As the lead officers on the case, Nu?ez and Brust had been alerted to Max’s presence by the desk cop. And then Nu?ez had immediately contacted whoever was at the other end of that phone number.

Not Petro, since Petro was dead.

But another shot caller, even further up the food chain.

Nu?ez and Brust had gotten their marching orders. And then headed to the Hollywood Station to murder Max.

The Turing Phones were links in a chain stretching up. How high that chain went remained to be seen.

Evan slid the shiny slab of Liquidmorphium back into his pocket.

“What’s that?” Max asked.

“Something else I have to handle.”

“Something or someone?”

Evan said, “Both.”

“How are you gonna handle it?” Max asked.

The headache had resumed, a vise clamping Evan’s brain. “I don’t know yet.”

Max rasped a hand across his stubble, peppered with gray. “I thought they were gonna kill me,” he said. “Two detectives. In a police station. And then … and then you busted in there with your head all wrapped like some kind of deranged King Tut.…” At this, the first sign of amusement teased his lips. But just as quickly it was gone. “Did you see Brust’s head? I’ve never … never seen anything like that.”