Into the Fire(80)

He watched the words land on her. She took in their meaning. Then she said, “This is lame.”

“Do it.”

She closed her eyes. Inhaled deep. Let it go.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“No,” she said. And then, “Maybe a little.”

He reached to brush her hair out of her eyes, an avuncular gesture, and she let him. He sensed a hint of softness in her face now.

She said, “Why do you care so much about Max Merriweather? I mean, aside from the fact that he lucked into your phone number?”

Evan didn’t reply right away. He owed her a considered answer. “He lost a baby, lost his wife, lost his bearings. He’s been knocked down for years, trying to get up, and these guys came along and put a foot on his back. You know what that feels like.”

Evan did, too.

He understood what it was to be born under a bad sign.

The few papers he’d been able to excavate after leaving the foster-home system indicated that his birth mother had traveled from out of state to relinquish him in Maryland for a domestic adoption. The post-placement visit to his new home revealed that the adoptive mother had suffered a series of strokes that she’d never disclosed, and her rapidly deteriorating condition left her and her husband unable to provide care to a newborn. The placement fell apart. A second placement became delayed when the agency tried to locate Evan’s birth mother, as she had retained the right to select the adoptive family. But she’d traveled out of state to hand over her baby for a reason; she didn’t want her identity known. And so Evan was frozen in a bureaucratic middle ground past one fate and shy of another.

The Nowhere Boy.

By the time the state had him officially declared “abandoned,” he was no longer a palatable commodity, but a four-year-old who’d bounced through multiple foster homes.

No mother, no father, no early-childhood memories.

When his remembrances started to fade in, they were not of being treated kindly.

After Jack had rescued him at the age of twelve from one dangerous life and put him into another, Evan had asked, Why’d you pick me?

You know what it’s like to be powerless, Jack had told him. I need someone who knows that. In his bones. Don’t ever forget that feeling.

All at once everything felt heightened, the air crisp, the nighttime sharp all around them.

“I made it out,” Evan said. “But I owed something still.”

“To who?” Joey asked.

“To anyone who got left behind.” Evan took a breath. “Jack never wanted…” His throat felt uncharacteristically thick. He cleared it. Joey was looking directly into him. He felt vulnerable, exposed, and had to look away for the moment. “It was never just about becoming a killer. It was about staying human. And it’s not easy. If I started picking and choosing … If I looked at someone like Max and decided he wasn’t worth it, then I’d be back to where I started. Where no one’s worth it. And then I’d just be what they made me to be.” His lips felt dry, cracked, and he wet them. “A murderer.”

Joey’s eyes were wide, brilliant emerald, glimmering with moisture or a trick of the light. They’d never talked about it, and the starkness of who he was, of who she was, too, lay there for an instant, as shimmering and vivid as koi in a stilled fountain. The words hung between them for a brief, searing moment, and then he cleared his throat and opened his door, disturbing the waters once more.

“You ever gonna really prove that to yourself?” she asked. “What you’re not?”

“I don’t know.” He scratched the back of his neck, looked away. “But it’s easier than figuring out what I am.”

Or maybe it’s the first step to getting there.

“How much more do you have to prove?” she asked. “When’s it end?”

The ultimate question laid bare, slicing him to the bone. He stared over at the rise of the jail, shadowed and foreboding.

“After this,” he said. “After this it ends.”

She stared at him. Her lips quivered ever so slightly, and she pressed them together, clamping down. She reached across his knees to pop the glove box, grabbed a pint of Cuervo Gold, and smacked it against his chest. “Don’t forget your tequila.”

He took the bottle, climbed out, and looked back at her across the high seats.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll do my job. Just make sure you do yours.”

She peeled out, spraying his shins with grit, leaving him with a mouthful of exhaust.

She’d left him behind the El Monte Busway by a Denny’s parking lot. He could see through Union Station’s Gateway Plaza to where the threads of the railroad tracks gathered. A cop car was parked past the bus entrance. An officer leaned against his unit, a nice visible presence for all the commuters streaming by, catching their trains home.

Evan uncapped the cheap tequila and flipped the top to the side, heard it ping off across the sidewalk. Then he settled himself with a deep breath, banishing thoughts of the vodkas slumbering untouched in his freezer drawer, each as pure as the driven snow.

This was far from the worse part. But it would still be awful.

He scrunched his eyes shut and drank a third of the pint in a series of long pulls, spilling a bit on his shirt for good measure. It burned down his throat, coated his stomach. He listed like a hobo there on the grimy sidewalk, praying his concussion symptoms wouldn’t come roaring back to life. Then he stumbled for the police officer.