Into the Fire(96)
He willed himself to walk. He could feel every bone in his foot struggling to hold balance as his weight rolled across it. One step. Another. Another.
He cleared the detectors.
The front door was ahead, and it was oscillating only slightly.
“Hey,” Willy said, and Evan’s skin went to ice. “Hey!”
He turned.
A drop of sweat trickled from his hairline, nearing the ink of the fake tattoos. He didn’t dare reach to wipe it away. His head hummed, spots dancing everywhere, pixelating the deputy.
Willy squinted at him.
Each second held the weight of an hour.
The drop of sweat reached Evan’s eyebrow, a few millimeters from smearing the teardrops.
Willy lifted a pair of scissors into view. For an instant Evan had a bizarre vision that the deputy might attack him here and now.
“Want me to cut it off?”
Evan cleared his throat. Cleared it again. “’Scuse me?”
Willy jerked his chin at Evan’s arm. “The wristband.”
“Oh,” Evan said. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He held out his arm.
A snip.
The wristband fell away.
Evan turned as the drop of sweat tickled down through the Bic ink at the side of his eye.
He walked out through the glass doors into the embrace of midnight.
The front gate, topped with concertina wire, rolled open. He nodded at the deputies and stepped through.
He had eighty of Teardrop’s dollars in his pocket. He’d have to walk to the garment district, see if there were any street vendors who could sell him a fresh shirt. He’d find a gas-station bathroom to wash the ash, ink, and dried blood from his face. And cab home.
Then he’d finally get this mission in the rearview mirror once and for all. And set about figuring out who he wanted to be for the back half of his life.
The night sky brought not relief but a dull kind of terror, as if he were standing on the brink of an abyss. The time inside had reacquainted him with his inconsequentiality. You know what it’s like to be powerless.
Yes.
He’d been within an eyelash of living it for the remaining seconds and minutes and years of his life.
If the spear hadn’t worked—
If he hadn’t been able to lure Teardrop into his cell—
If he hadn’t been able to slide off the wristband—
If—
He was shaking. Even here beneath the open expanse of the sky, he couldn’t draw a full breath. He staggered a block and then another block, and then he sat down on the curb. His beard rasped against the crusted collar. He couldn’t stop his hands from trembling.
A voice washed down at him. “Hey, pal. Need some money?”
“No, thank you,” Evan said. “I’m fine.”
“I’m fine,” he repeated.
“I’m fine.”
49
An Orphan’s Best Friend
The tonnage of Advil in Evan’s system kept the pain in his head to a low roar as he disabled the various front-door locks and pushed into his penthouse. The first thing he saw: dirty plates on the kitchen island. The first thing he smelled: dog. The first thing he heard: pounding footsteps and claws scrabbling across the concrete floor.
He held up a hand as Joey and Dog the dog flew up the hall from the master suite. “Wait, my head’s really—”
But Joey slammed into him with a hug, her cheek pressed to his chest. Despite the thunderous throbbing in his skull, he held her. The dog nudged his wet snout between them until Evan lowered his palm to be nuzzled. Joey’s hair smelled of fresh shampoo, the shaved right side bristling against his chin. Her hands were clamped around the small of his back, ratcheting him tight enough that his bruised ribs ached.
But he didn’t let go.
Not until she shoved him away, wiped her nose, and averted her gleaming green eyes.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” Evan said.
“I’m not glad to see you,” Joey said. “I’m just relieved you didn’t get yourself killed. There’s a difference.”
“I understand.”
She wiped at her nose again. Her face was still flushed. “I tore Bedrosov’s life apart and didn’t find anything else. I think you did it. I think he’s the end of the line.”
The finality seemed to weigh at them both. Was this really the end of the mission? The end of the Nowhere Man?
Evan broke the silence. “Nice work.”
She nodded. “Remember that when you get all anal-retentive about the fact that me and Dog slept in your stupid floating bed.”
“You let the dog—”
Joey held up a finger in warning. “Not a word. Except thank you.”
Evan clenched his jaw. “Thank you.”
“You look like shit. How’s your concussion?”
“Okay.”
“Good. It’s over. Which means you do nothing now but rest. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Joey snapped her fingers, and Dog trotted over to her side. “So me and this stupid dog you stuck me with better get out of here before anyone notices. Every time I took him out to go potty, we had to Scooby-Doo our way around that tight-ass HOA guy with the Where’s Waldo? glasses.”