Evan kept a number of safe houses scattered around Los Angeles County for this kind of contingency. Inside a stuccoed bungalow abutting a check-cashing shop on the Eastside, Evan burned his clothes and then showered. The place was one square room with a kitchenette and a nook of a bathroom. He held the deed under the name Xavier Francis and stopped by semiweekly to turn on different lights and clear the mail. He stood in the garage now for a time with his hand on the hood of his trusty Ford F-150, gathering himself.
He wanted the comfort of home, a comfort he’d been missing sorely for the past six months through the destruction and rehabilitation of 21A but never as sorely as now in the middle of a mission that had turned into a journey through the underworld. His penthouse with every last thing in its place. All the surfaces able to be scrubbed clean, polished to a reflective sheen. Each item steel and concrete, immune to the ravages of time and decay, as hard as every last bit of his training. No traces of the grime and decay of the outside world, of human beings, of confusing emotions that dragged him through the morass of his past and reminded him that he was as stained and dirty as everyone else.
Vodka to purify. A floating bed on which to meditate. His Vault to plot and plan.
He would make them answer. Every last León who had unleashed this hell. He’d start at the periphery and work his way inward to the glowing-hot center, to El Moreno, the Dark Man himself, who held Aragón and Belicia’s daughter captive in the hateful grip of his hateful enterprise.
Driving back to Castle Heights, Evan felt the nape of his neck still burning beneath the skin, though there was little visible damage. Scratches from the mask left his cheeks lightly scraped; a day’s stubble would shadow it under.
The radio was lit up with breaking news of the carnage. He listened for a time and then clicked it off. The air conditioner smelled like the freon of Belicia’s room, so he cracked the window the two inches allowed by the Kevlar armor hung inside the passenger door panel. Hot tar and exhaust returned him to the stink of the morgue. On the inhale he could still taste the blackened flesh of the trap house, a bitter tang riding the back of his throat. He rolled the window up again.
It didn’t help.
He was in the mission. It was all around him, in his mind and his body, everywhere he looked, in the air he breathed, the whole world flattened to that two-dimensional light of the park and those who had perished there. He had flattened himself, too, in order to fit into this world, in order to make sense of it and engage with it on its terms. He’d entered the prison of his OCD, all thinking and sensation hammered into a plane.
The valet at Castle Heights started to rise from his director’s-chair perch in the porte cochere but recognized Evan’s truck blasting by and sank back down in defeat. Descending into the mouth of the underground garage, Evan parked between the two pillars that bookended his space.
Out and up into the lobby, mere minutes from the sanctity of his own space.
Lorilee and Hugh were arguing near the front desk, Joaquin caught in the middle, his security cap low over his eyes as if that could make him vanish. Grateful for the diversion, Evan slipped behind Hugh’s back, gesturing at Joaquin to summon the elevator.
“Mr. Smoak!” Hugh wheeled on Evan. “Do you see the mayhem you’ve caused? We are dealing with a real crisis here.”
Evan halted. His voice still felt chalky from the fire, and he had to push out the words. “Not sure I understand.”
Lorilee pivoted next, a teacup poodle wedged between her biceps and the side of an augmented breast. “Hugh is freaking out over my cousin’s dog coming for a sleepover—”
Hugh adjusted the black frames of his eyeglasses, peering peremptorily at Evan. “Had you not set a precedent with service animals—”
Lorilee made cutesy lips. “This lil’ guy’s more like my nephew—”
“—Mrs. Rosenbaum has terrible allergies—”
“—this baby has terrible allergies, too. You wouldn’t believe the amount of yeast in most dry dog foods. We had to go to a line-caught salmon diet because he gets ear infections—”
“—Ida had to go on Zyrtec, which interferes with her blood-pressure meds—”
“—good thing poodles have hair, not fur, so they don’t shed—”
“—and health-code violations are not to be taken lightly when—”
Evan felt his teeth grind, enamel and bone. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve had a trying day at the office. Can we deal with this later?”
“No,” Hugh said. “I’m afraid not.”
The elevator arrived, and Evan got on. They both followed him. As Hugh continued to berate Evan, the poodle scrambled in Lorilee’s arms, lunging at him. It looked like a mop or a merkin or the paw of a properly sized dog.
“Ooh, wook how sweet,” Lorilee said. “Boba wants Ev cuddles!”
Evan was unsure how to convey how close he was to snapping the dog’s neck. And Hugh’s. And perhaps Lorilee’s for good measure.
“I need some personal space,” Evan said.
“‘Personal space.’ Come ooon, Ev.” She laughed. “Looks like someone’s caught a bad case of the sillies.”
The dog came at him, panting fish breath in his face, triangular pink tongue poking out beneath a Monopoly Man mustache. Evan made direct feral eye contact, and the dog stiffened and recoiled, curling into Lorilee’s surgically enhanced bosom.
Undeterred, Hugh continued with his monologue into the side of Evan’s face. “—norms keep us safe. We have to look out for one another. Like when Ida got mugged. Or Judge Johnson had prostate surgery. We take care of each other. We give our time. Our care. Our support.”
Evan returned to combat breathing: two in, four out.
Boba stared at Evan warily.
Hugh’s Adam’s apple jogged in his tanned throat, and Evan had the flash of an impulse: backhand strike to crush the larynx. That would make the words stop.
Not nice.
The elevator opened. They’d ridden up to the top floor with him.
Evan emerged. Did his best to assemble words suitable for whatever circumstance this was. “Thank you for the input.”
They stared at him blankly.
“I am … sorry for the service-animal complication.” Evan felt his face form what he hoped was a pleasant expression. “And for Mrs. Rosenbaum’s allergies. And Judge Johnson’s prostate operation.”
Evan stepped out. Just seeing the clean hallway was cause for relief. Hugh stayed at his heel. “It’s not just about feeling sorry—”
Evan turned and looked him in the eye.
Hugh shrank from the heat of his gaze, and his mouth snapped shut. He retracted back into the elevator.
Evan exhaled. Just a few more steps to carry him to his sanctum.
Key in the door, the clank of internal gears shifting, the faint whoosh of water within. The door creaked open to the sound of giggling.
At first he did not believe what he was seeing. Joey and Peter were wearing giant black bulging suits made of—was that Velcro?—circling each other like sumo wrestlers. A wide vertical stripe of black fabric covered the wall to his left from floor to ceiling. There was a disco ball hanging from the ceiling near the fireplace. A disco ball. A fucking disco ball. They’d placed Vera III in her nest of ludicrous rainbow pebbles on a chair next to them so she could get in on the fun.
Heat rose from the pit of his gut, claiming his chest, clawing up his throat, firing his face.
The kids hadn’t noticed him. Peter took two waddling steps and flung himself at the wall with a movie-karate cry. “Hiii-ya!”
He stuck sideways three feet off the floor, arms and legs pinned to his sides, his hands waving helplessly. Then Joey helped pry him off, the ripping sound of hundreds of tiny Velcro hooks peeling from loops. They collapsed on the floor together, belly-laughing.
Evan took another step into the great room, and they saw him for the first time. Joey rose, stumbling in her giant suit, peeling herself away from the nine-year-old.
“Evil E! You’re back. Wait, I have a surprise for you.” Joey snatched a sleek remote from the hearth of the freestanding fireplace, aimed it upward, and clicked a button. “Wait for it. Waaait for it.”
The disco ball began its rotation, flashing lights around the penthouse, music blasting from unseen speakers: Night fevah, night fevaaah, we know how ta show it!
Evan felt a cinching at his temples. “Joey.”
Now she and Peter were doing diagonal pointy fingers at floor, then ceiling.
The ball strobed light in Evan’s eyes. “Joey.”
They linked arms and do-si-do’d, waddle-dancing preposterously in their Velcro suits.
“Josephine.”
At his tone they both stopped. Joey looked at him. Some of the color drained from her face. She clicked the remote, and the music and lights stopped abruptly. They stood absurdly in their absurd suits. The silence was painful.
Evan said, “Peter. Home.”
“But we also hafta show you the cool nozzles in the shower that hit all your parts—”
“Now.”
Peter stripped out of his suit, tumbling over and then kicking his way free. His tiny footsteps pounded past Evan, out the door, and up the hall.
Evan closed his eyes. Saw the blond girl in his arms, her body arced as if an electric current were passing through, her insides gone to jelly, leaking out her nose and mouth. The raw skin at the nape of his neck prickled. The inside of his mouth, raw from chemical residue. All those fallen bodies littering the park. His need to come back to a space of his own, designed to his specs, something that reflected the state he tried moment by moment to achieve in his mind.
When he spoke, his voice shook with anger. “This is my place.”
Joey flipped her hair out of her eyes with a quick jerk of her head. Sweat glistened in the strip of shaved hair over her right ear. She tugged her arms free of the suit so it hung down at the waist like a coveralls bib. She looked wounded and foolish and utterly ridiculous. “Maybe it’s not anymore,” she said bitterly, fighting her way free of the puffy legs.
“What does that mean?” His voice wasn’t raised, but there was a coldness in his tone that he’d never used with Joey.
“It means you asked me to get all this done for you. And I did. And over the weekend. Tile guys and appliances and painting and— You know what? Never mind.”
“I asked you to help restore my place. Not add a bunch of shit that I don’t want.”
“When you ask for help, you don’t get everything exactly how you want it, X. It’s impossible for anyone to get everything exactly how you want it.” She kicked the suit aside. “You know why? Because you’re impossible.”
“It’s a stretch to think that I might not be ecstatic with Velcro and a disco ball?”
“I thought it might cheer you up!” she said. “Know what you told me? ‘Handle it yourself, Joey. I trust you.’”
“I thought I could trust you.”
“What?” Her mouth fell open. That dimple appeared in her right cheek, and not from smiling. “What did you say to me?”
It took everything he had to hold his tongue.
“You can’t trust me because I did something to cheer you up?” She blew the hair off her forehead once more. “Just ’cuz the world is dark and miserable doesn’t mean you have to be, too. You choose it. You choose not to trust anyone. You choose to be an asshole to people who care about you. Sure, you’re nice to some girl you don’t even know—Anjelina or whatever princess’s name is. You run off to save her. Do anything for her. But me? I’m here fixing your place up and you won’t even let me go on a road trip by myself.”
The road trip now.
Two in. Four out.
Not working. Images cascading down on him.
His defiled penthouse, Velcro and a disco ball.
The blonde shuddering in his arms, bleeding out.
Anjelina in the hands of men who decapitated their rivals and suffocated journalists with duct tape.
Joey out in the world he’d protected her from all this time, out among men like the Leones who lie in wait for vulnerable girls like her.
Too much for him to manage and also save Anjelina. Too much weakness and emotion to hold in his heart to go after those he needed to go after. He tried to access what was right, but he couldn’t. He was trapped in two dimensions, inside the painting of this horror of a mission.
Joey was still going, mouth wavering, anger in her glare. “Just ’cuz you can’t figure out how to have freedom doesn’t mean you can take it away from me.”
“You want to leave, Joey?” His voice low like a growl and even more controlled; rather than revving up, he was simmering down, eradicating emotion. “Go, then.”
She looked suddenly unsure of herself, even frightened. Like she didn’t recognize him. “X…?”
“Get out,” he said.
Her eyes flared, those big glossy lashes parting, emerald irises shining beneath the strokes of her eyebrows. She was wide open—her face, her heart, everything stripped bare.
She collapsed, hitting the floor on her side, head resting on her biceps, fetal and sobbing.
He stared at her in disbelief.
He had never done that to another human being. With words.
He couldn’t make sense of the noises coming from her.
“Joey,” he said in a strangled tone that was completely foreign to him.
She shoved herself up with her palms, got her legs under her. She was shaking her head, looking down, away. Hurt glowed from her, and something worse.
Shame.
She walked past him, giving him a wide berth, no eye contact. Not storming for the door so much as sweeping herself out before she went to pieces.
The front door slammed behind her.
A terrible silence asserted itself. No giggling, no belly laughter, no tearing of Velcro.
He didn’t understand what he felt, but he felt it everywhere. In his fingertips. His scalp. Tongue numb against his teeth.
Vera III looked up at him in her stupid fucking rainbow pebbles.
Then she was in his hand, hurled against the wall, the glass dish shattering, brightly colored pebbles raining down across the poured-concrete floor, skittering past his boots.
Belicia’s words returned to him like an echo: It’s not so black and white. It’s gray and messy. Family teaches you that.
Right now Evan had to turn away. Had to flatten himself out again, knife-thin, nothing but purpose and intent with a tapered point.
Because of the bodies scattered across that park. The remainder of the Kontact waiting at the Leones San Bernardino headquarters. The other batches creeping their way into America, spreading toxic tentacles through cities and towns, stash houses and bloodstreams.
He thumbed his RoamZone on, dialed Aragón.
“Yes?”
“I tracked down the first shipment of Kontact,” Evan said.
“And?”
“Turn on the news.”
He waited while Aragón grunted, no doubt rising from his armchair. There was a click, the sound of a commercial, channels flipping. Then a newscaster’s voice hitting a strained note of empathy.
“My God,” Aragón said. “My God.”
“I’ll handle the San Bernardino chapter.” Evan still maintained that flat, dead tone. “Every other channel you have a bead on from your or my associate’s intel, you leak to the DEA. Give them everything and see if they can backtrace to the original lab in Mexico. Blame the leak on the Gulf Cartel. Blame it on whoever you need to. But get it done now so they can stop those loads from hitting market, so they can snuff this out at the source. Understand?”
Aragón sounded shocked by whatever footage he was seeing. “I understand,” he said quietly, his voice touched with remorse. “Those people in the park … all those people.”
“It ends,” Evan said. “Right here. Right now. No more drugs. No more anything like it ever again. Burn whatever product you have. Destroy whatever you have in transit. You do it now. Or you’ll never hear from me again.”
The pause stretched out. Evan wasn’t sure he’d be able to hear the reply over the blood thundering in his veins.
”Okay.”
“Give me your word.”
Aragon said, “I just did.”
“I’m going in,” Evan said.
He cut the line.