Riding across town to his apartment, Max stuck his arm out the passenger window and let his hand skim across the passing air.
The Nowhere Man—who’d given only a first name of Evan—drove the Chevy Malibu at a steady pace, the needle pointed at the speed limit. He kept his gaze ahead, but his eyes stayed on constant rotation around the rear- and sideview mirrors. The guy seemed pensive, chewing on his thoughts.
Max’s heartbeat had slowed at last, but he still sensed the afterwash of adrenaline in his veins. His skin felt dead; it felt like the color gray. He wondered if he’d ever sleep again.
Evan finally broke the silence. “What did you mean?” he said. “That Violet made you want to be more than you were?”
The cool wind buffeted Max’s arm, whipped his hair around his eyes. He realized he was using it to jar himself out of numbness.
He thought for a beat, cleared his throat. “I was from the wrong side of the tracks,” he said. “I mean, only by comparison, but still. Her parents basically disowned her. I was trying to support her on a construction worker’s salary, going to night school to finish my degree. You know the kind of pressure that puts on you?”
Evan said, “No.”
Max laughed. “Well, if you ever have a shot with someone who’s worth it, try not to fuck it up.” He looked at Evan ruefully. “Man, did I try not to fuck it up. Me, in night school.” His chuckle, even to his own ears, held no amusement. “Pulling double shifts. And then when she got—” His breath snagged. “When she got pregnant.” He shook his head. “But I wasn’t. More. I was still just me.”
They coasted along the blacktop, sliding between cars, the city flowing by indifferently.
Max said, “When I first saw her, I knew, right? I know that sounds lame, but right away, she just … She hit me in the spinal cord. She was gambling. Slots. And the seat next to her was empty.”
The scene played in his head now, polished to jewel-like clarity by a million viewings. Sensation started to prickle his skin again, warmth spreading beneath the surface.
“I sat down and hit a jackpot with my first pull.” Max smiled. “And you feel like a hero, right? Like you’re in the movie and someone’s writing your lines for you?” He paused. “You ever have that?”
Evan said, “No.”
“Well, I guess you don’t need it. I mean, with what you do, you’re already there. But for me? In that moment? All of a sudden, it was like the whole world was open to me. If you could’ve seen how she looked just sitting there, doing nothing. And I remember thinking, If I can get this right, this one thing, all the other pieces will fall into place. And I got it. But they didn’t.” Max felt the loss now—a pressure at the backs of the eyes, his throat pressing upward. “Because I’m a fuckup. Who was I kidding that one thing could make everything fall into place?”
He stared at the passing cars, the work-casual folks on the sidewalk clustered around gourmet-food trucks. The oily taste of car exhaust left a bitterness at the back of his throat.
“Everything’s a story,” Evan said. “You want that to be the story of you, it can be.”
Max shifted to look over at him. “What’s the story of you?”
“That’s not what this is,” Evan said.
“What what is?”
“This isn’t a therapy session.”
“Well,” Max said, “given what you do, it sure as hell seems like you’re working something out.”
The Nowhere Man didn’t appear to like that answer. “So what happened?” he asked. “To you and Violet?”
Max closed his eyes, breathed the pollution. The wind poured through the window, cooling the sweat on his face. Evan had refused to answer any of his questions about personal shit. So he figured he was entitled to do the same. Especially about this. But he was already back in it now.
Awakened by screaming.
Violet in the bathroom.
Red drops on white tile. Thin rivulets down the insides of her thighs. She was crying in a way that he’d never seen, sobbing and hyperventilating at once, bent over, one bloodstained hand gripping the lip of the sink. She didn’t seem to register him there at her side, but when he touched her, she crumpled into him, a dead leaf collapsing into a thousand brittle pieces.
The only thing harder than postpartum depression, they were informed by the well-intentioned ob-gyn, was postpartum depression after a failed pregnancy. And the only thing harder than that was simultaneously grappling with the knowledge that their hope for future children had been excised as surgically as her ruptured fallopian tube.
Violet was wrecked, relentlessly battered by a confusion of hormones. And he was barely functioning, hollowed out with grief. They started fighting daily. By being born, he’d lost a mother. By losing a child, he feared he’d lose his marriage. He buried himself in work and overtime and night school. Violet grew sluggish, her broken heart a millstone at her core. She said she wanted to die. That she didn’t see the point of going on. How could she go back to work and spend her days surrounded by throngs of adorable kindergartners?
It was just talk, of course. The kinds of things you say when you’re trying to give shape to god-awful emotions roiling inside you, when you’re trying to process and vent and purge. He thought they’d figure it out. He thought they’d move on. He thought they would be fine right up until he came home from an evening class to find her in the bathtub, the cooling water the color of merlot, her floating arms etched from the razor.
Evan parked several blocks away and scouted Max’s apartment to make sure no one was watching it. Then he went back and retrieved Max, the two of them making a quick approach through the parking lot, skirting the building manager’s trusty Buick in the front spot. On the second floor, they ducked the manager’s window and eased into Max’s place, closing the door silently behind them.
Standing in the apartment, Evan noted how bare it was. It was a mess now, certainly, after the Terror had taken a tour through all of Max’s belongings and the drywall, but there hadn’t been much to begin with. Sawed-open couch, shattered TV on the floor, toppled coffee table. A few plates—now shattered—and some silverware dashed on the chipped linoleum in what passed for a kitchen nook. A bureau’s worth of clothes hurled around the bedroom. A few empty packing boxes piled in the corner.
From what Max had told him, it had been about two and a half years since he’d rented this place after Violet, and yet it seemed he’d never really moved in.
Maybe he didn’t want to.
Maybe moving in meant acknowledging that she was gone.
While Evan stood watch at the big front window, Max scurried around his bedroom grabbing personal items—clothes, toothbrush, and whatever else reasonable people considered to be necessities.
The second-floor corridor was empty, the street quiet. Evan cast another glance across the sparse apartment.
The habitat of a man who had figured out how to exist but not really live.
Evan wondered if his own place was merely a dressed-up version of the same. He had the thumb drive out, tapping it against his palm. He was eager to get to a secure location, plug it into his laptop, and see what the hell had started this ball rolling.
Max finally emerged from the bedroom, a bag slung over his shoulder. “Now what?”
“Now we tuck you away somewhere safe.”
“Like where?”
Evan considered. From what he’d heard of the Terror and seen of the shooter at Grant’s office, he figured these were street-level guys. Dangerous men, sure, but he doubted they had access to classified databases. Even so, he was reluctant to put Max on an airplane or check him in to a hotel.
Evan kept a number of safe houses scattered around Los Angeles, equipped with load-out gear and alternate vehicles. The locations were, like Evan’s financial holdings, fully off the books, buried beneath an avalanche of shell corps and offshore holding companies. Because all transactions around the safe houses had to be double-blind, they took a hefty investment of resources to acquire and maintain.
The instant a client entered a safe house, it was blown forever. He’d use one if absolutely necessary but preferred not to.
“We have a few options,” Evan said. “Number one: I give you a bundle of cash and a burner phone, you get in the Chevy Malibu and drive away. Then you keep on driving. You find a hotel five states away, pay cash for everything, and I contact you when it’s over.”
Max said, “No.”
“Why no?”
“Because,” Max said, “I gave my word.” He looked like he needed to sleep for a month. “I’m not just gonna run away. I may not be much help, but I have to be around in case you need me. Until it’s … you know, settled. And everyone else is safe.”
Evan gestured at the tufts of stuffing stripped from the gutted couch. “You didn’t give your word for this.”
“I told Grant I’d take care of it for him. That I’d keep it away from his wife and kids. That I’d see it through for him. So I have to do that.” Max swayed a bit on his feet and then said again, “I gave my word.”
“You don’t have to prove anything,” Evan said. “Not anymore.”
Max gave a hoarse laugh edged with self-loathing. His gaze was loose, unfocused.
“So what?” Evan said. “If you do this thing for Grant, it’ll prove you’re a good person?”
“No,” Max said. “It’ll prove I’m worth something.” His eyes moistened, and he looked quickly away. “I thought, just one time, it might be nice not to let anyone down, that’s all. It sounds so fucking juvenile, but…”
“What?” Evan said.
“I just … I could use a win, you know?”
His voice had grown husky, and for a moment Evan thought he might actually break down under the strain of it all. But then he seemed to shake off the thoughts and reset himself. “The other options,” he said. “What are they?”
Evan gave a nod, glad to move on. “You have anywhere you can go? Anywhere safe?”
“Not really,” Max said. “I mean, my dad’s still around, but my family’s not really … Like I said, we’re not really close.”
“Family’s not an option,” Evan said. “We can’t put them at risk.”
“Not that we have to worry about that,” Max said. “Them sticking out their neck for me, I mean.”
Evan said, “Okay.”
Max pressed his palm to his forehead. “Shit,” he said. “There is one— No, never mind. Shit. Okay. There might be one option but it’s…”
“It’s what?”
“Hard.”
Evan stepped on a cushion on the floor, the knife slash gaping. “Harder than this?”
Max swallowed. The last bit of color had drained from his face.
“Yes,” he said.