Evan had lost track of how long he’d gone without sleep.
Walking through the Castle Heights lobby, he felt faintly intoxicated, his feet like foreign objects he had to operate with every step.
Ida Rosenbaum, with the aid of a walker and a physical therapist, moved at a snail’s pace around the love seats, working on regaining her balance. The bruises on her face had faded to a sickly yellow. She wore a brick-red sweat suit with reflective stripes down the sleeves and legs, high-visibility precautions in case any traffic came blazing through the lobby.
“It’s good to see you up on your feet again,” Evan said.
“If that’s what you call this,” Ida snapped.
The physical therapist, a young Hispanic woman, said, “Would you mind watching her for a moment so I can use the restroom?”
“I don’t need watching,” Ida said.
Evan wanted nothing more than to get upstairs and lie down, but he paused and rested a steadying hand on the walker. “No problem.”
An awkward silence ensued after the woman departed.
“I heard you got your necklace back,” Evan said.
“I did. And they arrested the crook who took it.”
“But you’re not wearing it.”
“No.” Ida waved a dismissive hand. “I’m done with that nonsense. Acting like I’m something to look at.” She shook her head. “At my age.”
“Don’t give him that.”
“Oh, please.” She shoved the walker at him, the tennis-ball sliders squeaking on the marble floor, and he had to skip back. Firming her shoulders with pride, she took a surprisingly strong step. “Spare me your bumper-sticker aphorisms.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You don’t know what it’s like. To have real concerns.”
“No, ma’am.”
The physical therapist returned, thanked Evan, and took over. As he walked away, he heard her say, “You’re really improving, Mrs. Rosenbaum.”
“Sure,” Ida said. “I’ll be ready for the hundred-yard dash in no time.”
Evan had just closed the penthouse door behind him when his phone rang. He clicked to answer and held it to his face.
Joey said, “Hang on,” with great annoyance, as if he’d called and interrupted her. A rustle as she slid the phone aside and then muffled shouting. “Get off that! You chew my Das Keyboard one more time, I’ll get you fixed.”
“He’s already fixed,” Evan said, heading down the hall toward the master suite. The nausea was back, creeping beneath his skin, turning his flesh clammy.
“Well, I bet it’s just as unpleasant the second time,” Joey said. And then, “I spent all morning scrubbing the jail footage, which would’ve been way easier if you weren’t so incompetent.”
The sheets remained, a dirty swirl atop the floating mattress, fuzzed with dog hair. He had to squint against the sight of it.
He stepped through the bathroom and into the shower stall. “How am I incompetent?”
“Where do I start? I told you in advance where the cameras were.”
“I thought I avoided them pretty well.”
“Perhaps by your low standards.”
His hand swiped at the hot-water lever and missed. He reached for it again. A quick turn and he was through into the Vault. “I was busy trying to not get killed.”
“You should be used to that by now.”
“Fair enough,” Evan said, dropping into his chair with relief. His jaw started watering, a warning signal.
“Have you been resting?”
“Sure.”
“How’s the concussion?” Joey asked.
Evan hit MUTE, slid over the trash can, and threw up into it violently enough to strain his intercostals. He wiped his mouth, unmuted the phone. “Okay,” he said.
“Sure,” she said. “You sound fresh as a daisy.”
He gripped the edge of the table to try to stop the room from spinning. Vera II looked on with moral support.
“I just wanted you to know you’re free to retire now. Your tracks are completely covered. Once again I swing to your rescue. You’re such a damsel in distress. I mean, if I hadn’t found the hidden files on Grant’s thumb drive, you’d still be—”
His Gmail account, projected onto the wall before him, showed an e-mail message.
No sender. No subject line.
“Joey,” he said. “I have to go.”
He hung up on her while she was still mid-insult.
With a trembling hand, he clicked to open the e-mail.
A single sentence: Have you considered my offer?
The president, checking in on the status of the informal pardon.
Beneath the single sentence was a familiar phone number, a code word, and an extension.
(202) 456-1414. Dark Road. 32.
The informal pardon would put an end to the race he’d been running since the age of twelve, when he’d stepped off that rest-stop curb and into Jack’s car. No more knife wounds and concussions. No more dogfighting pits and shooters in shadowy parking lots. No more police-station raids and voluntary jail stints.
No more missions.
He’d always thought that being the Nowhere Man was his way of paying penance. But maybe it was more than that. Maybe risking his life for others again and again and again gave him the only sense of purpose he could find.
Would he be able to find another purpose as true as that?
He looked at Vera II. “What do you think?”
She seemed skeptical.
This wasn’t the time for debate. He still had a makeshift SWAT command on his ass and a cabal of city leaders to exterminate.
He returned Vera II’s haughty glare. “I know, I know. ‘Miles to go before I sleep.’ I just need a sec to lie down.”
Vera II gave him more passive-aggressive silence.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll have a quick peek. But that’s it.”
As he plugged Bedrosov’s thumb drive into his computer, he felt a pang of guilt for hanging up on Joey. Despite that, he didn’t regret cutting off her bragging about discovering the hidden files on Grant’s thumb drive.
He froze, hands a few inches above the keyboard. He looked at Bedrosov’s thumb drive, protruding from the computer tower like a stubby arrow.
Given the cascade of discoveries, he hadn’t checked it for hidden files.
He right-clicked on the icon, selected the option to run as administrator. Then he typed in “attrib-s-h-r /s /d.”
A single cloaked folder came into view.
Police and court documents with highest classification markings. Of course they’d been hidden behind one more layer of protection for Bedrosov; they pertained to his investigation alone. They had likely been fed to Grant so he could know more specifically what charges he needed to play defense against as he shell-gamed Bedrosov’s money.
The documents didn’t merely detail the case against Bedrosov. They also showed a flurry of activity surrounding the simple wire-fraud charges that had been leveled. Filed motions. Internal memos from the district attorney’s office. Annotated interview transcripts. Copies of court orders. Interview requests for the DA investigator. Demands for Lorraine Lennox to reveal her confidential sources. And a host of search- and electronic-surveillance warrants looking to expand the investigation. A few even targeted the players at the edge of Stella Hardwick’s empire—David Terzian, Alexan Petro, Detectives Ignacio Nuñez and Paul Brust.
Someone was looking to expand the case.
Evan’s muscles had locked up, his shoulders a sheet of stress pulling at the tendons of his neck. He knew in his gut who that someone was even before he found the matching signature at the bottom of each and every warrant.
In her conference room alone, gazing out at the mediocre view of downtown with her Turing Phone pressed to her ear, Stella Hardwick received the update with a ramrod spine and a stiff upper lip. She permitted no change of her expression or rise in the volume of her voice.
“So they failed,” she said. “You failed.”
There was a pause as Fitz seemingly gathered himself. “The man helping Grant’s cousin had a truck with discreet armoring.”
“An armored truck.”
“That’s right. Yes. Look—I’m sorry. We’ve been scouring the streets. We’ll get him.”
“Yes. You will. But now we can’t afford to hold off anymore.”
“On what?”
“We can’t take any risks. Clean up the rest of it.”
Another long pause, interrupted only by the crackle of static over the line. “I know we’ve taken steps before,” Fitz said. “But this is a whole other level. We’re talking about a Los Angeles County district attorney. To be clear—”
“I am being clear,” Stella said, and severed the connection.
All the signs had been there.
And Evan had missed them.
Every time he’d seen her, she’d been on the phone with her office, pushing for search warrants, forging into blowback, fighting to keep her investigation on track—the investigation he’d unknowingly collided with at every turn. She’d been up late and up early, cycling through court suits and spending most of her waking hours trying her long-cause trials downtown.
Stella Hardwick and her cabal had proved they were willing to kill to protect what they’d built. It seemed certain that with the walls closing in on them now, they’d be willing to assassinate a DA as well.
Agitated, Evan stood up. His vision filled with snow, and he reached for the desk, missed it, and fell over. He lay on the cold floor a moment, his head buzzing, and then he pulled himself back up into his chair.
He brought up the folder containing the files he maintained on every resident of Castle Heights. Mia’s was just as invasive as the rest of them, with zero-day exploits granting him access to her iPhone, her work calendar, the DA databases, and virtually everything else.
He hovered the cursor over her name.
Hesitated.
He could only imagine the ire Mia would unleash if she knew he was about to illegally pry into her life.
He recalled Max’s anguish at walking away from Violet to save her. How he’d done the one thing she would have least wanted him to do.
Because he couldn’t bear not to.
Evan opened Mia’s file.