In the dead of night, Evan waited in Tommy’s truck beneath the freeway overpass. A half hour passed before Tommy drifted up in Evan’s F-150. The windows had been replaced, and the bullet holes were gone. The body work was superb, the truck as good as new—a whole lot of ordinary wrapped around an exceptional core.
Evan could see Max sitting in the passenger seat, but Tommy mumbled something to him before he got out and Max stayed put.
Tommy ambled over to Evan and opened the door of his dually. “Scoot yer ass over,” he said, and Evan climbed over the center console into the passenger seat. Tommy hoisted himself up with a groan. “Got my money?”
Evan handed him a wad of hundreds, which Tommy thumbed through. He smelled strongly of cigarette smoke and wintergreen tobacco. He gave a nod. “Taggant-free Detasheet ain’t cheap,” he said. “Hope it was worth it.”
“It was worth it.”
“How do you like your Ballista?”
“It was great.”
Tommy cocked his head. “Why the past tense?”
Evan told him.
“Come again, motherfucker?” Tommy said. “You did what to my gun? Bleach? In a garbage bag? Down a trash chute?” He shook his head. “What’d I expect from a mouth-breathing trigger-puller like you. Pearls before swine.” He rubbed his eyes. “Aw, hell. I think I need a drink.”
Evan said, “I could use one, too.”
“There’s a flask of Smirnoff in the glove box.”
Evan laughed and then saw Tommy was serious.
Evan’s head felt significantly better, the worst of the concussion behind him. It seemed that taking a respite from crushing life-or-death stakes hastened one’s recovery. After everything he’d been through, he figured he could risk a sip or two.
He retrieved the bottle, unscrewed it, and took a sniff, doing his best not to recoil. Tommy dug two paper coffee cups out of the console and slapped one against Evan’s chest.
Evan shrugged. “What the hell.”
He poured two shots.
They drank.
Clark McKenna couldn’t doze off.
He hadn’t slept for shit since his run-in with Max Merriweather at the house. Or—to put a finer point on it—his run-in with Max Merriweather’s friend. A holier-than-thou roughneck brimming with swagger and moral sanctimony.
Who was that guy to question Clark’s choices?
Clark shifted around in bed until Gwendolyn gave a rumble of displeasure, and then he slid from the sheets, wrapped a bathrobe around himself, and headed into the kitchen. It was a cavernous affair, with vaulted ceilings and oversize doorways. The counter space alone was sufficient to seat a basketball team.
The help wasn’t around and the night was past the tipping point to morning, so he brewed up a pot of coffee and sat alone at the island. The room seemed to dwarf him even more than usual. The under-cabinet lights were on, the windows throwing back his reflection.
If there was one thing he didn’t want to look at right now, it was himself.
He’d raised the issue to Gwendolyn already twice, and twice she’d shot it down.
She was a stubborn woman, and that had made him a stubborn man. He supposed she would have argued the reverse.
He sipped his coffee and glared at himself.
For nearly three years he and Gwenny had clutched the secret close to their chests, content in the knowledge that they’d saved their daughter’s life. After the miscarriage he’d gone over to that hovel of an apartment and found his girl curled up on the kitchen linoleum, shuddering. Though it was nearly noon, she was still in her nightshirt and a pair of boxer shorts, her flesh as pale and cold as marble.
His paternal instincts had risen up, fierce as a cornered beast, and he’d vowed then that he would do anything to save her. Gwendolyn had found the treatment home. And later that night, privately in their bedroom, Gwendolyn had set the terms.
Violet was alive. But over these past years when Clark caught her in an unguarded moment gazing blankly out a window or drifting off in a meeting, he understood that a part of her was still lying on that kitchen floor, shuddering and alone, trapped in the knowledge that her husband had left her there.
That he’d found her no longer worth being with.
That was the kind of thing that could kill someone even if they were still breathing.
The coffee was cold now, the mug cool within his hands.
He’d known what he was going to do all along. He’d just been pretending that he didn’t. And he knew he had to do it before Gwenny’s alarm roused her for her morning yoga in the back garden.
He picked up the phone and dialed. It wasn’t as hard as he thought it might be. After all, he’d practiced countless times over the past two years and seven months.
When Violet picked up, her voice hoarse with sleep, a surge of emotion ambushed him. “Hullo?” she said.
“Sweet girl.” He had to fight out the words. “I have to tell you something.”
And then he’d lowered his eyes into his hand and wept.
Parking tickets sheeted the windshield of Max’s TrailBlazer. It felt like a lifetime ago when Evan had directed him to meet here in the lot by Universal Studios.
One problem had led to the second, the third to a fourth and then a fifth. When Evan had blown out Stella Hardwick’s conference room and everyone inside, he’d put down the sixth and final problem.
Now there was nothing left to do but watch the shrapnel settle.
Evan had given Max a thousand dollars to get back on his feet, along with Grant’s thumb drive and a cover story that they’d worked and reworked until it was more real to Max than what had really gone down.
Max was ready to walk into a police station and lay out a version of events that protected him fully and disclosed nothing about his relationship with Evan. Max had simply been a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like most successful fabrications, this was an extension of the truth. The criminal networks Stella Hardwick had assembled around her scheme had collapsed due to internecine warfare, or so the story would go. Greed and turf disputes had turned the parties against one another until they’d brought themselves down, sinking into a morass of blood.
Max hesitated by his TrailBlazer, keys in hand, and looked back at Evan. There was always this moment when they tried to say the unsayable. The bond forged over the course of a mission was unlike anything else.
Evan wondered how much he’d miss it.
This was the part where Evan empowered them to find the next client. To pass on his phone number and, in doing so, to help them move from victim to savior.
Evan cleared his throat. “Good-bye, then.”
“Okay.” Max bobbed his head. “Okay.” He tugged open his door.
“Write your own story,” Evan said. “Or someone else’ll write it for you.”
Max looked down at his shoes and smiled shyly. “I like that.”
“And one more thing,” Evan said. “Pick your damn head up.”
The past twelve hours had been among the most exhausting of Max’s life. He’d been interrogated by rotating sets of detectives, DAs, and even briefly by the district attorney, until he’d literally fallen asleep in the chair. But he hadn’t cracked and he hadn’t slipped up. The past week—and his time with the Nowhere Man—had introduced him to a new part of himself.
He drove straight from the police station to a 7-Eleven, where he bought a disposable razor and shaved in the restroom. After he splashed cold water on his face, he stared at himself in the rust-spotted mirror. It took a moment, like an image slowly pulling into focus, but he recognized himself again.
Next stop was the big Spanish-style house in Beverly Hills, the site of the Merriweather clan’s Taco Tuesdays. News of Grant’s corruption had leaked to Jill already—he’d gleaned as much from his time at the station—and he felt a need to show his face. He wanted them to know what Golden Boy Grant had done to him and what Max had gone through to protect them all. He pictured Grant with his overpriced suit and that easy, swallowed-the-canary grin. C’mon, Mighty Max. For once in your life, maybe step up, shoulder some responsibility.
A member of the staff let Max in, and he found the family in the kitchen, the trays of carne asada and al pastor sitting untouched. Jill’s face was pink from sobbing, the rest of the family fanned out around her in support or deference.
All eyes shifted to him.
He felt an overpowering urge to do what he always did—to slink away and nurse his self-loathing. But this time he didn’t. He stood his ground.
For a moment he didn’t know which way it would go.
The chef came in wielding a tray of corn tortillas and read the mood of the kitchen. “Maybe this isn’t the best time, sir,” he said to Max.
Jill wiped at her eyes. The family was silent. And then Max’s father found his feet. “It’s not the best time,” he said. “Which is why we should all be together.”
He pulled out an empty chair for his son, and Max blinked at it.
“Thanks,” he said. “But I can’t stay. I just finished at the police station.”
Jill rose, crumpling a tissue in her hand, her swollen face heavy with remorse.
The words were right there at the back of his throat, a lifetime of resentment and vitriol fired with newfound righteousness. He was ready to unleash, to set her straight.
But instead he heard himself say, “I’m so sorry, Jill. I wish it wasn’t true.”
She collapsed into him, sobbing against his chest. And he held her.
Michelle came in from the backyard with a plate of food and hugged them both from the side. Then she took Max’s hand and moved to press it to her stomach. He hesitated.
And then let her.
The baby bumped against his palm. A charge moved through him intense enough to bring moisture to his eyes. Wonder, yes. And grief for the baby he’d lost, as sharp as a fresh wound. But he noticed one feeling that was outshining them all.
Joy.
He kissed Michelle’s forehead. And then he left.
The drive to South Pasadena took the better part of an hour.
The cottage peeked out from behind the ivy-covered brick wall. Air crisp. The porch enveloped in the scent of roses.
His hand shook when he rang the bell.
But for a second time he stood firm.
Footsteps.
And then she was there.
Dark eyes and red lips and a long-sleeved sweater to cover her arms.
They both had so many scars to hide.
He held up the key to the Lincoln Heights house. “I promised to return this to you. But it’s really just an excuse to look at you one more time.”
He set the key in her hand. His fingertips brushed her palm. The smell of her perfume—orange blossom and vanilla—hit a spot in his brain that turned present into past and rolled them together.
She closed her fist around the key. Stared down at her knuckles. She looked like she needed to say something, so he waited and then waited some more.
“My dad called me last night,” she finally said. “He told me what you agreed to. The deal you struck. And why you did it.”
Her eyes were shut, and he couldn’t tell if she was going to cry or scream at him.
He said, “If you ever forgive me…” And then he lost the words.
She kept her eyes closed. She was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling, rising and falling.
He turned to walk off.
Her voice caught him halfway to the brick wall.
“I’m just—” She broke off in a sob. And then, “I’m just having an unlucky run. If you’re smart, you’ll get as far from me as possible.”
He looked down, and the grass got blurry and the walkway and the roses and the street beyond.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not that smart.”
He turned around.
And he lifted his gaze.