He heeled the door shut behind him. “Joey?”
She wheeled on him. “Where were you?” She came at him, striking blindly. “Why’d you leave me here? I got back, and you … you weren’t here. Why weren’t you here?”
He retreated, but she launched at him again, pounded with her fists, not like a trained operator but like an angry sixteen-year-old. “You left me. I thought … I thought…”
He tried to gather her in, but she shoved him away. She slammed the closet door off its tracks, kicked the chair across the room, threw the lamp against the wall, knocking a divot through the paint.
He moved to get out of her way, sat on the floor, and put his back to the door.
She ripped the hanger pole off its mounts in the closet, kicked the bed hard enough that the metal feet gouged marks in the carpet, drove her hand through the drywall.
Finally she finished.
She was facing away from him, her body coiled, her hands in loose fists at her sides. Blood dripped from a split knuckle.
She walked over. She sat across from him, facing away from his bed. Her huge eyes were wet, her shoulders still heaving.
“Where were you?” she said.
“I went to look for you.”
“You weren’t here.”
He swallowed. “Tiene dos trabajos. Enojarse y contentarse.”
She pressed both hands over her mouth. Tears ran over her knuckles, but she did not make a sound.
They sat on the floor together for a very long time.
53
My Breath on Your Neck
The next morning Evan and Joey sat on their respective beds spooning gas-station-bought oatmeal into their mouths from Styrofoam cups. He’d told Joey to put the room back together, and she’d done her best, but still the closet door was knocked off its tracks, the lamp shattered, the walls battered. The wreckage of the chair was neatly stacked in the corner, a pyre of kindling. It was a foregone conclusion that Suzi Orton, cheery Airbnb patron, was going to have to retire her profile after they cleared out.
“Look,” Joey said. “Sorry I kinda freaked out last night. It’s just … I was—”
Her phone gave a three-note alert, a bugle announcing the king.
She thumped her Styrofoam cup down on the nightstand, oatmeal sludge slopping over the brim, and swung off the bed into a kneeling position before her laptop at the desk.
“A police cruiser hit on the plate,” she said, her voice tight with excitement.
He leaned over her shoulder, saw a screen grab of the black Suburban captured by the light bar of a passing cop car. The SUV was parked in a crowded Food Lion grocery-store lot, the GPS specifics spelled out below.
“Damn it.” Joey nibbled the edge of her thumbnail. “By the time we get there, they’ll be gone.”
“No,” he said. “This is good. No one drives across town to get groceries.”
She caught his meaning, nodded, and snapped her laptop shut. They threw their stuff together in less than a minute.
Before heading out, Evan left ten crisp hundred-dollar bills on the floor beneath a fist-size hole punched through the drywall.
*
He started at Food Lion and drove in an expanding spiral, creeping through increasingly rough neighborhoods. A few miles along their winding path, he pulled abruptly to the curb.
Joey said, “What?”
He pointed at a ramshackle single-story house a half block up that looked like most every other house they’d passed. A chunk of missing stucco on the front corner, planters filled with dirt, overstuffed trash cans at the curb. A tall rolling side gate had been turned impenetrable by green plastic strapping interwoven with the chain-link. One of the gutters had come loose and dangled from the fringe of the house like a coal chute.
“I don’t get it,” Joey said.
“The trash cans,” he said. “See those green plastic strips poking up?”
She leaned toward the dash, squinting through the windshield. “They match the fence filler.”
“Right. Someone cut and installed that privacy screen on the gate this week.” He unholstered his ARES and opened the door. “Wait here.”
He crossed the street, darted through front yards, hurdling hedges. He slowed as he came up on the house, keeping his arms firm but not too firm, the pistol pointed at a spot on the ground a few feet ahead of the tips of his boots.
The gate was lifted two inches off the concrete to accommodate the wheels. Easing onto the edge of the driveway, Evan dropped to his stomach and peered through the gap.
The driveway continued past the gate to where the yard ended at a rotting wooden fence. Parked halfway there at an angle was a black Suburban. Weeds pushed up from cracks in the concrete, brushing the vehicle’s flanks. But they weren’t dense enough to cover the license plate.
VBK-5976.
Next to it on the baked dirt of the yard were the second rented Suburban and a Chevy Tahoe.
Evan withdrew.
Jogging back up the street, he flicked a finger for Joey to get out. She climbed from her perch in the driver’s seat, locking the vehicle behind her.
“It’s there?” she asked.
“It’s there.”
As they circled the block, he could hear Joey’s breathing quicken.
They cut through a side yard next to a partially burned house. The frame of an Eldorado rested on blocks in a carport that sagged dangerously on heat-buckled steel beams. They stepped carefully, moving into the backyard. A rear patio had served as a firebreak, preserving a yard filled with dead, waist-high foxtails. Evan and Joey waded into the weeds, their shoes crunching as they headed for the rotting wood of the rear fence. Though the fire looked to be a few days old, ash still scented the air, the smell just shy of pleasing.
The warped fence had plenty of cracks and crevices that provided a ready vantage across the target house’s backyard. On what was left of the lawn, an old-fashioned round barbecue grill melted into a puddle of rust. The reddish tinge on the earth brought a host of associations to Evan, which he pushed aside, focusing instead on the house beyond.
Plywood covered two of the living room’s three windows. One sheet had been removed and set to the side, presumably to let in light. The high kitchen window over the sink had been left exposed, and the rear door was laid open.
Paul Delmonico and Shane Shea, Van Sciver’s freelancers, stood at semi-attention, focused on someone in one of the blind spots. Evan assumed the other two freelancers were holding down the front of the house. In the kitchen window, Thornhill’s head was visible. A moment later a woman stepped beside him, facing mostly away from Evan.
Midlength hair, confident posture, athletic shoulders that tapered to a slender but not-too-slender waist—Evan would recognize her bearing anywhere.
Orphan V turned around.
In the shaft of light falling through the kitchen window, she looked quite striking. As she murmured something to Thornhill, she reached over her shoulder and scratched at a spot on her back. Evan thought of the burned flesh beneath her shirt and felt a jagged edge twist inside him.
Palms pressed to the splintering fence, he breathed the rot of the wood and watched the freelancers watching whoever was in that blind spot, two attack dogs waiting for a command. Beside him Joey shifted her weight uncomfortably, rolling one sneaker onto its outer edge. She was humming with nervousness.
The person in the blind spot stepped out of the blind spot and into view.
That broad form, the thin copper hair, the muscular forearms and blocky wrists. But it wasn’t just Van Sciver who made Joey’s breath hitch audibly in her throat; it was what he was carrying.
David Smith’s frail form draped across his arms.