“Moose socks!”
Evan rotated Peter’s arm out as if opening it for a hug, keeping the elbow pinned to the boy’s ribs. At the same time, he pushed the scapula in to catch the humerus, the bones meeting each other halfway, the shoulder reseating itself with a pleasing click.
Peter opened his mouth to scream but paused before any sound could escape. Mia had covered her eyes, but she peeked between her fingers.
The silence stretched out a beat. Peter closed his mouth.
Then he moved his arm gingerly. “That feels sooo much better.”
Evan said to Mia, “Will you please grab me a pillowcase?”
She nodded and headed up the hall.
Evan looked across at Peter. “Were the socks actually made out of meese?”
Peter grinned. “Mooses. And no. They had cartoons on them.”
Mia reappeared and flipped Evan the pillowcase. “Moose. Moose is the plural of moose. Like fish.”
“Except if you’re talking about species of fish,” Peter said.
Mia said, “Is that what Ms. Dinglepants taught you?”
Peter sighed. “You guys .”
“You should get it looked at by a doc,” Evan said, “but it can wait till the morning.” He triangled the pillowcase and tied it in a loose sling. “He can use this till then.”
“Okay. Thank God, Evan. Hang on … just … lemme get him to bed. Wait a sec for me?”
Evan said, “Okay.”
With his good hand, Peter fist-bumped Evan, then blew it up, then squidded his fingers away, then turned them into a firework, and then Mia said, “Peter,” and he scampered ahead of her into his bedroom.
Evan waited on the couch, taking in the soft colors of the well-loved space. A broken Little League trophy on the mantel next to a picture of Peter in a wooden frame built of Popsicle sticks. A shoe box on the floor transformed into a robot head. A Post-it on the wall by the thermostat with a line from that book Mia was always quoting to Peter: “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”
This childhood, this upbringing, this life so different from anything Evan had ever known.
And—in countless tiny, commonplace ways—so much better.
Mia reemerged, easing Peter’s door closed. “Sorry. Getting out of there at night is like backing out of a lion cage.” She ran a hand through her already mussed-up hair. “That was amazing. Thank you.”
“No problem.” Evan stood. “I have to go now.”
“Right now? Why?”
Still trying to kill the president.
Evan said, “Work.”
“Okay. Sure you don’t want, like, a Smirnoff Ice Pineapple or something?” She held a straight face for a few seconds but finally laughed at his expression. “I’m kidding.”
“You’re a very bad person.”
“Yes, I am.” She came over and hugged him. “Thank you so much. Seriously. I’m good with cuts and blood and whatever, but dislocations gross me out.”
Her arms stayed wrapped tight around his lower back. He was holding her, pretending not to breathe the scent of her hair. Her cheek was pressed against his chest, her head snugged beneath his chin. He waited for her to let go, but she didn’t, and he suddenly felt less in a rush than he was before.
“Ever notice how when they talk about dreams in movies they always make perfect sense?” she said, keeping her face against his chest. “No one ever says, ‘I was ten years old at my childhood house, but it wasn’t my childhood house, it was a school, and my whole fifth-grade class was there, but they weren’t my classmates, they were all the criminals I’ve put away and they were gonna get me, but then I was an adult all of a sudden, and you came in and you were you but you were also my dear departed husband, and you took me by the hand and we walked outside, but outside was inside and we were in a bedroom, and then you kissed me and said everything was safe.’”
Through his shirt Evan could feel the heat of her cheek.
He said, “Did you have that dream?”
She pulled back and looked at him and then looked away, her mouth crooked with sheepish amusement. “No,” she said.
He laughed.
But then they were serious again, her eyes so large beneath those long, dark lashes, and he kissed her. She tasted faintly like cinnamon toothpaste, and the smell of her, lemongrass mixed with lavender, came off her skin, and they were still kissing, but she was guiding them down the hall, an awkward walk-stumble that kept them together.
In her bedroom they finally broke apart, forehead to forehead, their breath intermingling, and then she lifted his shirt up and off.
“Wait a sec,” she said. “Are these muscles real? Or spray-painted on?” She poked at his abs. “I mean, seriously ? If you think I’m gonna get naked after this—”
But then they were tangled in each other again, moving to the bed, and he was holding her face in his hands, her mouth so soft.
She leaned away, lips parted, breathing hard. “Okay,” she said, “fuck it,” and pulled off her shirt.
The soft mattress felt like an embrace. Throw pillows tumbled. She rolled him on top of her, unbuckling his belt. She kicked out of her jeans and shoved his the rest of the way off with her toes.
The smoothness of her bare belly against his. Her nails digging into his arms. Her teeth pressing into his shoulder.
Not aggressive.
But hungry.
Afterward he lay sunk in a swirl of duvet, spent, as she lay beside him, one leg slung over his hip, their skin meeting in a warm seal.
There was only the sound of their breathing, ragged at first and then slower, slower, yielding to a peaceful silence. She shifted off him, away, and bedded down on her stomach with one knee hitched up so her body formed a lowercase h.
She wasn’t quite snoring, but she made a distinctive snuffle with each inhale that he found unreasonably charming.
He closed his eyes, enjoying the unexpected pleasure of this bed, her body beside his, this moment.
He couldn’t remember ever wanting to not leave, but here he was getting more and more tired, listening to her sleep sounds, his blinks growing longer.
A faint humming noise jarred him back to alertness.
The RoamZone, set to vibrate.
He slipped from the bed and dug it from the pocket of his tangled jeans. Taking quiet steps, he moved to the bathroom so as not to wake Mia.
Caller ID showed a mobile number with a Los Angeles area code. A GPS dot pinned the location downtown near USC.
Evan answered as he always did. “Do you need my help?”
A terrified voice said, “Yes, please, sir. Yes, please.”
21
Heavy Weaponry
Naked in the bathroom, Judd Holt stared at his reflection. Rivulets from the shower streamed down his powerful body. From his calves to his biceps, his muscles were compact and pronounced, coiled springs. The wrinkles at the edges of his eyes had deepened into grooves that touched his temples, where the brown-copper hair turned the color of dust.
It had been a long time since Orphan A had truly looked at himself.
In prison mirrors were hard to come by—and for good reason. An instinct rose up in him—wrap a hand towel around his knuckles, smash the glass, search out a dagger-size shard.
Just to have it.
But there was no need for that. Not here.
He’d selected a hotel near Dupont Circle, closer to the action, and paid more for the room than he thought a middling hotel should cost. Beneath the faucet an indentation in the porcelain held a petite lump of French vanilla soap, encased in fine paper and shaped like a scallop shell.
He unwrapped the lump, flung the wad of paper into the trash, then soaped his hands, forearms, and face, despite the fact that he’d just washed. It had been so long since he’d experienced a luxury scent of any kind, the sugary sweetness filling his nostrils like something from a remembered dream.
He toweled off and dressed quickly and then swiped a wider circle of steam from the mirror. His beard was coming in aggressively as it did, and he thought he’d let it keep coming, a Paul Bunyan show of strength.
The 1,779 days in prison had left his skin dry and chafed. Flakes of dandruff spotted the copper-wire tangle of his beard. With an old-fashioned black comb, he started grooming them out. They came, but the churning of the plastic teeth spawned more white flecks.
Orphan X invaded his thoughts once again. Not the man himself, whoever he was, since Holt had never laid eyes on him. But a shadowed face. A blurred darkness on a surveillance screen grab. The heel of a boot a split second before it vanished into an alley.
Holt scoured his beard harder and harder, the flakes multiplying like the goddamned broomsticks in that Mickey Mouse cartoon. He was thinking about what Orphan X had taken from him, how the fucker had dropped a fork in the road and forced Holt to veer left, wiping out an entire other life that might have been.
Instead Holt had remained what he was probably always meant to be. Orphan A, cleaning up messes for America.
His cheek was bleeding. He didn’t notice until a blood drop struck the porcelain sink, ruby red and serrated at the edges like a sunburst.