He set down the comb and took a few deep breaths.
It was four in the morning, and he needed to sleep.
He exited the hotel bathroom. The bed had a bunch of those oddly shaped pillows, cylinders with tassels, ovals with velvet trim. A watercolor of a windsurfer hung above the headboard. On the nightstand a remote control as wide as a Ping-Pong paddle was studded with more buttons than he could count.
Holt stood in the hum of the regulated air from the vent and knew himself to be safe.
And yet everything in his body screamed otherwise.
He dressed quickly and then pulled on his socks, laced up his shoes.
Then he lay atop the duvet, arms crossing his chest, a vampire in repose. He closed his eyes.
He imagined he was back in his cell, where his hours and thoughts were contained. This comforted him.
When he dozed off, he dreamed of a woman a lifetime ago. The scent of her on the bedsheets, her lyrical accent, that wavy dark hair. She was tough and beautiful and the only thing he’d ever known that had made life worth living.
He awakened two hours later, having moved not an inch.
On the desk, resting beside pamphlets touting Colonial Williamsburg and the Newseum, Wetzel’s file contained the information on the federal prosecutor who had put Holt away.
He stared at the picture with enmity.
He certainly was not a fan. But still—a federal prosecutor.
His mistake last time was going with heavy weaponry. He couldn’t risk being spotted with restricted guns, not during the warm-up round before the game went live.
He’d reserve heavy weaponry for when he really needed it, and he’d really need it soon enough. He knew that Wetzel and Bennett had processors sorting countless bits of data, scouring through the virtual universe. When X popped his head up, Holt would be waiting with a carbine, locked and loaded.
He memorized the specifics in the prosecutor’s file and then lit it on fire, dropped it into the bathtub, and washed the clumped ashes down the drain.
When he drove away from the hotel, a moon floated brazenly in the slate-blue morning sky.
He parked at a Home Depot and walked inside, breezing past early-morning contractors smelling of beer breath and strong coffee.
He found what he was looking for in Aisle 10.
He laid it on the checkout counter.
The clerk glanced from him to it and back to him again. He’d been told more than once that his presence made sensible people feel uneasy.
She tittered, a burst of nervousness escaping. “You sure that’s all you need?”
He looked at her. Set down a twenty.
She rang him up, tapping the keys with her fingers splayed so as not to snap off her fake nails.
Her eyes jittered over him. She cleared her throat. “Need a bag, sir?”
He picked up the clawhammer and walked out.
*
The two-story house rose from behind a wood-alternative picket fence. Michigan Park was located in Northeast D.C., but this block, with its freestanding homes and grassy setbacks, could have been anywhere.
Holt stood at the end of the walk, hands stuffed in the pockets of a Carhartt coat. He was hesitating because this wasn’t some high-value raghead or dickhead cartel hombre or off-the-rails Orphan, all of whom had it coming in one way or another. This was an attack on law and order itself, the kind of damage you sometimes had to do when you cut through critical structures to reach a deeper cancer.
The house itself looked warm and lived in, the kind of ordinary place where ordinary folks lived out ordinary lives. Verdant green front lawn, three steps rising to a porch, Crayola-red bricks.
Languid suburban motion pervaded the street. A mom out for a morning jog, yoga pants adhered to her lower half, pushing before her a baby stroller that resembled a space pod. A few garage doors creaking up in unison. A low-end Mercedes easing out into the workday.
Holt unfastened the latch on the thigh-high fence, stepped through, and progressed to the porch. Behind the door he heard morning commotion.
A woman’s voice. “Did you feed Dylan before car pool?”
“Waffles. Frozen but multigrain!”
Holt rang the bell.
“Hang on.” A man threw open the door. Middle-aged, worn T-shirt from an old Stones tour, sandy blond beard, neatly trimmed. “Hi, can I help—”
The feminine voice shouted from somewhere behind him. “Honey! Have you seen my briefcase?”
“Sorry.” The man turned away from the door. “On the chest in the playroom!”
“You’re the best.” The woman blew into view, briefcase in hand, holding up earrings. “These dangly ones okay? I have closing arguments today.”
The man said, “I’d go with studs. More assured.”
“You’re picking up car pool, right?” She turned, noticed Holt standing there mutely. “Hi, sorry. Hi.”
Holt stared directly at her. “You don’t recognize me?”
She squinted, tilting her head as she slid a diamond stud into an earlobe. “No. I’m sorry.”
Holt studied her a moment longer. Made a game-day decision
“Must have the wrong house.” He seated his hands back into his pockets and turned to walk away.
He’d reached the edge of the porch when he heard her voice behind him. “Wait! Four years ago—no, five. Possession of an illegal firearm, transporting across state lines.”
Holt paused, felt a weight bow his shoulders.
The sigh that left him made him feel every one of his fifty-two years.
Still facing away, he lifted the clawhammer from the deep inside pocket of his jacket.
Then he turned and moved swiftly for the open door.
22
The Small Gestures of Intimacy
Trevon Gaines’s South Central apartment was small but so clean it met Evan’s own diagnosable standards. Trevon sat on his bed scratching his biceps until his nails raised ashy streaks on the skin. He had on a pair of black-frame eyeglasses, thick lenses, one plastic temple secured at the hinge with a Band-Aid.
The bed was made up so tightly you could’ve bounced a sniper round on the comforter. Early-hours darkness still claimed the street, the quiet broken by the occasional car drifting past, music bumping from woofers. The building was close enough to USC to be relatively safe and far enough away to be interesting.
Evan stood in the shadow beside the bureau, away from the window, keeping a clear view of the bedroom door. He wore a Woolrich shirt held together with magnetic buttons that gave way readily in the event he made a quick grab for his weapon or someone made a quick grab for him. The shirt hid the Kydex high-guard holster riding his left hip, which held an ARES 1911 custom-forged from a solid block of aluminum, as untraceable as Evan himself. He’d fed the pistol a magazine filled with 230-grain Speer Gold Dot hollow points, a bonus round chambered in case a gunfight went nine deep in a hurry. Streamlined inner pockets of his tactical-discreet cargo pants hid extra mags and a folding Strider knife without showing so much as a bump. His Original S.W.A.T. boots were lighter than running shoes and looked perfectly ordinary with the pant legs pulled down.
The last words he’d spoken were, “Tell me everything you remember.”
That had been forty-five minutes ago.
The story took longer than Evan had expected, longer than any story he’d ever been told. Trevon recounted every last detail. That Mama used Kentucky bluegrass for her back lawn because it reminded her of home. That Muscley One’s truck was a Chevrolet Silverado kept very clean with a dangly tree air freshener that was blue which didn’t make sense because trees aren’t blue and they don’t smell like new-car scent. That Trevon had taken 978 breaths between when they’d put the garbage bag back over his head and when they’d dumped him in an alley downtown.
Evan thought of the Seventh Commandment—One mission at a time —and felt frustration thrum to life in his gut. He had already embarked on the biggest mission of his life—perhaps the biggest solo mission in history—and was eager to get back to it. To proceed he had to get into the Secret Service databases through Naomi’s phone. He’d booked his flight to Milan, to the one person with the hacking skills to possibly make it happen, and he was impatient to get airborne.
Mere hours ago he’d slipped out of the warmth of Mia’s bed. He’d wanted to leave a note on one of her trademark Post-its but had struggled mightily with what to write. This was where his upbringing failed him; the small gestures of intimacy escaped him every time.
He’d settled on, “Sorry. Work.”
He’d made it quietly across the room before pausing for a three count, his hand on the doorknob. Then he’d reversed course, moving silently, and added, “p.s. Wow.”