Now Jury examined his new silver bracelet, the most innocuous of all the recent anomalies. “What is this?”
“You know, I asked Azral once. I mean I know what the bracelet does, but I wanted to know how it does it. He gave me a haughty little grin and told me that any answer would be futile, like explaining a handphone to an ancient Egyptian.” Evan laughed. “Asshole, right? Well, what Mr. Snooty McFuture doesn’t realize is that even an ancient Egyptian can figure out how to break a handphone. Look.”
Evan removed his hand from the liquid. The band on his wrist was now cracked and white, as if frozen solid. He pulled the hammer from his knapsack and tapped the surface until a small section shattered. The remainder slid easily over his hand.
“Ta-da! See? If you want to ditch your own, feel free to use my mixture. It’s a special cocktail I invented. I call it the Unscrewdriver.”
Jury resumed his huddle. Evan shrugged nonchalantly.
“Suit yourself, Sarge. But you should know that there are people tracking us through these things. The Salgados will be here in two minutes to take you to their fancy building in Terra Vista. You don’t want to go there. Trust me. In six weeks, that place will be a bloodbath.”
Jury sprang to his feet, red-faced. “Shut up! For God’s sake, just shut up. I’m freaking out right now and the last thing I need is some creepy little geek who makes no sense!”
Evan’s glib smile vanished. Now Jury could see the hatred on his face. Though the policeman had fifty pounds of muscle on his new acquaintance, he raised his palms in contrition.
“Look, I’m not myself this morning. I took a drugged drink and . . . God, you wouldn’t believe the stuff I’m seeing.”
Evan fished through his knapsack with fresh cheer. “Well, why the hell didn’t you say so? Just so happens I have something that can help you.”
He carefully approached Jury, his hand still buried in the bag.
“Now, I want you to keep an open mind, okay? The thing about this—”
He plunged the hunting knife deep into Jury’s chest.
“—is that it really hurts.”
Gasping, Jury fell back against the wall, feebly clutching the hilt of the knife as he sank back to the ground.
Evan furiously stood over him, pinching a thumb and finger. “You know, I came this close, this close, to letting you live this time. I was ready to find a whole new way to screw with you, just for variety. If you were living the same five years over and over again, you’d know how crucial it is to mix things up.”
In Jury’s final moments, Evan no longer existed. The whole world bled away. All he had left were thoughts of Ofelia. He realized she may have been right after all.
“But no,” Evan continued, “you had to remind me why the world’s a better place without you. So now once again, you’ve reduced yourself to a bit role. You don’t get to play the hero. You don’t get to lead the Silvers. You certainly don’t get the big-titted love interest. Nope. So sorry. No Hannah for you.”
By the time Evan finished ranting, the last spark of life had left Jury Curado. His eyes fell shut and his head dropped back against the brick.
Evan crouched down and hissed a gritty whisper in his ear. “Rot in hell, pendejo.”
A long green van rolled to a stop at the mouth of the alley. Evan plucked the wallet from Jury’s pocket, then climbed the fire escape ladder. He smiled down from the roof as Martin Salgado and his square-headed son traced their wave signal down the alley. They squawked in fluster at the sight of Jury’s corpse.
“A little too late there, fellas,” Evan murmured.
He scurried to the front of the roof and looked down at the van. From his high angle, he couldn’t get a glimpse of Theo Maranan, the great Asian prophet. But Evan had a perfect view of Hannah.
“Come on, baby. Turn around and show me those big browns.”
Hannah twisted in the cushions and aimed a nervous glance out the window. Evan chuckled. For all her twitchy instincts, the actress had no idea what she just lost in that alley, the great and awful edit that Evan just made to her story. When left to their untampered fates, Hannah Given and Jury Curado would meet in Terra Vista and smack together like magnets—the man of absolute conviction and the woman of no conviction at all, locked in a vapid dance of physical worship and wall-piercing orgasms. It was an excruciatingly painful spectacle that Evan had suffered a long time ago, back in the days when he tried to be a good little Silver.