X
Her hand had moved to her mouth. She stared at the words and then over at the box of envelopes. The next one up said CHRISTMAS.
As she slipped the card back into the envelope, she noticed some lettering on the back.
Y.A.S.
Y.A.L.
It took a moment for the meaning to drop. These were the words she’d overheard that young father speak to his newborn in the park the day she’d wandered by, bleeding from one ear.
You are safe.
You are loved.
Another knock sounded, and she wiped at her eyes.
Sara’s gentle voice carried through the door. “Are you ready?”
Joey slid the shoe box beneath her bed and rose.
“Yeah,” she said. “I am.”
78
Worth the Trying
As Evan crossed the lobby of Castle Heights, Lorilee looked up from her mail slot and caught his eye. She was alone. She smiled at him, and the smile held deeper meaning.
He nodded, accepting her thanks.
He neared the security desk across from the elevator. “Twenty-one, please, Joaquin.”
Joaquin looked up, his security hat tilted. “Hey, Mr. Smoak. Haven’t seen you in a while.”
Evan grimaced. “Sales conferences.”
“Livin’ for the weekend.”
“You got that right.”
A voice floated from behind Evan. “Twelfth floor, too, Joaquin.”
“Sure thing, Mrs. Hall.”
Evan held the elevator doors, and Mia slipped past him, her curly hair brushing his cheek.
The doors closed, and they regarded each other.
He tried not to notice the birthmark at her temple. The line of her neck. Her bottom lip.
“Sales conferences.” She smirked. “Ever wonder which identity is the real one?”
He said, “Lately.”
And now that full grin broke across her face, the one he felt in his spinal cord. “How are you, Evan? Really, how are you?”
“Good. I’m good.”
And he was.
At long last Charles Van Sciver was wiped off the books. All that remained of him was the Samsung in the right front pocket of Evan’s cargo pants, pressing against his thigh.
Other matters had been put to rest as well.
Benito Orellana’s next credit-card bill would show a balance of zero, the medical debts from his wife’s illness settled in full. He would still have his primary mortgage, but the second lender who had nailed him with a predatory rate had been paid off. An unfortunate glitch in the same lender’s system had led to the disappearance of a six-figure chunk from the escrow account.
This morning the McClair Children’s Mental Health Center in Richmond had received an anonymous donation that happened to match the six-figure chunk that had gone missing from the escrow account. The money had been earmarked for improving living conditions, quality of care, and the security system.
It could also pay for a lot of Lego Snowspeeders.
The package of letters that Evan had sent would have arrived today, helping kick off a new life for a sixteen-year-old girl an ocean away.
Jack had always taught Evan that the hard part wasn’t being a killer. The hard part was staying human. He was superb at the former. And growing proficient at the latter.
It was worth the trying.
“I’m sad it didn’t work out between us like we hoped,” Mia said.
“Me, too.”
“Peter misses you. I miss you, too.”
Evan thought about a different life in which he could have been another man for them. For himself.
“I have to look out for him,” Mia said. “No matter what I might want for myself, I have to protect him at all costs.”
Evan said, “I get it.”
She tilted her head, seemingly moved. “Do you?”
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
The doors opened at the twelfth floor, and Mia got out. She turned and faced him, as if she wanted to say something else, though there was nothing else to say.
He knew the feeling.
The doors slid shut between them.
He rode to his floor, entered the penthouse. He went immediately to the freezer and removed the walnut chest. Opening the hand-blown glass bottle, he poured himself two fingers of Stoli Elit: Himalayan Edition, at about a hundred bucks a finger.
He’d earned it.
The penthouse felt vast and empty. A ring remained on the counter from Joey’s OJ glass. He’d have to scrub it in the morning. He thought about the mess of gear awaiting him in the Vault, a mirror for the exquisite complexities inside Joey’s head. The equipment would take days to untangle.
He paused at the base of the spiral staircase. Her absence flowed down from the loft, a stillness in the air. He found himself listening for the clack of her speed cube. Or the bump of a kite against his bedroom window.
But now there would only be quiet.
Drifting to the floor-to-ceiling windows, he let the first sip burn its way down his throat, exquisite and cleansing. He looked out at all those apartments on vertical display. Families were beginning to light up their Christmas trees.
He heard Jack’s voice in his ear: I love you, son.
Evan raised his glass in a toast. “Copy that,” he said.
Only once he’d finished the two fingers of vodka, only once he’d washed and dried the glass and set it back in its place in the cupboard did he remove Van Sciver’s Samsung from his pocket.
He read the last texted exchange from December 4 yet again.
VS: AFTER I GET X, CAN THE GIRL LIVE?
And the reply: NO ONE LIVES.
The sender of the response was coded as DR.
Dark Road.
It was amazing that someone so high up would risk so much because of a mission Evan had carried out nineteen years ago. He didn’t know where the tendrils of that job culminated, but he intended to follow them. They led, no doubt, to the farthest reaches of power. That’s where the darkness was. And the gold.
He’d raised the question himself, to Joey: How much is regime change worth? A well-placed bullet can change the direction of a nation. Tip the balance of power so a country’s interests align with ours.
He had fired a number of such bullets in his lifetime. Maybe the round he’d let fly in 1997 had been one of them.
Clearly he’d been a link in a chain, and he would devote himself now to discerning the contours of that chain, to seeing just how far up it stretched.
He stared at that text once again: NO ONE LIVES.
He had something else to devote himself to as well.
He crossed to the kitchen island where the red notebook waited. He flipped it open, that scrawl standing out in relief where Joey had shaded the page.
“6-1414 Dark Road 32.”
A switchboard. A code word. An extension.
He took out his RoamZone.
And he dialed.
*
On the Resolute desk, the middle of the three black phones rang.
President Bennett was not sitting there waiting.
He remained on the couch alone, holding a glass of Premier Cru Bordeaux in his famously steady hand.
No sweat sparkling at his graying temples. His breath slow and steady. The past few weeks would have reduced a lesser man to a stressed-out wreck, but he was Jonathan Bennett and his body obeyed his will.
He crossed the Oval Office and lifted the receiver.
He said nothing.
A voice said, “You should have left 1997 in the past.”
Bennett gave his allotted two-second pause and then said, “If you look into it, I will crush you.”
Orphan X saw Bennett’s two seconds and raised him a few more. Then he said, “I think you misunderstand the purpose of this call, Mr. President. Looking into it’s not good enough for me.”
“What does that mean?” Bennett said, only now realizing he’d rushed his response.
The disembodied voice said, “You greenlit Jack Johns’s death. And the girl’s death. And so many others.”
Bennett reseated his eyeglasses on the bridge of his nose, which felt suddenly moist. “I’m listening.”
Orphan X said, “This is me greenlighting yours.”
The phone clicked, the line severed.
Bennett breathed and breathed again. He placed the phone receiver back in its cradle. He circled the Resolute desk, sat down, and set his hands on the blotter.
They were shaking.