His second focus was her fist.
Which she’d cocked and deployed even while her knife hand had still been in motion. He had a split-second to admire the technique — knuckles following blade with double-tap timing — before she broke his nose.
He rolled his head with the punch, tumbled gracelessly up onto his feet. She grabbed the back of his shirt, but the magnetic buttons gave way—click-click-click—and he spun right out of it. His eyes watered from the blow to the nose, but the escape bought him a much-needed second to blink his way back to some version of clarity. She flung the shirt aside and launched a barrage of kicks.
He parried, parried, parried, bruising his forearms and knuckles, holding his attention mostly on the knife.
She came at him again, a jailhouse lunge, but now he was ready for it. His hands moved in blurry unison, a bong sau/lop sau trap that simultaneously blocked and grabbed her arm. He clenched hard, slid his fist up the length of her forearm, and hit the bump of her wrist with enough force that her fingers released and the knife shot free.
They were nose-to-nose, her mouth forming an O of perfect shock. He had a wide-open lane to her windpipe — one elbow strike and she’d be over — but Jack’s Eighth Commandment sailed in and tapped the back of his brain: Never kill a kid.
He barreled her over and pinned her with a cross-face cradle, a grappling move that left her locked up, her knee smashed to her cheek, arms flailing uselessly to the sides.
“Get off me!” she shouted. “I will kill you! I will fucking—”
He pressed his forehead to her temple, immobilizing her head and shielding his eyes. “Breathe,” he said.
She inhaled sharply.
“Again.”
She obeyed.
“Where is the package?” he asked.
“What?”
“What’d you do with the package?”
“The hell are you talking about?”
“You saw the message. You beat me here.”
“Can you get your knee out of my ribs?”
Evan eased off the pressure. “What’d you do with it?”
She gave no answer. Each breath rasped through her contorted throat.
Blood was trickling from Evan’s nose, tickling his cheek. “I’m gonna let you go, and we’re gonna try this again, okay?”
Her answer came strained. “Okay.”
“I’d prefer not to have to kill you.”
“I’d like to say the same, but I haven’t decided yet.”
He released her, and they stood. They kept their palms raised, halfway to an open-hand guard. She drew in deep lungfuls, her cheeks flushed. She was expertly trained but still green.
He got his first clear look at her. Her hair fell to her shoulders, thick and dark and lush. The right side had been shaved short, but it was mostly hidden by the tumbling length of her locks, a surprisingly subtle effect. She was lean and fit, her deltoids pronounced enough to show notches in the muscle.
“I’m gonna put my shirt back on,” he said. “If you come at me, it won’t go well for you.”
Keeping his gaze on her, he backed up and put on his shirt. Next to the rucksack, a ragged flannel rested on the carpet. He tossed it to her.
She tugged it on.
Keeping a bit of distance, they stared at each other. A wisp of agitated piano reached them from outside, the concerto hitting the third movement.
“Let’s cut to it,” Evan said. “I see how you move. I know you’re an Orphan. I know who sent you.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“What’s the package?”
She answered him with a glare.
He risked a fleeting look at her rucksack. “Is it in there?”
“No.”
He crouched over the rucksack.
“Don’t touch my stuff.”
He rooted around in it, sneaking quick glances down. Clothes, a few toiletries, a shoe box filled with what looked like personal letters.
“Put those down.”
“Is there some kind of code in these papers?”
“No.”
He armed blood off his upper lip. “Is the package something on the laptop?”
“No.”
“If you’re lying, I can hack into it.”
Her mouth firmed into something more aggressive than a smirk. “Good luck.”
As he started to reach for the laptop, it suddenly alerted with a ping, the screen saver vanishing.
Four surveillance feeds came up, tiling the screen. It took a moment for Evan to register that they were streaming different angles of the outside of the apartment complex.
The bottom-left feed showed two SUVs blocking the horseshoe of the parking lot. Teams of geared-up operators charged for the front gate.
“Your backup’s here,” the girl said. “What — you couldn’t handle me yourself?” Her voice stayed tough, but her chest heaved with the words. She was scared, and this time he knew she wasn’t faking it.
Evan stared at the screen. The operators displayed a similar military precision to that of the men in the Black Hawk. Evan counted six of them.
Seventeen rounds. Six men.
Just don’t put all the holes in the same place.
On-screen the lead operator kicked the front gate, and it clanged open. Evan heard it in stereo, registered the vibration in the floor.
He and the girl watched as the men poured into the ground-floor corridor.
He said, “They’re not with me.”
His eyes met the girl’s, and he saw that she believed him.
Her voice was hammered flat with dread. “You left the gates unlocked behind you.”
Clang. The stairwell gate flew open, courtesy of Evan’s ill-spent twenty-five cents.
The men throttled up the stairwell. The girl’s eyes darted from the screen back to Evan.
“Enemy of my enemy,” he said.
She gave a nod.
He drew his ARES. “Get behind me. Pick up your knife.”
The girl moved, but not for the knife. She shot over to the mattress and lifted it, revealing a hatch cut through the floor. She looked at him, eyes wild, hair swinging. “My stuff,” she said. “Get my stuff.”
The clamor of the men reached the second floor, spilled onto the corridor.
Evan snapped the laptop shut, rammed it into the rucksack, tossed the combat knife in after. She slipped through the hatch and disappeared. The mattress fell back into place, covering the hole. He didn’t hear her land. He sprinted across the room.
As he yanked up the edge of the mattress, he heard the front door smash in. Snatching the rucksack behind him, he shoulder-rolled beneath the mattress, free-falling. A thump announced the sealing of the hatch above.
He rotated to break his fall, but a soft landing caught him off guard. His boots struck another mattress, positioned on the ground floor directly beneath the one above. He tumbled off the side onto the carpet.
He looked up.
The girl was waiting.
She wrenched the rucksack from his grip, pistoned her leg in a heel stomp directed at his throat. He caught her foot in both hands and twisted hard, flinging her aside. She bounced up off the floor like a cat, shot across the room, flung open the window.
As she leapt through, he grabbed a strap of the rucksack, halting her momentum. She jerked back and banged against the outside wall, one arm bent over the sill. She wouldn’t let go of the rucksack. They were both off balance, caught in a ridiculous tug-of-war across a windowsill.
Boots drummed the floor above. It was only a matter of time before one of the men looked under the mattress.
Evan dove through the window, collecting both the rucksack and the girl in a bear-hug embrace. They sailed past the elderly artist, their fall cushioned by the blanket covered with his paintings. The Cadillac’s radio blared away, the C-major coda galloping along in presto.