Joey said, “I didn’t do it.”
He paused. “What?”
“The duffel bag. The guy. I didn’t do it. I couldn’t pull the trigger.”
Evan let his weight tug him back into the seat. He folded his hands. Gave her room to talk. Or to not talk.
She took her time. Then she said, “I stood there with the gun aimed, Van Sciver at my back. And I couldn’t.”
“What did he do?”
“He took the gun out of my hand. And showed me…” Her lips trembled, and she pressed her knuckles against them, hard. “The mag was empty. It was just a test. And I failed. If I’d done it, if I’d passed the test, I could’ve been like—” She caught herself, broke off the thought.
“Could’ve been like what?”
“Like you.”
Silence asserted itself around them. Kitchen sounds carried to their booth, pots clanking, grills sizzling. In a booming voice, the short-order cook was telling the staff that he hadn’t had much luck with the rainbow trout but he had a new spinning lure that just might do the trick.
“Van Sciver unzipped the duffel, let the guy out. He was acting all along. Probably some psyops instructor. Van Sciver said he was gonna walk him out, that I should wait there for him. But the thing is?” Her voice hushed. “I noticed something standing there, looking down at the duffel bag. It had a smudge of blood on the lining. And I knew that I hadn’t just failed the test. I’d failed Van Sciver. And at some point it would be me in that duffel bag and another kid outside it. And when that happened? The gun wouldn’t be empty.”
She sat back, breaking the spell of the memory. “That raised office in the hangar, it had a window with a shitty lock. I kept a hairpin hidden in my hair. I thought it’d be wise to GTFO before he got back. So I did. I was on the run eleven months until Jack.”
“How’d Jack find you?”
The distinctive ring sounded so out of place here among the retro candy-apple-red vinyl and Elvis clocks and display counter up front stocked with Dentine. It was a ring from another place, another life, another dimension.
It was the RoamZone.
Someone needed the Nowhere Man.
25
Honor-Bound
The RoamZone’s caller ID generated a reverse directory, autolinking to a Google Earth map of Central L.A. Evan zoomed in on a single-story residence in the Pico-Union neighborhood.
The phone rang again. And again.
Evan’s thumb hovered over the TALK button.
He could not answer this call. It was out of the question. He had a girl to unload. A laptop to hack into. A death to avenge.
Jack’s murder had sent Evan’s life careening sharply off course. His dying message had shattered any semblance Evan retained of order, routine, procedure. He should be home right now, concerned only with his vodka supply and his next workout. Instead he was in a diner outside Missoula, stacking his proverbial plate higher and higher until everything on it threatened to topple.
Why hadn’t Jack made arrangements for Joey? Why had he saddled Evan with her? Jack had known that Evan had his own honor-bound obligations as the Nowhere Man. Jack had known that being a lone wolf had been drummed into Evan’s cells — hell, Jack had done the drumming himself. Jack had to have known that Joey would be an inconvenient aggravation at the very moment that Evan’s universe would compress down in the service of a single goal — the annihilation of Charles Van Sciver.
An unsettling thought occurred. What if there was some design behind the plan? Jack’s teachings always carried a hint of back-alley Zen to them.
If you don’t know what you don’t know, how can you know what to learn?
But why this? What could Evan possibly have to gain from this disruption?
Everything doesn’t have to be a learning experience.
And Jack answered him, as clearly as if he’d been facing him across the breakfast table in that quiet farmhouse in the Virginia woods.
Yes. It does.
Evan banished the thought. There was no design. No artful master plan. Jack had found himself at the end of the road and had sent up a flare because he’d been desperate and needed Evan to clean up his mess.
It was nothing more.
Joey was staring at him. “You gonna answer that?”
Another ring.
He clenched his teeth, gave Joey a firm look. “Do not speak.”
Her nod was rushed, almost eager.
He answered as he always did. “Do you need my help?”
“Yes. Please, yes.”
The man’s gravelly voice had a tightness to it not uncommon for people calling the number for the first time. Like he was forcing the words up and out. A heavy accent, Hispanic but not Mexican. It was just past four in the morning. Evan imagined the man pacing in his little house, clutched in the talons of late-night dread, working up the courage to dial.
Joey had gone bolt upright, her elbows ledging the table, darkly fascinated.
“What’s your name?” Evan asked.
“Benito Orellana. They have my son, Xavier—”
“Where did you get this number?”
“A girl find me — her cousin is friend with my cousin’s boy. She is called Anna Rezian. She is from good Armenian family.”
Evan had never — not once — conducted a Nowhere Man call in the presence of someone else. Though he trusted Joey sufficiently to answer the phone in front of her, her presence felt intrusive. He wondered if this was what intimacy felt like. And if so, why anyone would want it.
Evan said, “Describe her.”
“She have the thin face. Her hair, it have missing patches. She is sweet girl, but she is troubled.”
“Who has your son?”
“I cannot speak the name.” The deep voice fluttered with fear.
“They kidnapped him?” Evan asked.
“No,” the man said. “He has joined them. And he cannot get out.”
“A gang?”
A silence, broken only by labored breathing.
“If you don’t talk to me, I can’t help you.”
“Sí. A gang. But you don’t know this gang. Please, sir. My boy. They will turn him into a killer. And then he will be lost. I’m going to lose my boy. Please help me. You’re all I have left.”
“Sir, if your son joined a gang of his own volition, I can’t help him. Or you.”
Beneath the words Evan sensed the pulse of his own relief. He couldn’t take this on as well. His focus was already maxed, the plate stacked too high. The Seventh Commandment—One mission at a time—blinked a red alert in his mind’s eye.
Evan pulled the phone away from his face to hang up. His finger reached the button when he heard it.
The man, sobbing quietly.
Evan held the phone before him against the backdrop of his wiped-clean plate, the sounds of hoarse weeping barely audible.
He blinked a few times. Joey was like a statue, every muscle tightened, her body like an arrow pointed over the table at him. Breathless.
Evan drew in a deep inhalation. He brought the phone back to his cheek. Listened a moment longer, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Mr. Orellana?”
“¿Sí?”
“I see the location you’re calling from. I’ll be there tomorrow at noon.”
“Thank God for you—”
Evan had already hung up. He slid out of the booth, Joey walking with him to the back door. She shot glances across at him, her face unreadable.
He pushed through the chiming door into the parking lot, the predawn cold hitting him at the hands and neck. He raised the set of keys he’d lifted from the waitress’s apron and aimed at the scattered cars, clicking the auto-unlock button on the fob. Across the lot a Honda Civic with a rusting hood gave a woeful chirp.