“Alicia,” Connor said, “that was the last beer. Wanna grab the other sixer from the cooler?”
Alicia’s lips peeled back in a smile. She ran her hand up her throat as if feeling her skin for the first time. “Sure, Connor.”
She held up a pale fist to Joey. “I was just kidding earlier,” she said. “C’mon, gimme knucks.”
Joey lifted her hand, but Alicia lowered her fist and turned away, the other girls snickering in a matching low key. Alicia slid an anorexic shoulder along the wall to the hatch, the other girls trailing her, so pale and insubstantial they looked like shades. They slipped through the cramped space without slowing.
As soon as they vanished, Scotty stepped over, blocking the way out. Joey sensed Connor sidle up behind her.
Blocking her in.
All of a sudden, Joey felt her awkwardness lift. She was aware of the scuff of Connor’s shoe in the dirt, the distance to the concrete walls around her, the latent power of her muscles. Her heartbeat ticked in the side of her neck, as steady as a metronome.
This part wasn’t scary or intimidating, not like drinking beer or bumping fists or figuring out how to smile the right way.
This part felt like home.
As she started to turn, Connor grabbed her belt in the front and pulled her close. She let him. He was big enough to bow her lower back, her face uptilted to his. His breath smelled like tea leaves.
His hand curled over her belt, knuckles pressed into her lower stomach.
“You know why you came,” he said.
Joey said, “Let go of me.”
He kissed her.
She kept her mouth closed, felt his stubble grate her lips. Behind her she heard Scotty laugh. Connor pulled his face back but kept the front of her jeans clamped in his fist.
She said, “Let go of me.”
Connor loomed over her. “I don’t think I want to just yet.”
She stepped away, but he tugged her buckle, snapping her back against his chest.
“Oh,” she said sympathetically. “You think you’re in charge.”
Calmly, she chambered her leg high and pistoned her heel through his ankle.
The snap sounded like a heavy branch giving way.
Connor stared down at his caved shin in disbelief. His foot nodded to the side, ninety degrees offset from the ankle.
Joey said, “Three… two…”
He screamed.
Scotty yelled, “Crazy bitch!” and charged her, lowering his shoulder for a football tackle. Sidestepping, she took his momentum and redirected him into the wall. His face smacked the concrete. It left a wet splotch. He toppled over, his legs cycling against the pain, heels shoving grooves in the dirt.
Joey placed her hand on Connor’s barrel chest and shoved. He fell hard, landing next to Scotty. He was still making noises.
She squeezed through the narrow hatch, emerging from the cage. As she stepped out, she sensed the world opening up all around her. Starting back down the hill to civilization, she felt a part of her flutter free from the trap inside her chest and take flight against the canopy of stars.
65
Not an Innocent
Joey stepped through the unlocked door of 21A and stared at the cavernous great room. All the lights were off, but the city shone through the giant windows, making the contours of the penthouse glimmer darkly.
A silhouette rose from one of the bar chairs at the kitchen island.
Evan.
He said, “I made up your bed.”
Joey stepped inside and shut the door behind her. “Thanks.”
“I’m not very good at it,” he said.
“What?”
He gestured from her to him. “This.”
“You’re better than you think.”
“I didn’t mean what I said on the phone. What you overheard.”
“I know.”
She came forward, and they stared at each other.
“I went to see that guy with the stupid hair,” she said. “From outside the safe house?”
Evan nodded.
“He’s a useless reprobate,” she said. “You were right.”
Evan said, “I don’t want to be right.”
She leaned into him stiffly, her forehead thunking against his chest, her arms at her sides. He hesitated a moment and then hugged her, one hand holding the back of her head, her thick, thick hair.
He said, “Rough night all around, huh?”
“Yeah.” Her voice rose an octave and cracked. “I think I’m done pretending.”
“Pretending what?”
“Acting like I didn’t need anything from anyone. I started after my maunt died, because… you know, I wasn’t gonna get it anyways.” She straightened up. “But I was lying. Now and then I still think about what mighta been. Someone to tuck me in, maybe. You know, ‘How was your day?’ Cute boy in homeroom. A soccer team. All that normal shit. Instead. Instead.” Her lips wobbled. “Do you think I ever could?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not too late?”
“No. Once we get Van Sciver, we’ll find what comes next for you. It doesn’t have to be this.”
She blinked, and a tear glided down her flawless brown cheek. “How ’bout you?”
“It’s not an option anymore for me. It’s different.”
She looked up at him. “Is it?”
He nodded.
“Even after you get Van Sciver?”
“There will always be Van Scivers.”
“But what about Mia? And the kid?”
“There will always be Van Scivers,” he said again.
She pursed her lips and studied him in the semidarkness. “I remember I was fourteen, bleeding from my ear. Van Sciver put me with a demolition breacher who let me get too close to a door charge. I thought it was a punctured eardrum. He took me back to town and dropped me at a park, you know, for pickup. Anyways, I was worse than anyone thought. I was stumbling along off the trail. And I came up behind a guy on a bench, rocking himself and murmuring. At first I thought he was injured, too. Or crazy. But then I saw he had a baby. His baby. And he was holding it so gently. I snuck up behind him in the bushes. And he was saying… he was saying, ‘You are safe. You are loved.’” Her eyes glimmered. “Can you imagine?”
Walking behind Jack in the woods, placing his feet in Jack’s footprints.
“Yes,” Evan said.
“Maybe that’s all anyone needs,” Joey said. “One person who feels that way about you. To keep you human.”
“It’s a gift,” Evan said. “It’s also a weakness.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a vulnerability they can exploit. Jack protecting me. Me protecting you. Us protecting David Smith. But we’re gonna stop all that now. Instead of letting them use it against us, we’re gonna start using it against them. The Ninth Commandment.”
“‘Always play offense,’” she said. “But how?”
“We have what they want.”
She stared at him, puzzled.
He said, “Us.”
Her eyes gleamed. “Use me as bait.”
Evan nodded. “And we know where to drop the line.”
They left at five in the morning, switched out Evan’s truck for a black Nissan Altima he kept at a safe house beneath an LAX flight path. Seven hours and four minutes later, they reached Phoenix. They did a few hours of recon and planning before pulling over in the shade of a coral gum tree. The car windows were cracked open, and the arid breeze tasted of dust.
The downtown skyline, such as it was, rose a few blocks away. They were on the fringe of suburbia here, two blocks north of the 10 Freeway, a handful more to the 17. A tall-wall ad on the side of a circular parking structure proclaimed ARIZONA’S URBAN HEART and featured a cubist rendering of a heart composed of high-rises.