Mercifully, they reached the lobby, and when Ida paused at her mail slot, Evan made a getaway down the stairs to the garage. He’d just stepped around the pillar, bringing his pickup into sight, when a voice called from behind him.
“Wait! Evan!”
He turned to see Mia run-walking toward him in her midheel shoes, still dressed from work.
She paused, looked down at her shoes. “Screw it,” she muttered, yanking them off and continuing toward him in stockinged feet. “Look, sorry, I know this is weird, but can I borrow your truck?”
Evan was speechless.
“That woman from 3B blocked me in with her stupid Range Rover. Beth someone.”
“Pamela Yates?”
“Sure. Whatever. Beths and Pamelas are the same type of woman. Everyone knows that.” She reached him, her foot skidding in an oil stain. “I have to run over to my brother’s in Tarzana and pick up Peter. It’s a schlep, I know, but he doesn’t get a lot of time with … well, male role models. Wow, that’s a dated phrase. But you know what I mean. I just came home to drop off some files, ran up, and now — look.” She flailed an arm at the SUV boxing in her Acura. “I can’t find Beth-Pamela anywhere.” She only now seemed to register the keys in Evan’s hand. “Oh. You’re going, not coming? Where?”
He blinked once, twice. “To get vodka.”
“That qualifies as an outing? What a life. Look, can I please just take your truck to get my kid? I’ll grab you vodka on my way back. What do you like? Absolut? Smirnoff?”
He just looked at her.
Her phone gave a personalized ring, the theme song from Peanuts. She snapped it up. “I’m coming, Walter. On my way.” Hung up. “Come on,” she pleaded. “I promise I won’t crash. And if I do, I’ll prosecute me.”
“I don’t loan my truck out.”
“Why? Cocaine stashed in the wheel wells?”
He looked at the door to the lobby, hoping that Pamela Yates would miraculously appear, but it remained stubbornly closed.
“Come on,” she said. “It’s a semi-emergency.”
He forced a tight grin. “I’ll drive you.”
“Oh shit,” Mia said.
Her foot had smeared oil on the spotless passenger-side floor mat of Evan’s truck. Evan tried to assess the damage without being too obvious. “It’s fine,” he said.
However, she was looking not at her feet but her phone. “Missed a work call.” She speed-dialed while gesturing for Evan to get onto the 405, which was as jammed as a parking lot.
Driving in traffic. To Tarzana. To pick up a kid.
It kept getting better.
Next to him Mia spoke sternly into the phone. “This is District Attorney Mia Hall. I need that update ASAP.” She hung up, leaned back, and sighed. “Thank you. Seriously. You saved my ass on this one.”
She clicked the button to lower the window a few times, and nothing happened.
“Why won’t the window go down?” she asked.
Because there was no room for it to retract after Evan had hung Kevlar armor inside the door panel. The windows themselves were made of laminated armor glass. The Ford F-150 came with a beefed-up suspension to handle the added weight, and as the bestselling vehicle in America for decades, it had the added advantage of blending in virtually anywhere. He’d taken other steps to prepare the truck as well, disarming the safety systems, removing the airbags, and disabling the inertia-sensing switches in the bumpers that render power to the fuel pump inoperable in a collision. To protect the vulnerable radiator and intercooler, he’d added a built-to-spec push-bumper assembly up front. If shot or punctured, the run-flat tires self-sealed with a special adhesive compound distributed internally with each rotation, and a support ring “second tire” hidden at the core served as a contingency to that contingency. In the back, flat rectangular truck vaults neatly overlaid the bed, providing secure storage while remaining inconspicuously lower than the tailgate. Like him, the vehicle was prepared for varied and extreme contingencies while never drawing a second glance.
Mia clicked the window button again. “Well?”
“It’s broken,” he said.
“Oh.” Her stare dropped to the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Where’s the stain? From last week?”
It took him a moment to realize she was talking about the blood that had sopped through the sweatshirt when they’d been crammed into the elevator together. What was he gonna say? That he kept a dozen black sweatshirts mission-handy?
“It came out,” he said.
“Grape juice. Came out.” She eyed him skeptically, then settled into her seat, at last noticing the traffic. “Oy,” she said. “Why didn’t you take Sepulveda?”
Evan waited at the curb outside the little clapboard house, engine running. At last Mia emerged from her brother’s front door with Peter in tow, his hair still spotty on the sides from the duct-tape incident. His backpack, nearly as big as he was, bounced on his shoulders, threatening to topple him. As she helped him into the compressed backseat of the truck, her iPhone rang with the Jaws theme. She frowned down at the screen, then wiggled it at Evan. “Sorry. This is that call. Confidential.”
“I really need to—”
“I know. Buy vodka. Gimme a sec?”
Before he could reply, she’d stepped away.
Silence from the backseat. Evan looked across at Mia pacing on the browning front lawn, phone at her cheek, gesticulating intensely. The call didn’t seem to be wrapping up anytime soon.
Evan had to tilt the rearview mirror to bring Peter into sight. Evan cleared his throat. “Your mom’s pretty busy with work, huh?”
“Yeah. She puts away killers and stuff. This one guy? He shot someone. How do you shoot someone anyway?”
“Twice in the chest, once in the head in case they’re wearing ballistic armor.”
Peter swallowed. “I meant, how could someone just kill someone?”
Oh.
“Practice. A lot of practice, I’d imagine.”
“I don’t get people who hurt other people.” Peter cradled his arm gingerly, and his shirtsleeve slid up, exposing a bruise on his biceps.
Evan thought about the boy’s injuries the past few times he’d seen him — the scraped forehead, the skinned elbow — and put it together. He turned around in the driver’s seat, tilted his chin at the bruise. “That’s not from dodgeball, is it?”
Those big charcoal eyes took his measure. Then Peter shook his head. “Josh Harlow,” he said, in his raspy voice. “A fifth-grader. What am I supposed to do?”
“Take out a knee.”
“Really?”
“If he’s bigger, yes. But I’m joking. About you doing it, I mean.”
“Oh. Then what should I do?”
“I don’t know. Ask your mom.”
“Yeah, right.”
Mia was across the front yard now, back turned, jabbing a finger at the air, the work call veering into some sort of conflict. Evan drummed his hands on the steering wheel impatiently. He wondered where Morena and Carmen were at this precise moment. Heading to their aunt’s or perhaps already there. Safe. He thought about the way that Chambers’s arm had jerked up when he dropped onto the plastic tarp, his expression illuminated by the strobe of the three suppressed muzzle flashes — shock, then fear, then terrible recognition.
Peter had said something.
Evan lifted his eyes to the rearview. “What?”