The reverberation, he realized, had the benefit of drowning out any potential audio surveillance.
One side of her face intercepted the light, a crescent of smooth cheek, and he thought about the ravaged flesh of her back, burned beyond recognition.
“I like the cowgirl getup,” he said.
“Oh, this old thang?” She smiled. Her mouth was wider than most. “I’m tired of waiting for you to come after me. And I’m not gonna spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. So we either have this conversation now or we kill each other.”
“What conversation?”
“What do you say we lower our pistols? If I was gonna shoot you, I would’ve done it the second you walked in the room. Like I said, I’m here to help you.”
“Hard to take you at your word,” he said. “Given how many times you’ve tried to kill me in the past.”
“I know you stashed the girl in a boarding school in Lugano.”
All at once he was aware of the moisture in the air, the way his shirt clung to his body. It took everything he had to keep his expression impassive. “Is that a threat?”
“God no,” she said. “It’s an offering. I’m the only one who knows she’s alive, remember? I figured out months ago where you parked her. The secret’s safe with me.”
He stared at her a beat longer. Then he eased back the hammer and lowered his pistol. For a moment he stared down the black bore of her gun. He saw her thinking about it.
A stray drop traced the edge of her temple. “It’s not like I’ve forgiven you or anything.”
He said, “Not aware I asked.”
Finally she lowered her pistol as well. “You’re going after Bennett,” she said.
He gave a little nod.
Again with the smile. “Revenge,” she said. “It’s a loser’s game. You’re better than that.”
“It’s not just revenge,” he said.
“It’s what’s right.” Her tone held mockery.
“Yes. And to prevent what’s still to come.”
“The list of targets,” she said. “How many Orphans are left?”
He bit his lip. Around their umbrellaed dome, rain fell unremittingly, hammering the floor, making the metal tremble beneath his boots.
“How many?” she asked again.
“Nineteen. As soon as Bennett finishes with me, he moves on to them.”
“They’re spies. Not innocents. You don’t know them any more than you know the average guy on the street. You’re a professional — or at least you were. When did you grow a conscience?”
Her tone was driven, and he found himself wondering whether she was arguing with him or with herself.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Somewhere along the way, it happened.”
“So you’re gonna stop killing by killing.”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as hypocritical?”
“Yes.”
“So why do it?”
He considered her question, the rain crashing down around them. “It’s the only thing I know how to do.”
She stared at him. He watched her chest rise and fall, the puff of condensation brought by each breath.
“Why do you want to help me?” he said.
“Because I’m one of those nineteen names,” she said.
Evan studied her closely, knew her to be lying. She cared about more than that, but her shifting morality didn’t interest him.
“Once you take out Bennett,” she said, “it’s over. He’s the head of the snake.”
He said, “And?”
“You need another operator at your skill level.” She blinked innocently. “Or better. And we all know there’s only one of me out there. And afterward … who knows?” She licked a raindrop off her lips. “Maybe you and I could move in together and have ninja babies.”
“House with a white picket fence.”
“Join a wine-of-the-month club. Buy a fucking Volvo.”
Evan holstered his ARES. “No wine-of-the-month club, no Volvo. And no working together. I operate solo.”
“Never believe a man’s first reaction,” she said. “It’s one of two rules I live by.”
“What’s the other?”
“Nothing good ever comes of dating guys named Travis.”
He smirked, looked away.
She took a step closer, set a hand on his cheek. “Oh, sweetie,” she said. “You’re still in denial about what you’re up against.” She turned his face until he was looking into her eyes. “You’ll never be able to pull this off by yourself.”
She lowered her hand and stepped back, the rain parting behind her and then resuming between their faces.
“You have the number I called you from,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for you to come to your senses.” She hesitated. “Even with both of us, it’s as long a long shot as ever there was.”
She eased away again, the rain thickening between them. One more step and the darkness enveloped her.
He stood listening to the pounding rain and his own beating heart.
39
A Method to the Madness
Furrows of rain clouds turned the sky into a field of gray. Evan stood between the Taurus and his Ford pickup on the top level of the long-term-parking complex, his head still humming from his encounter with Candy McClure. Her offer seemed to be legit, but there was a reason that the first of the Commandments proclaimed: Assume nothing.
Given her exceptional dangerousness, he couldn’t trust his usual procedures to cover his tracks.
He had the rooftop to himself. Most travelers didn’t want to leave their vehicles up here, exposed to the elements, especially when there were so many spots available on lower levels. And now was the midday lull between morning departures and afternoon arrivals.
He stripped naked, threw his clothes and boots into the back of the Taurus, and then dressed in an identical outfit, which he’d stored in the trunk. He transferred his backpack and everything else from the Taurus into the rectangular truck vaults installed over the bed of his F-150 pickup.
Then he took a hose and a gas can from the truck and suck-started a stream of gasoline from the Taurus’s tank. When he had enough, he doused the car’s seats and his clothes and lit them on fire.
He left the Taurus burning on the rooftop, sending a plume of black smoke up to join the charcoal sky.
He arrived back at Castle Heights without further incident and hustled across the lobby to catch the elevator as the doors closed. Too late, he picked up the scent of old-lady perfume, but his momentum carried him across the threshold next to the stubby and venomous Ida Rosenbaum of 6G.
She glowered up at him, her eyes pronounced behind her glasses.
He nodded at her. “Ma’am.”
“Again with the ma’am.”
They rose a few floors in awkward silence, Evan gripping his backpack before him. He hoped his hands didn’t smell too strongly of gasoline. Her nose twitched once and then again.
Before she could ask anything, he quickly diverted her. “It’s nice out today.”
Her painted eyebrows rose. “Know what my Herb used to say, may he rest in peace?”
“No, ma’am.”
“That talking about the weather is dull enough. But to talk about the weather in Los Angeles? You have to be pathologically dull.”
“Copy that, ma’am.”
Mercifully, the elevator doors parted on the sixth floor and Mrs. Rosenbaum shuffled out with an absence of alacrity that signaled either a hip condition or deep-seated passive-aggressiveness.
Evan exited on Mia’s floor and removed the present he’d picked up for Peter in D.C., still wrapped in brown paper from the gift shop.
As he neared the door of 12B, it occurred to him that he had nothing for Mia. Given that his last visit had wound up in her bed, was this poor form? He hesitated, finger extended to the doorbell, arguing with himself. It wasn’t like he was empty-handed. But was a gift for Peter enough? Or did that make it more insulting that he had nothing for Mia? What did ordinary people do? A bouquet of roses? Chocolates? Both options seemed crass and vaguely humiliating, as if he took his cues from TV commercials.