“Good,” he said. He didn’t relish the thought of being forced to silence a civilian. “On to step two.”
“You sure about this?”
“Nope. Never done it for a wound this big before. But it’s not like we have much choice. And remember: If I pass out, just keep going. It’ll probably be better for the both of us.”
Cameron swallowed hard. Poured alcohol over the paper towel on which her instruments rested: A pair of tweezers. A spool of thread. A sewing needle bent as best they could into a semicircle. All three were still damp from the last time she’d disinfected them.
Threading the needle was more difficult than she’d expected, but eventually she managed. She rested it against Hendricks’s side, flesh dimpling beneath it, and let out a deep breath before beginning. When the needle pierced his skin, his stomach muscles tightened reflexively and he let out a growl.
“Sorry,” Cameron said, pausing.
“Don’t be,” he replied, his voice low and strained. “And for God’s sake, keep going. You’re just doing as I’ve asked. As much as this sucks, I’m better off with you doing it than me.”
“Why?” she asked, twisting the needle through until the tip showed on the other side of the wound and then grabbing it with the tweezers. “You think because I’m a girl, I must know how to sew?”
Hendricks’s cheeks colored. “No! I-”
“Jesus.” She pulled the needle clear, thread trailing, and began a second loop. “I was kidding.”
“Anybody ever tell you you’ve got lousy comedic timing?”
“And here I thought that I was helping you relax.”
“I’ll relax when I’m all stitched up,” he said, although in truth, he doubted it. He’d be jumping at shadows until they were far enough away from Long Island that the likelihood that anyone would connect them to the Pappas mess was nil. And he wouldn’t fully relax until he’d tracked down every sitting member of the Council and put them in the ground.
“I wish I had some booze to offer you. I should’ve thought to swipe a bottle of vodka from the Salty Dog.”
“I’ve had quite enough today already.”
“Speaking of, I must’ve poured you eight shots this afternoon. How the hell’d you manage to stay sober?”
Hendricks, despite his pain, managed a weak smile. The kid had good instincts; she was trying to distract him so the stitches didn’t hurt so much. “A little sleight of hand and a strategically placed ficus.”
“So that’s why your corner of the bar always reeked of whiskey. I just figured it was you. No offense.”
“None taken,” he said. “That was kind of the idea.”
“Sorry I pushed that coffee on you. At the time, I worried…” She trailed off, lost in thought.
“Don’t sweat it,” he replied.
They fell silent for a while. Cameron concentrated on her stitching. Hendricks tried not to squirm. As the pain intensified, he decided he did better with the distraction.
“I told you my secret to staying sober,” he said through gritted teeth. “Now it’s my turn to ask you something,”
“Shoot.”
“Did you get yourself hired on at the Salty Dog just so you could keep an eye on me?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“That was a ballsy play.”
“Well, I’m nothing if not ballsy,” she replied.
“You didn’t give them your real name, did you?”
“I’m not stupid. I gave ’em a fake Social under the name of Cameron Franklin and rigged a trick license so the photo blurred out when they tried to photocopy it.”
“A trick license?”
“Yeah. All it takes is a little clear reflective paint. You know, the stuff that makes signs glow in the dark? It’s available at any hardware store. Anyway, you dip your paintbrush into it, wait until it gets a little tacky, and then flick some onto the photo-the address too, if that’s also made up. Not enough to cover them entirely, just a spatter here and there. Then, when they photocopy it, the paint reflects the copier light, and whatever’s behind it is obscured. If you do it right, it just looks like there was a defect in the copier’s glass plate, but no matter how many times they try to move it and get a better copy, the result’s the same.”
“Impressive,” he said, and he meant it. Even Lester hadn’t known about that technique.
“Just one of the many talents I’ll bring to the table if you decide to take me on.”
Hendricks sighed. “I thought we settled this already.”
“Not to my satisfaction.”
“What makes you think that you’re cut out for this kind of work?”
“What makes you think I’m not? You think unless a chick’s got a nose ring and a neck tattoo, she doesn’t know her way around a computer?”
“It’s not your computer chops I’m worried about,” he said. “Lord knows you found me easily enough. But now that you mention it, a pair of chunky glasses wouldn’t hurt.”
She feigned surprise. “Wait, was that a joke? Is the big bad action hero trying to grow a sense of humor?”
Much to Hendricks’s surprise, it was a joke. He hadn’t intended to crack wise just then-he scarcely had since Lester died. Sometimes, he was so focused on avenging Lester’s death, he forgot how much he missed the man’s company, or any friendly human’s, for that matter.
“All kidding aside,” he said, “you must realize I can’t possibly take you on. My job-my life-is just too dangerous. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I lost someone else.”
“Look, I get it. Your job is scary. But you choose to do it, just like I chose to seek you out. The risk is mine to take. And, I might add, you’re damn lucky I did, because if I hadn’t, you’d be dead.”
“Maybe so, but why on earth would you want to choose this life? You’re a kid, for God’s sake. You should be in school, not stitching up hitmen in some dump of an apartment.”
“Hitman,” she said. “Not hitmen, plural. And I’m not a fucking kid. Besides, I tried the college thing; it didn’t take.”
“What do you mean, it didn’t take? What happened? You don’t strike me as the type to wash out.”
Cameron pursed her lips as if she was weighing whether or not to tell him. “My first day at school, all the RAs in the freshman dorm broke us up into groups. Typical orientation-week bullshit, I guess. They made us sit in a circle and introduce ourselves. Asked us each to tell a story about an event that made us who we are. Most of the answers were pretty boilerplate and calibrated to impress. A game-winning slap shot in the state championship. That weekend spent volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. How a cousin’s peanut allergy inspired them to become an immunologist or whatever. It was excruciating, like sitting through a live reading of everybody’s college-application essays.
“Then the girl before me went. She’d been quiet until her turn, barely making eye contact with the rest of the group, but she came alive when she began to talk. About the nagging sense she had when she was young that something was fundamentally wrong with her. About the struggles in school and at home because of it. About her suicide attempt at fourteen and how the counseling her parents put her in afterward gave her the strength to come out to them. To tell them that their sweet little boy didn’t see himself that way. That inside, deep down, he knew he was meant to be a girl.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Everybody in the room was shocked. The bravery it took…the matter-of-fact way that she presented it. The fact is, she didn’t have to-with her parents’ consent, she’d started hormone treatment early, and she looked every bit the gender she presented as. I think she came out because she wanted people to know what she’d been through. Because she wanted to be understood and accepted for who she really was.”