Alison Siegler/17 yrs.
Seeing the casual scrawl fired something at Evan’s core.
He wondered about the seventeen-year-old girl locked inside Container 78653-B812.
It seemed that Claude and friends had managed to fulfill one last order this morning before shutting down the assembly belt. Which meant that Evan had one last head to sever from the hydra of Contrell’s operation to put it down for once and for all.
He had sixteen days until that container ship reached Jacksonville. He would meet the buyer there. But he didn’t plan on leaving Alison Siegler alone until then.
Folding the yellow form in his hand, he headed out, stepping past the trio of gasoline jugs in the hall and through the front door. Jogging up the front walk, he vaulted the security gate.
His boots had just hit the sidewalk when he heard the screech of tires.
Two Ford Transits flew in at him, one from either side, a narrowing V. Familiar gray, no side windows. As Evan reached for his hip holster, their doors rolled open, exposing a row of eyes peering out through balaclava masks. Inside each van a line of shotguns raised in concert, like a gun turret.
Neon orange spots floated within the dark vehicle interiors. The shotgun stocks, color-coded for less-lethal.
Evan had a moment to think, This is gonna hurt, and then the twelve-gauges let fly. The first beanbag round hit him square in the thigh, knocking him into a 180, a volley of follow-ups peppering his right side. A rib cracked. Another flexible baton round skimmed the side of his head, a glancing blow, but given the lead shot packed inside, it was enough. No pain, not yet, just pressure and the promise of swelling.
He spun with the blow, wheeling to round out the 360, somehow managing to draw his Wilson in the process. The black-clad men had already unassed from the vans in shooting-squad formation. These men were expert assaulters, leagues beyond Hector Contrell and his sorry assemblage of freelancers.
An enormous man in the middle held a bizarre gun, its conical barrel flaring to accommodate a balloonlike plug. It looked like a basketball stuck in a snake’s craw.
It discharged with a whoosh. Evan watched it unfurl at him with detached and helpless wonder. Durable nylon mesh, steel clamps weighting the four corners, the whole thing yawning open like the maw of some great beast.
A wildlife-capture net.
It cocooned him, his wrist smashed to his nose, one knee snapped up into his chest, his feet pointed down like an Olympic diver’s. This must have been what the Neanderthals felt like when the lava flow caught up, fossilizing them in all their awkward non-glory.
His gun hand, pinned to his left ear, was as useless as the rest of him.
The pavement smashed his cheek. For a split second, a dot of dancing yellow grabbed his focus — the shipping slip catching a gust of wind, riding an air current into the gutter. The last trace of Alison Siegler, whisked away.
Evan pegged his pupil to the corner of his eye, straining to look up. A massive dark form loomed, a needle held vertically in latex-gloved hands.
The form leaned in.
A prick of metal in the side of the neck.
Then searing darkness.
7
The Inevitable Gurgle
Once again Evan is inside that underground parking lot just south of the Jefferson Monument. Parking Level 3 is his personal hell.
Or, more aptly, his purgatory.
It is a humid summer night in 2008, the same night he has been stuck inside for eight years and change.
The elevator sign glows red as always, casting bloody shadows across the slumbering construction equipment. The lot is shut down for improvements. Evan waits behind a concrete pillar, scraping his boots against a bumper curb to dislodge the cherry blossoms from the tread.
He has summoned Jack here for a midnight meet. Evan is supposed to be in Frankfurt right now, lying low after a high-profile job in Yemen, but instead he has flown back to the States, impulsive and agitated and needing to see the face of the only person in the world he can trust.
Evan wants out.
Jack raised him to be the finest assassin in the world. He also raised him to keep his humanity. Two trains on a collision course.
After a decade spent operating as Orphan X, Evan knows he has to jump off before the crash, even if the jump kills him.
He doesn’t consider that there might be worse outcomes.
Jack didn’t want to meet. He said he was watching his movements. That he didn’t want to be drawn out, to break cover. But Evan demanded, and despite his better judgment Jack finally agreed.
It happens as it always does.
Jack appears from nowhere, footsteps ticktocking off the concrete walls, shadow stretched to noirish proportions across the oil-stained floor. He and Evan embrace. It has been more than two years since they’ve seen each other face-to-face. Jack appraises Evan as if he’s a son come home from grad school. A glint of pride touches Jack’s eyes. He is baseball-catcher square and rarely permits emotion to leak through the mask.
The words spill from Evan’s mouth. “I’m out.”
Jack answers with the words Evan has heard in a thousand renditions: “You’re never out. You know this. Without me you’re just—”
“A war criminal.”
The discussion intensifies as is ordained.
Until.
The roar of an engine and a startling burst of headlights snap their heads around to the black SUV flying down the ramp, careening onto the deserted parking level. Guns fire through the windshield, muzzle flares strobe-lighting the vehicle’s advance.
Jack grabs Evan, yanks him behind a pillar. Evan rolls across the back of the rounded concrete, the cool surface kissing the blades of his shoulders, and pops out the other side already shooting. He Swiss-cheeses the front seats and whoever occupies them. The SUV slows to a crawl, rolls forward to brush Evan’s thighs. The would-be assassins, tilted over the dashboard, have been made unrecognizable by his well-placed hollow points.
He braces himself for the noise he knows will come next.
The inevitable gurgle from behind him.
Bright arterial blood soaks the shoulder of the blue flannel. Jack’s hand, already wearing a glove of crimson, clamps the wound.
Evan rips the flannel off to get a clean look. Needles of blood spray from between Jack’s fingers. Lingering beneath the familiar tang of iron, the sickly sweet trace of cherry blossom churns Evan’s gut.
Years of training have stripped the panic reaction out of him, have crushed it from his cells.
And yet.
His face hot.
Time moving differently.
Grief clawing free of the lockbox in his chest, crowding his throat.
Jack is saying things he never said, things he would never say. He is speaking not from the memory but from Evan’s heart of hearts.
I took you in.
Raised you as my own.
And you killed me.
Why?
He raises an arm cloaked in blood, pointing out, away.
Banishing Evan from the intimate sight of his last ragged breaths.
Banishing Evan to a lifetime of atonement.