Evan didn’t want to risk checking in to a motel, not when he and Joey were this close to Van Sciver. Not when Van Sciver knew he was coming.
Instead he used a false Airbnb profile to book a room for forty-nine dollars a night. The owner, who listed several dozen apartments in seedy sections of greater Virginia, seemed to be a digital slumlord who oversaw his holdings from afar. The key waited inside a Realtor lockbox hooked around the front doorknob. The neighbors would be accustomed to high turnover, lots of renters coming and going. Which was good, since Evan’s profile represented him as Suzi Orton, a robust middle-aged blonde with a forceful smile.
The L-shaped complex had seen better days. Paint flaked on the fence around the pool out front, which had algaed itself to a Gatorade shade of green. A cluster of shirtless young men wearing calf-length charcoal denim shorts smoked blunts on strappy lawn chairs. Several of the doors remained open, women—and one fine-boned young man—lingering at the thresholds in off-the-shoulder tops, offering more than just a view. The thrumming bass of a remix rattled a window on the second floor. Pumping music, paired with the scattered regulars at the fringes, gave the place the woeful feel of a sparse dance floor at a club that couldn’t get up steam.
It was dusk by the time Evan had completed his second drive-by and parked the minivan several blocks away. He and Joey moved unnoticed up the sidewalk and then the corridor. Evan punched in the code to free the keys. He handed one to Joey, turning the other in the lock, and they stepped into a surprisingly clean small room with two freshly made twin beds.
He tossed his stuff onto the mattress closer to the door as Joey plugged in her laptop and then checked her phone for the fiftieth time for updates. She grabbed a change of clothes from her bag and went to shower as Evan worked out—push-ups, sit-ups, dips with his heels on the windowsill and his hands ledging the seat of the solitary chair. Joey came out, sweeping her hair up into a towel, and he turnstiled past her in the tight space.
When he finished showering and emerged from the bathroom, she was at the laptop again, chewing her lip. He checked his RoamZone to see if Xavier had called. He hadn’t. Evan used the wall to stretch out the tendons of his right shoulder. Almost back to full range of motion.
It occurred to him that neither he nor Joey had uttered a word in the preceding forty-five minutes and yet the silence had been comfortable. Pleasant, even.
It reminded him of when he was a kid, walking around the farmhouse with Jack, wiping the counters, taking turns on the pull-up bar by the side of the house, filling Strider’s water bowl. At times Jack and he cooked, ate, and cleared an entire meal without a word passing between them.
They were so in sync that they didn’t need to speak.
Joey looked over from the bluish screen, saw Evan watching her. That dimple floated in her wide cheek.
She said, “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” he said.
They blinked at each other for a moment.
“What are you doing over there?” he asked.
“Catching up on the latest and greatest. There’s a disposable, disappearing chat room for black-hat hackers.”
“I won’t ask if it’s secure.”
“No,” she agreed. “That would be condescending.”
“Do you want to try meditating again?”
She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I seem to suck at it.”
“Meditating?”
“Being out here.” She made a halfhearted gesture at the laptop. “Easier to be online. I feel real in there.”
“But it’s not,” he said. “Real.”
“What is?”
“Trauma.”
Her lips tensed until they went pale. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t ever have to know what happened to you in those foster homes,” he said. “But you’ve got it inside you. It’s holding on in your body.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s waiting when you close your eyes and get quiet.”
“Bullshit. I just don’t like sitting still.”
He went over to his bed and sat with his back to the headboard. He stayed very still.
“Fine,” she said. “Fine.”
She logged out, bounced from chair to bed. Crossed her legs.
“Get relaxed but not too relaxed,” he said. “Become aware of any tightness or tingling. Rest your tongue on the roof of your mouth, your hands on your knees. Focus on the breath moving through you. Follow it and see where it takes you.”
He straightened his spine, pulled his shoulders back into alignment, made a two-millimeter adjustment to the column of his neck. Slowly the laughter and music from outside faded. He became acutely aware of the pressure of the mattress beneath him, a twinge in his right shoulder, the scent of laundry detergent. He started to constrict his focus, the outside world irising shut. But he sensed an unease inside the room.
Joey, rocking from side to side. She rolled her neck.
“Try not to squirm,” he said.
“I’m not squirming.”
“Just keep coming back to your breath. And to sitting still.”
She remained motionless, but her agitation grew, a physical force clouding the air between them.
She exhaled sharply and flopped back. She stared at the ceiling. When she blinked, tears streamed down her temples. She was breathing hard.
Then she got up violently, the mattress springs whining, her bare feet hitting the floor with a thud. She rushed out, slamming the door behind her.
Evan stared at the door. She’d caught him off guard, perhaps even more than when she’d broken his nose.
He uncrossed his legs, stood up, hesitated.
She wanted to be alone. Should he respect that? In this neighborhood?
He reminded himself that she could take care of herself just fine.
Somewhere outside, a car horn blared.
He noted the concern swelling in his chest with each breath. An odd sensation. She was fine.
But he wasn’t.
Already he was walking to the door and then moving swiftly through the outside corridor. The other apartment doors were closed now, the denizens busy inside from the sound of it. He swept around the other arm of the complex—no sign of Joey. He circled back around the pool, the same young men telling the same stories, smoking different blunts, not noticing him or anything else. His chest tightened even more as he cut between the cars in the parking lot.
Still no Joey.
He jogged up the block. A pimped-out Camaro drove past, windows down, rap booming from the radio. Eminem was cleaning out his closet and doing a damn fine job of it.
She wasn’t at the minivan.
She wasn’t visible from the next intersection or the one after that.
He checked the RoamZone. She hadn’t called. Nor had Xavier. His worry compounded when he considered what he’d do if Xavier decided to contact him now. Sorry about your gang situation, but I’m busy running around Virginia trying to prevent a boy’s execution, chess-matching with the world’s most lethal assassins, and my sidekick just went missing.
Sidekick.
The word had tumbled naturally into his thoughts.
He cut over one block, walked back across cracked sidewalks, pit bulls gnashing at him from behind fences. Activity swirled inside an abandoned house, unsavory customers visible through the missing windows and front door. Evan strode across the gone-to-seed front lawn and through the rectangular hole where the front door used to reside. His boot crushed the shards of a dropped crack pipe. Half the back wall was missing, bodies milling ten deep in the packed living room. A couple was having sex on a couch shoved against one wall, their pale skin nearly glowing in the darkness.
Evan shoved through toward the backyard.
“Hey, fucker, you’d best watch where you’re—”
Palm—jaw—floor. The guy dropped as if brought down with a lasso, and Evan broke through the remaining fringe of bodies. More faces, more hands clutching crinkled brown paper bags, more glass pipes. A fire leapt inside an enormous clay pot, casting irregular light across bare midriffs, shaved skulls, a guy with glasses missing one lens.
No Joey.
Evan cut up the side yard, jogged back to the apartment complex, his stress quickening. The guys remained on the lawn chairs, the smell of weed contact-high thick in the corridor.
The door to the rented room was open.
Evan jogged forward, hand resting on the grip of the skinny ARES shoved into his waistband. He came around the doorway, stepping inside, ready to draw.
Joey stood in the middle of the room, shoulders hunched, her face in her hands. Her back shuddered.
He heeled the door shut behind him. “Joey?”
She wheeled on him. “Where were you?” She came at him, striking blindly. “Why’d you leave me here? I got back, and you … you weren’t here. Why weren’t you here?”
He retreated, but she launched at him again, pounded with her fists, not like a trained operator but like an angry sixteen-year-old. “You left me. I thought … I thought…”
He tried to gather her in, but she shoved him away. She slammed the closet door off its tracks, kicked the chair across the room, threw the lamp against the wall, knocking a divot through the paint.
He moved to get out of her way, sat on the floor, and put his back to the door.
She ripped the hanger pole off its mounts in the closet, kicked the bed hard enough that the metal feet gouged marks in the carpet, drove her hand through the drywall.
Finally she finished.
She was facing away from him, her body coiled, her hands in loose fists at her sides. Blood dripped from a split knuckle.
She walked over. She sat across from him, facing away from his bed. Her huge eyes were wet, her shoulders still heaving.
“Where were you?” she said.
“I went to look for you.”
“You weren’t here.”
He swallowed. “Tiene dos trabajos. Enojarse y contentarse.”
She pressed both hands over her mouth. Tears ran over her knuckles, but she did not make a sound.
They sat on the floor together for a very long time.