Prodigal Son Page 31

  “Oh.” For Janet that seemed to be the start to every sentence. She gave a nervous chipmunk laugh, short and stuttering, a rock skipping across water. “I was just showing your … mother … photos from my grandson’s wedding.”

  Evan said nothing. Veronica drifted to the bar and freshened up her own gin and tonic. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly to Janet.

  Her friend gathered the thick album to her chest like a shield and strode out, her head held high, a skilled practitioner of the dignified exit.

  Veronica sat at a barstool, turned mostly away from Evan. “What’s wrong?”

  “What the hell are we doing here? You and I? Do you really care about Andre? Why did you throw me in with him?”

  “I beg your pardon.” She seemed to be only a few drinks in, still fresh-faced, though her cheeks were starting to flush with emotion.

  “Let’s call it what it is. Andre’s a lost cause. Some people are just broken.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  “He convinced me.”

  The lines in her neck tensed. “Stern words from a professional assassin.”

  “Yes. And you found me. You asked for my help.”

  “And you have been helping him. In other ways, right? God, maybe I thought in saving him you could save yourself, too. It’s not just about killing people.”

  “No. It’s not. I choose to help people who deserve it, to keep them safe. I eliminate obstacles between me and that goal. Sometimes those obstacles are very dangerous people. And if that’s horrifying to you, feel free to crawl back into whatever luxurious hole you’ve been living in these past sixty-some years.”

  “Sixty-two,” she objected, with an amused purse of her lips, though it faded as quickly as it had arisen. “I’d imagine that someone with your background has kept company with a wide spectrum of people. What is it about Andre you find so personally repulsive?”

  “What is it about him you find worthwhile?”

  “Goddamn it.” She knocked back half her drink, her words only now coming slurred. “You’re so arrogant, Jacob—”

  “Jacob?”

  She rubbed her forehead, confused. She wore a sleeveless blouse, her arm wobbling beneath it, not toned as Evan had thought but frail, wasted. “It’s easy to have empathy for something we understand. But there’s a spectacular array of suffering out there.” She waved her glass vaguely in his direction. “Not all of it is your flavor. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth your empathy.”

  “You don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t know anything about me.”

  Her lips were trembling, an uncharacteristic show of anger, of vulnerability. “The hardest part of trying to become an adult is realizing that your suffering doesn’t entitle you to anything.”

  “You’re not the person to tell me that.”

  “I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about me.” She breathed wetly in the pause. “You don’t realize it until you’re alone and there’s no one there to hear you complain. Just you and, hmm, fate.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She set her drink down uncertainly, knocking over one of her orange pill bottles. “You struggle with Andre because he reminds you of your past.”

  “No.”

  “He reminds you that despite everything you left behind, you’re still the same person you’ve always been.”

  “No.”

  “We all are,” she said. “We don’t leave anything behind, don’t you understand?”

  Evan felt his molars grind. “You’re not hearing me. I’m done with this. I’m done with him.”

  “You can’t be.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” she said quietly, “he’s your brother.”

  She faced away from him, her hair tumbling down across one eye, the side of her face. It fluttered at intervals with her breaths.

  Evan couldn’t register his own breathing or the room or the words he’d just heard. All he sensed was his heartbeat thundering in his ears, a waterfall rush of blood moving through his system, keeping him upright. His flesh felt numb.

  It occurred to him that this is what full-blown denial felt like. Groping in the dark, searching for old bearings that no longer existed.

  Without knowing it, he’d taken a step back.

  The story beneath the words unfurled like a banner, spelling out the trauma writ large.

  He relived everything now through a new lens, one that brought all the blurry edges into focus. How vividly Veronica had described the rape of Andre’s mother. She had bruises around her wrists where they’d been held down. And she was wearing the shirt still, torn at the collar where it had been … Broken fingernails from trying to fight back. A clump of hair missing where it had been yanked out. It was brutal. Savage.

  Not someone else.

  But her.

  She took those damn tests every few days, like playing a lottery you don’t want to win. But sure enough, she won. And even though this was a child born of violence, it was still a child. And she decided she wanted to bring this child to term.

  She’d been telling Evan her own story the only way she knew how.

  She tried to raise this baby who’d done nothing wrong, who deserved so much more. But she found she didn’t have the strength to look in that child’s face every day and be reminded of what had been done to her. I remember her telling me that she could see in his features the face of the man who’d attacked her. Imagine living with that.

  He couldn’t.

  So she’d put Andre up for adoption. But not right away.

  She fought herself for a year. And gave this child care. But she also detested him. And it was tearing her apart. I’ve never seen a person so conflicted. So, yes. But by then he was a toddler, and the problem with that is …

  Evan had finished the sentence for her: The older a kid is, the less anyone wants him.

  He’d spoken from personal experience. But Veronica had tried to do it right the second time. With him. She’d tried to place him as a baby, where he could be loved and accepted into a real family. But the placement had fallen apart and he’d been consigned to the same fate as Andre.

  His numb legs moved him cautiously across the savanna-tan carpet to the sweeping embrace of the couch. He lowered himself onto it, felt his muscles let go a bit.

  His heart was still beating hard, too hard, the tuning-fork vibration from the revelation still humming in his bones.

  When he lifted his gaze, Veronica was looking at him from the bar. She wasn’t crying, but she was on the verge, her face altered, swollen, holding back a body full of emotion.

  He looked at the gin and tonic, for once untouched at her side, and thought about Andre and his rum, himself and his vodka, the pull of their shared genes toward liquid medication, toward elusive comfort, toward forgetting.

  “Sweet boy,” she said, “I never wanted you to find out this way.”

  He had never been called a pet name. Not one single time.

  It felt awful and beautiful and terribly confusing.

  He said nothing. He still couldn’t find his voice.

  “He was searching for me, but I couldn’t tell him,” she said. “I didn’t want him to know he was a child of … of…”

  Andre had already completed his childhood quest. He’d found his mother. He just didn’t know it. And now Evan was tied to him, his half brother. It felt like a burden and a violation.

  Desperately, desperately, he wanted it not to be true.

  “The whole time he was looking for me”—Veronica’s breath hitched, but through some deep-summoned strength she suppressed the sob—“I was looking for you.”

  “You knew where I was,” Evan said. “All that time.”

  “Yes, but I couldn’t find my way to you. I … I couldn’t.”

  “After the…”

  “Yes. After Andre. And the circumstances surrounding him. With you—you were so pure. Those few days we had together, I never put you d
own. But your father, he was never going to be there. I barely knew him. I was alone again with a baby. It all felt so familiar. And I thought after Andre, I didn’t…”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t deserve you. After what had been done to me, after what I’d done to Andre, how was I supposed to give myself to this new baby boy? How was I supposed to ask him to give himself to me?”

  Evan had never had a mother because of Andre.

  If she’d never been raped.

  If she hadn’t tried to raise Andre first.

  If she’d found Evan worth it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and there were tears on her cheeks, held perfectly suspended. They were clinging there in place as if they’d been painted on.

  Evan rose on unsteady legs and walked out.

  56

  Help on the Ground

  Even after he drove back to Castle Heights, Evan still felt altered, moving through a fog of anger and denial. He vaguely registered Lorilee in the lobby, bantering with Hugh Walters and the Honorable Pat Johnson over near the mail slots. Someone might have called out to him, but then he was on the elevator heading up, alone with his breath and his heartbeat.

  The twenty-first-floor hallway was empty as always, a blank carpeted run to his penthouse. But his front door was ajar.

  He froze as the elevator closed at his back. He had literally never come home to find it open.

  The ARES unholstered with little more than a whisper. He quickly ejected the mag and pressed hard on the top cartridge with the tip of his index finger. Little play, full mag. He clicked the magazine back into place, gave a swift tug on the baseplate, reacquired his grip, and moved stealthily up the hall.

  His locks undone, dead bolt retracted, four-inch gap in the frame. He collapsed his two-handed grip until the 1911’s mainstream housing was against his sternum in the inside position to guard against a gun grab. Then he eased inside, elbowing the door ajar.

  A glass of water on the kitchen island, set down with no coaster.

  He heard noise in his master suite and jogged toward it, braced for a firefight. Bathroom light on, shower door rolled back, monitor light casting the Vault in a cool blue glow.

  He exhaled and sliced the pie with the front sight as he entered the Vault.

  Joey sat on the floor, Dog the dog’s head in her lap as she fed him almond butter off a spoon. One of Evan’s spoons. Code wallpapered the OLED screens, more programs running than he could keep track of.

  The ARES was aimed directly at Joey’s critical mass, the center line of her torso, six inches down at the sternum.

  He exhaled angrily, lowered the gun. “The hell are you doing here, Joey?”

  “This mom shit is fucking you up.”

  “Language.”

  “No.” She untangled herself from the dog and stood. “What is going on with you?”

  “I didn’t tell you you could be here,” he said. “Pick your shit off the kitchen counter. And the dog’s shedding everywhere.” He stormed over to the L-shaped desk, where she’d left a coffee mug steaming, and snatched it up. “Is it that hard to not mess everything up everywhere you go?”

  Her voice warbled but held its anger. “You don’t talk to me like that.”

  Not an admonishment. A wounded observation.

  The hurt in her voice halted him on his feet.

  “This isn’t you,” she said. “This isn’t us. You’re trying to push me away. But I know that drill. And I know you.” Her chest jerked and her eyes welled, but she wasn’t going to cry, not here, not now. “I don’t care what you say. I do know you. So knock it off, okay?” Her mouth quaked a bit, but she firmed it angrily. “Just knock it off. Right now. Please?”

  He stood there holding the coffee mug for a time. Then he set it down. He felt a week’s worth of tension melt out of his shoulders, and he sank into his chair. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t look at anything. He picked at the bandage over his cuticle and then picked at it some more.

  When he risked a glance up, Joey was still standing there, shoulders back, spine straight, ready to fight or cry or maybe both. Dog the dog had risen to sit at her side, pressed into her leg. She rested her hand at his scruff, dug in for moral support.

  Evan said quietly, “You’re right.”

  Her shoulders lowered, almost imperceptibly. “I am?”

  More words were there somewhere, but they were words for other people, the kinds of things said by people who weren’t broken.

  He rose quietly and headed out. Down the long hall, past the workout stations, the heavy bag hanging from its chain. Past the living wall with its breath of mint and rosemary. Into the vodka room.

  Soothing coolness against his cheeks. The bottle of Guillotine rested on its glass shelf. And beyond, the rise of Century City, windows glowing into the night from the pseudo-skyscrapers. He was alone in these four walls with his alcohol and a view of the world.

  It struck him just how insulated he’d kept himself.

  He sensed movement outside. Joey had emerged and was watching him, Dog snugged up next to her. Evan stayed locked in the glass room, breathing his way back to some kind of sanity.

  But responsibility waited out there. To Joey. To himself.

  That’s what people did for you, they held you to a standard you had to live up to.

  He stepped out of the shell of the vodka room.

  He faced Joey. “I’m…” The words were dry and textured, hard to dredge up. “I’m sorry.”

  She cleared her throat, blinked a few times. Then she bit her lip and looked away. “Shit, X. You’re making me feel feelings.”

  It occurred to him that Joey was the only one who could get in here. Into the penthouse, into his emotions, his life. If something happened to him, it would all fall to her. The floating bed. The Vault. The vodka freezer.

  The last thought was worrying. He debated putting a self-destruct mechanism on the alcohol in case the next Hellfire hit its target.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Could Evan trust her with this? Could he trust himself to speak the words to someone else? That would make it real, would put it into the world where he’d have to stare it in the face. Dog the dog padded over to him and slurped his hand.

  He said, “Andre is my half brother.”

  “Oh,” Joey said. And then, “Oh.”

  She saw it all. He watched her get it.

  He cleared his throat. Looked back at the beckoning vodka. Then gave it up. For the moment. “You said there’s a heightened risk now. To him.”

  Joey nodded. It wasn’t back to normal between them, everything still heightened, but they would reach for operational specifics and that would make it safe again.

  “Molleken’s putting the finishing touches on a new gen of dragonfly drones,” she said.

  Evan thought of those thousands of yellow-green eyes glowing at him from the darkness of the battle lab. The terror of being vastly outnumbered by a swarm of things coldly robotic and yet alive.

  “They do more than seems imaginable,” she said, a horrified awe touching her voice. “Once they decide to lock onto you, they’re locked for life. Your face. Your thermal signature. Your electronic records. Everything. If they so much as spot you, they can store your biomarkers to find you later, once they’ve joined up with others. They can read your skin moisture, determine how far you live from the ocean. Assess your shirt and link to places you might have bought it—even trace elements that might show where it was shipped from and where to. They can search for you, neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, looking at faces on the streets, through windows into houses. They hook into whatever databases they want and don’t even report back to leave a record. No oversight. No accountability. They just find you and figure out the best way to kill you, and they do it all on their own.”

  Evan nodded. He felt tired, so tired. He wanted to meditate, to sleep, to go back in time and refuse to answer that call from Veronica. But it was too late,
and he was in now, and he owed it to himself to finish this.

  “What’s our time frame?”

  “The swarm is due for delivery to Creech North tomorrow night. Obviously the war capabilities are, like, incredible. But I found an encrypted kill order in the system at Creech, hidden in the list of high-value targets. The rest of them are in the Middle East. But the encrypted kill order is for someone right here at home.”

  Evan said, “Andre.”

  “He’s the only witness to have seen the program in action illegally on U.S. soil.”

  Evan said, “When they got Hargreave.”

  “Kill Andre, save the program,” Joey said. “If they launch those things, he will die.”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “That’s right. The encrypted kill order is a hack, put in place by one person at the source. Guess who?”

  “Molleken.”

  Joey dipped her chin in a nod. “The rest of the government doesn’t even know about it, obviously, since you can’t kill a U.S. citizen. Or at least leave a record of it. And the thing is, I can’t lift the kill order from the outside. Someone has to get in there and access the hardware directly.”

  Evan grimaced. “If I’m gonna get back in there, I’m gonna need help on the ground.”

  Joey took her phone out of her pocket, spun it on her palm, and at last broke a smile. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  57

  Some Kind of Thrill

  Candy McClure leaned back in the seat of the King Air plane, listening to the dipshit jumpmaster drone on.

  It was an affront to her training even to be here, on a commercial skydiving jaunt in the skies above Flagstaff, Arizona. She was surrounded by overly zealous thrill seekers who were pumped up on adrenaline and their own inflated self-images. The twenty-something women next to her—Madison (“call me Maddy”!) and McKenzie (“Me and Maddy are, like, sisters but not sisters”)—wore tight-fitting jumpsuits that still bore the fold marks from the store. The dude-bros wore similarly unnecessary suits with scuba-yellow sleeves, cone collars, and tight legs, patches adorning the synthetic nylon like military ribbons.

  Candy wore jeans and a T-shirt, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. The more disinterest she showed, the more the men showed interest in her, sneaking nervous glances, eyes dropping to her not insubstantial breasts, visible between the vertical straps of the harness belt.