Into the Fire Read online

  Stupid protective steel shanks.

  Stupid floating bed.

  Plus, the sheets were wrinkled all to hell.

  In order to reclaim his boot, he’d require an Ampco non-sparking, non-magnetic, aluminum-bronze crowbar. The flat rectangular truck vaults in the bed of his pickup held weaponry, body armor, climbing equipment—a full array of good-to-go load-out gear equipping him for a variety of contingencies. Like, say, a full-frontal assault on a wayward boot.

  He walked down the hall, grabbed his keys, and stomped to the elevator.

  Of course the car stopped on the twelfth floor.

  And of course, even before the doors parted, it was her voice coming through: “—because bubble gum isn’t a breakfast food, Peter.”

  Peter looked up, spotted Evan, and transformed into a blur of flying nine-year-old. “Evan Smoak!”

  He bulldozed into Evan’s side, his Batman lunch box swinging dangerously close to Evan’s groin. Evan patted his back in an awkward hug of sorts, using the diversion to avoid Mia’s stare.

  She was wearing her good-luck court-motion suit—midnight blue, subtle lapels. The California-in-a-pie-tin was balanced atop her briefcase, which she held horizontally like a server’s tray.

  “Hello,” she said.

  Evan said, “Hi.”

  Sensing the tension, Peter released Evan and stood beside his mom.

  He glanced over at Evan and then over at him again. “You’re missing a boot.”

  Evan looked down. “Yup.”

  “Where you going with one boot?”

  “To get a crowbar.”

  “Why?”

  “To get my other boot.”

  Peter said, “Oh.”

  Evan looked at Mia. She looked at the wall.

  “Adulthood is complicated,” he said.

  * * *

  Back in his bedroom, armed with a crowbar, Evan reapproached the boot. First he dug the forked end beneath the tread, then pried it up a few centimeters before it snapped back against the slab.

  He wiped his brow, took a moment to regroup. Then he got after the boot again, hooking it and setting his full weight on the end of the bar. It was right on the verge. As he repositioned, he felt the drift of his left boot and had precisely enough time to say “Goddamn i—” before he hammered the floor once more, the crowbar clattering at his side, his left boot cemented in place beneath the lip of the slab next to its mate.

  Lying flat, his leg raised as if in traction, he blew out a breath and let his head thunk against the concrete floor.

  And then he heard it. A distinctive ring. His RoamZone.

  He dug it out of his pocket. Staring at the ceiling, he lifted it to his face.

  He said, “Do you need my help?”

  9

  Bedside Manner

  Once Evan pried himself off the floor and free of the bed, the call followed the traditional course: Do you need my help?

  A harried masculine voice, cracked with adrenaline: “Yes.”

  “Where did you get this number?”

  “Some guy who … who … Trevon something. I think he’s on the spectrum. He said … he said you could help me. What does that mean?”

  “It means what it sounds like.”

  In his socks Evan crossed to the window, the subdued morning light washing over his face. Across Wilshire Boulevard the buildings gleamed with the promise of a new day. He was relieved to have gotten the call, his last mission finally put into motion.

  The man was talking. “I spent the night, I guess, working up my courage. Trying to figure out if this is real or some kind of hoax. I mean, an untraceable number? You gotta admit, it sounds—”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Nowhere. Not anymore. I slept in my truck last night. They’re after me, and—”

  “Name.”

  “What?”

  “Your name.”

  “Max Merriweather?”

  “You’re not sure if that’s who you are?”

  “No, I’m just a bit rattled. Um—”

  “Two hours from now,” Evan said, drawing back from the window. “Tram stop at the base of Universal Studios.”

  “Is that some kind of code?”

  “It’s where we’ll meet.”

  “Uh, okay. Is that it?”

  “No.” Evan looked at his floating bed. Two boots rising from the edge. A scattering of wrinkles interrupting the rectangle of the top sheet, causing static across his mental field. He turned away from the mess of imperfection, closed his eyes to clear the mechanism, and pulled together the strands of his focus into a coherent whole. “First you need to tell me everything.”

  * * *

  Max Merriweather arrived at the tram station, a flustered figurine through Evan’s Steiner tactical binoculars. Evan had set up eight blocks to the north on the roof of a Mexican restaurant, gravel roof poking his belly, the scent of fresh tomatillo sauce rising through a vent to his side. Before Max could work himself into a frenzy, Evan called his cell. He watched the figurine hold a phone to his face and glance around nervously.

  “Hello?”

  “Walk down to Cahuenga and get on the first northbound bus.”

  “Wait— What? We’re not meeting here?”

  “Keep your phone on. Further directions to come.”

  Evan hung up but stayed put. Over the next half hour, he called Max at intervals, routing him through Studio City in a rambling loop that wound up where he’d started. Then, slipping off the roof, he told Max to cross the street and get on the Metro, taking the Red Line toward downtown.

  Now Max sat on the molded white plastic seat cushioned with paint-spatter fabric straight out of the eighties. His hands were laced, his head hanging low, doubling his chin. His blinks were long and sluggish, and his face had the washed-out pallor of someone short on calories and high on cortisol.

  This mission felt distinct to Evan because he didn’t know who he was targeting. He had no sense of who the Terror was or what other enemies might be arrayed against him. How could he fight an invisible threat? How could he kill something without a face?

  By giving it a face.

  And then introducing that face to the notion of consequence.

  The Metro car was humid and smelled of someone’s overly exuberant application of musk body spray.

  Evan cut through the midday crowd.

  His ARES 1911 was a ghost gun, engineered by his armorer from a solid forging of aluminum. Eight 230-grain Speer Gold Dot hollow points in the mag, one in the spout. Though Evan was a lefty, he shot equally well with either hand, so he preferred an ambidextrous thumb safety. Simonich gunner grips practically adhered the weapon to his hand once drawn, and the front-frame checkering was an ambitious eighteen lines per inch. The high-profile straight-eight sights were designed for clear target acquisition even when a suppressor was screwed into the threaded barrel.

  The pistol rode in a Kydex high-guard holster clipped to the belt of his cargo pants in the appendix carry position. Appendix carry had multiple advantages. Better for semi-deep concealment, it guarded against the bump-frisk, aided weapon retention during ground fighting or grappling, and made the weapon demonstrably faster to present.

  His Woolrich shirt, too, had been selected for tactical considerations. Despite its dummy buttons, the front of the shirt was held together by magnets that parted easily, which meant that he could draw the pistol straight through his clothes, a shortest-distance-between-two-points movement of the hand that would have been useful in the Wild West and was occasionally useful now.

  But to everyone else on the Metro car, Evan looked like an average commuter.

  He sat down next to Max.

  Max stayed hunched over, his hands joined in a float between his knees. His knuckles were white. He was, Evan realized, trying to keep his fingers from shaking.

  The train juddered along. The background noise would be sufficient to drown out a hushed conversation.

  Max rocked with t
he movement of the subway, oblivious to Evan. His face was lined not so much from age, it seemed, but from defeat. Deep grooves like scaffolding propped up dark brown eyes. Beneath the wear and tear were ruggedly handsome features that seemed to be waiting to reemerge.

  He checked his phone wearily, awaiting the next instruction.

  So Evan gave it to him. “Hand me the envelope.”

  Max did a double take. Then he looked around at the folks hanging from the poles. A family clustered by the doors, the boys taking turns kicking each other’s shins while the parents tapped at their phones.

  “Wait,” Max said. “You’re—”

  Evan held out his hand.

  Max took the envelope from his pocket. Just as he’d described, bright yellow with that scrawl—DO NOT OPEN.

  “I’ve been super careful with it,” Max said. “Wanting to respect Grant’s wishes, like I said. I figure whatever’s in there is too dangerous for me to—”

  Evan tore the envelope open and tilted it into his palm.

  “Hey!” Max hissed through his teeth. “What the hell!”

  A key slid out, attached to a slender Swiss Army knife key chain.

  Max had turned away, averting his eyes. “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know anything.”

  “Seems they don’t care whether you know anything or not,” Evan said. “They don’t seem willing to take the risk. They want to kill you regardless.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  Evan turned the key over. Shiny gold, larger than a house key, the cuts oddly symmetrical. It seemed like a prop—a secret key that led to a doomsday cache or a treasure trove of hazardous materials.

  Max was pinching the bridge of his nose. “Tell me when we get to the ‘helping me’ part.”

  “The first part of helping you is making you face reality.”

  Max lowered his hand from his eyes. Then he looked at the key resting on Evan’s palm.

  “What—” Max’s voice cracked. “What reality?”

  “Your fingerprints and DNA put you at Lorraine Lennox’s house. With her corpse. Earlier in the evening, you showed up at Grant’s place in Beverly Hills behaving erratically, got into a confrontation with his wife. Your apartment is torn up, which would lead any reasonable detective to conclude that you’re into illicit business with bad people.”

  Max’s lips looked cracked. His eyes were wide, bloodshot. “Well,” he said. “If you frame it that way…”

  The brakes ground, a metal-on-metal screech Evan could feel in his teeth.

  “Look,” Max said. “I don’t want to drag Grant’s family into this. They’re going through it bad right now. And his oldest kid, she’s pregnant. I don’t really have … I don’t have a lot to lose, you know? So I need your help, yeah. But it’s more important that we keep them out of this.” He leaned back in his seat and exhaled, puffing out his cheeks. “Why’d you make me run around like that? The tram stop to the bus to the Metro?”

  Evan said, “I was deciding if you’re worth saving.”

  “Am I worth saving?”

  The doors hissed open at Union Station. Evan plucked the phone from Max’s hand, snapped it in half, and slid the pieces across the floor. They disappeared through the gap, falling onto the tracks.

  Before Max could react, Evan grabbed his arm, tugged him off the train, and hustled him across the platform and up the stairs. They blinked in the sudden light of day.

  Evan steered him across the parking lot and dumped him into the passenger seat of a white Chevy Malibu, a backup vehicle he’d picked up at one of his safe houses.

  Evan accelerated out of the parking lot, pressing Max back in the cloth seat, and shot north up Alameda.

  Max said, “Things go pretty fast around you, huh?”

  Evan zigzagged across the 110, and then they were forging upslope, weaving between parked cars on increasingly cramped streets. He stopped next to a construction dumpster brimming with detritus.

  Evan pulled a tube of superglue from the glove box and used it to coat his fingertips.

  Max said, “Mind if I ask…?”

  “Fingerprints.”

  Max craned to look through his window at the crumbling dirt rise of the hillside. “Why are we here?”

  But Evan was already out of the car, digging in the trunk. He produced an eight-ounce bottle of Marianna Super Star Cream Peroxide Developer.

  Max was next to him now, gawking. “So we’re gonna dye my hair? Disguise me?”

  Instead of answering, Evan hiked up the steep slope, boots slipping, releasing tumbles of dirt. Max made his way up behind him. They waded through knee-high weeds and came to the back of a fence.

  Max said, “Would you mind just telling me—”

  Evan vaulted the fence.

  He waited. A moment later Max pulled himself over as well.

  Max took in the postage-stamp backyard, his mouth popping open at the sight of Lorraine Lennox’s house. A dry breeze wafted the heat of the fire pit across their faces, and a faint smell from the house. Something fetid. The flat-screen TV emitted steady pulses of canned laughter.

  Evan cranked off the gas to the fire pit, the flames drowning in the lava stones.

  He said, “Don’t move.”

  He breezed into the house, weathering the smell, and did a quick spin through, safing each room and checking the front yard. He ignored the armchair and what it held.

  When he returned to the backyard, Max remained rooted in place, his feet staked to the dead grass. His mouth pulsed a few times, as if he were holding his gorge in place. “Look,” he said. “I appreciate this a ton, but your bedside manner isn’t exactly—”

  “What did you touch?” Evan said. “Start here.”

  Max blinked twice.

  Evan said, “Focus. Every single thing you touched.”

  Max pointed. “Side gate.”

  Evan jogged over, removing a rag from one of his cargo pockets and dousing it with the hair product. He wiped down both sides of the gate.

  From behind him, Max said, “It has bleach in it?”

  “Bleach is overrated. A lot of them are reducing agents that leave behind intact hemoglobin,” Evan said, giving extra attention to the handle. “Whereas hydrogen peroxide is an oxidizing agent—generates bubbles that degrade DNA.” He headed back to wipe off the rear fence where Max had jumped over and then considered the dilapidated lawn furniture. “Where else did you touch? Or even go near?”

  They worked their way inside, Max averting his eyes from Lorraine Lennox’s body. The smell was thick all around them, pressing into their pores.

  Evan said, “Don’t touch anything.”

  He lathered down the counter and then poured the solution into the sink, running the water and the garbage disposal for a solid two minutes. When he shut it off, Max was standing over by a bookshelf, staring at photographs.

  “Let’s go,” Evan said.

  “We can’t just leave her,” Max said.

  Evan paused halfway through the open sliding door. “She won’t know the difference.”

  Max pointed at the framed pictures. “She has a brother. And looks like her parents are still alive.” He wiped his mouth. “Her people deserve to know.”

  Evan’s own mouth tensed. He leaned to look down the brief hall through the front window. No one visible on the street. Yet.

  Then he strode inside, plucked the phone from the base station, and tapped out three digits with a superglue-tipped finger. He rested the cordless on the counter and ushered Max outside.

  Behind them he could make out a tinny voice asking, “What’s your emergency?”

  10

  Area of Expertise

  Downtown Los Angeles stretched skyward around Evan and Max, a huddle of high-rises shot above an apron of urban sprawl, as if a few square blocks had snapped off the slab of Manhattan and floated to the wrong coast. On a clear day, the San Gabriel Mountains loomed with deceptive closeness to the east. Snowcapped Mount Baldy dominated the ja
gged tear line where earth met sky, and beyond, smothered in an ocean of pines, lay Arrowhead and Big Bear, where Grant Merriweather had been put down with a bullet to the head.

  Here on the bustling city sidewalk, a wintry breeze rattled an empty Pressed Juicery bottle over the cracked concrete past Evan’s and Max’s shoes. On the corner a man sold roasted corn out of a food cart, his face weather-battered, his skin a rich shade of umber. The smell reminded Evan that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and he stared longingly as the man rolled an ear through metal troughs of melted butter, Cotija cheese, and powdered chili. Along the cart’s frame, freshly carved mango hung in clear bags, marinating in lime, salt, and sriracha.

  Grant Merriweather’s firm, the imaginatively titled Merriweather Accountancy, resided on the seventeenth floor of the black-glass rise before them. This was a convenient part of downtown for a forensic accountant, a few blocks from City Hall, LAPD headquarters, and the Criminal Courts Building.

  Evan clenched the Swiss Army knife key chain, the key swaying beneath his fist.

  Those oddly symmetrical cuts. The shiny gold finish, unworn by use, not a single scrape from tumbler pins.

  “Are we ever actually going to, you know, go inside?” Max asked.

  Dragging Max along, Evan had circuited the nearby blocks three times, checking parked cars, passing faces, and searching windows for glints thrown by binoculars or sniper rifles. They’d ridden up the elevators of surrounding buildings and watched the street from various vantages. Sipped espresso in the catty-corner Starbucks and studied the lobby.

  The Third Commandment: Master your surroundings.

  Evan slid the key chain into his pocket. Then headed for the entrance.

  Max followed.

  They slid through the weighty revolving doors, delivered onto a white granite floor scuffed from the tread of loafers and high heels. The elevator bank was to the left, set behind a directory shimmering with brass letters. Foot traffic was light. Cutting across the lobby, Evan circled his gaze from faces to hands to faces.

  No one reaching. No one sweating. No one with THE TERROR scraped into the flesh of his forearm.