Hellbent

Then she snapped her fingers at Joey, who stepped forward as if jabbed with a cattle prod. Melinda took her chin in hand and turned her face this way and that, assessing the face behind which she was going to build a new identity.

“Beneath all that scowling and the weird haircut, you are a very pretty girl,” she finally conceded.

“Thank you.”

“It’s not a compliment. It’s an observation.”

The sounds of the workers in the warehouse carried up the hall — suction tables roaring, equipment racks wheeling from station to station, exclamations rising above the din.

Melinda released Joey’s face, picked up a phone on the desk next to an AmScope binocular microscope, and punched a button. Then she said in her native tongue, “Be quiet. I can’t hear myself think in here, and when I can’t think, I act on emotion.”

The entire building silenced immediately. She hung up the phone. When she turned back, Joey’s mouth was slightly ajar.

Joey said, “You are one badass lady.”

“Yes, honey,” Melinda said. “I am sure.”

47 The Language of Comfort

Before bed Evan showered, dressed, and then finished tidying up the Vault as best he could. He found himself trying to align the monitors on the floor and finally gave up.

Chaos was a small price to pay when a thirteen-year-old boy’s life was at stake.

He stared at the various progress bars, all that software dredging the Web for signs of David Smith. “Work faster,” he said.

As he turned to leave, a rapid-fire series of beeps chimed from the alarm system, indicating an intruder at the windows or balconies. His eyes darted around the Vault, searching the rejiggered monitors to find the one holding the appropriate security feed. He was two steps to the gun locker when he found it and relaxed.

On the screen he watched a dark shape hover outside his bedroom window, bumping the glass.

He sighed and stepped through the shower and the bathroom. As he emerged into his bedroom, Joey entered from the hall. She was wearing pajama bottoms and a loose-fitting T-shirt.

She said, “What’s that noise?”

Evan pointed to the window. An old-fashioned diamond kite flapped in the breeze, smacking against the pane.

Peter’s bedroom was directly below Evan’s, nine floors down.

“A kid’s kite?” Joey said.

Evan opened the window and pulled in the yellow kite. Scotch-taped to the underside was a small freezer bag containing a folded piece of loose-leaf paper and a pencil. He removed the note.

Written in blue crayon: “Yor neece person is cool. Does she like me to? Check Yes or No. Your friend, Peter.”

There were two boxes.

He handed the note to Joey.

She took it, her eyebrows lifted with surprise. As she read, a microexpression flickered across her face, gone as soon as it appeared. But he’d noticed. She was charmed.

When she looked up at Evan, she’d fixed her usual look of annoyance on her face. “Nice spelling,” she said.

He handed her the pencil.

She sighed. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

She held the paper, tapped the pencil against her full bottom lip, as if contemplating. Then she checked a box, not letting Evan see. She stuffed the note back into the little bag and tossed the kite out the window.

It nose-dived from view.

He knew which box she’d checked.

She said, “You going to bed?”

“After I meditate.”

“Meditate?”

“Jack never taught you?”

“No. We didn’t have time for that.” She wet her lips, seemingly uncomfortable. “Why do you do it? Meditate?”

He contemplated. Jack had taught him this along with so much else. How to find peace. How to embody stillness. How to punch an eskrima dagger between the fourth and fifth ribs, angling up at the heart.

It struck Evan anew how Jack had embodied so many contradictions. Gruff but gentle, insistent but patient, firm but hands-off. He’d known how to raise Evan, how to push him further than he wanted to go.

Joey was watching him expectantly, slightly nervous, a flush rouging her smooth cheeks. Her question touched on the intimate, and that put her out over her skis.

He remembered telling her that Jack was the first person who ever really saw him. If no one sees you, how can you know you’re real?

Evan tried to imagine how Jack might see Joey.

“Your Rubik’s Cube,” he said. “From the motel — the shape-shifter with all the different planes?”

She nodded.

“You told me that to bring it into alignment you solve one dimension at a time. Shape first, then color. You said you look for the wayward pieces, find the right patterns to make them fall into place. Right?”

“Right.”

“That’s what meditating is. Finding the wayward pieces of yourself, bringing them into alignment.”

“But how?”

He went to the bed, sat crossed-legged, pointed to a spot opposite him. She climbed on the bed and mirrored his pose. Hands on thighs, straight spine, shoulders relaxed.

“What now?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“So I just breathe?”