Hellbent

Thornhill pulled the pot off the stove to cool, came around to confer with Candy and Van Sciver.

Van Sciver said, “You got the propofol?”

Thornhill flashed that million-dollar grin. “Now it’s a party.”

He went to a black medical kit and came up with a syringe filled with a cloudy white liquid. They didn’t call it “milk of amnesia” for nothing. The medication provided a quick knockout and a rapid, clear recovery. Push a little, it was an anesthetic. Push a little more and you had a lethal injection.

In all matters Van Sciver strove to have a full range of choices.

How the boy responded in the next few minutes would determine how much pressure Thornhill’s thumb applied to the plunger.

Candy found herself biting the inside of her cheek.

Van Sciver walked over to the boy and tugged off the pillowcase.

David Smith blew his lank bangs off his forehead and took in the plywood-covered windows, the empty jugs of water, the fresh plastic tarp on the floor. Then he squinted up at Van Sciver.

“Is this a test?” he asked.

52 Chess-Matching

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.”