Hellbent

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…”