Hellbent

She pursed her lips and studied him in the semidarkness. “I remember I was fourteen, bleeding from my ear. Van Sciver put me with a demolition breacher who let me get too close to a door charge. I thought it was a punctured eardrum. He took me back to town and dropped me at a park, you know, for pickup. Anyways, I was worse than anyone thought. I was stumbling along off the trail. And I came up behind a guy on a bench, rocking himself and murmuring. At first I thought he was injured, too. Or crazy. But then I saw he had a baby. His baby. And he was holding it so gently. I snuck up behind him in the bushes. And he was saying… he was saying, ‘You are safe. You are loved.’” Her eyes glimmered. “Can you imagine?”

Walking behind Jack in the woods, placing his feet in Jack’s footprints.

“Yes,” Evan said.

“Maybe that’s all anyone needs,” Joey said. “One person who feels that way about you. To keep you human.”

“It’s a gift,” Evan said. “It’s also a weakness.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a vulnerability they can exploit. Jack protecting me. Me protecting you. Us protecting David Smith. But we’re gonna stop all that now. Instead of letting them use it against us, we’re gonna start using it against them. The Ninth Commandment.”

“‘Always play offense,’” she said. “But how?”

“We have what they want.”

She stared at him, puzzled.

He said, “Us.”

Her eyes gleamed. “Use me as bait.”

Evan nodded. “And we know where to drop the line.”

* * *

They left at five in the morning, switched out Evan’s truck for a black Nissan Altima he kept at a safe house beneath an LAX flight path. Seven hours and four minutes later, they reached Phoenix. They did a few hours of recon and planning before pulling over in the shade of a coral gum tree. The car windows were cracked open, and the arid breeze tasted of dust.

The downtown skyline, such as it was, rose a few blocks away. They were on the fringe of suburbia here, two blocks north of the 10 Freeway, a handful more to the 17. A tall-wall ad on the side of a circular parking structure proclaimed ARIZONA’S URBAN HEART and featured a cubist rendering of a heart composed of high-rises.

Evan and Joey had worked out a dozen contingencies and then a dozen more, charting escape routes, meet points, emergency scenarios. Because they’d driven from Los Angeles and didn’t have to concern themselves with airport security, he’d brought a trunkful of gear and weaponry, a mission-essential loadout that left him prepared for virtually anything. But at the end of the day, when you went fishing, you never knew precisely what you’d get on the line.

As if reading his thoughts, Joey said, “Okay. So if they go to grab me. What do you do?”

“Grab them.”

She shifted the bouquet of irises in her lap. “And then what?”

“Make them talk.”

“How?”

Evan just looked at her.

“Right,” she said. “And if we’re not so lucky as to have that work out?”

“Don’t fall in love with Plan A.”

The sunlight shifted, and at the peak of the hill above, the arched sign over the wrought-iron gate came visible.

SHADY VALE CEMETERY.

This was where Jack had found Joey, visiting her maunt’s grave. As she’d said, he knew how her heart worked.

Van Sciver knew, too, though not from the inside out. He understood people from a scientific remove, learning where the soft spots were, which buttons to push, where to tap to elicit a reflex.

He had kept Joey for eleven months, had trained, analyzed, and assessed her. Evan was counting on the fact that Van Sciver was strategically sharp enough to surveil a location that held this kind of emotional importance to her. Whether that surveillance took the form of hidden cameras or freelancers on site, he wasn’t sure.

For Van Sciver vulnerability was little more than a precipitating factor in a chain reaction. Joey’s maunt would lead to Joey. Joey would lead to Evan.

Evan thought about the GPS unit Van Sciver had planted in David Smith’s arm and wondered how they’d plan to tag Joey if they caught her here.

He recalled the Secret Service background of at least two of the freelancers Van Sciver had hired. Van Sciver had never drawn operators from the Service before, and it was unlikely a random choice for him to do so now. Evan’s train of thought carried him into unpleasant terrain, where the possibilities congealed into something dark and toxic.

Joey screwed in her earpiece and started to get out of the black car. Evan put his hand on her forearm to halt her. A memory flash hit him — the image of himself at nineteen years old climbing out of Jack’s truck at Dulles International, ready to board a plane for his first mission. Jack had grabbed Evan’s arm the same way.

It was the first time Evan had ever seen him worried.

Evan reminded himself that he wasn’t worried now. Then he reminded himself again. Joey was looking at him in a way that indicated that his face wasn’t buying what he was telling himself.

“What?” she said.