Hellbent

Evan looked at the floor. An image came to him, Joey standing in front of that house in the Phoenix heat, gun in hand, staring down a woman on a porch swing. And then handing the pistol back to him, unfired.

The words were surprisingly hard to say, but he fought them out: “Because everyone deserves a second chance.”

Xavier extended his hand, that Madre tattoo bleeding and raw and beautiful. “I’ll do it. I’ll find someone else.”

Evan shook his hand.

The front door banged in, Tommy shouldering through, gripping a Hardigg case in each hand.

Xavier and Benito looked at the stranger with alarm.

“Also,” Tommy said, “we’re gonna need to borrow your roof.”

* * *

At the base of the sloped lot, Evan and Joey stood between a tower crane and a hydraulic torque wrench, staring up at the five-story development. Beyond the tall concrete wall to their side, afternoon rush-hour traffic hummed by.

The workers had retired for the night. The six-acre blind spot provided an unlikely patch of privacy in the heart of Los Angeles. Upslope, the lot ended at a street, but the houses beyond, including Benito Orellana’s, were not visible.

The construction platform’s lift, an orange cage half the size of a shipping container, had been lowered for the work day’s end. Joey stepped forward, rocked it with her foot. It didn’t give. Then she leaned back and appraised the steel bones of the building-to-be.

“Which route?” Evan asked.

Joey squinted. Then she raised an arm, pointing. “There to there to there. See that I-beam? Third floor? Then across. Up that rise. There, there, and then up.”

Evan visualized the path. “How do you know?”

“Geometry.”

“Okay,” he said. “Now you’re done. Let’s get you somewhere safe.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No,” he said. “You’re out. Me and Tommy will handle it from here.”

“You and Tommy are gonna have your hands full. You need me. Any way you cut it, it’s a three-man plan.”

He knew she was right. Evan could handle five freelancers, skilled as they were. But not three Orphans on top of that.

He leaned against the blocky 1980 Lincoln Town Car they’d driven down the slope. Beside it the lowered claw of a backhoe nodded downward, a crane sipping from a lake.

Joey looked up to the top of the building, the breeze lifting her hair, a wisp catching in the corner of her mouth. “You laid it out yourself. Van Sciver won’t deploy drones on U.S. soil. The president ordered him not to use choppers anymore. We can control some of the variables.”

“This is different,” Evan said.

“I’m not leaving you to this alone. And you only got a few more hours before those GPS chips break down in your stomach. You’d better eat something and throw a signal while you still can.” She reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out a Snickers bar, and wiggled it back and forth.

He didn’t smile, but that didn’t seem to faze her.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “So quit wasting time.”

“Joey. It’s too dangerous.”

“You’re right. Anywhere I go, he’ll find me. You know that. You know it in your gut. I will never be safe until he’s dead. And you know you need me to make this plan work.”

Evan studied her stubborn face. Then he came off the car and pointed at her, trying to keep the exasperation from his voice. “After this you’re out.”

“I’m out. Some other life.” Her smile held equal parts trepidation and excitement. “Ponytails and white picket fences.”

“The minute this operation goes live—”

“I’ll just sail out of here,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” She paused. “But you? I don’t see you getting out of this.”

He listened to the wind whistle through the I-beams overhead. Jack, paraphrasing the German field marshal and the Scottish poet, used to say, Even the best-laid plan can’t survive the first fired bullet. Evan had taken his measurements, charted his course, laid his plans. He had escape routes planned and off-the-books emergency medical support on standby. Despite all that he knew Joey was right, that this man-made valley could well prove to be his grave.

“Maybe not.” He placed a wire-thin saber radio in her hand; the bone phone would pick up her voice and allow her to listen directly through her jaw.

She said, “We could still get into that ugly-ass Town Car and just drive away.”

A wistful smile tugged at his lips. He shook his head.

The breeze blew across her face, and she swept her hair back. “He’s gonna come with everything he has. And he’s gonna kill you like he has everyone else. You think Jack would want this?”

“It’s not just about Jack anymore. It’s about everyone else who Van Sciver’s got in his sights.” His throat was dry. “It’s about you, Joey.”

He’d said it louder than he’d intended and with anger, though where the anger came from, he wasn’t sure.

Her eyes moistened. She looked away sharply.

For a time there was only the breeze.

Then she said, “Josephine.”

“I’m sorry?”

“My name. You wanted to know my full name.” Her eyes darted to his face and then away again. “There it is.”