Hellbent

The other man had landed to the side, propped against the toppled trash can, one hand pawing the air above his collapsed windpipe. The motion grew slower and slower.

Joey looked at him and then back at Evan, her eyes even wider.

“He’s dead,” Evan said. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

She cleared her throat. “Thanks.”

“Grab your rucksack. Let’s go.”

She did.

They barreled through the doors into the waiting room. Chaos reigned. People shoved and elbowed to the exit. A homeless man was bellowing to himself, stuffing his bedding into a shopping cart. Workers cowered behind counters.

There were sirens outside already, flashing lights coloring the parking lot. Lead responders spilled through the front entrance, bucking the stream of humanity.

“This way.” Evan grabbed Joey’s arm, ushered her up the corridor to the bathrooms.

They were halfway there when a service door swung open and two cops shouldered through. Their eyes lasered in on Evan and Joey, Glocks drawn but aimed at the floor.

Evan swung her around, reversing course. They didn’t get three steps when, up ahead, responding cops filled the waiting room.

They were trapped.

18

Short on Time and Short on Crowbars

Behind them one of the cops shouted, “Wait! Stop right there!”

Evan and Joey froze, still facing away. The corridor was empty, squeaky clean save for a dropped newspaper and fresh plug of gum stuck to the wall.

“What now?” Joey said to Evan out of the side of her mouth.

“We don’t kill cops.”

Ahead, PD started locking down the big hall. Behind them the cops’ boots squeaked on the marble as they approached cautiously.

“I know,” Joey whispered. “So what do we do?”

“Get arrested. Face the consequences, whatever they are. We go down before we break a Commandment.”

The cops were right behind them. “Turn around. Right now.”

Joey reached up and flipped her hair over, exposing the shaved side of her head in its entirety. She brushed against Evan as she pivoted around, and when he followed her lead, he saw that she had his RoamZone in hand.

“This is totally not fair,” she said. “Some big guy ran past us, all freaking out, and whammed into me. I dropped my phone and it’s, like, ruined.”

Her posture had transformed, shoulders slumped, twisty legs, head lolling lazily to one side, a finger twirling a tendril of hair — even her face had gone slack with teenage apathy.

And she was chewing gum. With teenage vigor.

Evan shot a look at the spot on the wall where the fluorescent green plug had been a moment before.

Joey yanked on Evan’s arm. “Dad, you are buying me a new phone. Like, now. There’s no way I’m going to school with the screen all cracked.”

Evan cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Officers.”

The cops looked behind them. “A big guy ran past you? This way?”

“Yeah. You, like, just missed him.”

The cops exchanged a look and bolted back down the corridor to the service door.

Joey called after them, “If you find him, tell him he’s paying for my new phone!”

The door banged shut after them. Joey swept her hair back into place, blanketing the shaved side. “‘Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.’”

“Odysseus?”

She took the gum out of her mouth, stuck it back on the wall. “Bruce Lee.”

He nodded. “Right.”

They moved swiftly out through the service door, skating the edge of the parking lot just before more cops swept in, setting a perimeter around the building.

Evan peered across to the outer fringe of the lot. Even through the windshield glare, he could discern the outline of the man in the rent-a-car. He was trapped for now; the cops had blockaded the exits.

Joey took note of the man. “The lookout?”

“Yes.”

Evan hustled her away from the commotion and into an employee parking lot shielded from view by a flank of the building.

“Is the car this way?” she asked.

“No. I parked it a block to the south.”

“Then why are we here?”

He stopped by a canary-yellow Chevy Malibu.

“Evan, this isn’t the time to swap cars again. We can’t drive out of here anyways. You saw the exits.”

Dropping to his back, he slid under the Malibu. He unscrewed the cartridge oil filter and jerked it away from the leaking stream.

He wiggled back out from under the car.

She saw the filter and said, “Oh.” And then, “Oh.”

He shook the filter upside down, oil lacing the asphalt at his feet. Then he examined the coarse threading inside. “Give me your flannel.”

She took it off. He used it to wipe oil from the filter and then his hands. It wasn’t great, but it was the best he was going to do. Holding the filter low at his side, he stepped over a concrete divider onto the sidewalk and started arcing along the street bordering the station, threading through rubberneckers.

“Why are we risking this?” Joey asked. “Right now?”

“Given their response time, these guys have some kind of headquarters in the area. We saw at least seven more men at your apartment building, including the Orphan. We find the HQ, we get answers.”