Hellbent

67 The Pretty One

As Orphan X, Evan had left behind a spaghetti snarl of associations, connections, and misery. Every high-value target he neutralized anywhere on the globe was a stress point in a vast web. The Secret Service’s involvement meant that somewhere in his dark past a silken thread trembled, leading back to the heart of the District.

As he neared the freeway exit, Joey said, “Hang on.”

Pulled from his thoughts, he glanced over the console at her. “We’ve gotta get back to L.A.”

“There’s something I want to do first.”

The set of her face made him nod.

He followed her directions, winding into an increasingly shabby part of east Phoenix. Joey studied the passing scenery with an expression that Evan knew all too well.

“They call this area the Rock Block,” she said. “Can’t walk down the sidewalk without tripping over a baggie of crack.”

Evan kept on until she gestured ahead. “Up here,” she said.

He got out and stood by the driver’s door, unsure in which direction she wanted to go. She came around the car and brushed against him, crossing the street. He followed.

Behind a junkyard of a front lawn sat a house that used to be yellow. Most of the cheap vinyl cladding had peeled up, curling at the edges like dried paint. An obese woman filled a reinforced swing on one corner of the front porch.

Joey stepped through a hinge-challenged knee-high front gate, and Evan kept pace with her through the yard. They passed an armless doll, a rusting baby stroller, a sodden mattress. Joey stepped up onto the porch, the old planks complaining.

Despite the cool breeze, sweat beaded the woman’s skin. She wore a Navajo-print dress. Beneath the hem Evan could see that half of one foot had been amputated, the nub swaying above the porch. The other leg looked swollen, marbled with broken blood vessels. Evan could smell the sweet, turbid smell of infection. A tube snaked up from an oxygen tank to the woman’s nose. The swing creaked and creaked.

The woman didn’t bother to look at them, though they were standing right before her.

Joey said, “’Member me, Nemma?”

Fanning herself with a TV Guide, the woman moved her gaze lazily over to take Joey in.

“Maybe I do,” the woman said. “You were the pretty one. Little bit dykey.”

Joey said, “I wonder why.”

Air rattled through the woman’s throat, an elongated process that sounded thick and wet. “There’s nuthin’ you can do to me the diabetes ain’t done already. And that’s just the start. They cut out the upper left lobe of my lung. Five, six times a day, I get the coughs where I can’t even clear my own throat. I have to double over, give myself the Heimlich just so’s to breathe. Bastards took away my foster-care license and everything.”

Joey eased apart from Evan, putting a decaying wicker coffee table between them. She said, “You want me to feel sorry for you?”

The woman made a sound like a laugh. “I don’t want anything anymore.”

Evan noticed that his hip holster felt light. Joey stood with her body bladed to him so he couldn’t see her left side. The woman’s gaze had fixed on something in Joey’s hand. Evan recalled how Joey had brushed against him by the Altima after he’d parked. He didn’t have to move his hand to the holster to know it was empty.

Joey had positioned herself nicely. The angle over the coffee table was tricky. He wouldn’t get to her in time, not given her reflexes and training.

The woman gave a resigned nod. “You came to hurt me?”

Evan sidled back a step, but Joey eased forward, keeping the mass of the table between them. Her eyes never left the woman’s face.

He stopped, and Joey stopped, too. He still couldn’t see her hand, but her shoulder was tense, her muscles ready.

The only sound was the sonorous rasp of the woman’s breathing.

Joey exhaled slowly, the tension leaking from her body. “Nah,” she said. “I’d rather let life take you apart piece by piece. Like you did to all us girls. The difference is, I can put myself back together.”

The woman didn’t move. Evan didn’t either.

Joey stepped forward and leaned over her. “You don’t get to live in me anymore. You get to live in yourself.”

She turned and walked off the porch. As she passed Evan, she handed his pistol back to him.

They left the woman swaying on the porch.