Hellbent

75 The Blackness to Come

Evan’s hands rested in his lap, covered with blood.

Crimson gloves.

Tommy drove through darkest night. Los Angeles was well behind them, Las Vegas well ahead.

They had handled what they’d needed to handle.

“I know you’re emotional,” Tommy said, “but we gotta think straight.”

Evan said, “I’m not emotional.” His voice shook.

“This is next-level shit,” Tommy said. “We gotta go to ground. A few weeks, minimum. See what shakes out. I got a ranch in Victorville, completely off the grid.”

Evan stared out the window. The blackness sweeping by looked like the blackness before and the blackness to come.

Tommy kept talking, but Evan didn’t hear him.

Candy McClure sat on the carpet of her empty safe house, knees drawn to her chest. Past the tips of her bare feet, her phone rested on the floor. It was after midnight, and yet she’d felt no need to turn on the lights.

She had no idea how long she’d been sitting like this. Her hamstrings and calves ached. Even her Achilles tendons throbbed.

She was having what more poetic types might call a crisis of conscience.

The Samsung might ring.

Or it might never ring again.

If it did, she had no idea what she’d do.

It was one of those wait-and-see things, and she wasn’t really a wait-and-see girl. Or at least she didn’t used to be.

What was she now?

The phone vibrated against the carpet, uplighting her face with a bluish glow. The Signal application, presenting her with a two-word code.

It was Van Sciver.

Somehow alive.

She found herself not answering.

An unanswered phone seems to ring forever.

At last it stopped rattling against the floorboards.

She picked it up.

She keyed in a different phone number.

1-855-2-NOWHERE.

She stared at the phone, the empty house seeming to curl around her like the rib cage of some long-dead beast.

She hung up before the call could ring through.

She pressed the Samsung to her lips and thought for a time. Then she set it on the floor, rose, and walked out.

She took nothing. She didn’t bother to lock the door behind her.

She wouldn’t be coming back.