Out of the Dark

44 Shock-and-Awe Charm

When Mia opened the door, she noted what Evan was holding and her face froze with surprise.

It wasn’t the expression Evan had been hoping for.

He stood there dumbly, Peter’s wrapped present tucked under an arm, a bulky gift for Mia front and center. He offloaded it to her, and she struggled a bit under its weight.

“It’s — wow, cool — a … um, first-aid kit.”

“It’s actually a Black Hawk medical pack, designed to SEAL-team medic specs. I packed it with essentials — syringes, field dressing, alcohol pads. I guess the morphine vials are a little much.”

She hefted the immense olive-drab pack onto an accent table, displacing a mound of LEGOs. “Maybe so.”

“There’s a sternum clasp and cinch straps for the sides to help maintain load integrity during stress maneuvers. Not that, you know … But I figured after Peter’s injury…” He read her eyes and stopped. “I’m not very good at this, am I?”

“No. But you’re so bad that it actually makes you good.”

“Pity factor?”

“No,” she said. “More like shock-and-awe charm.”

“I’ll take it.” He followed her inside, the condo filled with the scent of fresh-baked pie. The TV was on in the background, a commercial featuring a silver-haired couple toasting with umbrella drinks while a rugged voice ran down a list of horrifying side effects. “I’m sorry I’ve been gone. Traveling for work.”

She started clearing dirty plates off the kitchen table. “No worries. Been busy here, too.”

“I brought something for Peter, too. Is he—”

“Evan Smoak! Check it out!” Peter shot out of his room. He rotated his right arm in the socket, showing off the healed shoulder even as he streaked toward Evan. Then he saw the wrapped package and froze: Flying Hug Interruptus. “What is it? What is it?”

Evan handed it to him, and Peter sat on the carpet to unwrap it. The half-moon plaque came clear. “It’s … um…?”

“A plaque,” Evan said. “From the White House gift shop.”

“Like, the actual White House?”

“The very one.”

Peter went to lift the plaque, but it came apart, a clean break splitting the brass patina. “Oh, shoot. It’s broken.” He looked up at Evan, his charcoal eyes wide. “What happened?”

I cracked it over the head of an MPD officer.

Or it shattered from the overpressure of a frag grenade in my hotel room.

Or it fractured when I crashed through the floor on top of an assassin and used it to break my fall.

Evan cleared his throat. “Must’ve been mishandled by airline baggage.”

Mia came around from the kitchen and crouched behind Evan. “Let’s have a look.”

“Don’t worry,” Evan said. “I know exactly who can fix this. I’ll bring it back soon, good as new.”

Across the room the news had taken over from the Cialis commercial. “—new information about the death of the deputy chief of staff, who we’ve now learned heroically intercepted a bomb intended for the president, taking the brunt of the blast—”

Out of the corner of his eye, Evan noticed Mia’s head rotate to the TV. She did a double take. In the reflection of the screen, he saw her look down at the White House plaque. Then she shook off the notion, rolling her eyes at herself.

Evan folded the broken gift back in the paper and rose quickly to help with the dishes.

Later he sat on the couch next to Mia, spooning fresh rhubarb pie into his mouth as she sipped coffee. Peter had gone to bed after demanding two stories, a glass of water, a closet check, a search under his bed, and a trip to the bathroom. Evan had taken care of all but the latter.

“So,” Mia said. “Whaddaya say we break in that Navy SEAL medic kit and get crazy? I can make a string bikini out of adhesive tape. You could oil down your chest with triple-antibiotic ointment.”

He had to fight off a smile. “It was either that or a catheter kit. So be grateful.”

She reached across and brushed his temple with her knuckles. “I am,” she said. “Grateful.”

“Plus, it’s not a Navy SEAL medic kit. It’s designed to SEAL-team specs.”

She was laughing at him now.

“Here’s where I should stop talking?”

She said, “Here’s where you should stop talking.”

She leaned to kiss him when her cell phone rang. She answered. “Mia Hall.”

As she listened, her expression altered, the warmth and softness draining out of it. “Don’t you dare try to intimidate me. I will bring the full weight of the law down on your head, and I will crush you.”

She looked at the phone, the screen showing that the call had been severed. She hurled it aside onto the cushions. “I won’t let that piece of shit scare me,” she said. “I won’t.”

But her voice was shaking.

“Who is it?” Evan asked.

“Remember that case I closed?”

Seven felony counts. Oscar Esposito. Case number PA338724. Four-year-old girl who knew her name only as “Idiot.”

“Remind me,” Evan said.

“Domestic abuse.”

“That’s right.”

“He was out of custody throughout the court process, so the judge allowed a surrender date later than the date of sentencing so he could, you know, get his affairs in order. Like he’s an international mogul instead of a strung-out reprobate renting a by-the-day room at the Voyager Motor Inn in Huntington Park. So he’s out there free till the end of the month. I objected, of course, flight risk, blah-blah, but she said if he was gonna run, he would’ve done so before the conviction happened. I pulled every lever, but ultimately I’m limited in what I can do.” She scowled, bunching the faint freckles on the bridge of her nose. “So of course he’s been blowing up his soon-to-be-ex wife’s phone, trying to figure out which domestic-abuse shelter she’s staying at. If she caves, I think he’ll kill her and the little girl.”

Evan set down his plate on the coffee table. “Restraining order?”

“Three hundred feet. But until he violates it, he’s out there. Free to make anonymous threatening calls. To her and me.”

“What’s he threatening you with?”

Mia waved him off. “The usual. He’s gonna rape me. Kidnap me and keep me in a cellar. That when he’s done, I’ll beg to be put out of my misery.”

Her eyes belied the hard-bitten tone.

Evan realized he’d come forward on the couch, his legs tensed. She took note of the shift in his posture. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she said. “I’m telling you this in confidence. Nothing better happen. Not like the other time. Okay?”

He pushed his thoughts away.

He had a president to assassinate and a criminal enterprise to take down. His plate was full enough.

“Okay,” he said.

“This is none of your business.”

“I understand.”

He stood to go, but she took hold of his hand.

“That doesn’t mean leave,” she said.

He lay in the softness of Mia’s bed, her skin glowing milk-white in the spill of light through the window. The sweat had dried on his chest, his body a lovely confusion of heat and coolness.

She rested on her side, her eyes closed, and he could barely make out the birthmark at her temple beneath the tumble of her hair. Three stretch marks rode the hump of her hip, a Japanese fan, the skin looking so feather-soft he had to lean to press his lips to it.

She gave a pleased murmur he felt in his spine, and then she shifted onto her belly.

Somewhere in the dark room, his phone hummed.

He got out of bed silently, located the RoamZone in his heap of cast-off clothes, and stepped into the bathroom, easing the door shut behind him.

He answered, “V?”

“I have the field specs on all three locations,” Candy said. “Texting them now.”

His phone buzzed and buzzed some more, the data coming through. Measurements, dimensions, elevations.

She said, “Tell me I’m the best.”

“You’re the best.”

“No shit,” Candy said. “Let me know when you’re ready to come out and play.”

She hung up.

As he studied the data on the three perches, one came clear as the most suitable.

A soft tapping issued through the door. He opened it to find Mia standing there, wearing his T-shirt, the hem falling to mid-thigh. Her eyes were at half-mast.

“Is it a woman?” she asked.

Evan hesitated. “Yes,” he said.

“Are you sleeping with her?”

“No.”

“Okay,” she said, kissed him, and trudged back to bed.

The afterimpression of her lips lingered on his. In his hand the RoamZone’s screen displayed the coordinates he required to end the life of the president of the United States.

He wondered if he could ever bring these two lives of his into alignment without destroying one or the other.

For a long time, he stood on the cold tiles of the bathroom, phone in hand, staring across the threshold at Mia’s nestled form on the bed.

Then he dressed quietly and slipped out.