Panic

MONDAY MARCH 14
23

E van didn’t expect the children.

Monday morning at ten Evan imagined the Audubon Zoo would be nearly empty, but a good-sized crowd trickled to the gates as the zoo opened. The small parking lot, on the edge of Audubon Park, held two buses of schoolkids from a Catholic academy and three minivans sporting the logo of a retirement community. Then there was the usual spill of tourists, which New Orleans never lacked.

Evan paid his admission to the zoo. He wore his dark glasses and baseball cap. Few twentyish men were in the crowd. He spotted Shadey, paying in a different line, wearing an Astros ball cap and sunglasses. Keeping his distance, walking with Evan’s duffel slung over his shoulder.

The zoo, Evan noticed, wasn’t a place where many people walked alone. Families and couples and herds of students with harried teachers. He circled, keeping his gaze moving across the crowd.

No sign of his father. Or Dezz. He had no idea what Jargo looked like. He saw no sign of a squad of guys in dark glasses that might work for Bricklayer, with earpieces and trench coats. They wouldn’t be so obvious.

Evan darted through the swell of the opening-gate crowd. Last night, in the cheap motel rooms he and Shadey had scored near the French Quarter, he had downloaded a map off the Audubon Zoo’s Web site and memorized it. Every way in, every way out. The zoo backed up to the green sprawl of Audubon Park on one side, to an administration building, side roads, and a Mississippi River landing on the other. The map was general. He suspected there were routes for animal handlers and zoo employees that were not shown.

He remembered strolls here with his father, his hand in his dad’s, his other hand holding a sticky, melting ice cream. He loved the zoo. He headed in the direction of the main fountain in the plaza, with statues of a mother elephant and her calf cavorting in the spray. He walked a slow, measured pace along the palm-lined brick pathway, glancing behind him, as if he were taking in the sights and were in no hurry. Schoolkids milled around him, a teacher attempting to herd them to his right where the real elephants ambled in the Asian Domain, others eyeing a restaurant to his left, although it was too early for burgers and shakes. He was a man enjoying a day at the park, the gentle best of the Louisiana spring before the swamp-native heat and humidity melted the air.

A long, curving bench near the fountain sat empty. Schoolkids and families drifted toward the elephant pen. Most of the early crowd passed him, moving beyond the fountain for the zoo’s carousel and the Jaguar Jungle exhibit.

Evan spotted a man walking toward him. Eyes locked on him. Tall, a handsome face, hard blue eyes like chips of ice. Hair streaked with gray. Wearing a dark trench coat. Rain loomed in the skies, but Evan believed the man had something hidden under his coat. That was fine. Evan had something hidden under his raincoat, too. Not a gun. Shadey had the gun, because if either Jargo or Bricklayer grabbed Evan, they’d simply relieve him of the weapon. He had his music player in his pocket, and he would say the files were on it. No argument. No searching. He’d just give it to them, let them worry about decoding it if they could.

He watched. No sign of his father.

‘Good morning, Evan,’ the man said. Baritone. The same voice he’d heard in his kitchen, heard on the phone.

‘Mr. Jargo?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where’s my dad?’

‘Where are the files?’

‘Wrong. You first. Give me my dad.’

‘Your father doesn’t really need rescuing, Evan. He’s with us, of his own free will. He’s worked for me for years. So did your mother.’

‘No. You killed my mother.’

‘You’re confused. The CIA killed your mother. I would have saved her, given the chance. Please look over to your right.’

Evan did. There was a small playscape, then by the restaurant a patio of tables and chairs for diners. Dezz and Carrie stood at one of the canopied tables, Dezz with his arm looped around Carrie’s shoulder. She looked pale. Dezz grinned at Evan.

Evan’s heart sank into his gut. No.

Carrie’s gaze locked on Evan’s.

‘But Carrie, she’s another matter. My people found her when they came to your house in Houston to help protect you the morning your mom was killed. We couldn’t leave her for the CIA to kill as well, so we brought her with us.’ Jargo made his voice a slow soothe. ‘This has all been a terrible, wretched mistake, Evan.’

They’d found her. It could explain Carrie’s behavior after he’d left for Austin. They’d forced her to quit her job so she wouldn’t be missed, forced her to call him to see where he was when he was in the car with Durless.

‘Carrie is a true innocent, Evan. I think she’s a fine young woman. I don’t wish her any harm. I’d like to let her go, and I will, as soon as you give me those files. You and Carrie can talk privately. Then I can take you to your father. He’s desperate to see you.’

Evan opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He stared at Carrie. She shook her head, ever so slightly.

‘Yes or no, Evan.’

Evan kept waiting for the government to descend on them. Bricklayer might be lurking nearby, watching the drama play out, seeing who broke the standoff. But he couldn’t wait forever.

Evan said, ‘Carrie walks out of here, free and clear. She tells that security guard over there she’s very sick, she needs to go to a hospital. Right now. An ambulance takes her away. When she’s safe, she calls me on a number I give her. Then you get my dad on the phone and I talk to him, and then, and only then, do I give you the files.’

‘I’m a great believer in compromise, Evan.’ Jargo held up a small device – a handheld computer, a PDA – next to Evan’s ear, thumbed a control.

‘Evan,’ his father’s voice said. Mitchell Casher sounded tired, sounded desperate. ‘The danger you’re in is not from Jargo or any of his people. It’s from the CIA. You’ve made a mistake in not trusting Jargo. The CIA killed your mom. Not Jargo. Please cooperate with him.’

Jargo clicked off the voice recorder. ‘I’ve satisfied one of your requirements.’

‘I said a phone. Not a recording. He could have said all that under duress. You could have put a bullet in his head when he was done talking.’

‘Let me assure you, I would never hurt your dad,’ Jargo said in a low voice. ‘I don’t want to hurt you. You don’t want to come with me, fine. You and Carrie can just walk out of here once I have the files.’

‘As if I could trust you.’

‘That’s your call,’ Jargo said with a quiet shrug. ‘If you want to trust the CIA not to kill you once you’re back on the streets, that’s your call, too. Give me the files, and you and Carrie can walk out of here together if you choose. Have your wonderful life together, although I think the CIA will keep that wonderful life exceedingly brief. Or you can come with me and I’ll take you to your father, and I’ll protect you from those murdering bastards.’

‘You promised me my father. You can’t tell me that he didn’t want to come here and see me.’

‘Your father’s face is all over the news right now. You and he are the most prominent missing people in the country. He wasn’t comfortable with traveling. Not when the CIA is hunting him as much as they hunted your mother.’

‘I don’t believe you. We had a deal. You’re changing it.’

‘The world changes all the time, Evan. Only fools don’t change with it.’

‘Well, your world just changed. Look over by the elephants,’ Evan said.

‘I don’t have time for games.’

‘I’m not playing one.’

Slowly Jargo made a quick survey over the scattered crowd around the elephant pen, looked back at Evan.

‘Thanks for the nice profile shot,’ Evan said. ‘You’re being filmed. On digital, with a high-powered lens that provides me pristine prints of your face and of Dezz’s face.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I have friends in the documentary world all over this country. You hurt or kill me or Carrie, you’re on the evening news, and you won’t be able to spot the hidden camcorder before my friends get away. I told you my demands for giving you the files. Let me talk to Carrie. Now.’

Jargo beckoned with a single finger and Carrie hurried over to them. Dezz stayed put.

‘Evan,’ she said.

‘No touching.’ Jargo raised an arm, kept her back.

‘Are you all right?’ Evan asked in a low voice.

She nodded. ‘Fine. They didn’t hurt me.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it.

‘She leaves, just as I described,’ Evan said.

‘You’re not very smart,’ Jargo said. ‘You showed too much of your hand. I would have been willing to let Carrie go once you gave me the files. But film of me? No. I’ll need that as well.’

‘When she’s gone.’ Evan narrowed his stare. ‘Soon as Carrie’s safely away, I’ll give you the film and hand you a music player that has the files stored on it. I don’t have copies. Understood?’

‘No. Give me the files and the film, then she walks. If you’ve got a camera on us, I certainly am not going to harm you, if that’s what you’re so wrongly worried about. Then we can all part ways, if you’re so determined not to see your dad,’ Jargo said.

Carrie broke free from Jargo, closed her arms around Evan. Sobbed into his shoulder. He embraced her, smelled the soft peach scent of her hair, kept his stare locked on Jargo.

‘Trust me,’ Carrie whispered into Evan’s ear. Then she pulled a small gun free of her coat and jabbed it under Jargo’s chin. ‘Tell Dezz to walk away or I shoot you through the neck.’

Jargo’s eyes widened in shock.

She pulled Jargo in front of her and Evan, putting him between them and Dezz. ‘It’s okay, Evan. We’re getting out of here. He’s got a gun in his pocket. Take it.’

‘Carrie, what the hell…’

‘Do what I tell you, babe,’ Carrie said. Evan did, pulling a gleaming pistol free from Jargo’s coat. He risked a look the other way – toward where Shadey actually stood, under the awning at the edge of the food court. With a duffel, one side cut out, the camera resting inside.

Dezz, now hurrying forward, stopped, fifteen feet away from them, staring at the small gun pressed into his father’s neck. Carrie moved the gun down, pressing into Jargo’s back, where it wasn’t so visible.

‘Back off, Dezz!’ Carrie shouted. She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Evan, if he comes any farther, shoot him.’

Evan, still stunned, nodded.

‘Evan. You’re making a mistake,’ Jargo said. ‘I’m the one who can help you. Not this lying bitch.’

Dezz’s mouth worked, watching his father, and he ran ten feet to one side, grabbed a young mother pushing a stroller with a fussing toddler. He jabbed a gun into the young woman’s throat, yanked her around, put her between himself and Evan. The young mother’s face blanched in shock and terror.

‘Shit,’ Carrie said.

‘I’ll trade you!’ Dezz yelled.

Another woman saw the gun in his hand, shrieked for security, began to run.

Carrie shoved Jargo to the ground in a hard sprawl. ‘Run, Evan,’ she said.

Dezz pushed his hostage away; she grabbed her baby and fled. Dezz ran toward Evan and Carrie. Pistol out, readying to aim.

Screams erupted around them. Carrie fired past Evan. Dezz ducked behind the bench and shrubbery.

Around them, people panicked, stunned for a moment at the oddity of gunfire, then stampeding for cover or for the entrance, teachers herding kids, parents carrying children.

Jargo grabbed at Evan and Evan popped him in the jaw, sent him sprawling back over the bench.

A zoo security guard advanced toward them, yelling an order. ‘Down on the ground! Now!’

A bullet splintered the palm trunk by the guard’s head. Dezz had fired. The guard retreated behind the thick trunk.

Carrie gripped Evan’s arm. ‘Run. If you want to live and get your dad.’

He ran with her, dodging through scrambling tourists, deeper into the zoo. He glanced back. No sign of Shadey; he would blend in with the retreating crowd, escape. Evan had told him to make sure whatever footage he got of Jargo made it to safety, no matter what happened to Evan.

‘The entrance,’ Evan said. ‘It’s the other way-’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But they can cut us off. This way.’

He didn’t argue. He was the faster runner and he clutched her arm.

Dezz moved through the fleeing crowd, pursuing fast. Gun drawn, people veering away from him in every direction, giving him a clear path. Jargo followed. A man, wearing a Tulane sweatshirt, made a lunge at Dezz, and Dezz hit him hard across the face with the pistol. The man went down. Dezz and Jargo didn’t slow down, Dezz handing Jargo a second pistol.

Evan and Carrie ran past the singsong of the zoo’s carousel, firing up for its first ride of the day, and onto a tram path where the Swamp Train looped around the zoo. The next section held animals from South America. Evan looked around for an exit sign. Or a building where they could hide. They kept running, onto a wooden walkway. It bordered an algae-topped pond for a flock of flamingos on the right and pine-studded land for llamas and guanacos on the left. A family with three kids stood at the walkway’s halfway point, admiring the flamingos, snapping photos.

‘Over the railing,’ Evan said. They couldn’t run past the family, who would be caught between Carrie and Evan and their pursuers.

Carrie bolted over the wooden divider, dropped down into the exhibit. A small herd of llamas watched them with disinterest. The ground, groomed to look like Louisiana’s best approximation of the pampas, was hard and dusty, and they ran to a dense grove of pines near the exhibit’s back perimeter.

‘Get the trees between you and them,’ Carrie said. They ducked into the short maze of pines. A bullet smacked against the trunks.

‘Over the fence,’ he said. They climbed in a fast scramble, toppled over the barrier onto an unpaved trail behind the exhibit. The musky smell of wolves in a neighboring exhibit filled their noses. They ran down the service path. Maintenance buildings lined one side, the back of the South American exhibits the other. Tried the doors. Locked.

Through the foliage and the fencing, Evan saw Jargo running past the family on the wooden walkway, spotted Dezz following in their tracks through the South American grounds.

Trying to catch Evan and Carrie between them. ‘Keep your head down.’ Carrie grabbed at the back of his head. ‘Security camera up ahead, don’t want it to catch your face.’

He obeyed. They ran, eyes to the ground. The service road dead-ended. A glass and stone building to their right held a family of jaguars. Jaguar Jungle was a major attraction of the zoo, a re-creation of a Mayan temple.

They clambered over the padlocked fencing at the dead end, dropped onto a stone visitors’ path by the jaguars, who lounged behind thick glass. One yowled at them, baring curved fangs.

Jargo huffed into the Mayan plaza, saw Carrie, fired. A bullet pinged against the Mayan stone carvings. The jaguars raised a ruckus of snarls and snaps.

Carrie and Evan sprinted through dense growth and stone paths, past another faux temple with spider monkeys, past a children’s archaeological-dig play area. They stumbled down a creek lined with thick bamboo, hurried back up the other side to the stone path. A few moms and kids ambled along and they stared.

‘Crazy guy with a gun!’ Carrie yelled. ‘Take cover!’

The moms jumped for cover in the bamboo or off the path. Jargo ran past the women, ignoring them.

‘Evan!’ he yelled. ‘I can give you your dad!’

Carrie spun and fired at him. Jargo ducked back into the bamboo. Evan ran past a sign that read NO TRESPASSING, ZOO EMPLOYEES ONLY, Carrie following. It had to lead to a building, he decided, a place they could barricade themselves in – Jargo would flee to avoid the police, who would be racing into the zoo now.

Evan hit a short fence, they went over it and then rushed up to another short fence, and Evan said, ‘Shit.’

Alligators. On the other side of the three-foot divider, on a bank, with a narrow gap of scum-topped water beyond, leading to the zoo’s Louisiana Swamp wooden walkway, where visitors walked above the water and admired the reptiles from a safe distance. Three of the gators sunned themselves on the bank. Not five feet away from them.

Behind them, a bullet hissed through a silencer. The shot caught Carrie high in the shoulder and she staggered and screamed. On the walkway across the water, a woman screeched for the police. Loudspeakers boomed into life, urging everyone to head calmly for the exits.

‘Wrong move, Carrie,’ Dezz called from behind a tree. ‘Wrongo. Stupid. Fucking dense.’

Evan held her with one arm, aimed the gun with the other. To stand there was to die. The gators looked fat and zoo-happy and probably weren’t hungry. Please. He hoped. He spotted Dezz peeking around a tree and fired a steady barrage of bullets, forcing Dezz back into the undergrowth, helping Carrie over the fence.

‘Dezz… hates reptiles,’ she said. ‘Afraid of them.’

Evan wasn’t sure he had a bullet left in the clip. He hurried her past the resting gators. He stumbled over one’s tail and it opened its white, razor-ringed mouth in a defensive hiss. But the gator started a slow waddle away from them.

Do they smell the blood? Evan had no idea.

‘Go,’ she said. ‘Leave me. Get safe.’

‘No. Come on.’ Dezz would be charging toward them since Evan had quit shooting. He saw Dezz approaching, taking careful aim. Evan’s gun clicked on an empty magazine. Evan and Carrie jumped into the green-frothed water. He heard a bullet scream above their heads.

Evan held Carrie’s gun above the water, but he couldn’t swim, help Carrie, and shoot at the same time. The distance to the wooden walkway seemed like a mile. People on the walkway scattered, mothers fleeing with children, one man hollering into a cell phone.

Dezz gingerly put a foot over the fence, his gun aimed at the gators, who seemed as uninterested in him as they had been in Evan and Carrie.

Evan kicked forward, pushing Carrie, thinking, Dezz gets a bead on us, it’s over.

‘Help us!’ he hollered up toward the walkway. The cell phone man gestured at Evan to swim to the right.

A log lay between them and the walkway, and with a sudden, yet ancient horror that spasmed up from his spine, Evan saw it wasn’t a log. An alligator, facing away from them, lay barely submerged. Ignoring the ruckus behind him.

Evan shoved Carrie to one side, slapped his hand on the water to draw the gator away from her. Carrie paddled toward the walkway. He heard a hiss behind him. One of the gators on the bank opened its mouth again, heckling Dezz, and Dezz gave ground, putting one leg back over the fence. Looking scared and furious.

They can move faster in water, Evan thought, logic kicking into his brain. Carrie’s bleeding, does it draw them like a shark? Carrie reached the wooden supports, the cell phone man offered a hand, another man steadying him, and they hauled Carrie up to the walkway.

Evan kicked away from the track Carrie had cut in the water. The log-gator orbited toward Evan. Evan swam hard, waited for the tug to tear off his leg. He blundered close to the walkway and put up an arm. The men yanked him up. Six feet behind him, the gator wrenched its mouth open in bravado, then settled and watched him with an ageless gaze. Evan dripped water and scum and sprawled across the wood. One of the rescuers wrenched Carrie’s gun from his grasp.

‘Please!’ Evan said. ‘I need that!’

‘No way, asshole!’ Cell Phone Man put a heavy hand on Evan’s chest, pushed him to the railing. ‘I called the police, you stay right here!’

Evan turned toward the bank. Dezz was gone, swallowed back in the bamboo. No sign of Jargo.

‘She’s really shot,’ the other man said. ‘Holy Jesus.’

Evan seized Carrie’s hand, shoved Cell Phone Man to one side, ran. The men yelled at him to stop. Old swamp-style rocking chairs lined the deck, two older ladies sitting frozen in shock, clutching their purses, as Evan and Carrie ran past. At the end of the walkway stood a gift shop and just past its door, a railing. They went over the railing; the next walkway led to a wildlife nursery, built to look like a weathered swamp shack with small boats docked in a fronting lagoon. They hurried around the back of the shack. More fencing, covered with ivy, bamboo curtaining a service road beyond.

Evan pushed Carrie up so she could pull herself over. Blood welled from her shoulder and she gasped as she climbed. She tumbled over the ivy, falling headfirst into the blanketing thicket of bamboo beyond the fence. He jumped on the mesh and saw Jargo approaching from his right, Dezz from his left.

‘Give it up, Evan,’ Jargo called. ‘Right now.’

‘Stay back, or that tape puts your face on the evening news.’

The indecision played on Jargo’s face. ‘You go, you’ll never see your dad again.’

Evan went over the fence. A bullet barked a centimeter from his hand as he let go and fell into the overgrowth.

Carrie grabbed him and they ran, hearing the pit-pit of bullets pocking through the bamboo curtains. Then the noise stopped. Evan was sure the two men were only stopping to climb over the fence in pursuit. They ran along a paved road that served as a tram path. Zoo employees headed away from them in a golf cart, hollering into walkie-talkies. Another fence and they stumbled along a stretch of parking lot and grassland on the border of the zoo. He checked behind them. No sign of Dezz or Jargo; they hadn’t scaled the fence.

They ran along the edge of the zoo now, hearing the approaching whine of sirens.

‘Are you in pain?’ he asked. Stupidest question ever asked, he decided.

‘I’ll make it. Are you all right? Did they hit you?’

‘No. I’m fine. How did you…’ Shoot your way out of there. Save me. He looked at her as if he didn’t know her.

‘We’re getting the hell out of here,’ she said.

Beyond the expanse of the parking lot they could see the whirl of police-car lights near the main entrance.

‘Here.’ He steadied her. ‘I’m getting you to a doctor.’

‘No doctor. Evan, you have to do what I say. I’ve been protecting you since day one. I’m sorry I had to lie to you.’ Her voice faded to a weak whisper. ‘I’m from Bricklayer.’

He stopped in his tracks. ‘What?’

She reached out a hand to him, bloodied from being pressed against her shoulder. ‘I… I was supposed to protect you. I’m sorry.’

‘Protect me. For how long?’

She steered him off a path that cut across a swath of deep green. ‘Jargo thought I worked for him. He thought I would kill you for him today. But I would never hurt you. Never.’

This wasn’t what he’d expected. He hurried her into the truck he’d stolen from Bandera. Sirens rose.

Trust me, she had said. He nearly said, I can’t leave Shadey. But if he told her about Shadey, and she was leading him into a trap, then Shadey would be caught in Bricklayer’s net. He shut his mouth, hoped that Shadey had escaped in the melee.

He eased her over into the passenger seat, looking around frantically for Jargo and Dezz.

She collapsed, blood smearing the seat.

‘Bricklayer and I are CIA, Evan,’ she said. ‘I’m not supposed to tell you but you need to know.’ She gritted her teeth against the pain.

CIA. Like Gabriel. The people Jargo said had killed his mother.

He didn’t believe Jargo.

‘There they are,’ she said as he climbed into the pickup. ‘The Land Rover. Silver.’ Jargo and Dezz, trying to wend past the New Orleans police cars that had responded. Evan didn’t see Shadey anywhere in the mass of people milling in the lot. An ambulance stood, lights flashing, but paramedics weren’t loading Shadey, or anyone else.

‘Hold on.’ Evan floored the pickup across the lot, then over the expanse of lawn. Headed toward Magazine, the frontage street for the zoo that separated it from Audubon Park.

‘Jargo’s seen us,’ she said. ‘You’re not trained for evasive driving, Evan.’

‘I’m a Houston driver,’ he said, drunk with fear and energy, and he barreled across Magazine, laying on the pickup’s horn, bouncing over the curb into the greater expanse of Audubon Park. Think. Think of what they’ll try next and be prepared for that. Because you can’t make a mistake.

In the rearview he saw the Rover narrowly miss hitting another car, then follow him across the grassy yard between the parking lot and Magazine, Jargo laying on the horn.

Midmorning joggers crossing the swale of parkland stared at Evan as he revved the pickup truck along the grass, dodging the oaks. The northern edge of Audubon Park faced out onto busy St. Charles Avenue, and the neighboring Loyola and Tulane universities stood on the other side of the avenue. He had forgotten that along St. Charles everyone parallel-parked along the streets, and this morning cars filled every inch of curb bordering the park. Large concrete cylinders blocked the park’s main gate from the street.

No way out.

He veered the car to the left, spotting an opening at St. Charles and Walnut, the park’s far corner. It was a noparking zone across from an old estate reborn as a hotel. The pickup lumbered as he spun out onto Walnut and hooked an immediate right onto St. Charles.

He started to panic. St. Charles was hardly a raceway. Stoplights stood every few blocks; the wide median held two streetcar tracks, with their green tubes lumbering up and down the rails, tourists leaning out to snap photos of the grand homes or of leftover, faded beads still dangling from the street signs from a passed Mardi Gras. If there wasn’t a light, a crossover spanned the median, and cars making turns backed onto the avenue.

But at 10:20 in the morning, traffic wasn’t a thick nest. He heard a boom, a thud. The Rover exited Audubon Park behind him, navigating an opening on the opposite corner of the park from where he had exited. Shots hit the bumper; the Rover powered up close to the back of the pickup.

‘He’s shooting for the tires.’ Carrie shivered, in shock and dripping wet, blood flowering through her blouse.

A light ahead, red. Cars stopping.

Evan swerved the truck into the streetcar median. He nicked a line of crape myrtles and put the truck on the rail tracks to avoid the metal poles that supplied the cars with electricity. He jammed the accelerator to the floor.

From his right, gunfire, a bullet smashing into the rear window. Shards of glass nipped the back of his head.

Carrie said, ‘Drive steady, please.’

‘Sure!’ he yelled back. He zoomed past – no one in the median turn – the intersection with the light, and in his rearview the Rover bounded onto the median with him. Accelerated fast.

Ahead, a minivan loitered in the median, waiting for traffic to open up. Two children in the minivan’s windows stared as the pickup truck rocketed toward them, a boy pointing in surprise.

Evan spun back onto St. Charles, narrowly missing the minivan, clipping a parked car. Jolt and shatter. He could not head farther right – parked cars lined the length of St. Charles, and the front yards of many of the homes were fenced or walled in. No clear room to navigate. It was the street or the median. Bad choice versus worse.

Another shot hit the rear of the pickup truck. A line of heavier shrubs lined this stretch of the median. Evan plowed back through them, deciding he was putting fewer lives at risk there than on the street, after he went through another intersection where a car waited in the median to turn onto the westbound side of St. Charles.

Then he saw the streetcar coming toward him, occupying the left-side track, and he laid on his horn.

The streetcar driver grabbed at a radio mike and yelled into it. Evan screeched to the left, the streetcar passing between him and Jargo.

Ahead he saw two police cars, lights flashing, sirens blaring.

Evan rumbled right, aiming for the center of the median; another streetcar was approaching and he overshot, revving off the tracks and back onto St. Charles. An open intersection. He took a hard right, more to keep from crashing than from strategy, then the next left, and drove down a residential street of neat homes, cars parked on the street. Then another right.

‘Turn here, here!’ Carrie said.

She pointed at a corner lot, a bright yellow building, antiques in the window, a neon OPEN sign. He saw her idea. The parking and exits were behind the building. He spun into the lot and stopped the car.

Waited.

The Rover, its side badly dented, shot past on the street. Evan counted to ten, then twenty. The Rover didn’t return.

‘What now?’ Evan didn’t recognize his own voice. His mouth tasted of the fake-swamp water and his hands shook.

‘Police will be all over St. Charles,’ she said. ‘Take a side road that runs parallel. Get us down to Lee Circle, we can get to the interstate there. Get to the airport.’

‘You need a hospital.’

‘No hospital. Our pictures will be on the police wire soon,’ she said through gritted teeth.

He gently peeled her blouse away from her shoulder. He saw the small but vicious wound, touched the stickiness of the blood.

‘You need a doctor.’

‘Bricklayer will get me help.’ She closed her eyes, closed her hand over his. ‘You don’t have any reason to trust me. But we just saved each other. That means something, doesn’t it?’

He didn’t know what to say.

She opened her eyes. ‘A government plane there can take us to a place we can be safe. Where we can work on getting your dad back.’

‘What will the CIA do to get my dad back? He’s not one of them. He’s an enemy to them if he’s worked for Jargo.’

‘Your father could be our best friend. With his help, your help, we can break Jargo.’ She leaned against the door. In pain. ‘Certain people in the CIA and Jargo… have an arrangement. Jargo’s selling information to every country, every intelligence service, every extremist group that he can. We’re trying to find his contacts inside the CIA. Get rid of the traitors. They’re selling our national secrets to Jargo. I was undercover for the Agency, working for Jargo for the past year.’

‘Year,’ he whispered.

‘We’ve never been able to identify any of his operatives other than Dezz. He has a whole network. Your parents… worked for him.’

Evan swallowed past the rock in his throat. ‘I can’t keep pretending they are completely innocent in all this, can I?’

‘No one can tell you what to do. I learned that early on.’

‘But Jargo knows you’ve turned on him, and you have me. He’ll just kill my father.’

‘No. He doesn’t want to kill your dad, I don’t understand why. Your father is Jargo’s weakness. We have to use it against him.’

Airport. Hospital. He had to choose. Trust the stranger beside him or trust the woman he loved. He started the car, eased out of the lot. No sign of Jargo. Evan drove, finally turning back onto St. Charles. He drove through Lee Circle and fed onto the highway that would merge onto Interstate 10. Traffic was light. He steadied his hands.

‘So. You knew me before I knew you,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘So our relationship was a trick. A show.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘No, I don’t, I don’t understand how you could lie to me.’

‘It was to protect you.’ Her voice rose in half-hysteria. ‘Would you have believed me? If I’d said, “Hey, Evan, both a freelance spy network and the CIA are interested in you, want to go see a movie?”’

‘You answer one question for me.’

‘Anything.’

‘My mother. Did you tell Jargo that I was going to Austin?’ His voice strained for control.

‘No, baby. No. Jargo picked up my voice mail. He got the message.’

If I hadn’t left Carrie the message, my mom would be alive. Grief and horror rose in him like a tide. ‘No. Why did you have to leave that morning?’

She covered her face with her hands.

‘Goddamn it, Carrie, you answer me!’ he screamed.

Her voice sounded broken. ‘I wanted permission from Bricklayer… to end the surveillance on you. To pull you and your mom out, get you both to safety. To forget trying to draw Jargo into the open. I had to talk to Bricklayer alone. That’s where I was. When I got back, you were gone.’

‘And so you told Jargo.’

‘No. No. I acted like I didn’t know where you were. I told him I hadn’t checked my voice mails, I hadn’t gone back to your house.’

‘You told him I loved you, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’ She closed her eyes.

‘You must have all had a laugh.’

‘No. No.’

‘Did you send the CIA to my house?’

‘No. Bricklayer’s team is very small. We’re not set up for big operations. We can’t reveal our existence to any possible traitors inside the Agency, because they’re our targets, along with Jargo. We’re not supposed to operate on American soil.’

‘Wow, so my family and I, we’re really freaking special,’ Evan said. ‘I don’t know why I should believe you now.’

‘Because I’m still the same woman you met a few months ago. I’m still Carrie.’ She spoke after long seconds of silence. ‘I love you. I told you not to love me, I didn’t want you to say it, but I wanted it to be true. I didn’t want you hurt. That’s why I wanted to pull out. I’m sorry.’ She leaned forward, watching the rearview, watching for the police. ‘Oh, Jesus, this hurts.’

Did you ever love me?

He made his choice. He followed her directions, stopping at a quiet aviation office near Louis Armstrong International with two cars parked in front.

‘Inside. People who work for Bricklayer. Bricklayer’s real name is Bedford. There’s trust for you. Only three people inside the CIA know his real name.’

He looked at her. He could just run. Leave her, her colleagues would find her, and he could vanish and never see her again. Never hear another lie from her lips.

He thought of that morning three days ago, waking up, loving her with both dreaminess and certainty. And she was gone. Thought of how beautiful she had been the first time he’d seen her in the coffee shop, reading that bad book on film with intense concentration. Lying in wait for him. Thought of her in his bed, the softness of her kisses on his lips. Looking at him as though her heart would burst. Maybe her loving him was a lie, but he loved her. She was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. She was the best chance to get his father home. And she had saved him now, saved him from certain death.

Evan carried her out of the car and kicked four times on the office door.