The Nowhere Man

18 Flesh and Bone

Locked in his room, Evan paced circles in his boxers, waiting for the fire in the hearth to burn down. It was going at a pretty good clip, the roaring cedar bringing memories of his penthouse perched on the twenty-first floor of Castle Heights. The logs had been restocked while he was at dinner and would likely burn through the night.

He moved to the sliding glass door and peered out at the mountain rims, barely visible, deeper black in the black night. The north slope was most gradual; that was probably why René had parked a sniper there. But were there more long-gunners on the other slopes? Evan gauged the rest of the range. A dip to the west looked promising. He’d have to assess it in the cold light of day.

For now he had to keep his head clear. Mind and body. The Second Commandment: How you do anything is how you do everything. Above all else, Jack had taught him to train his focus. To be one thing at a time, one thing and one thing only.

He stretched. The push-ups felt less painful, the bruises dissipating. His ribs still ached — Manny’s kick to the gut hadn’t hastened healing — but the pain was manageable. He sat on the bed, crossed his legs, aware of the camera charting his every move. Then he closed his eyes and let the hidden lens fade into inconsequentiality, let his focus turn inward, let himself find the breath and only the breath. It moved inside him, a breeze whispering through flesh and bone. The transience of each instant also held its beauty. This one breath, this single moment in time. This one body, impermanent and perishable and gloriously mortal. There would be this breath and then another, and at some point he will have drawn enough breaths to be still. He could control only how he chose to spend each one. And only in choice was there meaning.

A whip-poor-will was at it outside, whistling into the gloom, lonely and haunting. The roar of an engine came audible, drowning it out. Tires crackled across frostbitten ground.

Evan hopped from the bed, stepping out onto the balcony in time to see one of the G-Wagons slalom up the drive. It skidded to a stop, the driver’s door popped open, and David spilled out. Two men and two women, also in their early twenties, emerged from various doors, pint glasses in hand. A bottle shattered. Peals of laughter.

Snatches rose to Evan, distorted by distance and the wind:

“Nice house, dude!”

“I hafta pee.”

David dug a slender white remote from an inner jacket pocket, raised it over his head, and clicked. Lights flared from beneath the eaves, flooding the grounds.

The young women tittered, wobbling on high heels.

“Whoa,” one of the guys said. “That’s so James Bond.” Gauge earrings the size of silver dollars stretched his lobes to tribal proportions.

David turned a circle, arms raised. A bottle of champagne had appeared in one of his hands. “Well,” he said. “You coming?”

He stumbled drunkenly toward the chalet’s front door, the partyers following in his wake. Shivering, Evan watched until they vanished from view. Then he turned and stepped back inside.

Standing before the fire was a naked woman.

Her jet-black hair, thick and glossy, was swept up in the back, twisted around a chopstick. Wisps fell forward, framing her cheeks, clutching her neck. Her body demanded his attention, but he returned his focus to her face. Smooth, straight nose, olive skin, large dark eyes with prominent lashes.

The woman he’d seen Dex manhandling in the barn.

Red streaks grasped her wrist where the capillaries had broken. Again Evan wondered if the episode had been staged for his benefit. Her appearance here, like this, made it seem more likely.

She spread her arms, a ta-da gesture.

Then a pronounced frown. “Normally men look happier to see me.” Her accent was strong but musical — Croatian? Greek? Serbian? Her hands clapped to her sides, sending a shudder through her strong hips. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like gifts?”

“Not slaves.”

She stepped nearer, taking his hand in hers, drawing him to the warmth of the fireplace. “Let’s make an exception.”

Her mouth was close, her lips full. Heat prickled his skin, not just from the fireplace. She kissed him. It took a good measure of restraint not to kiss her back.

She pulled away, more amused than anything else. Then she pivoted him, tented a hand on his chest, and pushed him gently onto the bed. He sat. She sidled close, her breasts brushing his mouth. He was acutely aware of the camera above.

“Step back or I’ll move you back,” he said.

But instead she eased him gently onto the mattress, leaning over him. Her hair fell like a curtain, connecting their faces, caressing his cheek. It was the first time he hadn’t seen through a promise, maybe in his entire life.

When she looked at him now, her expression was different, her brow pinched, her dark eyes moist. Fear.

He realized that she’d let her hair cover their faces to block them from the camera.

“Then we need to fake it,” she whispered. “Or it will be bad for me.”

He whispered back, “He punishes you when someone turns you down?”

“I don’t know.” Her teeth pinched her puffy lower lip. “No one has ever turned me down.”

“What’s your name?”

“Despi.”

Greek, then, from Despina.

She flicked her hair back over one shoulder. He could feel her against him, all warmth and pressure.

“Please,” she said.

He mostly believed her. And yet it seemed a gambit theatrical enough for René to have dreamed up. He studied the faint pulse in her neck. Thought about the chopstick in her hair.

He gripped her at the waist and rolled her over toward the part of the bed the ceiling-vent camera couldn’t reach. He kept the edge of their bodies in view so as not to give away that he knew about the remaining surveillance.

“Here,” he said.

“Okay.” She was breathing hard. “Okay.”

She sat up on him, tugged free the chopstick, shook her mane of hair. It resettled as if she’d placed it there strand by strand. She let the chopstick clatter to the nightstand, then ran a finger across the yellowed bruise on his shoulder from the beanbag round.

“You are tough,” she said. “But are you tougher than René?” The name brought a faint shudder.

“I know enough not to underestimate him.”

“That’s wise,” she said quietly. “You’ve killed some of his workers.”

“How do you know?”

“The men talk.” She was undulating on him, her shoulder blocking the camera above. “So you did?”

It was taking all sorts of focus and nonfocus for Evan to maintain the ploy. “Yes.”

“That’s what you do? Wait in this little room dreaming up ways to kill your way out of here?”

“Yes.”

Her skin carried the fragrance of jasmine. She leaned forward, pressing the softness of her stomach to his. The tips of their noses nearly touched. Her hips worked and worked some more, her eyes watching him appraisingly the whole time. “How would you kill me?”

“I’d put the chopstick on the nightstand through your carotid artery.”

Her eyes flared. “What an ugly thing. To know something just like that.”

“Yes,” he said.

She rolled off him, threw an arm across her forehead, ostensibly worn out. He slid the rest of the way out of the lens’s purview. She let her head fall to the side so she was facing him. “That’s why they told me I had to take the chopstick when I left. It was an experiment. To see if you’d fuck me or kill me.” Sadness touched her eyes. “You did neither.”

She waited for him to say something, but he had nothing to say.

“That’s what I am now,” she said. “A lamb staked to the ground to test the predators.”

She got up abruptly, slipping off the bed. She was sure to get the chopstick on her way out. When the door opened, Evan heard multiple sets of footsteps outside. It closed, dead bolts clanking into place, one after the other. He barely had time to consider what had just happened when he heard a familiar hissing from above.

“Fuck,” he said.

Gas flooded down on him.