61 To Do Harm

Evan woke up sometime in the night. Darkness crowded the windows, making the cabin feel small and inconsequential, a box drifting through outer space. At the square of the kitchen table, Jack slumped in a chair, breathing heavily, his sleeping face uplit with the dancing glow of a screen saver.

As quietly as he could, Evan slipped from the sheets. His shoulder ached with each movement, but the pain was surprisingly manageable. He walked silently across the floorboards. His muscles felt tight, his lower back complaining about the bedridden hours.

Easing into the bathroom, he tugged the pull-chain light. His unshaven face glowered back at him from the mirror. He’d seen more attractive sights.

It took some doing to reach the string at the back of the hospital gown, but he managed, letting the fabric rustle forward off his arms and puddle on the floor. Biting his lip, he loosed the adhesive dressing taped across his shoulder, letting it hinge open. A gnarled patch of flesh capped the deltoid. A horizontal scar ran above the clavicle, an accent mark Mohawked with sutures. The bone looked passable, probably restraightened with the help of a metal rod.

His vision spotted, and he leaned against the sink to regain his balance. Another week or so and he’d be well enough to leave. But he didn’t have a week.

He had to get to the boy, as promised.

To Alison Siegler.

And then to René.

Evan’s hair was knotted, gummed with sap. His face had been wiped clean, but streaks of dried blood still marked the side of his neck, the edge of his temple. He smelled of sweat and dirt.

Lowering himself into the empty tub, he let the water trickle warm. A fresh razor rested on the cake of soap. He shaved carefully in the semidarkness, then used a washcloth to bathe himself. The lather filled the tiny bathroom with familiar scents, bergamot and saddle soap, lemon and musk — the smell of Jack. It brought Evan back to the two-story farmhouse of his childhood. His dormer bedroom looking across a blanket of oak trees. Strider, their Rhodesian ridgeback, lapping table scraps from Evan’s twelve-year-old hand beneath the table. The hard part is keeping you human. Jack’s foot ticking along to La Fille du Régiment. Nine high C’s. Towering bookshelves and mallard green walls. Photograph of Jack’s long-dead wife in its tarnished silver frame. Parking Level 3. Blue flannel. The tang of iron and cherry blossoms. Have I ever lied to you?

Have I ever lied to you?

Yes.

You have.

Evan shut off the faucet. With effort he hoisted himself up, stepped free of the bathtub, and managed to towel himself mostly dry. Leaving the dirty hospital gown, he exited the bathroom, crept across the room, and sat on the bed.

The cabinet of the nightstand held medical supplies. He spread them on the sheets. Tugged out a fresh square of gauze and tore the package with his teeth. The medical tape gave him trouble.

Behind him at the table, Jack was awake. Evan didn’t know how he knew. He just did.

Jack’s voice ghosted over his shoulder. “Can I help you?”

“No,” Evan said.

* * *

Evan awakened the next morning to an empty cabin. He felt less groggy. After dressing in some of Jack’s clothes that he found in the closet, he went over to the stretch of counter that passed for a kitchen and made himself oatmeal. He was still stirring the bowl when Jack stepped in from outside, snapping down the stubby antenna of a satphone.

“René Peter Cassaroy,” Jack said.

“That’s quite a name.”

Jack flicked his head at a stack of printouts on the kitchen table. “He’s got quite a lineage.” He ducked out of his scarf, slung it on the coatrack. “He’s in the wind.”

Evan crossed to the table, flipped through the reports, all of them stamped CLASSIFIED. Most were from the FBI, which looked to be running point on the investigation. Evan suspected that the IRS docs would prove most valuable. A few scanned crime-scene photos had been printed out as well. The barn. The basement lab. The erupted ballroom. It seemed from another lifetime.

“The fingerprint cracked things open, sped up the investigation. The Bureau is piecing together a RICO case on top of murder, kidnapping — the usual suspects. Cassaroy paid top dollar to rent gunmen from the Sinaloa Cartel, as you know. A few young men and women have gone missing from the neighboring counties, and there are some bizarre assault claims floating around as well. The agents found similar groupings of disappearances and complaints near the last several mansions Cassaroy rented — Albuquerque, Cabo San Lucas, Brussels.” Jack tugged off his jacket, heaped it atop the rack. “They’ve got meticulously maintained financial and medical files for the victims, helicopter flight logs, and a dead disreputable hematologist — Dr. Franklin? But no René Peter Cassaroy. He’s vanished.”

Evan sat down with his oatmeal over the stack of printouts. “I’ll find him.”

“If you do, Van Sciver will be waiting. Like you said, he’s already shown he can track René. He cracked his encryption once, he’ll do it again.” Jack shook off his boots. “He’ll spring a trap on you.”

“I’ll spring a trap on his trap.”

Jack settled into the chair opposite. He always sat still so as to limit any information given up by nonverbal tells. As a kid Evan had learned the same from him and from an interrogation specialist who’d rapped his knuckles with a metal file every time he made a hand gesture. He and Jack faced each other now, paralyzed grand masters contemplating their next move.

“How did you get out of that parking structure?” Evan asked.

“I stumbled from the rear stairwell right after you. I had a man in the area. He picked me up half dead, got me to an old friend at Walter Reed. I woke up stitched back together.”

Evan struggled to get his head around it. Jack must have had a Smoke Contingency also, a plan to disappear. Stashed papers and hidden accounts and a cabin in the Alleghenies. Eight years. Eight years.

“So those men I killed that night,” Evan said. “The men who shot you — they were Van Sciver’s men?”

“Yes.”

“How many are there?”

Jack looked at him blankly.

“Orphans,” Evan said.

“From what I can glean, only a half dozen or so left under Van Sciver’s control,” Jack said. “It’s hard to get a precise count because, you know. Orphans.”

“Van Sciver’s hunting down those of us who got out. Those of us who were deemed higher risk.”

“He’s hunting some more than others,” Jack said pointedly.

“They’re neutralizing us.”

“I know,” Jack said. “I been working sub rosa, helping the ones who need it most.”

“You always knew. Even way back when, before you met me in that parking structure. You sent me the fake assignment to kill Van Sciver because you knew I’d refuse and go to ground. You knew I’d never kill one of my own. It was a play.”

Jack broke the mannequin standoff, rubbing his eyes. “It was more complicated than that. Van Sciver was tasked with killing you. If you’d found out, you would’ve destroyed everyone in your path.”

“Yes.”

“The directive came from the highest level. You would have tried to kill your way right up the chain.”

“Yes.”

“You would have died. Even you, Evan.”

“I would have died for the truth instead of running from a lie. That’s what you did to me. Eight years I’ve been running from that goddamned parking lot—”

“Eight years you’ve been alive.”

“That’s all that matters to you?”

“Yes!” Jack brought his fist down on the table, making the bowl jump. “That’s all that matters to me.”

“I thought I killed you. I forced you to break cover to meet me.”

“I told you it wasn’t your fault. I told you it was my choice to meet you. I told you—”

“It doesn’t matter what you said. It matters what happened.

“I knew you’d never run. Not as long as you thought I was alive. At some point you’d stick your head up, make contact with me, and they would get you.”

“Like you did now?”

“I found out you were in trouble. And I moved heaven and earth to get to you. You’re still a son to me. Look at me. You’re still my son.”

“Do you have any idea what I’ve lived with?”

“How about what I bear?” Jack said. “Taking you from that foster home. Stripping you of … human warmth. Putting you in harm’s way to do harm. I dragged you into all this. I wanted you to get out. I wanted you to have a chance.”

“At what?”

“At a life!” Jack flared a hand angrily around the cabin. “That isn’t this. A wife. Maybe even kids. I tried to free you. I didn’t think you’d scurry right back to it, Assassin for the People.” He tapped his palm on the table, a judge’s gavel. “That is what you do now, isn’t it? Freelance jobs? For others, people who can’t—”

“You’ve been keeping tabs on me?”

“From afar,” Jack said. “I couldn’t let you go. I could never let you go. I know you can’t see it this way right now, but it was a sacrifice, what I did.”

“A sacrifice.”

Jack firmed at Evan’s tone. “You’ve never been a father.”

Evan felt the pulse fluttering his neck. “A father? You weren’t my father. I wasn’t a son to you. I was a weapon. You shaped me into what you needed and used me until I was used up.”

Jack stiffened. The skin around his eyes shifted, and for an awful moment Evan thought he might cry.

Jack cleared his throat. “You know that’s not true. However angry you are, you know that’s not true.”

“I have been paying penance,” Evan said. “For the blood on my hands. Including yours.”

Jack sagged back in his chair. “I couldn’t risk losing you, Evan. Not after I lost Clara.”

“You swore. You swore you’d never lie to me. It was the one thing I could count on. The one solid thing I could trust in the world. You don’t know what my first twelve years were like. In that home — in all the homes. You … you were the one thing I could ever count on.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you.” Evan stood and stuffed the stack of printouts inside his jacket. He grabbed the cash and the fake license and walked out.

For a long time, Jack sat in his chair, staring at the empty seat across from him.

His breathing grew harder.

He raised a hand and pressed it over his mouth. Tears forded his knuckles, spotting the rough wood of the table.

He did not make a sound.

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