The Nowhere Man

7 The Inevitable Gurgle

Once again Evan is inside that underground parking lot just south of the Jefferson Monument. Parking Level 3 is his personal hell.

Or, more aptly, his purgatory.

It is a humid summer night in 2008, the same night he has been stuck inside for eight years and change.

The elevator sign glows red as always, casting bloody shadows across the slumbering construction equipment. The lot is shut down for improvements. Evan waits behind a concrete pillar, scraping his boots against a bumper curb to dislodge the cherry blossoms from the tread.

He has summoned Jack here for a midnight meet. Evan is supposed to be in Frankfurt right now, lying low after a high-profile job in Yemen, but instead he has flown back to the States, impulsive and agitated and needing to see the face of the only person in the world he can trust.

Evan wants out.

Jack raised him to be the finest assassin in the world. He also raised him to keep his humanity. Two trains on a collision course.

After a decade spent operating as Orphan X, Evan knows he has to jump off before the crash, even if the jump kills him.

He doesn’t consider that there might be worse outcomes.

Jack didn’t want to meet. He said he was watching his movements. That he didn’t want to be drawn out, to break cover. But Evan demanded, and despite his better judgment Jack finally agreed.

It happens as it always does.

Jack appears from nowhere, footsteps ticktocking off the concrete walls, shadow stretched to noirish proportions across the oil-stained floor. He and Evan embrace. It has been more than two years since they’ve seen each other face-to-face. Jack appraises Evan as if he’s a son come home from grad school. A glint of pride touches Jack’s eyes. He is baseball-catcher square and rarely permits emotion to leak through the mask.

The words spill from Evan’s mouth. “I’m out.”

Jack answers with the words Evan has heard in a thousand renditions: “You’re never out. You know this. Without me you’re just—”

“A war criminal.”

The discussion intensifies as is ordained.

Until.

The roar of an engine and a startling burst of headlights snap their heads around to the black SUV flying down the ramp, careening onto the deserted parking level. Guns fire through the windshield, muzzle flares strobe-lighting the vehicle’s advance.

Jack grabs Evan, yanks him behind a pillar. Evan rolls across the back of the rounded concrete, the cool surface kissing the blades of his shoulders, and pops out the other side already shooting. He Swiss-cheeses the front seats and whoever occupies them. The SUV slows to a crawl, rolls forward to brush Evan’s thighs. The would-be assassins, tilted over the dashboard, have been made unrecognizable by his well-placed hollow points.

He braces himself for the noise he knows will come next.

The inevitable gurgle from behind him.

Bright arterial blood soaks the shoulder of the blue flannel. Jack’s hand, already wearing a glove of crimson, clamps the wound.

Evan rips the flannel off to get a clean look. Needles of blood spray from between Jack’s fingers. Lingering beneath the familiar tang of iron, the sickly sweet trace of cherry blossom churns Evan’s gut.

Years of training have stripped the panic reaction out of him, have crushed it from his cells.

And yet.

His face hot.

Time moving differently.

Grief clawing free of the lockbox in his chest, crowding his throat.

Jack is saying things he never said, things he would never say. He is speaking not from the memory but from Evan’s heart of hearts.

I took you in.

Raised you as my own.

And you killed me.

Why?

He raises an arm cloaked in blood, pointing out, away.

Banishing Evan from the intimate sight of his last ragged breaths.

Banishing Evan to a lifetime of atonement.

Banishing Evan from himself.

With the bloody flannel mopped around his fist, Evan runs. He runs for the darkness, because only darkness can cover the nakedness of his shame.

Only in darkness can he be alone.

He came to in silk.

Liquid sheets caressing his skin, a sea of rumpled purple darker than eggplant, a bed fit for a maharaja.

At first he thought he was still in the dream.

And then the pain hit.