Into the Fire(6)
In the past year, he’d resected the cancer of his past. He’d vanquished the corrupt Orphans pursuing him. And the man at whose direction they’d been acting—the president of the United States. The plan to wipe out the innocent Orphans had been stopped and the survivors scattered to the wind.
Now that Evan was no longer running from something, he’d started to wonder where he was running to. Lately he felt worn down, bone-tired. More and more, questions were arising from some deep-buried place.
How much atonement was enough?
How much longer could he forge through the refuse-choked alleys of cities, staring down eyes as black as the abyss, souls clouded with sick intentions?
Would he just keep going until he was holding down a slab at the morgue?
At some point had he earned enough of himself back to deserve something better?
He didn’t know. But he’d decided nonetheless.
The next adventure would be his last.
One more ring of the durable black phone that he kept on his person at all times. One more time he’d shatter through into the underworld and—if he could make it back alive—carry someone out of damnation. One more time sacrificing a pound of his flesh to win a piece of his soul.
One last mission and he was out.
4
A Healthy Touch of Paranoia
Parked in an alley behind a grocery store in West L.A., Max took a deep breath and tore open the cheery yellow envelope Grant had given him.
It contained a folded piece of Grant’s letterhead with a name and phone number scrawled on it. Lorraine Lennox, who Max took to be the reporter at the Los Angeles Times who Grant told him he could trust. As he unfolded the bottom flap of the letter, a smaller yellow envelope tumbled into his lap. Three words written boldly across the front: “DO NOT OPEN.” It had some heft to it, as if it contained a silver dollar.
Max tossed the smaller envelope onto the passenger seat. Stared at the number on the letter.
“If anything ever happens to me, call the number inside.”
Max wasn’t worth much, but he was worth his word.
He dialed.
Four rings to voice mail. Lorraine Lennox, asking him to leave a message, sounded trustworthy enough. At the beep he said, “Yeah, hi, it’s … uh, Max Merriweather. I need … I really need to talk to you as soon as possible. So call me back. Like now.” He heard the intensity rising in his voice and took a breath. “I’m sorry if that sounds all stalkery. It’s just— Look, I’m in a super weird situation—dangerous, even—and I need to … Uh, you’re the only person I’m supposed to talk to. Because I promised, and…” He rubbed at his bleary eyes, unsure how to explain. “Please call me back. Okay. Thanks.”
He rattled off his phone number and hung up.
He blew out a shaky breath and reminded himself that a whole lotta folks do better with worse, that he could be in Aleppo or Fallujah right now.
That he wasn’t absolutely fucking terrified.
He was down to a quarter tank of gas, and he had no clothes, no money, no clue what to do next. He debated for the fifth time or the fiftieth whether he should go to the cops, but Grant had told him to trust nobody except Lorraine Lennox. Max had given his word, and now Grant’s request had upgraded itself into a dying wish. Plus, encountering a bowie knife–wielding psychopath nicknamed “The Terror” had inspired a healthy touch of paranoia.
The air coming in through the vents carried the sickly-sweet smell of rotting produce, which didn’t help the acid roiling in his gut.
He put his hands on the steering wheel as if he were going somewhere, but he had nowhere to go. He cursed Grant, himself, the whole untenable situation, and then he lost an internal struggle and reached for the phone once again.
This time a prerecorded message announced Ms. Lennox’s office mailbox as full.
He hung up and glared over at the DO NOT OPEN envelope.
It glared back.
He reached for it and then withdrew his hand.
Grant inspired a kind of compliance. The oldest of the cousins, he’d always been the patriarch of this generation of Merriweathers. For his fiftieth birthday last March, he’d rented a yacht and hosted a champagne-and-starlight party on the marina. Max had heard all about it from his old man—crab claws and Perrier-Jou?t, a string quartet and iPad party favors, each luxury recounted with a kind of accusation.
Max had entered the world a disappointment to his father. His mother had died from complications giving birth to him, a cardiorespiratory arrest from an amniotic-fluid embolism, big words he’d learned very young. His father, from a close-knit family of five brothers, had raised him stoically, pretending not to resent the fact that his only kid had robbed him of his shot at the future he’d imagined. Terry had seen through his paternal duties with joyless competence, providing the basics and little more.
The best defense, Max had quickly figured out, was to keep his head down, to be unseen, the squeakless wheel. After all, he already had enough to apologize for. Not wanting to intrude on his father, he’d GED’d his way out of Culver City High and gone to work. As long as he had his freedom, he was content to be the least robust apple on the family tree.
Until Violet.
The summer of his twenty-sixth birthday, he’d met her after a George Thorogood concert at the Morongo Casino near Palm Springs. His buddy scored tickets, and Max bought the overpriced beers, and they’d spilled out onto the casino floor afterward with “Bad to the Bone” ringing in their ears and an unearned sense of optimism for what the night could hold.