Gregg Hurwitz - The Survivor

Grace gestured Nate toward the couch, then sat in a worn denim chair draped with a crocheted blanket. He took the cushion next to Charles, who watched him with keen interest. A dusty upright piano in the background held countless framed pictures of Charles, many from his boyhood. That dopey, optimistic smile.

“I’m happy for the visit,” Grace said.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier.” Nate laced his fingers, staring down, working up the courage. “I was with Charles. When he died.”

She looked up and away, the skin loose at her neck. Her ankles shifted below the hem of the robe, the skin dry and white.

“I was afraid to see you,” he continued slowly. “To talk to you. Because of what that might bring up for me. And that wasn’t right.”

She nodded a few times. “I’d like to know,” she said. “Everything. I’ve been living in a haze of government-issue obfuscation for almost a decade now. And that’s been the worst part of the grieving. Not knowing.”

He’d forgotten her razor clarity, perhaps because it always seemed at odds with her chipper demeanor. A former teacher, she used her words precisely.

“Are you sure you want the details?”

“I think I’m entitled.” She readjusted the blanket across her legs. “I’ve certainly had enough time to think about it.”

Nate glanced across at Charles, who for once didn’t say anything. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple jerking.

Nate began, starting with Abibas and the little girl with the paddleball. How Charles had found the skinny man they were seeking, hiding behind a generator. The roasting walk out to the sand dunes. Abibas forgetting his notebook. Nate’s moment of indecision and how Charles leaped on the rucksack.

At this, Grace’s eyes moistened, and she lifted a tissue, produced from thin air, to her cheeks. Her eyes closed, a glow coming up beneath her grief-stricken face, altering her expression. It took a moment for Nate to identify it. Pride.

He kept on. How he recalled seeing the rotor blades kiss the sand and then not much of the minutes after. McGuire screaming, holding his severed leg. And Charles’s gut, the morass of dark blood. How Nate had carried him over his back, running to get help, and how he couldn’t let go even when the sergeant asked him to.

Somewhere in the telling, Nate realized he’d gone hoarse with emotion, the words a rush at his mouth. “‘Don’t leave me.’ He kept telling me, ‘Don’t leave me.’”

At long last she rose with difficulty. She crossed and laid a fragile hand on his shoulder, light as a feather. “You never did.”

The words went straight to the core of him, the simplest truth and yet one that redrew the lines of a picture he’d thought was carved in stone.

She walked slowly from the room, heading toward the rear of the house, and Nate understood somehow that she wouldn’t be back.

When he rose, he saw that Charles was standing in the front doorway, forearms pressed to the frame on either side, a cowboy’s lean. A playful enough posture, but it was clear that he was moved by what had preceded and was doing his best to cover up. He screwed on his crooked grin. “What next?”

“Sorry, podnah,” Nate said. “From here I walk alone.”

He brushed through him heading out the door.

NEW ODESSA . The scrolled letters on the glowing yellow sign were visible from a block away. The parking lot sat empty until Nate pulled the Jeep in and slotted it into a front space. The vast bouncer-the one who’d shoved his face to the table-preened beneath the awning, peering at the dark glass inset in the oak door and making imperceptible changes to his cropped hair.

He turned as Nate approached and grinned broadly, showing off a gap between his front teeth. “You come back for more-”

Removing a handgun from the waistband of his jeans, Nate walked right past him, firing down through his thigh. As the big man grunted and began a slow-motion collapse, Nate pushed through the big door, never breaking stride.

The waitstaff flitted between the empty tables, changing linens and flatware, making the most of the pre-dinner break. They paused at Nate’s entrance, the memory of the gunshot hanging in the dim air. In the TV mounted above the bar, he caught a picture of himself and a snip of a newscaster’s chirpy declaration: “-in a startling reversal, the former bank hero now wanted in connection with the murder of a federal officer-” He kept on, pistol low at his side, weaving through workers. In the rear banquet hall, a band dressed in costumes suited to a medieval fair tuned their instruments, the shrill cacophony amplified off the brick walls.

Nate beelined for the VIP table encircled by pillars. Sure enough, the Georgian was there, poring over paperwork, one jaundiced hand poking at an accountant’s calculator as the other groped blindly between a platter of pickled fish and a wineglass. He lifted his head at the sound of Nate’s approach, his meaty lips twitching with disdain.

Nate kicked the chair straight out from under him, the hefty man toppling forward, his face smashing into the platter. The wineglass went sideways, his hands groping at the tablecloth, pulling himself up even as the cloth lost traction. Wheezing, he collapsed into the neighboring chair, hand cupped beneath his mouth, drooling blood through his fingers onto the starched linen. Red wine blotted his shirt. A piece of herring clung to the bulge beneath his chin. His eyes were wide, rolling, and his vast chest heaved. The lock of dyed black hair swooped up and away from his forehead as if aspiring to flight.

With his strong hand, Nate slammed the big head to the table, pressed Danny Urban’s Glock 19 to his temple, and brought his clenched teeth to just above the man’s ear. “Tell him I’m coming for him. Tonight. Understand?”

The Georgian’s frantic nod against the tablecloth rattled the shards of the shattered platter.

Nate left him in the mess. The workers stood frozen between the tables. As he walked past, they lowered their eyes with respect.

Under the awning the bouncer was slumped back against the wall, each short breath blowing a string of saliva from his mouth. Bone glinted deep in the wound. His pant leg was lifted, snared on the ankle holster, and he leaned forward a few inches, reaching vainly for the gun. His trembling fingers were feet away and not getting any closer.

Nate stepped over his legs on his way out.

Yuri and Misha had taken the replacement Jaguar because the Town Car looked too conspicuous. A sheet of paper wedged on the dashboard and reflected up onto the windshield held numerous addresses, each a secondary residence of one of the Overbays’ relatives or friends. The top two addresses were crossed out. Next up was the cabin belonging to Nate’s father.

Flicking a cigarette out the window, Yuri turned off at the base of Bouquet Canyon and headed upslope. Wearing a sport coat and jeans bleached to within a shade of white, Misha reclined in the passenger seat, turning the map this way and that.

Blue and red lights flashed behind them, and Yuri lifted his eyes to the rearview, cursing under his breath. A Chevy Tahoe, raised on big knobby tires, with a light bar and a big black bumper guard like a shark’s mouth. A Forest Service ranger. As Yuri signaled and pulled over, Misha removed a pistol from beneath his sport coat and racked the slide to chamber a round.

Yuri waved at him. “Not yet.”

As the ranger approached in his pressed green uniform and the silly broad-brimmed hat, Misha slid the pistol beneath his leg and smoothed his hands down his thighs.

The ranger tapped the glass, and Yuri rolled down the window.

“Whoa there, pal. What happened to your face?”