Marcus Sakey - The Blade Itself

He nodded, trying to keep his voice reassuring. “Just don’t do it again, okay? I know it seems like a little thing, but-”

“-It’s the little things that get you caught.” She smiled. “Evan told me you used to say that all the time.” Her face suddenly darkened at the name.

“What is it?”

She looked away from him, staring out toward the road, watching traffic pass. “I didn’t know he was going to do it. I should have known, I guess, but I didn’t. Really.”

“Do what?” Silence. “Debbie, do what?”

She looked back at him, her eyes shot through with red, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I didn’t know Evan was going to kill him.”

He felt the ground roll, and reached out a hand to lean against the SUV. Kill him? What did that mean? Kill who?

“We were out to lunch, I didn’t want to go, but he convinced me that Tommy would be okay. When we finished eating, he said he had a call to make. He got out a matchbook with a number on it, and I tried to stop him from calling, but it was too late, he was already talking to Richard.” Her words came fast, piling on one another, her eyes wide like a child’s. “He said if he didn’t get the money he was going to shoot Tommy in the head, and just then some guy walked out of the bathroom, and I don’t know if he heard or not, but Evan followed him to the parking lot, and, and…” Her voice choked in a sob, and she turned away, then bent over, her hands knit across her stomach.

A bead of sweat ran down his side. Overhead, he could hear the faint buzzing of a plane. Evan had killed someone.

Oh, sweet Jesus.

“Debbie.” He waited for her to straighten up, to take a breath. “Where is Evan now?”

“He put the guy in the trunk of his car and made me follow him to O’Hare long-term parking. He said he’d deal with the body later.” She shivered. “Then we went back to the trailer, and I told him I needed to get out for a couple of hours. That I had to shower.”

“Good. You go home now.” He pitched his voice level and even, as if talking to a teenager. “Forget any of this ever happened.”

“What do you mean?” She looked at him, confused.

“Walk away. Be done with it.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean?” She couldn’t still have a fire burning for Evan, not after this. Danny had pegged her as a groupie, a smart woman who liked bad men, but it couldn’t run this deep. “You’ve got to get clear.”

She looked away. “I’d cut off a finger for a cigarette right now.”

He stepped forward, grabbed her by the shoulders. She tried to squirm away, but he held fast. “I can’t,” she whispered.

He stared at her, mute.

“Think about it,” she said. “If I bail, what’s Evan going to do? I saw him kill someone .”

Her eyes were red and tired of the whole world. The punk-rock princess was gone, and what was left was a scared little girl. But she was right. Evan might go after her. Or he might panic and kill Tommy.

He nodded, let go of her shoulders. “Okay.” He stepped back, reached in his pocket for his keys. She winced when she saw them, but he didn’t have time to ask why. He turned and walked toward the truck. “Go home,” he said over his shoulder.

“What are you going to do?”

He stopped, the car door open, and turned to look at her. “I’m going to end this.” Then he climbed in, started the engine, and gunned it. The tires squealed as they bit, rocketing the car forward. The speed felt right, clean and pure as anger. He looked in the rearview when he reached the street, and saw that she was still standing there, staring after him, though at this distance he couldn’t tell if her expression was hopeful or despairing. Then he turned onto the street and she was gone.

Evan had killed someone.

What had happened to Evan? What had he become? He’d always been reckless and too hard. But this took things to a new level. Maybe it was prison. Maybe it was desperation. Something had turned Evan into the kind of man who could decide a stranger needed to die and then kill him.

Jesus.

And the call! Why had he made the call from the diner? Why make it at all? To impress Debbie, to show his independence? Why call Richard for that?

Wait a minute . More important than why was how. In order to make the call, he would have needed the phone number. Danny thought back, trying to replay Debbie’s fractured monologue. She’d said something about him taking out a matchbook with the number on it.

Which meant that after the first call two days ago, Evan had taken the trouble not only to remember the number, but to write it down. Not exactly brain surgery. But also not the kind of thing Evan did. Unless he’d already been planning, even then, to act without Danny. The thought sent a chill down his spine, immediately followed by a flush of furious heat.

Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised him. But it did.

In front of him, traffic slowed, a sea of brake lights. Everyday people trying to get home. At this rate it would take him twenty minutes to make ten blocks.

He swerved over to the shoulder, ignoring the honking, and jammed his foot to the accelerator, half on, half off the road. Cars blurred by. Farther down the shoulder became parking, so he turned into a diner, slowed enough to engage the four-wheel drive, and then rolled right over the grassy embankment separating it from the southbound street. It was a quiet road that took him six blocks before dead-ending in one of the small parks that dotted Chicago. He didn’t even slow down, just took the curb at speed, the wheels jamming into it before catching, jerking him forward till the seat belt bit. Two black teenagers sharing a cigarette on top of the playground equipment spun to watch him, their mouths open, but it didn’t matter, because on the other side of the park lay Pike Street, just down from the site.

He was running on anger, never the smart play, but right now, he didn’t care. All the lethal thoughts he’d entertained the other night were bubbling to the surface. He covered the last two blocks and pulled up to the construction fence. The gate was closed but unlatched, and he nudged it with the front of the truck and drove right through. He was out of the car before the engine had even fully stopped.

Evan sat on the cinder-block steps of the trailer, a cigarette in one hand. He rose, his shoulders back, and flicked the half-finished smoke to one side. “Hey, partner.”

Danny didn’t speak, just let the momentum carry him the four paces to the steps, his eyes on Evan’s, his arm snapping back into a swing that caught Evan off guard, Evan’s hands coming up too slowly to keep Danny from connecting with his jaw, a hearty, dead-on smack that left Danny’s hand throbbing with shards of pain. Evan fell, caught himself against the side of the trailer, and came up in a lunge, his fists quick, forcing Danny back. He blocked one, stepped away from a second, but a brutal right caught him in the temple, the world leaping and resettling, and then it was on, the two of them scrabbling and fighting like kids from the old neighborhood. Danny managed to bring a knee up into Evan’s gut but took two quick jabs to his side in the process, both men breathing hard, gritting teeth, murder in their eyes. It was all coming out in Danny now, every stress of the last month, every setback and failure and lie and calculation he’d sworn he’d never make again, and it burned hot as gasoline. He landed a cross that spun Evan’s face and bloodied his nose, but in the process overreached and left himself open. He saw the mistake too late, Evan’s fist coming round in a hurtling uppercut, all the strength of his body behind it, and then suns exploded behind Danny’s eyes as the force of the punch lifted him off the ground. He fell back, the gravel rushing to meet him, slapping his back. A steel-toed boot slammed into his kidney, and he jerked to his side, at once gasping for air and gagging viciously.