Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

The other spoke up. “We have encountered many men who weren’t interested in our opinions. Their broken bodies are now at the bottom of the Río de la Plata. You will see them soon enough.”

He took a step forward. His counterpart paralleled him on the left side.

Evan said, “This isn’t a good idea.”

The second man chuckled, leaned back on his heels. They each had at least four inches and fifty pounds on Evan. “You don’t look like much.”

Evan said, “That’s why this isn’t a good idea.”

The man sidled forward, resting a firm hand on Evan’s shoulder. The clenched grip was supposed to be intimidating, but it accomplished little more than making the man’s limb available.

Evan said, “We’re really gonna do this, then?”

“We are.”

Evan said, “Okay.” He grabbed the man’s hand and rolled it outward, snapping wrist and elbow with two percussive pops. A savate piston kick staved in the guy’s knee from the side, and he grunted and sank a few inches, evening out the height differential.

Before the bodyguard to the left could react, Evan reached across the injured man’s broad back, gripped him beneath the armpit, and pinwheeled him into his partner. Hurled sideways, the man hit his colleague at mid-leg, hyperextending both knees with a pleasing crackle. They tumbled into a stone edifice, the first man’s head smacking the wall from the momentum of their fall, the second’s after Evan clipped his chin with a well-placed jab, driving his skull into the granite.

They weren’t unconscious, but they couldn’t manage anything more than breathing, wet rasps and shudders. Evan looked down at them, doing his best not to consider how satisfying it felt to knock the rust off his fighting-muscle memory. It had all the dark deliciousness of giving in to a bad habit. He knew too well the costs of surrendering to it and yet couldn’t shake the sense right now, with the night air keen at the back of his throat and the rush of blood in his veins, that this was in fact the thing he was meant to do.

The greater the gift, the greater the curse.

Evan patted the men down, finding on each a Bersa Thunder .45, the predictable choice for an Argentine strongman.

The corroding door of the mausoleum had wedged halfway open, exhaling a faint waft of rot and mold. Evan rolled the men through the gap, letting the dank interior swallow them. Their pained exhalations floated out, ghostly echoes.

Evan dropped the magazines from both guns, cleared the rounds in the chambers, and tossed the pieces into a nearby trash can.

Then he started back toward the spot where the woman—Veronica?—had posed in feigned vigil over the child’s tomb.

The third bodyguard stood in the middle of the next lane, perfectly backlit, the glow from the distant high-rises bleeding around his silhouette. His gun was out, aimed at Evan.

They confronted each other a few feet apart.

Evan said, “Bersa Thunder .45, huh?”

“A nicely weighted gun.”

“I always found it lacking. The trigger-return spring gives out after a few hundred rounds.”

The man shifted his weight. He was barrel-chested, the glow of the streetlamps limning the side of his face, highlighting muttonchop sideburns. “I hadn’t noticed.” His accent was thicker, with the Italian lilt that qualified the Spanish here. He kept the pistol aimed at Evan’s heart. “Slide-lock issues, though.” He made a clucking sound to voice his disapproval.

He took a slight step forward. His gun hand stayed steady. Not his first rodeo.

Evan eyed the frame-mounted safety at the rear of the pistol. It was off. The man’s thumb was under the safety lever, not riding on top of it, a tell that he was not as experienced an operator as he projected. The .45’s heavy recoil could cause the thumb to slip on the grip and accidentally engage the safety.

The man flicked his head at the darkness behind Evan. “My men?”

“They’re alive.”

The man sidled forward a bit more, bringing the muzzle within a few feet of Evan’s chest. With its mishmashed frame angles, oversize levers, and aggressively angled trigger, it was a dog’s breakfast of a pistol.

Which made it a nice match for the man’s face.

He smiled, revealing beautiful square teeth inside a dense beard. “My name is Raúl. I am in charge of Ms. Veronica. I am under specific orders not to let anyone near her.”

“Were those orders given by Ms. Veronica?”

“This is not your business. And you are unarmed. I understand you got past my associates, and that has given you confidence. But they are boys. You are about to find out what happens when you meet a man.”

Evan nodded, chewed his lip. “Let me be clear. I’m a nice guy by choice.”

Raúl grinned again. “You are a nice guy who is about to—”

Evan’s hand flashed out, slapping Raúl’s thumb upward, engaging the safety an instant before Raúl pulled the trigger. Raúl’s eyes dropped to the Bersa, and Evan drove a wing chun bil jee finger jab into his larynx. Raúl clutched at his throat, releasing the pistol. As it fell, Evan caught it by the slide, his hand rising in an uppercut, the metal curled in his fist like a roll of quarters. When he struck the jawbone, he heard those beautiful teeth splinter.

Raúl went down, shoulder blades slapping concrete. His hands pressed to the bottom of his face, which was no longer the shape it had been an instant prior. Evan stepped over him carefully and turned the corner.

The woman was still before the tomb with the baby’s carved likeness. But she was standing now, staring directly at him. She was poised, exceptionally so, shoulders back, swanlike neck, her hands at repose at her narrow waist like those of a ballerina in first position. Given the gloom and the eclipse of her black summer hat, he could see nothing of her features. And at this distance he was confident that she could see nothing of his.

Unsure what to expect, he started for her. Moonlight glossed the edges of the mausoleums. The air was heavy with the sweet-rot scent of dead flowers.

She didn’t move as he drew near.

And then her arms straightened nervously, one hand picking at the hip of her dress. A resonance in his chest caught him off guard; it was as though she’d teleported her trepidation to him. But how did he know she was apprehensive?

And more to the point, why was he?

He was aware of his arms swinging heavily at his sides, the distance closing one painstaking step at a time. And then he was standing before her. Her breathing had quickened, her chest rising and falling, her collarbones and the hollow of her neck pronounced.

Trace of lilac. The faint pressure of her breath in the air. The total black of her face.

She reached tentatively for his cheek and then seemed to lose her nerve. Her hand froze, wobbling in the air.

An exhale escaped her, putting more slack in her posture. Averting her gaze, she looked down to one side. A straw-yellow glow from a streetlight beyond the cemetery’s wall caught half her face, mascara-laden lashes casting a shadow down her cheek, doubling the smoky look of her eyes.

He looked at her wide cheeks and dark shimmering eyes.

And knew it was her.

Something beneath the surface of her pale skin, something deeper than an expression or even bone structure, a physical resonance no less profound than the one that had transmitted her apprehension to him.

Ms. Veronica.

The woman who’d given birth to him.

In the pit of his gut, he felt something knot and release simultaneously. It was a yielding and a hardening, though into what and against what he did not know. His face felt hot, an uncharacteristic flush creeping north from his throat. Moments before, he’d engaged three large men without so much as an uptick in heartbeat, but now he sensed his breath moving irregularly in his throat.