Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

“You just came for the boxed merlot?”

“I got dragged off the elevator.”

“Poor defenseless baby.”

“Mom?” Peter tugged at Mia’s sleeve indelicately. “I have to get a poster board for that stupid family report.”

Mia said, “Poster board. Stupid family report. Got it.”

“And, Mom? Mom? You said we could get the Christmas tree this weekend.”

“Christmas tree. Weekend. Copy that.”

“And, Mom?”

“That’s it. You’ll get your poster board for the stupid family report and a Christmas tree, but that’s where I’m drawing the line. Mom’s closed.”

Peter’s lank blond hair swirled in the front, a cowlick that served almost as a side part. It gave him a bit of gravitas, though it was undercut by the smear of chocolate on his chin. “I was just gonna ask if I could have a Coke.”

“Sprite. No caffeine.”

He scrambled off toward the drink cooler, his shirttails swaying.

“What’s with the shirt?” Evan asked.

“It was Roger’s,” Mia said. “Peter got into my closet and started wearing them last month.”

Mia’s husband had passed away when Peter was three. Adopted by Mia and Roger as a baby, Peter had always grappled with questions about his lineage.

“I’m not sure how to handle it. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He just says he likes the shirts.” Mia ran a hand through her curls, heaped them on the other side. “Maybe I should’ve thrown them out? The shirts?” She leaned close, put her mouth to Evan’s ear to talk over the music. “There’s no handbook for this stuff, you know?”

“No.”

“What do you think? You said you never knew your birth parents, right?”

Evan flashed on Veronica crouching by that ancient statue of a lost baby in the cemetery, her head bowed as if in prayer. How he could see the mirror of his own features in hers. The way she’d rested her hands on his shoulders. Maternally.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “No.”

In the background, even over the tumbao rhythm, he could hear Hugh Walters holding forth about his perplexing new symptoms of gastrointestinal distress.

It was difficult to fathom that hours ago Evan had flung himself into a dumpster to avoid disintegration by Hellfire missile.

“I know it’s different, but maybe you could talk to him about whatever he’s working through,” Mia said. “Whether it’s about where he came from or Roger’s death or whatever.”

Hugh’s voice rose again above the music. “And tuna,” he said. “It just moves right through me.”

Lorilee had stopped dancing to refill her drink. She paused over by the table, arms crossed, one hand cupping the opposite elbow, staring at nothing. She looked suddenly lost. Despite the work she’d had done, Evan could see the worry lines beneath her eyes. He wondered what would drive her to alter her body continuously and drastically, to fight against time, against who she was.

She looked lonely, so lonely, as if the veil had dropped and he was seeing her true self. He felt a pang of empathy. And it struck him that since looking into Veronica’s face, he’d felt more adrift. It wasn’t a feeling of homecoming but a reminder of what he’d never had.

Lorilee was now studying the big going-away banner—that cartoon cowgirl riding off into a better tomorrow—with wistfulness. And fear. Johnny touched her arm, an invitation to dance, and she suddenly snapped back into form, an openmouthed smile and a whoop as she allowed herself to be spun.

How unmoored they all were, how helpless, how courageous. Lorilee struggling to present her best face to an unsure world. Peter struggling to know a father who’d died before he could solidify into memory. Mia struggling to help her son.

And Evan.

Mia had said something. “Well?”

“What?”

“Will you talk to him?”

Evan felt the slightest pressure behind his face. “Sure.”

She reached out gently and touched his cheek. “What happened here? You look scraped up.” This was the plausible-deniability dance they always did, former assassin and district attorney skirting the edge of the truth. He started to answer, but she cut him off. “I know, I know. You fell down the stairs, walked into a door—”

“—dodged an air-to-surface missile.”

She laughed. “Okay, Mr. Danger.”

Johnny spun Lorilee, and she let go of his hand, allowing herself to accidentally brush Mia aside and fall into Evan, her breasts hard and synthetic against his chest. Her perfume had been applied with biblical intensity.

Lorilee beamed into Evan’s face. “Who’s a single Pringle ready to mingle?”

She grabbed Evan’s hand and spun back to dance-point at Johnny and jiggle her hips.

At Evan’s side Mia covered her mouth in a poor attempt to hide her schadenfreude. Evan had an instant to say, “Kill me,” before Lorilee yanked him into a cha-cha.

18Picking a Fight with Vodka

Upstairs, Evan stripped naked and burned his clothes and boots in the freestanding fireplace that sprouted from the expanse of the gunmetal-gray concrete floor, its flue a sleek metal trunk. Despite the fact that he’d already changed outfits once at the safe house, habit was habit. As the Second Commandment decreed, How you do anything is how you do everything .

He clipped his nails, taking them to the quick, and used a toothpick to scrape out the last remnants of ash. Then he took another shower, scouring with a silicone scrubber. There was virtually no chance that trace evidence remained on his skin, but he found the cleansing ritual calming; it soothed the OCD compulsions coiling around his brain, squeezing like a python.

He had plenty to be stressed about. He had met the woman who’d given birth to him and been asked to help a man who was either a murderer or a murder witness. He had been set upon by a crew of bodyguards and half the Argentine police force. He had survived a drone attack and a cha-cha with Lorilee Smithson.

He required vodka.

First he dressed, pulling his usual items from the dresser. He kept ten of each piece of clothing, all identical, folded with razor-sharp precision. From the top of each stack, he peeled one fresh item—boxer briefs, gray V-necked T-shirt, dark jeans. A new pair of Original S.W.A.T. boots from the tower of boxes in the closet. A Victorinox watch fob.

Then on to the kitchen.

He entered the freezer room, a cool waft finding his singed cheeks. The door sucked shut behind him, the rubber seals whispering an airtight foomp . The bottles stood in perfect parallel on the shelves like cartridges on an ammunition belt. Through the wall of exterior glass, a thousand pinpoint lights glistened in Century City, the world at bay for the moment.

He started to reach for the Guillotine Vodka but hesitated, his fingertips brushing the cool glass.

This was not a formal mission—and he was retired. He deserved to relax, take the night off, and resume in the morning. He’d offered to look into Andrew Duran for Veronica, but that didn’t mean he had to devote himself to it with his usual fervor. It had already nearly cost him his life and had the potential to cost him his unofficial presidential pardon.

Whatever Duran knew, it was dangerous enough that they were willing to bring a Hellfire down on his head.

“So what?” Evan asked the chilled bottle.

He thought about the next step. When he got back on Duran’s trail in the morning, Evan would make sure not to wear a hat so the eyes in the sky wouldn’t mistake him again for the target and convert him into pink mist.

But the longer he waited, the more at risk Duran was.

Evan thought back to Veronica’s voice over the phone. All I know is that there are people after him. And that he’s scared for his life .