Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

She patted her pockets. No change. She looked at Bridger, who was predictably useless. She walked to the newspaper stand, liberated a brown paper bag while the worker was distracted helping a customer, and put it over the parking meter upside down.

A quick and easy out-of-service scam.

Evan felt his temperature tick up another degree.

Bridger led her into the Italian restaurant next door.

Evan moved to the opposite curb and parked, watching across two lanes of traffic as they were shown to a window table.

A poor countersurveillance move. Joey still had much to learn.

Which was precisely why she shouldn’t be out on a date with an eighteen-year-old named “Bicks.”

Bridger hit his vape pen once more and handed it across the table. Joey stared a moment. Then took it. She gave a few puffs. Even at this distance, Evan could see the effort it took for her to pretend to enjoy it.

Last straw.

He climbed out, unlocked one of his truck vaults, and removed a long-range laser listening device, headphones, and Steiner tactical binoculars. Back in the driver’s seat, he rested the apparatus in the V between the slightly open door and the frame of the truck, training the microphone on the restaurant window.

Inside, Bridger took back the vape pen, then removed something from his pocket and set it on the table in front of Joey.

The invisible infrared beam detected vibrations in glass, translating them into sound, amplifying them, and filtering out ambient noise. “—oh, nice,” Joey was saying in a hyperfeminine tone Evan barely recognized. “A candle. Thank you so much .”

Evan lifted the binocs, put the stadia crosshairs on the gift: Misty Cashmere, fancy glass vessel, forty hours’ burn time.

Cloying.

As Joey and Bridger made cute-talk, Evan held the mic steady with one hand and scrolled through his RoamZone with the other, running a background check.

“’Scuse me one sec,” Bridger said. “Gotta drain the main vein.”

As he headed to the bathroom, Joey picked up the candle and sniffed it, closing her eyes.

Evan dialed. Watched her expression harden as she glanced down at her phone. She screwed a Bluetooth earbud into her ear angrily and tapped the screen to answer.

He watched her lips move, the sound reaching him on a slight delay. “What do you want? I lost you for a reason.”

“Misty Cashmere,” Evan said, “sounds like a stripper name.”

Her head jerked over. She scanned the street. It took a moment for her glare to zero in on him, but when it did, he felt it like a retaliatory laser.

“You take one more hit off that vape pen,” Evan said, “and Bridger’s gonna wake up tonight knowing what a choke hold feels like.”

“That’s so perfect. I make my own choices as a woman—”

“You’re not a woman—”

“—and you blame the man . Like, I have no agency.”

“You have more agency than I can keep track of,” Evan said. “But you don’t even know this guy.”

“That’s the point of dating,” she said. “To, like, get to know someone.”

“The guy’s a communications major—ironic given his lack of verbal acuity—and he barely maintains a two-point-oh. Been on academic probation twice. And he had a jaywalking ticket—”

“Uh, you just butchered six dudes in an impound lot .”

“Context is everything.”

“Yeah?” Joey said. “Well, maybe he was jaywalking to help a nun not get run over by a bus.”

“An unlikely array of circumstances. Plus, that would’ve been on the ticket write-up.”

Her face was red. “Pulled that up already, did you?”

“Yes. And he has an outstanding speeding ticket. Not exactly responsible.”

“Not exactly Ted Bundy.”

“That’s your standard now, Orange Blossom Girl?”

Bridger stepped back to the table, drying his hands on his pants in a manner unbefitting a legal adult.

Joey said, “This is me hanging up on you.”

“He’d better pay for dinner,” Evan said. “He’s got a five-thousand-dollar limit on his Mastercard, and he hasn’t even used half of it this month.”

He watched her reach for her phone.

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t you want to know his late-payment history?”

Click .

Joey smiled at Bridger as he slid into his chair. When he adjusted his napkin in his lap, the grin vanished and she shot a death stare over at Evan.

Bridger looked back up, caught the tail end of her expression before she produced a new radiant smile. “You okay?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Joey said, swirling her straw in her water glass. “It’s nothing.”

A truck passed between them, disrupting the reception. Evan adjusted his headphones and picked her back up again.

“—just issues with my uncle.”

Bridger said, “That angry guy?”

“Yes,” Joey said. “I agree that he comes off real angry. He doesn’t think so, but he lacks self-awareness.”

“Yeah? That sucks. My dad’s like that. He doesn’t get what a dickhead he is all the time, like, ‘I’m not paying for you to get C’s,’ you know?”

But Joey was barely paying attention to her date, instead casually letting her gaze sweep the street. It stuck for a moment on Evan, her defiant smile magnified through the Steiners. “And lack of self-awareness isn’t even his worst trait.”

“What is , then?” Bridger, ever the conversationalist.

“He’s really demanding. I work for him, kind of. But he needs everything on his time frame.”

“I hate that shit.”

“And he’s not appreciative,” Joey continued. “Barely at all. And right now he needs me to arrange an appointment for him tomorrow, but I made clear there’s no way I’ll help him if he doesn’t give me the night off tonight. So.” She smiled once more, flashing that hair-thin gap in her front teeth, a dimple indenting her right cheek. It was ridiculous how elegant she looked across the table from that mouth-breathing reprobate. “We’ll just see if he’s smart enough to not disturb me for the rest of dinner…”

Bridger looked confused. Or that was just his resting facial expression.

“… and to remember that I will handle any work that needs to be handled the way I always do, which is with earth-shattering competence—”

“Uh—”

“—before he comes over tomorrow morning. At, like, seven A.M., ’cuz I know it’s pressing. Anything my uncle and I have to deal with we can deal with then.”

“O- kay ,” Bridger said.

“And he should know me well enough by now to trust that I can take care of myself ,” Joey continued. “And that I will get home safely tonight, isn’t that right, Bicks?”

Bridger said, “Sure?”

Evan lowered the binoculars into his lap. She was his charge, and he had to look out for her and keep her safe. Didn’t he? What was the right amount of protective and what was too much? A low burn started in his chest like an overstretched muscle. Anger? Concern? He didn’t have a good sense for things like this, not the way Mia did.

He tugged off his headphones and threw them and the surveillance device into the passenger seat. Pulling the truck out into traffic, he flipped a U-turn. When he passed the front of the restaurant, Bridger had his face buried in the menu, but Joey’s eyes flicked up and watched him sail past.

She mouthed, Thank you .

As he headed back to Castle Heights, that burn in his chest spread out, descending the rungs of his ribs, creeping up his neck. An image came to him unbidden, Veronica on that endless sweep of a couch, her gaze lowered to the rim of her champagne glass: I thought if I named you, I couldn’t bear to part with you . And then it slammed home, the name for the warmth expanding from his torso, the realization making him wince.