Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

They reached Evan’s truck. He paused by the passenger door. “Are you comfortable getting in?”

She nodded.

He unlocked the door and helped her up and then circled around. As he pulled himself into the driver’s seat, he noticed she was sobbing. Face tilted into her hands, shoulders trembling, deep, wrenching sobs. He let her cry.

Five minutes passed and then another five. He wondered if she wanted some physical reassurance, a rub of her back, but wasn’t sure if that would be invasive. He wondered if men raised with mothers actually knew better what to do in circumstances like this. Veronica came into his mind, her cool, mysterious demeanor holding no answers.

At last Cammy lifted her head. “How do I stop crying?”

“You don’t,” Evan said. “You don’t right now.”

“What do I do?”

“How old are you?”

“I turned eighteen on Tuesday. They checked my ID before they let me on the list. Took a picture, even. For, like, evidence.” A smile found her face, though it held no happiness. A resting grin, the kind that young women wore to cover whatever darkness was moving beneath the surface.

“Are you in school?”

“I’m a freshman. At Foothill.”

A first-year at community college. Evan gripped the steering wheel, the steel shot rolling in the leather pouches at his knuckles. “Can you talk to your parents?”

She gave an ugly laugh. It hung there, an echo imprint on the air.

“I went to a biker bar in Los Gatos with some friends last week.” She shoved fists across her red cheeks. “All these fat, bearded rednecks, and we were treated with respect, but these MIT assholes…” Her voice trailed off.

“I can take you to the ER,” he said. “File a rape kit.”

“No.” She shook her head roughly, like a little girl. “No. They used condoms. Rishi threw them at his friends. Said, ‘We don’t wanna get cock rot.’ And they laughed.”

She hoisted the hood over her head and withdrew her hands into the sleeves, bunched the fabric to close it off, a sea anemone retreating into itself. Evan thought about all the creatures Molleken studied but how he only appropriated their strengths instead of learning from their vulnerabilities.

He pictured Joey’s date offering her that vape pen on the patio and suddenly felt tired. How much courage it took to care for someone. He thought of Mia figuring it out alone. What had she said? I’ll let you in on a secret. No one ’s enough as a parent . And yet she was doing everything for Peter that she could—the way Cammy’s parents likely had for her. Evan’s training had taught him to cover every operational contingency, but the feat of laying bare one’s heart seemed rife with greater dangers yet. There was nothing more wild and unpredictable than a human being.

“I knew what I was doing,” Cammy said. “I did. At the front part at least.” She sipped in a few breaths. “They slapped me. Rishi grabbed my mouth hard from behind, cut up the insides of my cheeks. These guys watch so much porn they think they know what turns girls on. Or maybe they don’t care.” She looked over at him, her eyes huge and unguarded. Her voice little more than a whisper: “I never said no.”

“The crying should have been enough.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But it wasn’t.”

There wasn’t anything to say to that.

“There’s nothing to do,” she said, her words hushed and cracked.

“Well,” Evan said. “Maybe not nothing.”

She looked at him.

“Are you okay to wait here a few minutes?” he asked.

“What if they come after me? Smash a window?”

“You’ll be safe here. No one will get into this truck.”

She hesitated. Gave a quick, nervous nod.

He handed her the key. “Don’t drive off.”

No smile.

He climbed out and started back for the party.

47White Knight

Cutting through the crowded foyer, Evan brushed against a partygoer and lifted a stainless-steel ballpoint pen from the guy’s shirt pocket. It slid free of the pocket protector smoothly. Climbing the stairs, he thumbed the tip off and dropped the spring and the ink refill from the barrel so all that remained was a smooth metal tube.

As he headed up the second-floor hallway, he heard Rishi’s voice carrying through the partially open door. “—and when you’re on the prowl, pay attention to their eyes, Scotty. Women on the pill blink an average of nineteen times more a minute than women who aren’t. That’s how you know they’re active, right?”

He stepped inside the room. The orgy bed was now empty, but Rishi and his compatriots—Zack and Scotty—remained in their chaise longues, half disrobed. To the side a trio of women were pulling on their clothes.

Evan said to them, “You might want to leave.”

The women took one look at his expression and scurried away, clutching high heels and shirts to their chests.

Evan looked at Rishi and his two friends. “You hurt the young woman.”

Rishi glanced over at him, stroking his beard, his biceps rippling. “Who are you talking about? The one with the ripped jeans?”

He didn’t bother according her a name.

Evan felt his jaws tighten, an ache in the bone. “And the ripped shirt,” he said.

“I think you’re gonna want to move along before you get yourself hurt.”

Rishi’s two sidekicks looked more tentative, but they covered with lupine grins.

“Look, White Knight,” Rishi said, “we don’t procure the product.”

“You mean the girls?”

“Women,” Rishi said. “Don’t be disrespectful.” He leaned back, spreading his beefy arms along the top of the couch. “This Valley is about one thing. Resources. The right VC. The right engineers. You know the most valuable resource? Time. But young women who are DTF? They’re inexhaustible resources. They’re the one reward we get. So we outsource the selection process. That girl—Cammy?—she gave her ID to the bouncers yesterday , man. She knew why she was here. You don’t agree to come to a party like this looking like that and think it’s for your personality.”

“That’s true,” Evan said.

“I did nothing illegal.”

Evan said, “No.”

“She had a choice.”

“Yes.”

“She could have left at any time.”

“Maybe.”

“She’s legal.”

“By seventy-two hours.”

“Hey, man.” Rishi gave a big shrug. “If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

Zack and Scotty laughed.

“No,” Evan said.

“How would you know?” Rishi said.

“Because,” Evan said, “I’m a hammer.”

Rishi stared at him. Then he stood up, his shirt unbuttoned down the front. He was a thick guy, all muscle and bloat. His friends stood up, too.

“Okay,” Rishi said. “So we’re gonna do this?”

Evan’s gaze stayed level. “Do you know what a tension pneumothorax is?”

Rishi rocked back on his heels. “A what?”

“A torn lung leaks air inside your chest cavity, increasing pressure. That prevents the lungs from filling. Then it prevents blood from getting to the heart.”

Rishi looked at his friends. Back at Evan. Laughed. “You’re a weird fucking dude. But that’s okay. I like weird dudes.”

He stepped forward and swung at Evan’s head. Evan ducked and sidestepped.

Rishi regained his balance, turned, and tried another cross. Evan leaned back, the wind from the punch fanning his face.

Flustered, Rishi threw a haymaker. Evan weaved right and crouched, tightening his hand, the weighted knuckles of the glove stretched tight across his flesh.

He drove a compact punch into Rishi’s right side just beneath the armpit.