Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

Evan had to dip his head to press the ice pack to his swollen cheek. His knee felt bruised, and the index finger of his left hand had been torn at the nail in the one-sided rumble. Raw skin ringed his wrists where he’d been steered hard by the handcuffs. His fingerprint adhesives were still smudged with ink from when they’d printed him, and dried blood from a nosebleed had crusted on his upper lip.

He’d been brought into a concrete box of a room in the neighboring building and deposited into a chair bolted to the floor, his cuffs locked to a metal ring on the table before him. His reflection gazed back woefully from the one-way mirror.

His activist high jinks had earned him two hours locked in this position. His arm muscles were cramping, his hamstrings tight from sitting on the hard chair for this long. He watched a fly crawl across the ceiling. He wondered if it was real.

At last he heard footsteps.

The door was flung open with seeming great annoyance, and then a major general entered and steadied an iron gaze on Evan. He had pale blue eyes that looked hard, chips of gemstone. Yellow-red mustache, blond-white hair in a dated center part, two-star insignia riding the shoulder of his pressed uniform. His rank showed that these people treated any intrusion as a national security threat.

At first assessment he seemed to be stalwart, one of those men whom the military had disassembled in basic and rebuilt from the boots up. He filled those boots now with a forward-tilting confidence that seemed righteous—or at least approximated righteousness with conviction.

Evan wondered if anyone at Creech North had an inkling of Molleken’s extracurricular activities, that the good doctor was putting his considerable resources toward cleaning up those who might interfere with the massive government contract that the DoD was on the brink of awarding him.

“Every last thing on this base falls under my purview. My attention is valuable, Mr.…” A glance down at a printed report in his hand. “Paul Norris.”

“I know what you’re doing here,” Evan said. “I know you’re building drones that violate international law. I have a hundred and eighteen Freedom of Information Act requests in with the CIA, and as soon as I get those results”—he faked a tic that jerked his head to one side, a mannerism he’d picked up from Danny when he’d visited him in prison—“I’m gonna whistle-blow on your whole operation.”

The words seemed to wash over the major general without moving him in the least, tide over a boulder. He kept on his own track. “How’d you acquire a Creech North parking credential?”

“Our 4chan group keeps track of drone pilots. We know when someone goes down, gets arrested…” Evan paused coyly. “When their truck winds up in an impound lot. We won’t stop until the killings do.”

“I see you have previous arrests at other bases.” The major general’s eyes slotted to the paper and then assessed Evan once quickly, top to bottom, like a computer scanner. He folded his arms across his chest, his uniform starched and wrinkleless, as if it had been painted on. “So it shouldn’t surprise you that sneaking onto a military installation is a federal offense. As is impersonating a member of the U.S. military.”

“That’s why I’m here. Arrest me.”

“You’ve certainly given us good cause.”

“I’m ready to go to trial.” Evan gave with another series of twitches. “Let’s let the American people hear about what you’re doing here.”

“It must be nice,” the major general said, “to do so much complaining and offer no solutions. I need to get into that business, because God knows what I do here to protect idiots like you out there is a helluva lot harder.” He snapped the sheet curtly to his side and turned to leave. “We’re done, Mr. Norris.”

53Bump in the Night

For Declan, twilight was the hardest time of day. Morning and afternoon he moved with a predator’s fearless stride, the world around him lit with clarity. Obstacles and opportunities. Prey moving obliviously before his all-knowing gaze, a living buffet. And at night he felt invisible, capable of doing things that one could do only when no one was watching.

But the transition froze him in a child’s place, the gold leaching from the sky, the air murky like fog, promising uncertainty. During the gloaming he was neither the active hunter nor the one who lurked.

Queenie read this in him like she read everything, though they’d never discussed it. They sat in her Mustang now on stakeout, waiting for an opening to get their surveillance gear in place. They were also waiting for the doctor to return their call. They’d left two messages and finally texted him the new information about the Nowhere Man. He’d process it in his cold reptilian fashion, hostility tempered by logic, and then he’d toss the grenade back into their laps.

Declan stared at the moths gathering beneath the streetlight, feeling that constriction in his chest that presaged his night terrors. They wouldn’t come on now, not while he was awake, but they’d flicker at the edges of his awareness, a reminder of the waiting nightmares.

Queenie reached over and took his hand. Breathe deep, little brother .

He said, “I am.”

She adjusted the mirror for a better view of the building they were watching. “I know.”

He placed a hand reassuringly on his stomach, felt the cotton twill soft against his skin. No fingernail scrapes there. The insides of his thighs smoldered, memory twitches of cigarette burns.

Queenie tightened her grip. Not real. Not real .

He would be okay. Just a few minutes as the earth turned, and then night would fall like a soothing blanket and he’d be invisible again, safe until sleep.

An obese woman in a pink pantsuit exited her minivan and walked past them on the sidewalk. He thought about the bones inside her holding up all that weight. The blood coursing through her veins, keeping the whole enterprise functioning. There was enough iron in a human body to make a three-inch nail. That’s all anyone was. Parts and particles. Raw matter that could be rearranged. You could dress it up with gym muscle or bespoke clothes or plastic surgery, but at the end of the tunnel people were just pain receptors and nerves, ligament and marrow.

The charade was exhausting.

He adjusted his cuff link, watched the orb of illumination hanging from the streetlamp grow more pronounced until it stood out against the darkness, a fishbowl holding a swirl of fluttering moths.

It was safe now for a while.

He exhaled, released his sister’s hand.

“It’s not our fault, you know,” he said. “What we are.”

She looked over at him. Snapped her gum. “That’s the only thing scarier than if it is our fault.”

“My first memories are her telling me I was toxic. Dangerous. Didn’t care about anyone but myself. Maybe it wasn’t true. But that’s what I heard when my brain was just … when my brain was just clay. And now?” He held out his arms, biceps bulging beneath the tailored suit jacket. “Now it is true.”

“You care about me,” Queenie said.

“That doesn’t count.”

“Why’s that?”

“You are me.”

She pursed her lips, considered.

Declan said, “What if we don’t get away with anything?”

“Mom did.”

“No,” he said. “Mom lived in hell. And now maybe we do, too.”

The phone rang through the speakers. Once. Twice.

He and Queenie looked at each other.

Then he answered.

“Who the fuck is Andre Duran?” the doctor said.

“Nobody,” Declan said. “He’s a nobody.”

“That’s what you’ve been telling me. But now we have this—what?—private assassin on our hands?”