Page 31 of Hellbent

There was nothing there but wind shivering the leaves of the trees.

14

A Pang of Something Unfamiliar

Evan stood at the trunk of the Cadillac. Golden light filtered through the high windows of the ancient barn, lending a fairy-tale tint to the hay-streaked ground and empty stables. He braced himself and opened the trunk.

The girl erupted from inside.

This time Evan was ready. He ducked, and the tire iron strobed by, fractions from his skull. She landed, spun, and came at him again, but it was halfhearted. She knew she’d lost her one good shot.

He stripped the tire iron from her hands and deflected her onto the ground. She lay there panting, a strand of glossy brown-black hair caught in the corner of her mouth.

“Well,” she said, and spit out the strand. “Can’t blame me for trying.”

“No,” Evan said.

She sat, laced her hands across her knees, rolled back slightly onto her behind, and looked up at him. Broad cheekbones, long lashes, vibrant emerald eyes. The pose was youthful, disarming. She might have been watching a movie at a slumber party. But there was something haunted beneath her strong features. As if in her brief life she’d seen more than she’d wanted to.

“You killed him, didn’t you?” she said.

“The cop?”

“No,” she said. “Not the cop.”

“Who?”

“I only had him for a few months,” she said. “I finally had someone who…” Then she went blank, a screen powering down.

“Who?” he said.

Silence.

He tried a different tack. “What’s your name?”

“Joey.” Same empty expression.

“What’s it short for?”

Her eyes whirred back to life, clicked over to him. “None of your business.” She looked up at the high rafters. “Where the hell are we?”

“Off the beaten path.”

“What’s the plan?”

“Leave the Caddy here. There’s a working truck outside a storage shed a klick and a half north. I take that and leave you here. After.”

“After what?”

“You give me the package. We can go through your things, piece by piece. Or you can tell me. But there’s no way this isn’t happening.”

She just stared at him.

“Look, Joey, you know how this works. You are a classified government weapon—”

“No. Let’s be clear.” She stood up, half crossed her arms, one hand gripping the opposite elbow. Her shoulders tensed, rolled forward. Defensive. “I’m a defective model of a classified government weapon. I got pulled off the assembly line.”

“Meaning?”