Page 71 of Hellbent

Her face softened. She returned her focus to the Pomeranian.

Evan walked swiftly past the gas pumps to the 4Runner, which waited for them, motor still on, already angled downslope for a quick getaway. Joey met him there, climbing in as he did, tossing her rucksack ahead of her.

She was still winded from the fight and the adrenaline rush, her clavicles glistening with sweat.

He said, “You are a powerful young woman.”

He pulled out onto the freeway and headed for home.

31

Sprint the Marathon

By the time they arrived at Evan’s Burbank safe house twelve hours and twenty-nine minutes later, they were driving a Prius with the license plates of a Kia. Bottlebrush and pepper trees shaded the street of single-story midcentury houses. Evan’s sat apart at the end of the block behind a tall hedge of Blue Point juniper. When he’d bought it, one of a half dozen he kept at the ready, the neighborhood had been affordable, the houses charming if slightly ramshackle. But owing to Burbank’s fine schools and proximity to the studios, the block’s gentrification had reached a fever pitch; now remodels perennially clogged the quiet street. He’d been planning to unload the place and would do so as soon as he and Joey were done with each other. He maintained a labyrinthine and impenetrable network of shell corporations that allowed him to shuffle and discard assets without fear of being traced.

He parked in the garage next to a decade-old Buick Enclave that had served him loyally. The garage door shuddered down, and then he and Joey were cocooned in darkness, safe.

He started to get out when she said, angrily, “What does it matter?”

“What?”

“Whether I kill someone?”

He took a moment to consider. “It changes you in ways you can’t understand. You’d never be able to have a normal life.”

“A normal life? So I can … what? Hang out at the mall? Go to prom? Take a thousand fucking selfies?”

Her voice held an anger he did not understand.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’d fit right in.”

“It’s about more than that,” he said. “We’ve talked about the Tenth Commandment. ‘Never let an innocent die.’ But maybe there’s another part to it: ‘Never let an innocent kill.’”

“I’m not an innocent.”

“No. But maybe we could get you back there.”

She did not seem satisfied with that.

She made no move to get out of the car. Sitting in the Prius, they stared through the windshield at nothing.

“I’m weak,” she said.

Her face cracked, contorting in grief, a flicker so fast that he’d have missed it if he’d blinked.

“Why do you think that?”

“I couldn’t pull the trigger on the guy in the duffel bag. I couldn’t do it at the rest stop either.”

“That’s not because you’re weak,” Evan said. “It’s because you’re stronger.”

“Than who?”

He hadn’t seen where the words were headed, not until now. He set his hands on the wheel, breathing the dark air.

“Than me,” he said.

* * *