Page 105 of Into the Fire

The man beside her folded his hands on the table and frowned ponderously. “What—” His voice went dry, and he coughed into a fist and started again. “What did you have in mind?”

She told them.

The silence afterward hummed with discomfort. The men had blanched. Their gazes remained on the table, on their hangnails, on the seam where the wall met ceiling. Eye contact was too threatening. Too human.

“But, Stella.” Fitz fiddled with his wedding ring. “That’s a whole other thing.”

The Steel Woman smiled. “So are we, dear.”

44

Mantrap

The Inmate Reception Center smelled overwhelmingly of industrial disinfectant and body odor. The ducts were working overtime, doing their best to diffuse a lingering trace of spent pepper spray. Beneath a splotch of blood where someone had tried to put a fist through the cold concrete, Evan sat on a bright orange chair seemingly molded for maximum discomfort. The aftermath of the booze, soaking into his addled brain, made his head feel as though it had been molded for maximum discomfort, too. He’d been waiting for nearly forty-five minutes while sheriff’s deputies shuffled other arrestees through the system.

Happy hour was crowded at Twin Towers Booking.

In fact, every hour was crowded at Twin Towers, the world’s largest jail.

There were forty-five hundred inmates jammed into a space running at 150-percent capacity.

Evan closed his eyes, breathed the stale scent of riled men, felt the heat from countless trapped bodies. Someone was sobbing and someone was screaming and someone was singing. Singing badly.

He’d already been processed by the baggy-eyed civilian employee with caked-on foundation. He’d stood at the counter hiccupping while she reviewed the probable-cause statement. It had been sent through the bulletproof glass in a transaction drawer along with a time-delay, self-destroying license with his face and Paytsar Hovsepian’s information, ingeniously engineered by Melinda Truong. “Open container, drunk in public.” She glanced up at the young cop by Evan’s side, chewed the inside of her cheek. “Barfed on your boots?”

The cop said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Sounds like a charmer.”

Evan had given her a loose-handed salute, and she’d smiled wryly in response.

His training had taught him to find quiet where he could, even in the most stressful of circumstances. He kept his eyes closed and breathed. His task right now, in this moment, was to do nothing but occupy his body. The charcoal pills had done their job, ameliorating the effects of the tequila, but the acrid taste of eighty-proof bile remained in his mouth. The light-headedness held on, wobbly shapes floating behind his eyelids.

A beefy deputy rapped him gently on the shoulder, and he opened his eyes. “Patser Hovsepian?”

Evan corrected him with a crisp accent. “Paytsar.”

“Great,” the deputy said, “okay. We’ll be sure to get it perfect before you take the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.” He flicked two fingers the size of breakfast sausages. “Come with me.”

Evan followed him into the booking room. Stations were set up three deep, sullen men being shuttled through like cattle. A jocker inked with the Aryan Brotherhood clover and trip sixes caught Evan’s eye and flicked his tongue at him lewdly. Ignoring him, Evan looked around, assessing any loose items he might be able to palm and sneak in. A stapler on a desk in the corner. Pen tucked into a clipboard. A computer mouse.

His plan only covered getting in and—ideally—getting back out. He couldn’t know in advance what the precise conditions in the jail would be. When it came to protecting himself and eliminating Benjamin Bedrosov, he had to improvise.

Predictably, any obvious tools or weapons were well out of reach.

The deputy gave Evan a prod, reminding him that he no longer controlled where his body went and what it was allowed to do. He complied readily, not willing to escalate to a situation that increased the odds of a blow to the head.

“Stand over here. Back up. Smile for the birdie.”

Above the stalk of a skinny tripod, a tiny digital camera peered at him like the head of an exotic insect. Evan flashed A-OK signs against his chest, one circle up and one upside down. Armenian Power.

“Hey, dipshit. You sure you want that to be the look the judge sees at arraignment?”

Evan winked at him. There would be no judge, no arraignment. And Joey would have the digital photo wiped from the system within minutes of Evan’s departure. Or—if things went badly—he’d be dead and none of this would matter.

The deputy sighed. “Your funeral.”

The flash hit Evan, burning his eyes. He cringed away drunkenly. The alcohol leaching through the charcoal and the light sensitivity from his concussion made it easy to play the role.