Page 10 of Antihero

Tommy was the best armorer and the finest shot Evan had ever known, as well as a procurement and R&D specialist for various three-letter agencies. Dreaded by the bureaucratic class but beloved by spec ops, veterans, and emergency services, he’d been a bridge between Evan and the legitimate world. Now he was gone, leaving behind an armorer’s lair stuffed with ordnance, munitions, gear, equipment, and an abyss in a place inside Evan he didn’t know he had.

When Evan had deserted the Orphan Program, feared and hunted by those in highest power, he’d had the clothes on his back, brimming bank accounts in nonreporting countries, and not one single relationship. From the age of twelve, he’d been raised apart from anyone else, rotated through grueling training sessions conducted by a blur of subject-matter experts, senseis, and instructors. The only consistent face had been that of his mentor, Jack Johns, who’d overseen his tutelage, teaching him everything but the strange language of intimacy. The hard part isn’t turning you into a killer, Jack had pounded into his head. The hard part is keeping you human.

Staying human while committing unsanctioned assassinations at the behest of orders issuing from the shadowy underbelly of the DoD had proven untenable, even for Orphan X. Evan had finally slipped off the radar, reconstituting himself under another of his operational aliases. As the Nowhere Man, he took on personal missions unsullied by political considerations. That meant helping people who were being terrorized by others, people who had nowhere else to turn.

As the Nowhere Man, he operated as he always had. Alone.

Tommy had become his first anchor to mankind. They’d earned each other’s trust, step by step.

They had become friends.

Evan’s first.

“—med-boarded out, PTSD bullshit. Man, I was so lost. Still just a kid, twenty-four, wet behind the ears. He catches wind, my phone rings. He says, ‘Get to Las Vegas. Worse men than you have crashed on my couch for a spell.’ So I do. First morning I go in to hit the rainlocker, thing’s full up with—” A chorus of unintelligible shouts. “That’s right. Fucking moonshine in the bathtub. Like he’s some Prohibition bootlegger.” The slightest crack of the voice. “Miss you, brother. Broke the mold, that’s for sure.”

Evan tried to imagine what would happen when he died. No funeral or memorial, no fruit plates and rambling reminiscences—certainly no poster-board prints on easels. He’d never had his picture taken, not since grade-school yearbooks from his foster-home days, and those had been carefully expunged from any public record, along with the other scant traces of his childhood. When he did finally catch a bullet, nothing would change in the world around him. He’d simply remain what he’d always been: the Nowhere Man.

He rested his hands at the ten and two. What the hell was he doing out here eavesdropping on a memorial service? He’d skipped Tommy’s funeral. His profession had inured him to rituals that were not his own. He dealt in blood and sweat, not buglers wailing “Taps” and twenty-one-gun salutes. He had no need for any of it—color guards and flag-folding protocols, higher brass showing off chest candy and unit pins pounded into coffin lids, shovelfuls of dirt and solemn suits with epaulets of closet dust. And now, weepy speeches at a podium, apocryphal tales burnished into legend.

And yet.

Here he was, watching and listening, the eternal outsider looking in.

Behind the window, a grizzled vet hugged a teary young serviceman. A trio of women in tight white jeans marveled at a blown-up photo of younger-days Tommy. A little girl in a bright yellow dress ran through the guests, waving a fairy wand and banging into knees.

Evan would’ve liked to be in there near the celebration.

He would’ve liked to say a few words about his friend.

He would’ve liked to give Tommy a proper good-bye.

But the notion of conveying intimate emotion in a public setting among others raw with grief was unthinkably messy and contaminating, a break from everything he’d been trained to be. It would’ve required courage that he did not have.

On the passenger seat, the RoamZone gave its distinctive chime. The untraceable encrypted phone was always with him. When he answered as the Nowhere Man, he never knew what new mission would present itself. What he could anticipate was that whoever dialed the number was calling from the depths of a hellish personal misery.

Caller ID was blocked.

He answered as he always did.

“Do you need my help?”

“Huh? Wait. Hold on— Do not let the fucking dog drink the Charles and Diana Dom Pérignon.”

“Devine?”

Evan had come up against the erratic billionaire on a prior mission. They spoke rarely and only on Evan’s terms.

This was not on his terms.

“What?” Devine’s voice sounded hoarse. “Look—Can you just—Can you just get here?”

“Get where?”

“The Hamptons house.”

“Why?”

“I think— I don’t know. I don’t know why. There’s a lot going on and my brain is roaring and I can’t— You three! Take your fucking purse dogs and get out!—can’t seem to find a handle—and—and—there’s also a girl here in my bed who saw something bad happen to another girl—kidnapping, maybe?—and I’ve got all these plates spinning, you see, with great geopolitical import, and I have to make choices and I don’t—”