Page 22 of Antihero

Evan was still standing before the guards arrayed in their apprehensive arc. All guns remained holstered, all limbs intact.

He said, quietly, “If you draw, I’m going to break that wrist and shoot you through the foot.” He turned his attention to the other three. “Then I’ll smash your ankle and shoot you through the wrist.”

Keshishian said, “What about me? I’ll just be standing here batting my eyelashes?”

She did have lovely eyelashes. Distinct but not overdone makeup, dark paint around dark eyes, a womanly form constrained by the monkey suit.

Evan said, “That’s the hope.”

“He did, uh…” The guard with a potential gunshot foot in his future scratched at the side of his mustache, his other hand now pointedly farther from his holster. “He did kill the last shift, Kesh.”

“The last shift?”

“Of guards. He did, uh, kill them all. Like: all of them. Ya know?”

More screaming carried up one of the marble-lined halls upstairs, and a sound like the crash of cymbals.

Kesh wet her lips, which looked suddenly dry. “The Nowhere Man.” The corners of her jaw rippled barely, a micro-tensing of the molars. She studied Evan. Then raised her hands, palms out stickup-style. “Boss pays us plenty. Not enough for this.”

Evan relaxed his posture and they mirrored him.

“I’m here to help,” Evan said. “He called me. How bad is it?”

Kesh set her hands on her hips, blew a wisp of dark-chocolate hair out of her left eye. She wore chunky chestnut highlights. Her uniform was impeccable, and sharp intelligence shined through her expression. “I’ll be honest. Pretty out of control, man.”

Almost Shattered Ankle said, “We’re just trying to hold everything together. It’s, uh, it’s been a lot.”

“Copy that,” Evan said. “This is my associate.”

In his peripheral, he sensed Joey nod.

There came a slam of a door from somewhere deep in the architecture. A moment later, a spark plug of a man, early thirties, shot across the landing above and then down the staircase, his loafers pitter-pattering over the steps, floating his torso smoothly through the descent. He wore a black suit, sufficiently plain to be forgettable. His bearing and artless crew cut said: marine. Devine favored marines for his inner circle.

A tidy block of a man, he swept a wall of air in front of him. “Hold on, hold on,” he said to them all. “Let’s just cool heels a minute.” He had a hand up to Evan, fingers splayed. His base was set but his posture remained pointedly conciliatory. “We don’t need a blasting cap in a powder keg.”

Evan said, “Agreed.”

“Will Rawlings, chief of staff. I know who you are. Please—just, stay calm.”

“I am,” Evan said. “Calm.”

“Right. Right. This is…?”

“My associate.”

Rawlings nodded to Joey and she nodded right back. Shockingly, she made a good mute. Rawlings gave each of his guards a reassuring glance in the eye, and Evan respected him for it. From a thousand mental dossiers, Evan extracted a quick psychological profile for him. Reliable, stalwart, competent. Lots of gym time and creatine and something else to juice it up from time to time. His mother was likely oversexualized, arresting him slightly in adolescent virility. But she was fundamentally good.

Rawlings wore one of those fabric bracelets around his wrist, not as rustic as the usual leather strappy ones, an artistic flourish that tilted him higher on Big Five trait openness. And he had a wedding band, which he actually wore, platinum stamped with the tiny Cartier manhole covers. That meant a wife with her head in the Zeitgeist, exposure to a broader array of outgroups through her friends, increased tolerance for different ideas. That’s why Devine would have chosen him—all the conscientiousness of a conservative with a liberal’s flexibility. And if pushed, men like Rawlings could show a good amount of fuck-around-and-find-out, without which the other positive attributes were merely hypothetical.

“I don’t want to have any violence kick off,” Rawlings said. “No trouble. Nothing … unpredictable. I know your history here with Mr. Devine.”

“He asked me here,” Evan said.

“His judgment isn’t actually—” Now the sound of something toppling, the wash of spilled gallons of liquid across marble. A string of curses roared out into the cavernous foyer, linked one after another like boxcars, and they went on and on without repeating, a linguistic carnival trick.

The mansion quieted abruptly, the silence even more creepy.

Rawlings cleared his throat, started over. “His judgment isn’t in the best place,” he said. “I don’t know your intentions. But I do know what you’re capable of. And he is my responsibility. I hope you can understand that, sir.”