Page 30 of Antihero

But he couldn’t rush. Couldn’t risk the damage an unhinged Luke Devine would wreak.

Resetting, he shuffled through dossiers, case files, and profiles in his mind, extracting personality traits, pressure points, angles of leverage. He revisited a sheikh with a propensity for trafficked girls whom he’d sunk beneath the aqua waters of Palm Jumeirah. A Texas heir to an oil fortune whom he’d considered putting a Nowhere Man round into. A beak from Eton with a proclivity for faglets whom he’d dispatched outside Goodhart House.

“The part of you that’s blind is running you right now,” Evan told him. “And it’s gonna run you straight onto infantry pikes. From here? Your options get worse. The fallout gets worse.”

The snifter had already warmed against Evan’s palm, the subtle aroma dissipated. He swirled the vodka in the wide bowl, gave a sip. Off the broad rim, the Chopin bum-rushed his palate like a ’roided-up forward pack of ruggers.

Devine wore a faint non-smile, a forked vein prominent in his forehead. Pressure building within. “Last chance to grab the deal of deals. Quite the sales pitch.”

“Why did you call me, Devine?”

A shit-eating beam. “Can’t I just want to see an old friend?”

“Do you even know what a friend is?”

“Sure I do. Someone who can keep up. Someone who can thrust and parry. Someone who knows…” The rarest hitch, a hint of emotion lurking deep beneath the surface, a poignant memory flung up.

“Knows what?” Evan pressed.

“Knows precisely what your favorite drink is.” His eyes, wistful from some remembered kindness. “And how to serve it.”

“That’s all cute,” Evan said. “But you’re compromised like this. You’re gonna step on your own dick and start a coup in Africa or release intel on the VP.”

“I told you about the VP?”

“Yes,” Evan said.

“Hmm. Well, circumspection can be overrated.”

“If only there were a memorable adage about valor and discretion.”

Devine bobbed forward, tapped the ash from his cigar. “I won’t start any fires that don’t need to burn.”

“There is a young woman out there at risk and the longer I have to deal with you, the more danger she may be in.”

“If she’s not already dead,” Devine said, and Evan resisted the urge to lean forward and snap the slender stalk of his neck.

Receding into the bar, Joey continued to read the room perfectly, listening attentively but not invasively. She smoothed her poplin blouse, crossed her legs high, showing a modest stripe of stockinged ankle. With her elbow on the bar and her crisply elegant bearing, she looked capable of headlining an M&A deal for a Wall Street white-shoe firm. A flash of proudness caught Evan by surprise.

Devine scraped his tongue along his front teeth. “When I’m in this state, I don’t miss a thing.” He flourished his black box, a nice bit of theater. “Who’d you like to talk to in order to assuage your fears? Prime minister of Germany? President of the Hague’s ICC? Newly implanted director of the NIH? I’d offer up the president”—a wicked smirk—“but she and I aren’t on the best of terms lately.”

Evan held his cigar forked between index and middle fingers, angled upward. He’d taken two puffs and would not require a whole lot more.

Devine’s lips twitched. “On occasion I imbibe and let my mind gallop and blow out pressure valves to keep the mental machinery clear.” A fissure emerged in his eye, bleeding through the sclera. Evan watched it expand in real time. And yet Devine’s mask remained perfectly intact, his serpent’s tongue eloquent as ever. “But when it comes to what matters? When I decide to be focused? I am perfectly—perfectly—in control.”

There it was. The break point.

Evan took his last pull on the cigar, let the smoke sheet from the side of his mouth. “In control?”

Devine’s pupils jittered and he started to reply but Evan bulldozed over him.

“Your nonverbal tells are all over the place, you’re smoking your cigar like a rube—label on, lit with butane, angled downward, tapping the ash like a chain-smoker—and you misquoted Sun Tzu. You’ve given up two unforced errors”—he allowed the briefest pause so he could watch Devine compute, that mighty brain rewinding and catching the duo of reveals: that he had dirt on the vice president and that he’d installed the new puppet head of the NIH—“you showed me the sole of your foot—try that in a Middle East negotiation—you served me vodka in a snifter—barbaric—and you poured the lady an Aperol spritz without an orange-slice garnish, like some barback on a Caribbean booze cruise.” Evan’s voice was low, steady, mechanical, unremitting. “You are acting like a slob. Ostentatious, flashy, showing off, misstep after misstep. Manic enough to think you can solve the world.”

Evan watched Devine’s face change, the muscles loosening of their own volition, those peaked cheeks going slack as the realization roosted inside him. He’d hit Devine hard, stunned him into submissiveness, but his state was fragile and new and would shatter into something else if tapped too hard.

“Why did you call me, Devine?”

The slightest tremor surfaced, wobbling a postage-stamp-size patch of skin beneath Devine’s right eye. His lips parted. Nothing came out but a dry rasp of air.