Hellbent

“For years I’d reconciled myself to living off the radar,” Evan said. “I was content to hide in the shadows. To leave you alone. Not anymore.”

Joey had inched above the speed limit, and Evan gestured for her to slow down.

“Evan,” Van Sciver said. “That’s what we’re counting on.”

The connection fizzled into static, then dropped.

Evan turned off the Samsung and pocketed it. He leaned to check the speedometer. “Keep it at sixty-five.”

Joey’s chest rose with each breath, her nostrils flaring. “‘Not worth killing?’” She shot his words back at him.

“Everything’s strategic, Joey.”

“Didn’t seem that way to me.”

“We don’t have time for this,” he said.

“What?”

He tore the dangling duct tape off the laptop and popped it open. “Your feelings.”

They drove in silence.

24

A Teaching Moment

Given the events at Portland Union Station, Evan decided to get Joey safely out of the state before parting ways. In the past he’d had a few near misses with Van Sciver around Los Angeles, so Van Sciver likely knew that Evan had a base there. Putting himself in Van Sciver’s shoes, Evan figured he’d bulk up surveillance on routes leading south from Oregon. So rather than head for California, Evan and Joey rode the bell curve of the I-90, routing up through Washington and cutting across the chimney stack of Idaho.

They swapped seats at intervals, Evan driving the current leg. His attempts to access the laptop had been unsuccessful. The Dell Inspiron had proved to be heavily encrypted. Breaking in would require time, focus, and gear, none of which he could get until he had Joey off his hands.

Van Sciver’s words returned, a whisper in his ear: You have no idea, do you? How high it goes? You still think it’s about me and you. No matter how many ways Evan turned the conversation over in his head, he couldn’t make sense of it. Van Sciver was working off an agenda unknown to Evan.

That scared him.

It felt as though Van Sciver were sitting at the chessboard and Evan was a pawn.

It was ten hours and change to Helena, Montana, a destination chosen for its unlikeliness and because they had to cross three state lines to get there. His stomach started complaining in hour six. It had been nearly eighteen hours since he’d eaten.

Joey had finally dozed off, slumped against the passenger window, a spill of hair curled in the hollow of her neck. It was good to see her sleeping peacefully.

Evan pulled off at a diner, braking gently so as not to wake her. He parked behind the restaurant, out of sight from the road, and reached to shake her awake.

She jolted upright, shouting and swinging. “Get off me! Get off—”

Awareness came back into her eyes, and she froze, backed against the door, fists raised, legs pulled in, ready to kick.

Evan had leaned away, giving her as much space as possible. He’d taken the brunt of her fist off the top of his forehead. If he’d been a second slower, she would have rebroken his nose.

Her chest was still heaving. He waited for her to lower her shoulders, and then he relaxed his.

She unpacked from her protective curl, looked around. “Where are we?”

“I thought we’d get some food.”

She straightened her clothes. “This isn’t a thing, okay? Like some big window into me.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know what happened to me. Or didn’t happen to me.”

“Okay.”

“I just have a temper, is all.”

Evan said, “I’d noticed.”

* * *

They sat in a booth in the far back of the empty diner, Evan facing out. Despite the stuffing peeking through the cracked vinyl benches, the restaurant was clean and tidy and appealed to his sense of order. The aroma of strong coffee and fresh-baked pies thickened the air. A Wall-O-Matic jukebox perched at the end of their table, the Five Satins “shoo-doo ’n’ shooby-doo”—ing in between hoping and praying. Salt and pepper shakers, syrup bottles, and sugar jars gathered around the shiny chrome speaker like children at story time.

From the old-school baseball pennants to the inevitable Marilyn poster, the manufactured nostalgia made the place seem like a location from a TV show, a faux diner set decorated to look like a real diner.

Evan ate egg whites scrambled with spinach and dosed heavily with Tabasco. Joey picked at a stack of pancakes, furrowing the pooled butter with the tines of her fork.

Conversation had been in short supply since the incident in the car.

Evan set down his fork, squaring it to the table’s edges. A few drops of coffee formed a braille pattern next to his plate, remnants from the waitress’s lazy pour. He resisted for a few seconds and then caved, wiping them clean with his napkin.

Joey remained fascinated with her pancakes. Her rucksack rested next to her, touching her thigh, the closely guarded life possessions of a street dweller.