Page 178 of Hellbent

Candy.

Evan’s last ray of hope left him.

Candy approached, appraising them.

“Find what they love,” she said. “And make them pay for it.”

Evan would have to let go of Joey’s leg to reach for his knife on the ground.

He did not.

He stayed where he was, his palm covering her wound.

He closed his eyes, saw his tiny feet filling Jack’s footsteps in the woods. This was the path he was born to follow. A path into life, no matter the cost.

When he opened his eyes, Candy was standing right over him, the barrel of her pistol inches from his forehead. In his arms he could feel Joey’s breaths, each more fragile than the last.

Evan stared up the barrel at Candy. “After you kill me, clamp this artery.”

Candy said nothing.

He said, “Please.”

The end of Candy’s pistol trembled ever so slightly. Her face contorted.

Evan looked back down at Joey. After a moment he sensed the pistol lower. Candy eased back from view. He barely registered the sound of the SUV driving away.

Joey jerked in a few shallow breaths. She raised a hand to his cheek, left a smudge of blood under his eye. He sensed it there, a weighted shadow.

“I see you,” she said. “You’re still real.”

As he heard Tommy’s truck shudder to a stop behind him, her eyes rolled up and closed, and her head nodded back in his arms.

75

The Blackness to Come

Evan’s hands rested in his lap, covered with blood.

Crimson gloves.

Tommy drove through darkest night. Los Angeles was well behind them, Las Vegas well ahead.

They had handled what they’d needed to handle.

“I know you’re emotional,” Tommy said, “but we gotta think straight.”

Evan said, “I’m not emotional.” His voice shook.

“This is next-level shit,” Tommy said. “We gotta go to ground. A few weeks, minimum. See what shakes out. I got a ranch in Victorville, completely off the grid.”

Evan stared out the window. The blackness sweeping by looked like the blackness before and the blackness to come.

Tommy kept talking, but Evan didn’t hear him.

* * *

Candy McClure sat on the carpet of her empty safe house, knees drawn to her chest. Past the tips of her bare feet, her phone rested on the floor. It was after midnight, and yet she’d felt no need to turn on the lights.