Page 121 of Into the Fire

He cleared the detectors.

The front door was ahead, and it was oscillating only slightly.

“Hey,” Willy said, and Evan’s skin went to ice. “Hey!”

He turned.

A drop of sweat trickled from his hairline, nearing the ink of the fake tattoos. He didn’t dare reach to wipe it away. His head hummed, spots dancing everywhere, pixelating the deputy.

Willy squinted at him.

Each second held the weight of an hour.

The drop of sweat reached Evan’s eyebrow, a few millimeters from smearing the teardrops.

Willy lifted a pair of scissors into view. For an instant Evan had a bizarre vision that the deputy might attack him here and now.

“Want me to cut it off?”

Evan cleared his throat. Cleared it again. “’Scuse me?”

Willy jerked his chin at Evan’s arm. “The wristband.”

“Oh,” Evan said. “Yeah. Thanks.”

He held out his arm.

A snip.

The wristband fell away.

Evan turned as the drop of sweat tickled down through the Bic ink at the side of his eye.

He walked out through the glass doors into the embrace of midnight.

The front gate, topped with concertina wire, rolled open. He nodded at the deputies and stepped through.

He had eighty of Teardrop’s dollars in his pocket. He’d have to walk to the garment district, see if there were any street vendors who could sell him a fresh shirt. He’d find a gas-station bathroom to wash the ash, ink, and dried blood from his face. And cab home.

Then he’d finally get this mission in the rearview mirror once and for all. And set about figuring out who he wanted to be for the back half of his life.

The night sky brought not relief but a dull kind of terror, as if he were standing on the brink of an abyss. The time inside had reacquainted him with his inconsequentiality. You know what it’s like to be powerless.

Yes.

He’d been within an eyelash of living it for the remaining seconds and minutes and years of his life.

If the spear hadn’t worked—

If he hadn’t been able to lure Teardrop into his cell—

If he hadn’t been able to slide off the wristband—

If—

He was shaking. Even here beneath the open expanse of the sky, he couldn’t draw a full breath. He staggered a block and then another block, and then he sat down on the curb. His beard rasped against the crusted collar. He couldn’t stop his hands from trembling.

A voice washed down at him. “Hey, pal. Need some money?”