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“Freezefreeze?” Evan asked. “Or can I drop the hydrangeas?”
Naomi looked unsure of herself. “Drop the hydrangeas.”
He let them go.
“Hands! Hands!”
He raised them, palms showing.
The sound of men on the staircase was closer now, thundering down at them. He could sense movement through the closed doors behind him and also past Naomi along the corridor.
The noose tightening through the slipknot, cinching in.
“Let me take you, X,” she said. “The CAT boys have hot triggers. Best-case they break your ribs with less-lethal. Worst-case someone gets killed.”
Her eyes and muzzle steady, she reached for a nylon pouch looped to her belt and withdrew a syringe filled with clear blue liquid. Given the scope of the tactical response, he guessed she was wielding etorphine, a semisynthetic opioid three thousand times more potent than morphine, used by vets to sedate large animals. He would have preferred something more suited to humans but wasn’t in a position to get finicky. The corridor was swimmy, the bright lights disorienting.
She bit off the plastic cap, spit it to the side. “I need to put this in your shoulder. You have to give me your word you’ll let me.”
Shouts and footfall even closer, all around them. A cry from the staircase, no doubt Frank B. being overtaken. Evan and Naomi stared at each other. No one else in the world.
“Please,” she said, with the faintest tremor in her voice.
Evan knit his fingers together at the base of his neck and took his knees, one at a time.
Not with a bang, then. But a whimper.
Naomi moved forward, her shadow falling across him, blocking out the harsh glare. She kept her weapon drawn, the needle readied in her right hand.
Now she stood over him.
He looked up at her. She looked down at him.
He felt her breath stir the air, felt it brush his cheeks. There was great respect in her eyes.
“Thank you,” she said.
A jab straight through the shirt into the meat of his shoulder.
The buried fire of the injection.
She holstered her SIG, holding his head with her other hand. Weakly, he nuzzled into it.
Somewhere at what felt like a great remove, he heard doors banging open, voices and shouting. Countless shadows flickered along the white, white hospital walls. His muscles started to give, and then he slumped into a fetal position.
The last thing he felt was Naomi’s hand cradling his cheek so his head wouldn’t strike the floor.
6
Battle-Testing
“The thing you should excel at most is being wrong,” Jack says.
The study glows amber from the fire, bronzing Jack’s reading glasses, the cut-glass crystal tumbler glass in his hand, the finger of liquor within, the walnut bookcases, even the mallard-green walls.
Evan sits on the worn leather couch, elbow resting on a heap of dusty books. At twelve years old, he’s still so small that the tips of his sneakers barely scrape the floor. One of his laces is untied, dangling. He knows that probably drives Jack nuts, but it is a small enough rebellion to be overlooked.
His voice rich with single-barrel gravel, Jack continues. “Pay attention to everything you don’t know and everything you’re getting wrong while there’s still time to learn.”
