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“Learn what?” Evan asked.
“To use different muscles.”
Evan couldn’t wrap his head around that right now.
“The missed shot,” Tommy said. “Is that what put you in the hurt?”
“No.”
“What did, then?”
“Huh. Three Black Hawks, five Counter Assault Teams, a fewdozen LAPD, a convoy of uparmored SUVs, and a mess of Secret Service agents.”
Tommy gave that a few seconds’ respect. “And yet here you are.”
“That doesn’t matter. They got me. Theyhadme.”
“And now they don’t,” Tommy said. “So you got two choices. Indulge yourself and lick your wounds. Or. Go all the way down inside yourself. Find the leaks. And plug ’em.”
Evan said, “Right.”
The snap of a Zippo, the crackle of a new stick. “You got this,” Tommy said, and cut the line.
Evan sat with his knees pulled to his chest and for a long time did nothing but breathe in the darkness.
“You’re okay,” he told himself. His voice was deep, strong, gravelly like Jack’s. “You’re okay.”
16
Four Count
In the dark of the closet, Evan breathed in for four seconds.
Held his breath for a four count.
Breathed out for four seconds.
Held empty for four seconds more.
Then he did it again.
17
A Very Bad Night
It was a very bad night.
18
Unavailable Men
Evan bellied down beside an industrial A/C unit atop the northmost peak of the upscale Beverly Center mall. His Steiner Tactical binoculars pointed across San Vicente Boulevard, trained on the east-facing bank of windows of the Saperstein Critical Care Center.
The shade of Mia’s window was half lowered to cut the morning light, but he could make out the bump of her body beneath the hospital sheets, an IV tube threading into a pale arm, and the shadowed outline of her head nested in her unruly chestnut waves of hair upon the pillow. She appeared to be asleep.
On the web of streets surrounding Cedars-Sinai, LAPD continued a halfhearted stakeout in the event Evan were stupid enough to return. There was no obvious sign of Secret Service, but a pair of dark SUVs running circuits around the nearby streets indicated they’d left some units to sniff out the area. Approaching through the crowded mall, he’d been cautious of surveillance cameras, double-downing with a heel wedge insert inside his left boot to foil any potential gait recognition.
He watched. And he waited.
