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“Soright.” Heat in her face, pressure behind her eyes. There wasa pause so long that she wondered if the caller had hung up. “Still there?”
“I am.” A briefer pause. “Will you tell me more about him?”
“Huh. I suppose so. It’s just …”
“What?”
“I can’t hear an instrument in your voice,” she said. “Is that by design?”
“Do most people have an instrument in their voice?”
“Everyone,” she said. “Who are you? What’s your name?”
“If I flew out to see you, would you promise not to kill yourself until I get there?”
The wind howled against the window, and the building creaked in response. Wrapped in the blanket and the glow of her own body heat, she felt safer than she had in months.
“Why the hell not,” she said.
21
Fallen Angel
Seven hours later Evan sat in Echo’s upscale studio condo on a chair pulled over from the kitchen set. She was nested in a blanket on the couch where—he assumed—she’d relocated from the ledge when he’d spoken to her this very morning. Shabby-chic furniture and soothing Swiss-coffee-colored walls warmed the place, and yet everything about it seemed to be straining for cheeriness—the Crate & Barrel decor, the area rug beneath his feet, the desperate spray of daisies leaning from the painted soup-can vase on the counter that passed for a kitchen.
Evan’s trip to Manhattan had been seamless, thanks to Aragón Urrea’s generosity. Urrea had found Evan awhile back and asked for his help to retrieve his missing eighteen-year-old daughter. The mission had been dangerous and grueling, nearly costing Evan his life. The price he’d demanded for his help was that Aragón limit his future dealings to the right side of the law. Or at least the rightishside. Overwhelmed with gratitude, Aragón had goneabove and beyond that, putting his small fleet of private planes at Evan’s disposal whenever he needed to travel discreetly, which was always.
Given the federal government’s renewed interest in hunting him down, Evan had been happy to take advantage of a flight that required no TSA checkpoint, no commercial airports, and no documentation, forged or otherwise.
Echo’s building was Manhattan-tiny but Tribeca-nice. Aside from the brimming trash barrels in the facing alley and a guy slumbering beneath a shiny thermal blanket on the neighboring steps, the whole block felt scrubbed clean.
The night was sloping toward midnight. Echo gripped a steaming cup of tea with both hands. She’d yet to take a sip; it seemed there for warmth alone.
She’d been talking in desultory stops and starts, painting a mosaic of a relationship that was at turns wonderful and damaging. “Maybe they go hand in hand,” she said in that same dreamy tone she’d had on the phone. “I think a part of me still loves him. Do you have any idea how infuriating that is?”
No expert in relationships, Evan kept his mouth shut. Wisps of steam rose from her cup, framing her clean features. She was prettier than she allowed herself to be, limp hair framing the smooth, pale skin of her face. A lean build tilting toward too skinny. Evan wondered at an eating disorder.
“It sounds like there was a change in him, your relationship.”
Her eyes darted away.
“What happened?”
“It’s hard … it’s hard to talk about it.” Her lips trembled, but her expression remained flat.
“Everything is on your terms,” Evan said. “If you don’t want to talk anymore, don’t.”
“But you came all the way here.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
For a time Echo stared down into her tea. Evan rubbed his fingertips together, each coated with an invisible layer of superglue to obscure his prints. Somewhere in the building, a water pipebanged. The old-fashioned clock in the kitchen had a vigorous second hand that ticked off one minute and then another.
She started to talk, hesitated, pushed through. “He stopped taking his meds.” The words came out in a rush, as if she had to force them out before she lost her nerve. “He said … he said they were holding him back.”
“Meds for what?”
“I don’t know exactly. But they slowed him down. Made him kind.”
