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Evan stood maybe twenty feet from Luke Devine at the edge of an expensive-looking silk splash rug that stretched to the fireplace. On the rug by the hearth were two facing love seats. Between them sat a rectangular cuboid of a glass table with a naked male mannequin trapped within, a piece that Devine must have fancied to be art. A series of radius windows looked out on what felt like perpetual darkness with no glimmer of the backyard party. Evan’s internal compass was exceptional, but he had no sense which way he or the room was oriented; it was as though they were floating in the gloom.
For a moment the men regarded each other, neither blinking. The inferno raged behind Devine, flames leaping from his shoulders.
“How did you know I was coming?” Evan asked.
“We’ll get to that.”
“How do you know who I am?”
“We’ll get to that, too,” Luke said.
Evan had the unnerving sense of being outplayed and out ofhis depth. He was reminded of the shot he’d missed from twenty feet at the hospital plaza. Wide open, no wind factor, no glints or shadows.
needle punching through his shirt
windshield spiderwebbing
missed shot at twenty feet
He felt vulnerable.
He hated feeling vulnerable.
“Please,” Luke said with an artful flare of his hand. “Sit.”
They took positions on the love seats, squaring off across the glass table.
Luke’s eye contact was direct, unremitting. There was no sign of the mania that Echo had warned Evan about, and he wondered what it would take to get Luke there. Or had Echo made it up, exaggerated his flaws through the prism of her own inadequacies?
“I’m fascinated by people who are exceptional at something,” Luke said, his tone as calm as ever. “Because excellence is the way we burrow through to meaning and—if we’re lucky—wisdom. Dancing, thinking, sculpting …” He cast an eye at Evan, translucent blue like Icelandic water.“Killing.”
The mannequin peered up, its smooth, featureless face conveying terror, plastic palms pressed to the glass, mouth agape in a silent scream.
“I want to know what they know,” Luke said. “I want to feel what they feel. I admire people like you. The mercilessness required to get done what you get done—I’d imagine you pay a terrible price for it. I’d imagine you have to turn off many parts of yourself. You have to be so much less to be so much more. It’s a sacrifice, really. But you were made for it. If the rumors are true, you’re like … like a demigod.”
“No,” Evan said. “Just a guy with no patience for theatricality.”
“Amusing coming from someone dressed up like an avenging angel,” Luke said. “You put on the garb, but you won’t own what’s beneath. I understand. There’s nothing more terrifying than embracing that which is great in you.”
“I’m not certain about much,” Evan said, “but I’m sure that there’s no greatness in what I do.”
Luke cocked his head. Being at the receiving end of his focus was like staring into a klieg light. “Your humility seems unfeigned.”
“I was taught to remain aware of how many ways I can be better,” Evan said. “But I’m not interested in myself. I’m interested in you.”
“I’m the recipient of a great deal of interest from a great number of powerful people. They think I’m dangerous. No one can rise this high without dealing outside the boundaries of accepted law. The rules change as you ascend. That’s why you’re here.” The fire made cat’s-eyes of Devine’s pupils. “Because of the power I hold.”
Evan wondered why Devine wanted to block a trillion-dollar environmental bill. Money was the obvious answer, but he seemed governed by other impulses. Evan, too, had different concerns beyond a bill and a Senate vote, neither of which had motivated him to arrive at Devine’s door dressed in the black garb of death.
The heat of the fireplace warmed the right side of Evan’s face. “You had a kid killed. And a young woman.”
He looked at the cat’s-eyes, and the cat’s-eyes looked back. Or they did not.
Luke’s light blond brows vanished when the flames licked a particular way, but the skin of his forehead rose a quarter inch. Evan read his posture, his expression, looking for a forward lip purse or some other alpha display that indicated a clandestine plan. There was none. Luke seemed genuinely surprised.
“I did no such thing.”
“Then why did your man come after me in New York?”
