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Tenpenny skipped back to let the real fighters have their space.
Rathsberger was already lunging, but Evan dropped low and swept the leg. Rath hit the rug hard on his shoulders, ruinous face contorted, his lungs ejecting a noise sounding like a displeased seal.
Dapper Dan snatched Evan up from behind in a sleeper hold, arching his back to pull Evan’s feet off the floor and choke him out. His massive biceps crowded Evan’s cheek. Evan could sense the crinkle of Dan’s smile, the fresh scent of wintergreen gum.
In front of him, Gordo had labored up to a knee, one hand pressed to the shattered glass to support his substantial weight. Blood veined the silk beneath his palm. Evan kicked out his elbow, and the big man crashed once more, cheek finding shards. Dapper Dan tightened his hold, static crowding in, and Evan shuddered once, made a gurgling sound, and went limp.
The losing-consciousness act worked, Dan relaxing just enough for Evan’s boots to lower a few inches. Evan heel-stomped the inner arch of Dan’s foot through the trendy sneaker, crushing bone, and Dan grunted and released him. Evan threw an elbow hard back into Dan’s solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him but missing the floating rib he’d intended to break. Dan staggered back into the upended love seat, which struck him at the backs of the legs. He tumbled over it, deposited in rocket-launch position staring up at the ceiling with his back and legs parallel to the floor.
Evan whirled to face Santos, the least threatening, but Sandman’s bearing showed him to be anything but. The small man had taken a medium-wide stance, heels elevated, springy on his feet. Arms partially extended, elbows bent, hands open and searching. Spine flexed and curved forward, center of gravity eased slightly over his lead leg, readying for a lunge.
A grappler.
Grapplers were always the most dangerous.
It had all gone down so fast—less than ten seconds.
The others were on the floor or picking glass out of themselves. They were gasping and panting, breaths echoing like crosscurrents in the vast hard room. The acrid stink of body odor made itself known above the burning cedar.
As Santos moved, an Order of Christ pendant, square with flared tips, swayed at his chest. He was short and compact, low center of gravity. Evan shuffle-stepped with him and tried to track his eye movements to see if he’d give up a target glance telegraphing where he’d strike first.
That’s when he heard the click of a hammer drawing back on a pistol.
Tenpenny peered over a 9-mil, gripping it like a mall warrior with the thumb of his support hand behind the slide. Evan could see that the sights were aimed under his left elbow, and the deltoid of Tenpenny’s shooting arm was tensed, which meant he’d likely anticipate recoil and place the shot even lower and wider. If Evan could shake Santos for a moment, he could get inside Tenpenny’s reach and introduce his Adam’s apple to his neck vertebrae.
But Santos drew in toward the other marines, and Tenpennyshuffled behind them as well. On the floor Rath rolled onto his side and coughed out more air, his sleeve smeared with white paint from Evan’s face. A test tube had slid from his pocket, and it took Evan a moment to distinguish the insectoid scrambling within. He thought of the pimp’s face adhered to the table in that pigsty in Mattapan. Skin swollen tight like cellophane, glass cylinder protruding from the nostril, a grotesque feeding tube. The way the swollen lips had bulged at the corner before the red ant had wriggled through and popped free.
Rath tracked Evan’s gaze to the test tube, then grabbed for it and lunged up, his twisted features a blur of scar tissue. His hand found the coyote-tan pistol in his hip holster, but he didn’t draw; his angle would put his own men in the danger-close area and his principal within ricochet distance. Gordo had risen as well, as slow as a mounting ocean swell. Glass studded his left cheek, blood dribbling from both palms. Dapper Dan was next up. Tenpenny edged farther behind his men, still aiming the pistol imprecisely at Evan over their shoulders.
Devine was also on his feet, though Evan hadn’t seen him move; it was as though he’d teleported from the love seat.
It occurred to Evan that for the past few seconds there’d been no memories, no doubts, no uncertainty. He had occupied himself without distraction. And it had been a dark kind of lovely.
He stared at the crew of men. They stared back. They were more bruised and bloody than he was, and that pleased him.
He offered Devine the faintest tip of his head. “Please inform security that I’ll show myself out.”
44
Letting Go
Rathsberger and Tenpenny bookended Evan down the stairs, through the partygoers, past the tumbling waterfall and string quartet, and to the massive pivot door in the front, where a rugby scrum’s worth of no-necks continued to check faces and names. The two marines were sure not to touch Evan. Contact would be reserved for a future date.
They walked him out into a soft spitting rain, across the quartz driveway to the edge of the property where the front gardens met Meadow Lane. They halted once Evan’s boots hit asphalt, facing him from the rim of the lawn.
Line in the sand.
A half step behind Rath, Tenpenny glowered at him. Dew had caught in his dated mustache. His eyes were brown and forgettable.
Evan flat-out fucking hated him.
Hated his cowardice in how he’d hidden behind his men upstairs. Hated how he’d clutched the younger woman inside andnuzzled her neck while pretending to steady her. Hated how he wielded his height as if it were something earned rather than a throw of the genetic die.
Evan stared up at Tenpenny, his best ask-yourself-do-I-look-scared glare. Rath withdrew the test tube once more, tapped it against his knuckles.
“You enjoy yourself,” Evan asked, “feeding ants through the face of Angela Buford’s pimp?”
When Rath smiled, it looked like a wound reopening.
