Evan Arden 04 Isolated (8 page)

I’m too late. She’s gone. She’s fucking gone.

I have no idea how long I lie there, trying to breathe and trying not to think. It doesn’t work. I keep running over everything in my head, trying to figure out where I went wrong. Did I pick the wrong escape route? If I had been here a couple of days earlier, would she still be here? Should I be packing a bag and jumping on the next flight to Arizona?

When I finally open my eyes, I’m looking at the Iraqi teen leaning against the sliding glass door to the porch. His arms are crossed, and he glares at me. As I watch, he approaches and drops to the floor. He sits cross-legged in front of my face and stares at me.

“
You fucked it up.”

“
I was going to fix everything,” I tell him.

“
No you weren’t.”

“
I just…I just need to explain. Tell her I couldn’t walk away before, but now it’s different.”

He raises an eyebrow at me.

“
I could call her,” I whisper. “I could tell her it’s all okay now. I’ll promise not to do it anymore.”

“
You’d be lying.”

“
I mean it,” I say, trying to sound convincing. “No more contracts; no more hits. I’m done.”

“
For how long?” he asks. “How long before the urge to kill brings you back to Rinaldo? How long before your loyalty to him outweighs your need for her?”

I have no answer.

The kid moves forward, and I flinch. He places his palms on the floor and leans his head down until we are face to face.

“
You are a killer.”

I swallow. I open my mouth, wanting to protest, but I can’t.

“
I’ll…I’ll change…” I don’t believe the words even as I say them. I gasp for air and try to sit up as my body shudders.

“
You don’t deserve her.”

As I hear the words and recognize the truth of them, I release all the tightness in my body. I slump against the floor again, head buried in my arms. The air around me is so heavy, it’s oppressive. I can’t move.

I don’t have any reason to move.

I knew this day would come. Part of me has always known it. When we left Chicago to escape the life I had there, my intentions were pure. I had planned to get out of the business and live a quiet life with Lia.

I should have known better, but it’s what I had wanted at the time.

It wasn’t possible to stay away from that life. It had taken six months for Rinaldo to contact me after I left Chicago, but if I was to be honest with myself, I was glad when he did. Target shooting was never quite enough for me. I craved the real shot—the real kill. I took the odd jobs, escaped Lia with some lame excuse, and flew out to wherever I needed to go to take out whoever Rinaldo had assigned. At first it was just a couple of jobs, but they became more frequent.

But now he thinks I’m dead.

How long would it be before Rinaldo figured it out? How long would it be before my own desire to return to that life interfered with my time with Lia? Would I even last a year before I went searching for information on Rinaldo’s activities with thoughts of doing what I could to help him?

I can’t blame Lia for leaving. I want to, but I can’t.

My shoulders shake, and I don’t know if I’m sweating or crying. I squeeze my eyes shut, but I know if I open them, my persistent phantom will still be there. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to look into his eyes and know he’s right.

I can’t change.

I fall to my stomach, no longer able to control my sobs as images of Lia scroll through my head. My leg is pressed against something sharp. It might even be cut, but I don’t care. I squeeze my eyes shut, but I can’t close my mind. She’s everywhere inside of me.

I see her for the first time as she walks to my cabin in Arizona. I see her through the sights of my Barrett as I take shots randomly around the local park. I see her as she wraps her arms around me, tells me it will be all right, and runs her fingers through my hair.

It’s not all right. It’s never going to be all right.

Curling into a ball, I finally lose consciousness.

I wake up, screaming.

My eyes are dry and achy as I stare into nothingness, lost in my own thoughts. I’m not sure how long I’ve lain in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by the shambles of my outburst. I know my stomach stopped growling at me long ago. I’m not even thirsty anymore.

A thump at the door startles me, and I look up. I can see through the window a thin outline of a man on the front porch. He crouches briefly and then stands again.

Instinct kicks in, and I roll myself away from the center of the room and take cover at the end of the couch. I don’t have a weapon on me. The closest gun is in the kitchen, still inside the backpack Eddie-boy handed me on the beach.

The shadow in the window moves, and I tense. Whoever it is turns and thumps down the steps to the driveway. I push myself to my feet and race to the kitchen to retrieve the Glock from the backpack and then head to the window in the front room.

Barely pushing the curtain aside, I watch a UPS truck pull away from the cabin.

On the porch is a long, brown package. The return address is a post office box in Thompson. When I squat down to pick up the parcel and carry it inside, it’s heavy. I’m wary, to say the least, as I place the box on the kitchen table and slice open the packing tape.

As I push the top half of the box away, I see my disassembled Barrett M82 sniper rifle.

I run my finger over the sleek metal. Near the trigger, the metal is darker with no scratches from wear and tear. It’s been repaired, and I have no doubt that it will work perfectly. When I lift the barrel from the box, I discover a small piece of paper.

Finish your business and return home.

Rinaldo had not been fooled. He had known exactly what I was doing the whole time.
Home
meant Chicago—there is no doubt in my head about that. I don’t know if I want to scream or cry.

I do neither. I laugh instead. The sound is empty and hollow in the deserted room.

In the back of the bedroom closet, there is a small safe. From it, I remove an old flip phone and select the only number entered into it. It only rings twice.

“
Evan?” I close my eyes as I hear Rinaldo’s voice. I have to swallow before I answer.

“
Yeah.”

“
You got my package.” It’s not a question.

“
Yes, sir.” I want to ask him how he had known I had survived, but I don’t. He probably wouldn’t tell me anyway.

“
There are a lot of changes coming,” Rinaldo says. “I’m going to need your undivided attention.”

“
You have it,” I say.

“
Really?”

I take a deep breath, but I can’t quite bring myself to say the words.

“
Evan?”

“
She’s gone,” I finally say in a harsh whisper. “Finally had enough of my shit.”

There’s a long pause on the other end of the phone.

“
I’m sorry, son,” he says, “but it might be for the best.”

I can’t agree with him, so I say nothing.

“
Take your time and do what you need to do,” he tells me.

“
Yes, sir.”

“
Keep in touch.”

The phone goes silent.

I pack a bag. The cabin looks like a tornado went through it, but I’m not cleaning it up. I doubt I will ever even return to it. As I take a last look around to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything, the quarter on its chain beckons me.

I touch the coin, tracing its edge with my finger. Slowly, I drag it across the surface of the nightstand and hold the quarter in my palm. As I grip it, I can feel the metal warm from my body heat. I remember the day I did the same thing in a far more rustic cabin in the Arizona desert. I left her behind because I had nothing to offer her but apologies.

Just like now.

“
Sorry,” I whisper as I drop the quarter onto the center of the bed.

I stare at it a moment, square my shoulders, and pick up my bag. Near the front door, the duffel with my Barrett sits underneath the coatrack. I bundle up against the cold, pick up all my gear, and lock the door behind me.

The cold wind is in sharp contrast to the heat I felt when I was leaving the Arizona cabin. The same feeling of my chest being ripped apart is glaringly present, but I have no canine companion to share it with this time.

I drive off.

Passenger side empty.

Completely alone.

Clear Shot

Cool mist dampens my face. I’m sure at some point it stops raining in Seattle, but I’ve never experienced a dry spell here. With a duffel bag over my shoulder, I scout out the security around the Space Needle and ultimately decide it would not be a good place to set up. It might have been fun, but there aren’t enough ways to get out, and the chances of being caught are too great.

I have two other options.

I jump a bus and head down to the pier near Pike’s Place Market. The area is fairly open in many places, and transportation is easy to find. My target shops here every Saturday. Once a month, he takes a dinner cruise from Tillicum Village. There are plenty of docks along the edge of the Puget Sound—lots of hiding places. Taking him out while he is on the water gives me maximum escape time, and he’s already scheduled his dinner for next weekend.

I don’t even bother checking out the third location. It is too close to his home—too close to his additional security. I walk back to my hotel, soak in the bathtub, and pretend to myself that I’ll get some sleep.

There’s no way. I’m too pumped up. By the time the sun is rising, I’ve slept maybe an hour or two. I shower, shave, and dress in workman’s overalls. I put a change of clothes, my binoculars, and a pair of gloves in my duffel bag before I head out to the pier.

There’s a catwalk above the entrance to the ferry. Two large air circulation units provide the perfect cover and a close-up view of the water. I walk casually around and watch various dock workers as they go through their morning routines. The ferry fills up with vehicles and pedestrians wanting to travel to Bainbridge Island. Kneeling near the ladder to the catwalk, I pull out my gloves and slide my hands inside them. There’s a ton of activity as the ferry prepares to take off, and I use the chaos to mask my quick ascendance of the ladder to the top of the platform.

It’s cool and breezy, but the view is perfect. I kneel down and listen closely, but I hear no one yelling out to me. I’m not surprised. They key to moving in restricted areas is simply to look like you know exactly where you are going. Few people will actually question you.

Taking out my binoculars, I get a better look at everything around me. Tourists mill about the shopping areas and the aquarium. The view is perfect, but there is an obvious problem—I’m too low to the ground. There are other walkways at my level, and I could be too easily spotted. The wind is going to make my shot difficult, and the trajectory is low. I need to be higher up, but there aren’t many tall buildings.

The building housing the fire department has a tower on it. I’m not sure if it’s functional or decorative, but it’s close to my location. There’s always the Alaskan Way Viaduct, but I’m not a fan of shooting from a roadway, and I can’t see any overpasses. On the other side of the viaduct, there’s a parking garage with several floors of office space above it. Beyond that, a federal building is the tallest and most obvious place for height, but there will be too much security there.