“Hit men,” Dani said with a snort. “Not all created equal.”
“You two are really adorable.” Ev stepped close enough to kiss Choo-Choo. “Here are your options. I kill you right now and wash my hands of this entire mess. I walk away and let the man looking for you find you—and he will find you. Or you come with me, tell me everything you know, and just maybe we all walk out of this alive. Five seconds. Your choice.”
Booker checked his pockets for cash. He didn’t want to take a cab tonight. The way this operation was disintegrating, the less of a trail he left the better. Cab drivers had an irritating habit of remembering their fares by sight and he didn’t need his movements tracked any more than necessary. Besides he loved the Metro. He loved its cavernous feel, the bright echoing hallways so clean and wide. More than once he’d had to resist the urge to belt out a song as he descended the many magnificent escalators. The
whole system was such a bizarre contrast to the low-slung, buttoned-down federalist architecture above ground. It felt like the designers had sat in front of one too many statues of men on horses and Ionic columns and that once they got belowground, they’d run amok.
He wanted to call Dani. He wanted to hear her voice, to hear in her words what she knew about this cover-up. She’d been so calm so far, so clever. Was that just her way or did she know that he’d just hit a hornet’s nest? She had to know. She worked at Rasmund. Then why was she running? If Rasmund had the connections they seemed to have, why would she flee them the way she did? Why not call in to her superiors and have them protect her?
Booker studied the lighted Metro map, seeing the orange line he was looking for but not letting it register. Was she running? Or was she out there as bait? The unpleasant sensation of heat on his skin flushed over him. He was doubting himself. Booker never doubted himself. Doubts led to hesitations and hesitations made a person vulnerable. He reminded himself that he had gotten this far, had developed the reputation he had, by trusting his instincts and his instincts had told him that Dani was truly on the run. And if she was on the run, whatever power or influence Rasmund had, they couldn’t reach her. Or maybe they didn’t offer their unique brand of shelter to their grunts. The thought of some shadowy figure throwing Dani to the wolves like a bone irritated Booker. Yes, he’d been hired to kill her but he wasn’t her employer. She didn’t trust him. Maybe she didn’t trust them either.
Booker wanted to hear it for himself. From Dani.
Ev led them into a little Ethiopian restaurant Dani knew by smell more than by name. She knew they served killer
doro wat
but it looked like the business of the night was drinking. As one of the few restaurants on the block open at this hour, business was good. Around the low woven tables, older men huddled together over glasses of sweet wine and tea while college students and young professionals toasted each other with bottles of Coke or beer.
“I like this place,” Dani said, nodding to the old woman perched behind the cash register. “Their
berbere
sauce can make your eyes water.”
“I know,” Ev said, settling onto a low-slung chair. “I mean I know you like it. I have no idea what kind of sauce you’re talking about. It smells heinous in here.”
“Are you kidding?” Dani eyed a nearly empty platter at the table beside them. “This food is delicious. As a matter of fact, we should each order a meal. Do you know how it works here?”
Ev watched Choo-Choo consider the low armless seat before sliding down into a graceful recline. She scowled at his artfulness. “Dinner? Let me guess. They bring us food. We eat it and the last one to die of food poisoning wins?”
Choo-Choo snorted. “I bet you’re fun at Christmas.”
“Maybe with you, Ev, the chance of dying is high,” Dani said, “but in Ethiopia the custom is that everyone eats off of the same plate. All the meals are served on one huge platter. The idea is that if you eat off the same plate with someone, you’ll never betray each other.”
“A little late for that, isn’t it? Maybe we should have had them cater a luncheon for us.”
Choo-Choo leaned in. “You think we betrayed you? How the hell do you figure that?”
“Well someone betrayed me.” Ev settled her elbows on top of her knees and let her head sink down.
“And you think Choo-Choo and I did this? Orchestrated this?”
She shook her head, her red ponytail slipping over her shoulder and curling under her chin. “I don’t. But I need to blame someone and you’re the closest two.” When she looked back up, her eyes shone with held-back tears.
“You look tired.”
“Fuck you, Dani. You look like you always do—like a hobbit.” She sighed and dropped her head back down. “Don’t pay any attention to me.”
“That’s kind of hard under the circumstances.”
Choo-Choo pulled his very crumpled box of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and dropped it on the table with a sigh. “And just when you think it can’t get any worse, I’m out of cigarettes. Since this night shows no sign
of ever ending, I’m going to buy another pack from the machine out there. Assuming it works.” He rose and stretched his back. “And if it does, I’m going out to smoke. Don’t talk about anything interesting while I’m gone and don’t kill each other.”
Ev smirked at him. “What if the machine doesn’t work?”
“I’ll kill all of you and then myself. It seems only right.”
Ev leaned back to let his long legs step over the seat she crouched on and she watched him glide through the low tables. When he moved to the register to get change, she shook her head and turned back to Dani. “Unbelievable. Of all the people to make it out of Rasmund, it’s you two. Snow White and Dumpy, the eighth dwarf.”
Dani took off her purse and lay back against the cushions. Unlike her two long-legged companions, she found the low chairs and tables of the Ethiopian joint to be perfectly comfortable. She considered pulling out the Rasmund pouch from under her heavy shirts but decided she couldn’t bear to go through all that disrobing. “Is this what we’re going to do all night, Ev? Listen to you talk tough to us? Because I have a few other more pressing issues at hand.”
“How much do you know?”
Dani laughed an unamused laugh. “Between me and Choo-Choo? We barely know our own names. I know that I underestimated you.”
“Likewise.”
“Hey, all we did was get away. You got away with a gun and a Stringer code.” Dani saw the guarded expression on Ev’s face. “First things first. Which are you? A Stringer or a Face?”
“I don’t like to limit myself.”
“Cute, but which is it? And what about Hickman? Was he like you?”
“You mean glamorous and deadly?” Ev didn’t quite manage to pull off the quip and Dani’s humorless reception didn’t help. She sighed. “No, Hickman was straight Face. Literally. He was the faciest Face I ever knew. The man was born to it. He could talk the underpants off a nun and have her thanking him for the opportunity.”
“I never got the impression that you two were close,” Dani said.
“We weren’t. Who is at Rasmund? Don’t tell me you and the Slavic Stud are in love?”
It took the rest of Dani’s tattered and overworked control to keep from kicking the table into the redhead. “Why don’t you cut the shit with the cute names, okay Twyla? What? Shocked by that? Didn’t think we all knew your real name, Twyla Dawn Cruickshank?”
A mottled flush rose up from the collar of Ev’s jacket, leaving a blotchy path along her neck and cheeks. Maybe Ev was dangerous, Dani thought, but if she thought Dani and Choo-Choo were just going to whimper and grovel, she had an unpleasant surprise coming. Before Ev could spit out whatever it was she had planned, Choo-Choo glided in among them on a cloud of night air and cigarette smoke.
“Swapping secrets, girls?” He crossed his legs at the knee. “What next? Braiding hair?”
“What’s next,” Dani said, “is that we’re going to order some drinks so we don’t draw any more attention to ourselves and then we’re going to settle back and let Ev regale us with what she knows. How about it, Ev?”
Once again Ev got cut off, this time by the arrival of the waiter. Ev and Dani ordered beer, Choo-Choo asked for house honeyed wine.
“You like
tej
?” Dani asked.
“I loathe it.” He waved to the dark room around them. “But I’m a slave to conformity.”
Dani started to laugh then caught Ev’s glare. “Don’t let us keep you, Ev. You were just getting ready to tell us everything you know.”
“If you’re waiting for some big exposition and reveal, you’re going to be disappointed. I don’t know much more than you, I’d guess. Someone sold us out. Someone got inside and hit us. They took Maureen and they’re not going to stop until—”
“Maureen?” Dani and Choo-Choo spoke as one and Ev’s blush deepened.
“Mrs. O’Donnell. They got Mrs. O’Donnell and they’re holding her. They called me and let me talk to her, so I know she’s alive.”
“She called you?” Dani didn’t think it was possible to be surprised after all that had happened but that did it. “Wait, how did you get out? Why weren’t you inside?”
This time Ev looked relieved when the appearance of the waiter interrupted her. She ignored the offered glass and drank right from the bottle.
Dani did likewise, trying not to get distracted by Choo-Choo’s dainty sips of the pale wine. “Maureen was afraid something was up. She knew the Swan job was screwy. She’s been real irritated the past few weeks, real snappy. I knew something was on her mind.”
Choo-Choo shot Dani an expressive side-eye and Dani phrased her question carefully. “Did you and… Maureen… work together a lot? Outside of the usual job?”
When Ev nodded, Choo-Choo snorted a soft laugh. “I’ve had jobs like that before.”
“It wasn’t like that, you fucking man-whore.” Ev looked like she might smash her bottle against his skull and Dani leaned in.
“Relax, Ev. Take it down a notch, okay? We don’t need any more attention.”
Ev huffed back in her chair, wiping her nose with the back of the hand that held the beer. Some splashed from the bottle onto her sleeve and she ignored it. She sniffled, her lips set in a stubborn pout. Dani risked a glance at Choo-Choo and saw the same confusion on his face that she felt. It was difficult to reconcile the surly, almost adolescent-acting woman before them with the cold, polished Face they had known before. Or thought they’d known.
“I started out as a Stringer.” Ev’s voice was soft, with nasal traces of an accent that suggested an upbringing in Southern mountains. “Nah, I started as a mess, a runaway with a record and a habit. I got picked up once for B&E and next thing I know I’ve got U.S. Marshals asking about me, wanting to put me in witness protection if I’d testify about what I’d seen at this house. Well, I hadn’t seen anything and I kept telling them that and then they started getting pissed, like I was playing them. Hell, I would’ve told them anything if I’d only known what they wanted. They started threatening me with jail time—like that was something I was afraid of, you know?—but they were serious. They wanted something bad and they wanted me to give it to them and when they thought I wouldn’t, I seriously thought they were going to make me disappear.
“Then Maureen showed up.” Ev took a deep breath, just uttering the name making her accent disappear, her usual throaty tone back in place.
“She said she would give me a choice. Of course my track record to that point had proven that my choices always ended badly for me, but she told me to trust her. Funny, because that usually ended badly for me, too, but there was just something about her, something so strong and calm. She told me she worked for a company who could put my skills to a more positive use. How did she put it?” Ev smiled at the memory, mimicking Mrs. O’Donnell’s low tone to perfection. “‘I work for people who will appreciate your lack of squeamishness.’ That’s what she told me and that’s how I came to work for Rasmund.”
Dani found it hard to swallow her beer. “As a hit man? Hit woman?”
Ev shot her a dark look over her beer. “That’s the smallest part of what I do. Don’t get so hung up on titles, Dani. I could get into places others couldn’t. Especially back then. Nobody looked twice at a kid like me. It was Maureen who taught me to appreciate style, to lift myself up from the dirt I’d been wallowing in. She cared about me. We care about each other.”