“You sure you want me to work this hard to like you?”

“I didn’t ask you to come here.”

“No. Your father did.”

“That old man don’t know shit.”

Evan cuffed him, an open-handed slap upside the head. The sound rang off the cracked drywall. When Xavier pulled his face back to center, his cheek bore the mark of Evan’s palm.

“Make whatever choices you want to fuck up your life,” Evan said. “But don’t disrespect that man.”

Xavier touched his fingertips to his cheek. Down near the elbow, his forearm had a tattoo so fresh it was still scabbed up. An elaborate M—the beginning of Mara Salvatrucha.

He stared at Evan. And then he nodded. “Okay.”

“We both know you’re not a killer,” Evan said. “But they’re gonna make you one.”

Xavier’s face had softened, his cheeks full, his eyes as clear as in that photograph Benito had shown Evan. He looked much younger than twenty-four.

“I know,” he said.

Evan recalled the tremble in Benito’s voice when he discussed his son. This boy he’d taught to put on socks, ride a bike, throw a baseball. Countless hours of loving attention, late nights and early mornings, and then your son winds up here, with grown-man problems. And you — the father who once held the answers to the universe — you’re helpless.

A memory flash penetrated Evan’s thoughts: Jack squinting into a handheld camera at sixteen thousand feet, wind whipping his hair. Evan banished the image.

“I am out of time,” Xavier said. “I swore the oath.” He held up his arm, showed the tattooed M at his elbow. “It’s written on my flesh. Know why they do that?”

“It’s good business,” Evan said. “Once you’re marked, you can’t ever join another gang. They own you. Which means they can treat you however they want and you can never leave.”

Xavier looked confused at that. “It’s to show allegiance. For life, get it?”

“Nothing is for life. We can remake ourselves in any image we want. One choice at a time.”

“I’m out of choices.”

“We’re never out of choices.”

“Know what their motto is? ‘Mata, viola, controla.’” Xavier snarled the words, suddenly the raw-boned gang member again. “‘Kill, rape, control.’”

“Their motto,” Evan said.

“What?”

“You said, ‘Their motto.’ Not ‘Our motto.’”

“I already robbed a store. I stole stuff from a truck. They make me collect from the putas. I brought one in today, and she… she got her face cut open.” Xavier put his hand over his mouth, squeezed his lips. “I’m already one of them.”

“Does anyone beyond this chapter know about you?”

“No. I’m just getting jumped in.”

“No one back in El Salvador?”

Xavier’s eyes shone with fear. “No.”

“You’ve got one chance to get out.”

Xavier paced a tight circle by the kitchenette, came back around to face Evan. “Why do you care?”

“I got into something when I was young,” Evan said. “I’ll never get out. Not clean. You still can.”

“What about them?”

“I can handle them.”

“You can’t do that. No one can do that.”

Evan just smiled.

Human engineering had been part of Evan’s training, no less than savate and marksmanship and endurance. He had been trained to disappear into a crowd and fire three-inch clusters at a thousand yards. He had been trained to intimidate, to make grown men afraid. He could convey breathtaking menace when he had to.

So he just smiled, and that was enough.

“You decide what you want,” Evan said. “And call if you need me: 1-855-2-NOWHERE. Say it back to me.”

Xavier said it back.

Evan started for the door. He’d stepped over the stripped gun and set his hand on the doorknob when Xavier spoke.

“This girl today, her face…” Xavier lowered his head. “There’s a point you cross where you can’t get yourself back. Where you can’t find, I don’t know. Redemption.”

“Every choice holds redemption.”

Xavier lifted his eyes to meet Evan’s. “You really believe that?”

Evan said, “I have to.”

44

Running the Same Race

A half-drunk glass of milk rested on the kitchen island. Standing just inside his front door, keys still in hand, Evan stared across the open stretch of floor at it.

There was filmy white residue up one side where Joey had sipped.

He unlaced his boots and then crossed to the kitchen.

He picked up the glass. It had left a circle of milk on his counter. Beside it a pile of crumbs rested next to a torn-open box of water crackers. The inside bag was left open, the crackers exposed to the air, growing stale.

What kind of feral creature ate like this?

The rest of the world could be filthy and chaotic and lawless. But not in here. After scraping through the underside of society, Evan needed to return to order.

He washed the glass by hand, dried it, and put it away. There was another glass missing from the cupboard, an empty spot leaving the left row incomplete. It occurred to him that two glasses had never been out of the cupboard at the same time. He nudged the clean glass into place, the set of six still down one soldier.

Maybe she needed another glass upstairs.