Page 167 of Villains Series

AFTER

EON

HOLTZ shivered, not at the sight of the corpse on the steel table, but from the cold.

The storage room was fucking freezing.

“Not so tough now,”

muttered Briggs, her breath a cloud of fog.

And it was true.

Lying there, under the cold white light, Eliot Cardale looked … young. All his age had been contained in those eyes, flat as a shark’s. But now they were closed, and Cardale looked less like a serial-killing EO and more like Holtz’s kid brother.

Holtz had always wondered at the gap between body and corpse, the place where a person stopped being a he or a she or a they, and instead became an it. Eliot Cardale still looked like a person, despite the shockingly pale skin, the still-glistening bullet wounds—small, dark circles with serrated edges.

Nobody knew how Haverty had been able to render Eli human—or at least mortal. Just like they didn’t know who had shot the EO, or who had killed the ex-EON scientist—though everyone seemed to assume it was Victor Vale.

“Holtz,”

snapped Briggs.

“I’m freezing my ass off, and you’re making moony eyes at a corpse.”

“Sorry,”

said Holtz, his breath pluming.

“Just thinking.”

“Well, stop thinking,”

she said.

“and help me load this thing.”

Together, they maneuvered Cardale’s corpse into cold storage, which was basically just a permanent stretch of deep drawers in the basement of the EON complex, dedicated to indefinitely housing the remains of deceased EOs.

“One down,”

she said, scribbling notes on her clipboard.

“one to go.”

Holtz’s eyes flicked to the other body that waited, patiently, on its own steel plank.

Rusher.

Holtz had avoided looking at his old friend as long as possible. Not just because of the gunshot wounds that stood out in livid marks against the old scars, but because he couldn’t believe his eyes—Dominic had survived so much. They’d served together for four years, and worked here, side by side, for another three.

And all that time, Holtz had never known what Rusher was.

Rios was always telling them not to make assumptions, that EOs weren’t ducks—they didn’t have to walk like one and talk like one and smell like one to be one.

But still.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

he murmured.

“Makes you wonder how many are out there. And here. If I was an EO, you better believe this is the last place I’d be.”

Briggs wasn’t listening.

He couldn’t blame her.

EON was in a state of emergency. They’d gotten the place back under lockdown pretty quickly, but they’d still lost four EOs in the process, a third of the soldiers were in medical—five had died. The gala mission had been a total disaster, EON’s first unkillable EO was dead, possibly from the efforts of their own ex-employee, and the director hadn’t even bothered to come to work today.

Holtz needed a drink.

Briggs sealed the doors to cold storage and they climbed back to the main levels.

Holtz swiped through security and stepped outside, grateful that his shift was finally over.

His car sat waiting on the employee side of the lot. It was a sleek yellow speedster, the kind that took on an animal grace—it didn’t just drive. It prowled and growled and rumbled and purred, and the other EON soldiers loved to give him shit for it, but Holtz hadn’t craved many things since he’d gotten out of the army—just fast cars and pretty girls—and he was only willing to pay for one of them.

He climbed behind the wheel, engine revving pleasantly as he jacked up the heat, still trying to shake off the chill of cold storage, the lingering shock of the last twenty-four hours. As he pulled through the gate, Holtz cranked up the radio, trying to drown out the sound of the gravel drive. He shook his head—EON, he assumed, could surely afford to have paved their private road, but apparently they didn’t want to encourage any traffic. So if you were a civilian, hitting gravel in this area was a sign you’d gone the wrong way.

Though some people didn’t get the message—like this asshole, Holtz thought, looking down the road.

A car had parked on the shoulder, a low, black coupe, its taillights glaring and its hood raised.

Holtz slowed, wondering if he should call it in, but then he saw the girl. She’d had her head bent over the engine, but as he drew up beside her car, she straightened, scrubbing at her forehead.

Blond hair. Red lips. Tight-fitting jeans.

Holtz rolled down the window.

“This is private property,”

he said.

“I’m afraid you can’t stop here.”

“I didn’t want to,”

she said.

“the stupid thing just up and died.”

Holtz caught the edge of an accent, a melodic lilt. God, he loved accents.

“And of course,”

the girl went on, kicking a tire.

“I don’t know shite about cars.”

Holtz eyed the low black beast.

“That’s quite a car for someone who doesn’t know shite.”

She smiled at that, a dazzling, dimpled smile.

“What can I say?”

she said in that musical voice.

“I have a weakness for nice things.”

She pulled her hair up off her neck.

“Think you can help?”

Holtz didn’t know shite—shit—about cars either, but he wasn’t about to admit it. He got out and rolled up his sleeves, approaching the engine. It reminded him of the fake bombs he’d had to defuse in basic training.

He toggled and poked and made low humming sounds as the girl stood at his shoulder, smelling of summer and sunshine. And then, miraculously, his fingers brushed over a hose and Holtz realized it had simply come free. He reconnected it.

“Try starting it now,”

he said, and a second later, the coupe’s engine rumbled to life. The girl let out a joyful sound.

Holtz shut the hood, feeling triumphant.

“My hero,”

she said with mock sincerity but genuine affection. She dug through her wallet.

“Here, let me pay you…”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“You bailed me out,”

she said.

“There has to be something I can do.”

Holtz hesitated. She was out of his league, but—fuck it.

“You could let me buy you a drink.”

He braced himself for the inevitable rejection, wasn’t surprised when the girl shook her head. “No,”

she said.

“that won’t do. But I’ll buy you one.”

Holtz grinned like an idiot.

He would have gone with her right then, left the black coupe on the side of the private road and driven her anywhere she wanted, but she apologized—she was running crazy late, thanks to the breakdown—and asked if he would take a rain check.

Tomorrow night?

He agreed.

She held out her hand, palm up.

“Got a phone?”

He offered up his cell, flushing slightly when her fingers lingered on his, their touch feather light, but electric. She added her name and number to his contacts and passed it back.

“Tomorrow, then?”

she asked, turning toward her car.

“Tomorrow, then…”

Holtz looked down at the entry in his phone. “April.”

She glanced back at him through thick lashes, and winked, and Holtz climbed into his yellow speedster and drove away, still watching April, haloed in the rearview mirror. He kept waiting for her to disappear, but she didn’t. Life was strange and wonderful sometimes.

And tomorrow, he had a date.

* * *

JUNE watched the yellow car shrink into the distance.

Idiot, she thought, starting up the road, this time on foot.

By the time she reached the gates of EON, she looked for all intents and purposes like Benjamin Holtz, Observation and Containment, age twenty-seven. Loved his little brother and hated his stepdad and still had nightmares about the things he’d seen overseas.

“What’s this?”

asked the security guard, rising from the booth.

“Stupid car broke down,”

she muttered, doing her best to imitate Holtz’s northeastern accent.

“Ha!”

said the security guard.

“That’s what you get for choosing style over substance.”

“Yeah, yeah,”

said June.

“What you need is a good midlevel sedan—”

“Just let me in so I can grab a van and some cables and get my shit back on the road.”

The gates parted, and June stepped through. Easy as pie. She crossed the lot on foot and whistled at the sight of the front doors. It looked like someone had driven a car into them. Inside, a soldier looked up from some kind of scanning station.

“Back so soon?”

he asked, rising to his feet.

“Left my wallet somewhere.”

“Won’t get far without that.”

“You’re telling me.”

Small talk was an art form, one of those things that made people’s eyes gloss over. Go silent, and they might start wondering why. But keep them talking about nothing at all, and they wouldn’t even blink.

“You know the drill,”

said the soldier.

June did not. This fell soundly in the realm of minutiae, something that rarely conveyed with a touch. Making a guess, she stepped into the scanner, and waited.

“Come on, Holtz,”

said the soldier.

“Don’t be a pain in my ass. Arms up.”

She rolled her eyes, but spread her arms. It was like standing inside a copier, a beam of white light that moved from head to toe, followed by a short chime.

“All clear,”

said the soldier.

June saluted him, a casual flick of her fingers as she started down the hall. She needed to find a computer. It should have been easy, a building as fancy as this one, but every hallway looked alike. Identical, even. And every identical hallway was studded with even more identical doors, almost none of them marked, and the farther into the maze June went, the farther she’d have to walk out. So she settled instead for simplicity, pointing herself toward the nearest door. Halfway there, it swung open. A female soldier stepped out, took one look at Holtz, and rolled her eyes.

“Forget something?”

“Always,”

said June. She didn’t pick up her pace, but her fingers caught the door just before it closed. June slipped inside, and found a small room with four computer consoles. Only one of them was occupied.

“Finally,”

the soldier said.

“I’ve had to piss for an hour…”

He started to swivel toward June, but she was already there, one arm hooking around his throat. She pinned him against the chair, cutting off his ability to speak, to shout for help. His back arched as he fought her hold, throwing punches made clumsy by shock and the sudden lack of oxygen. But Benjamin Holtz was no weakling, and June had killed her fair share of men. The soldier did manage to get a pen and jam it back into June’s thigh, but of course, it wasn’t her thigh.

Sorry, Ben, she thought, tightening her hold.

Soon enough, the soldier stopped fighting. He went limp, and she let go, rolling his chair out of the way so she could get to his computer. June hummed as her fingers slid over the keyboard.

She had to hand it to EON. They had a very user-friendly system, and half a minute later she’d found the file she needed. It had been labeled ALIAS: JUNE. She skimmed through, curious to see what they’d found—which wasn’t much. But still enough to merit the trip.

“Good-bye,”

she whispered, erasing the file—and herself—from the system.

June went out the way she’d come in.

Retraced her steps down the hall, past security and the gates, back to the waiting black coupe. June opened the car door, and by the time she climbed behind the wheel, she was herself again.

Not the leggy brunette, or the thin teen, or any of the dozen faces she’d recently worn, but a spritely girl, with strawberry curls and a splash of freckles across her high cheeks.

June let herself sit in that body for a moment, breathe with her own lungs, see with her own eyes. Just to remember what it felt like. And then she reached out and started the engine, sliding into something safer. The kind of person you wouldn’t look twice at. The kind who gets lost in the crowd.

June glanced in the rearview mirror, checked her new face, and drove away.

It had been 297 days since David died.

294 days since Samantha left.

293 days since he locked himself in the house that had been his and then theirs and was now his again.

And he had finally made a decision.

He wasn’t quite sure when he made it, somewhere between turning on the shower and stepping in, perhaps, or pouring the milk and adding the cereal, or maybe a dozen tiny decisions had added up like letters until they finally made a word, a phrase, a sentence.

Either way, he’d made the decision, and now he stood very still at the kitchen counter, holding his choice in his hands with his coffee, afraid that if he moved, his resolve would crumble. He stood there until the coffee went cold, and he was still standing there when Jess came in, arms full of groceries.

“Jesus, David,”

she said, dropping the bags on the counter.

“it’s like an oven in here.”

His sister went for the thermostat. He swallowed. Three small words, a phrase, a sentence.

A decision.

“I’m going out,” he said.

Jess’s hand froze above the AC.

“Don’t joke about that.”

She’d pleaded with him for weeks—months—to leave the house, before finally giving up. Now her eyes brightened with a kind of guarded hope.

“I’m not,”

said David.

“I’m going out.”

The words felt more solid the second time. Jess gave him a long, hard look.

“What changed?”

“Nothing,”

he lied.

“I just think it’s time.”

Jess turned the temperature down and came to him, resting her elbows on the kitchen counter between them.

“How long has it been?”

she asked casually, as if they weren’t both counting.

297.

294.

293.

He didn’t know how to choose the right number. The instant of impact or the aftermath?

“Two hundred ninety-seven,”

he said at last, because it had all started there in the snow.

“Sure you don’t want to wait for three hundred?”

Jess managed a thin smile when she said it, but the joke was too careful, too light, like she knew they were on cracking ice. The smallest misstep would send them under. David felt it, too. That’s why he’d been standing so still.

“I’m ready,”

he said, looking down at the still-full cup, the coffee long since cold. He tightened his grip on the porcelain, and a moment later fresh steam rose from the dark surface. A small, conscious effort. The line between accidental and intentional meant everything.

“I’m going out tonight.”

“Okay. Great,”

said Jess, rousing.

“This is great. I get off work at seven. I’ll swing by and we can—”

David shook his head.

“I need to do this.”

Alone. The word hung in the air, unsaid but understood. Control was all about focus, and he couldn’t do that, not with Jess hovering, studying him like a puzzle she could piece back together. She hadn’t yet realized that the picture had changed.

David had thought about telling her. Hell, he’d acted out that conversation a hundred times. Maybe tonight, he would finally do it. He’d come home, and he’d call her, and he’d tell her why Samantha had left, and why he’d spent 293 days in his house, and why he kept shivering no matter how high he turned the thermostat up. It would all make sense, and she’d know he wasn’t crazy. He was just scared.

And cold. Tonight, he decided, setting aside the coffee cup and turning toward the groceries. He handled the items gingerly, maneuvering the carton of milk, the apples, the steak, like they were grips, outcrops, footholds, ones that might give way if he weren’t careful. That first week, every single piece of food had turned to ash in his hands. Now he cupped a Granny Smith in his palm, marveling at the way the green skin glistened.

He was ready.

Behind him, Jess scooped up the discarded mug.

“Fuck,”

she swore, fumbling the cup. It hit the floor and shattered, spilling coffee across the tiles.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,”

she murmured, shaking her fingers.

“You okay?”

David knelt and gathered up the broken shards.

“Careful,”

she said, running her hand under the tap.

“It’s hot.”

David nodded absently as he piled the broken pieces in his palm before dumping them in the trash. Dulled nerves, he’d told her. From years of climbing ice.

You should really get that checked out, she’d said.

You’re probably right, he’d replied.

“Sorry,”

he said now, sponging up the coffee with a towel.

“It’s not your fault,”

she said. She didn’t know.

“Sorry about the mess.”

She glanced at her watch.

“Crap, I’m going to be late.”

Jess taught second grade at an elementary school. David’s son, Jack, was in kindergarten there. It had been 294 days since he’d seen him.

“Go,”

said David, wringing out the towel.

“I’ve got this.”

Jess didn’t move. She just stood there and stared, squinting at him like he was written in another language.

“I’m proud of you, Dave,”

she said, reaching out and touching his shoulder. He didn’t touch her back.

“Call me when you’re home, okay?”

David nodded.

“Sure thing,”

he said as if the very act of leaving the house wasn’t a strange and terrifying prospect.