the hell she knew Andre. And figure out what other pieces of his best-forgotten childhood she held.
Tension built in his chest until his inhalations burned. At the next exit, he screeched off, parked at the Flying J truck stop, and hustled inside. A hefty man lumbered out of the bathroom. On his way in, Evan elbowed the swinging door so as not to touch the handle.
He slathered his hands with powder soap and washed them under hot water and then washed them again until his palms chafed lobster red. He cuffed his sleeves and scrubbed up his forearms next and then ducked his head to the tap and shoveled hot water across his face, scouring away Danny’s scent, his words, the bleach and BO of the prison air.
He knew it was in his head, a user error that flared up when he was under emotional duress—a need to control, to purify, to set his world in order. He wouldn’t feel properly disinfected until he had a proper shower, but this would be enough to get him home.
He hit the lever for a paper towel but then sensed the germs on his fingertips from touching the plastic so he rinsed his hands again and then turned off the faucet using the wadded paper towel. He didn’t want to touch the plastic lever again, so he mashed the soggy wad to release another scroll of paper towel, which he ripped free and used to open the bathroom door. He exited and stood for a moment, breath still coming hard.
Then he walked outside.
Fresh midday air, the sun like a klieg light to the east, boring through a fuzzy blue sky.
He dug his RoamZone out from the center console, fired it up, and dialed.
Joey picked up through her computer; he could hear the last chimes of the ringtone on a delay. “I tried you twice, but it went straight to voice mail,” she said.
“I was in prison.”
“Excuses, excuses. I have the background on Jake Hargreave you wanted.”
“Go.”
“Air force, like you said. Senior airman, active warfighter, all that. Then—get this—he got moved to Creech Air Force Base to work on … guess what?”
Evan said, “Unmanned aircraft testing.”
A rare moment of speechlessness from Joey. “How’d you know that?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Yeah, he was with the 556th Test and Evaluation Squadron. Till he and his sensor operator ran into some trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
She snapped her gum with gunshot vehemence. “Dunno. Honorable discharge for Hargreave a few months back. His partner got ODPMC, whatever that means.”
“Other Designated Physical and Mental Conditions Discharge.”
“Headcase, then?”
“Where is he? The sensor operator?”
“In Fresno. California Veterans Reintegration Center. It’s like a compound to help vets get their heads right or something like that. But get this, it’s got crazy security—cameras and guards and whatnot. What’s up with that?”
“The DoD prefers to keep drone-warfare intel in a dark box,” he said. “A lot of these operations aren’t even under air force command. They hook it under JSOC or the CIA.”
Joey said, “So I guess when you have people who know lots of classified shit but might be losing their minds, you gotta lock them up.”
“Or kill them.”
“Ha.” A pause. “You weren’t joking.”
“No.”
“So?” she said. “That’s it. Another job exceptionally handled by moi.” More loud gum chewing. “Pretend you got a personality transplant and say, ‘Thank you, Joey. You’re amazeballs.’”
“I would never say ‘amazeballs.’”
“You just did.”
Evan grimaced, pinched his eyes. “I need you to find something else for me.”
“No thanks,” she said. “I’m busy not studying.”
“Andre Duran is living in El Sereno renting a room above a Chinese restaurant.”
“Sounds glam.”
“He sent a MoneyGram payment to Daniel Gallo’s commissary account at the prison about two months ago. The database should have wire details on all financial transactions, including where the money originated from.”
“You want me to hack into the CDCR databases again, find the MoneyGram store that Duran sent the cash from, and cross-correlate with two-story Chinese restaurants in El Sereno?”
“I want you to do precisely that.”
“What was it like seeing Danny Gallo?” Her voice was hushed, respectful. She was such a pain-in-the-ass teenager that it was sometimes easy to forget she’d been a foster kid like him, floating through a system, devoid of past or future. “Was it weird?”
He lowered his head, bit his lip. Pictured Danny’s pockmarked face, the tic that jerked his head to one side, that burn that had robbed his left earlobe. The image took his voice away.
Joey came through the RoamZone, tinny over the receiver. “X?”
“Thanks, Joey,” Evan said, and hung