She studied him, one eyebrow arched in an unspoken question. Her robe hung open, showing the slope of her divine belly—Venus at the Bath. She was waiting to knot the sash again and leave, either with the car jack or without.

He looked down at it there on the sheets. If he accepted it, he had to accept all the responsibility that came with it.

He looked back up at Despi.

He nodded.

35. Into the Snowy White

35

Into the Snowy White

In a single shirt and sweater, Evan felt less bulky than on his previous excursions. He had to be for what he was about to do.

He stepped out onto the balcony. The moonless sky was black as pitch, broken only by flurries of snowflakes that swept through the welded bars. A trio of guards clustered around the fire outside the barn, warming their hands, Kalashnikovs resting at their sides. They did not look over.

He had a limited window of time out here in the dead of night. His gloveless hands already felt cold, and the more numb they got, the more useless they’d be.

Raising the scissor jack, he jammed it between two of the bars. Then he cranked the handle. The jack expanded, irising open with enough force to lift a four-thousand-pound car.

The bars bowed. Evan kept rotating the handle, leaning into the effort. The sounds of creaking metal intensified. The resistance grew stronger, his forearms straining. And then two of the bars gave way at the welded joints, popping free. One struck him lightly in the chest and clanged to the floor of the balcony. The other plummeted into the snowy white.

He shot a glance at the guards by the barn, but they were telling stories, focused on the flickering light of the fire, not the darkness beyond. Sticking his head through the gap, Evan looked down, but the fallen bar was lost to the white bank below, the thin black slot in the ground already being layered over.

Onward.

He squeezed his head and one leg through the hole, then drew his body carefully behind him. The bag of Doritos crinkled in his waistband, where he’d tucked them. The RoamZone phone bulged in his pocket, awaiting the kid’s next call. Despite the extra baggage, Evan made it through the gap.

The bars provided a ready grip from the outside. The only problem was how cold they were, sticking to his palms. When he adjusted his grasp, he left some skin behind. He lowered himself down into a squat, his ass hanging in thin air, his heels cantilevered off the outside edge of the balcony.

He checked the guards, firmed his fists. Then he let his feet slide free, his legs dangling. For an instant his grip faltered, and he thought he was going to plummet two stories onto the open ground, landing in full view of the guards. But somehow he held on.