Page 25 of Evolved

7|Nancy Alweston’s silk pajamas

OTTILIE

HALF AN HOUR LATER, having ransacked Nancy Alweston’s closet, I return to the kitchen.

Knox is drinking coffee, sitting at the table, looking out the window where Gran is firing a silenced gun at a target one of them must have set up in the backyard.

Her posture is good.

So is her aim.

The sharepfffftof the silenced bullet hits my ears, and a black hole appears in the center of the bullseye.

Knox’s gaze slips to me, up and down the pair of silk pajama pants I found in Nancy Alweston’s closet drawers. They’re far too short, but they’re the loosest item of clothing she possessed. Even her sweats were too tight. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet. Even in flats, I was head and shoulders taller.

The pajama pants stop above my ankle and cling uncomfortably, riding up.

“You feeling okay this morning?” he asks

“I just chugged two bottles of water with electrolyte packets. I feel fine.” I follow his gaze down to my sock-covered feet and shrug. “I’ll borrow Gran’s coat and her shoes. Mine are still too wet. I’m assuming we’re going out? For new clothes and then to the Capitol?”

His mug scrapes on the rough table, and a second later, he shoves his chair back over the stone floor, and he’s up. “I checked your gun. It’s dry now.” He pulls it from a secondary holster on his belt and hands it back to me.

I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s always thoughtful. But still. “Thank you.”

The gun is warm from his body.

I find myself continuously looking at his shoulders as I lace on Gran’s slightly too-small shoes and shrug on her too-small coat and follow him to the front, where Gran locks up behind us, then down the drive and out onto R Street where we turn right and head toward Wisconsin Avenue, and the markets and boutiques there.

The rain has quit, and the sun has melted away most of the ice, but we’re cautious as we pick our way over slush-covered rubble and leaves. The water level has receded, the rushing rivers of last night receding to slushy mixtures that funnel toward storm drains that are no longer backed up.

We stop at the corner edge of a gift shop, looking carefullyup and down Wisconsin Avenue at the covered boutiques, restaurants, and offices that line that road, interspersed with bare-branched trees and cafe-style seating.

Empty.

A ghost town.

Ninety-nine percent dead.

Everything is different now.

No more hiding in back rooms, hunched over a computer, making strings of words for someone else to read. Not in this strange new world.

I study his body language, the way he’s angling himself along the wall for concealment, and I mimic it, keeping my head back, trying to think like him, observing the street carefully, looking for changes in silhouettes, shifting movement in the shop windows.

“Teach me,” I say.

He must understand because he doesn’t ask what I mean. “Check the rooflines, edges of corners, the glass. Check it all once, looking specifically at places people hide, then unfocus and just let your brain seek movement, anything out of place. Then again, in more detail.” He points to the top of the roofs, low apartment buildings, townhomes, legal offices. Some have former windows, others are flat. “Eyes out of focus, then eyes in focus,” he says.

The only movement is in the barren branches leaning into the wind and the slow drift of gray clouds against the silver sky.

I’m looking at the buildings.

But he’s looking at me.

And then we’re staring at each other.

So close.

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