Covenant Read Free

traffic and the hordes of people passing him by. He walked by a shop window and saw his reflection staring back at him, a cut beneath his left eye. He vaguely recalled arguing with someone in the street the previous night after drinking perhaps a little too much: a running volley of shouts, threats, and then blows as he’d punched someone, only to find himself flat on his back moments later.
    Then the flashing lights and sirens, more shouting.
    Then the booking and the jail.
    Just another day. Nothing matters.
    Ethan continued on his unsteady way, grabbing the “L” elevated train and following the Red Line south until he reached 47th at Fuller Park, getting off and walking toward a soaring housing project. Cars parked bumper to bumper lined the sidewalk of West 42nd Place, the project that had been his home for the past six months. An old man sitting outside with a cane greeted him with a broken-toothed smile as he walked inside.
    As he reached his apartment door he saw a broad bouquet of carnations propped against the wall, the petals battered and wilting with age. Ethan sent them ritually once a year, every year, and they were ritually returned unopened within a few days. He sighed and grabbed the drooping bouquet. The damned things were an expense he could ill afford, and he wondered again why he sent them at all.
    If you’ve got nothing, then nothing matters.
    Ethan closed his eyes, his fists clenching as a wave of despair rose up from somewhere deep within him. He inhaled and struggled against an unyielding tide of hopelessness, scrambled above it, and stamped it back down into some deep place where it could no longer bother him. Nothing to worry about. Nothing matters. He stood in silence as the panic receded, breathing alone in the center of his universe, and for a brief instant he was asleep on his feet.
    And then he heard the sound coming from within his apartment. Ethan’s eyes flicked open, his senses suddenly hyper-alert. Footsteps, crossing softly across his living room. Heavy enough to be male. Left to right. Right to left. Ethan glanced down at the door lock and saw a few tiny bright scratches against the dull steel of the barrel.
    His heart skipped a beat and a hot flush tingled uncomfortably across his skin.
    Without conscious thought Ethan set the flowers down in the corridor and slipped his key from his pocket, taking a deep breath before sliding it into the lock, turning it, and then hurling himself through the doorway.

 
    E than lunged at the form of a man standing in the center of the apartment, catching a brief glimpse of a dark-blue suit and gray hair as he swung a fist toward the man’s face.
    A knife-edged hand shot into Ethan’s view with practiced fluidity to swat his punch aside into empty air, and he felt a hard palm thump into his shoulder and propel him across the apartment. Ethan staggered off balance as the man stepped neatly aside from his charge.
    “You’re getting sloppy, Ethan.”
    The old man lowered his guard and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the apartment door. “And your security isn’t up to much. Lucky I was here, in case somebody broke in.”
    “You could have just called, Doug,” Ethan muttered, regaining his balance and ignoring the old man’s wry smile.
    “Where’s the fun in that?”
    Ethan retraced his steps and grabbed the bouquet from the corridor outside before closing the door.
    Doug Jarvis glanced curiously at the decaying flowers in Ethan’s hand.
    “The bail?” Ethan asked before the old man could say anything, and was rewarded with a curt nod as Jarvis glanced around at the apartment.
    A small couch, a coffee table, and a television that Ethan hadn’t turned on in a month occupied the uncluttered room. The coffee table was stacked with library books.
    “How have you been, son?” Jarvis asked.
    Ethan had met Doug Jarvis when the old man had been captain of a 9th Marine Corps platoon. Ethan had himself served with pride as a second