Devils in Exile Read Free Page A

leverage.
    Maven never saw the third man’s face. Only the woman a few cars down, a man’s black jacket draped over her shoulders, her silver dress shimmering like rain within the rain.
    It was Danielle Vetti, watching him, her hand covering her mouth.
    Maven released the knife guy, who had already fainted. The man behind him released Maven, and Maven backed away from Danielle Vetti’s eyes, walking, then running full out, so hard that even the rain couldn’t catch him.
    S EE, ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS THIS KID .
    A lonely kid from a wrecked family, no father, barely a mother. A kid who didn’t know how to be liked, never mind loved. Growing up, this kid never guessed hundreds, if not thousands, of other kids out there were just like him: teenagers spurned by their parents and peers, outwardly quiet but inwardly raging.
    It turned out he was one of an entire subset generation of would-be terrorists, adolescent time bombs sitting alone at the foots of unmade beds, managing their misery by drawing up scenarios of violence, vengeance, and immortality.
    But he didn’t know this at the time. No one did.
    These were kids for whom simple self-destruction wasn’t enough. Suicide would only have confirmed other people’s view of them as a nothing, a no one, a defeated outcast.
    So why go out as a question mark when you can go out as an exclamation point instead?
    But for this kid, as for most, the flip-switching bully’s punch or crushing social slight or failing grade never quite came to pass, at least not with the annihilative force he had imagined. Fantasy, in the form of death lists, detailed school maps, and first-person-shooter visualizations, appeased his teenage longing for mayhem in the same way that masturbation alleviated his longing for sex.
    When the Columbine school shooting occurred in the spring of his graduating year, he was more appalled than fascinated. He saw his own dark shadow there, in the cafeteria video of the two trench-coat-clad shooters, and knew then, more than ever, that he needed to get the hell out of Gridley, Massachusetts.
    So he visited his local army recruiter before graduation, stayed off pot all summer to pass the drug screen, and returned on his eighteenth birthday to sign on the dotted line and swear to uphold the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic.
    That was two Septembers before 9/11.
    Before Afghanistan.
    Before Iraq.
    Many speak of the fog of war, but for this kid, war brought clarity. It gave him a mission, clearly defined. Rules of Engagement. A six-article Code of Conduct. He experienced the fellowship of men in combat and learned to give and to earn respect. Hewas commended, awarded, promoted. Honor, Discipline, Integrity: all those formerly bullshit, silver-plated words came to mean something to him. He was recommended for the six-month Q Course training and even learned passable Korean to earn his Special Forces tab.
    He wore the Green Beret. He was accepted, even esteemed, if never totally understood. For the first time in his life, Neal Maven belonged.
    And that vengeful, damaged kid, the one everyone tried to piss on? He was gone forever.
    Or so Maven had thought.
    I T HAPPENED TOO LATE FOR ANYTHING TO BE IN THE NEXT DAY’S papers. Maven spent the morning walking around in a daze, waiting for a call from … who? The police? His boss?
    He returned to work that night without any idea what he might be walking into. The rain had cleared, the night mild and almost meek in comparison. The day guy had nothing for him. Maven had stashed the previous night’s take under the counter and would make a double deposit that evening; with banks closed for the weekend, his boss would never be the wiser.
    He went over to where the fight had happened, the rain having washed away any blood. Cars started pulling in, and bit by bit the tension in his chest began to go away.
    The Boston police detective stopped by around eight thirty. A black guy, he pulled his unmarked Sable