Free The Blade Itself by Marcus Sakey

sideways and shove it up your ass.’
    Danny shrugged, finished his beer.
    ‘You owe me, Danny. But I’ve thought of a way to square us. And you’re going to help, like it or not.’

11. Swept Up in Fire
    The cigarette tasted sweet as a stolen kiss.
    A funny expression, Evan thought, Ma’s. She used to say it on good days, the ones when she’d sing, the ones when the bruises weren’t too bad. He hadn’t thought of her in a while, but now, strolling through Lincoln Park, watching families indulge in happy domestic bullshit, she came to mind. He couldn’t say for sure, but he’d bet she’d not had too many kisses stolen.
    After he’d jimmied the lock on Danny’s window and let himself in, Evan had wandered from room to room. He wasn’t searching for anything in particular. Just looking. He lingered over a photo of Karen smiling in a bikini, shielding her eyes from the sun of a lost afternoon. Took a shit in the master bathroom, thought about leaving it floating there, a little gift, but decided against it. Then he’d sat and waited with a smile growing inside. It felt good to be playing again.
    And the game had gotten better once Danny arrived.
    He took another drag, smoking the cigarette to the filter, feeling the melting resistance as the heat fused it. His favorite part, the cigarette yielding. He knocked off the cherry and flicked the butt into the grass. One of the Lincoln Park mothers, about his age, figure still tight and her hair expensive, glared at him. He winked, then laughed as she gathered her boy off the swing set and hustled him away.
    Look out for the bad man, kid. Your mommy, she’s still a nice piece of ass, and she’s got instincts strong enough to tell her to move away. Funny how it worked. The moreyou had – a job, a house, a lover, a kid – the more you had to lose. Soccer Mom may not have spelled it out that way, might have chosen to push a truth like that out of her well-decorated world, but some elemental part of her understood.
    Evan pulled the smokes from his shirt pocket and tapped out another one. The sun fell warm on his back and the top of his head, though the wind was cool. A perfect afternoon.
    Danny had said no. Or tried to, anyway. In the end, he’d agreed to think about it. With the old Danny, the one he’d known, it would have been different. But now he was just an angle to be played, and he cowed the same as a prison queer or a soccer mom.
    But then, he had so much. So very much to lose.

12. Liabilities
    ‘Jesus.’ Patrick turned, one hand still on the railing, to look Danny in the face. ‘Are you serious?’
    Karen had whipped up pasta for dinner, with spicy sauce and a bottle of red. She hated the criminal in Patrick, feared his impact on Danny, but Patrick the person, him she loved. So the three of them had sat at dinner, laughing and having a good time, all the while Danny raging behind a calm mask, desperately needing to talk to Patrick alone. ‘Nevermore.’
    ‘I can’t believe he asked you to do that.’
    ‘It wasn’t so much asking,’ Danny said, ‘as telling.’
    ‘Motherfu –’
    ‘Keep your voice down.’
    Patrick turned back to the sprawling night sky. After dinner Danny had led him out to their fire escape, ostensibly so that Patrick could smoke, but really for the privacy of it. The game had just let out, and Wrigley Field still blazed with light. The streets swarmed with fans shouting drunkenly for cabs.
    ‘What are you going to do?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Danny shook his head. ‘I really don’t.’ Was it only yesterday afternoon he’d sat at the kitchen table, knuckles clenched on the beer bottle, listening to Evan propose a plan to shatter his life? Hard to believe so little time had passed. He’d thought of nothing else since. Hardly slept, his mind spinning and grasping for a way out.
    Your boss, Evan had said. He’s got a kid, yeah?
    Right then Danny had known what was coming, and fear climbed his spine one vertebra at a