The scraping grew louder.
He eased out a breath, peered around the corner.
A girl crouched, facing away, her forehead nearly touching the far wall. She had a mane of dark wavy hair, torn jeans, a form-fitting tank top. It was hard to gauge from behind, but he guessed she was a teenager. She was bent over something, and her shoulders shook slightly. Crying?
The closet and bathroom doors were laid open, and there was no furniture for anyone to hide behind. Just her.
He thought about the double-keyed locks and wondered—was she being held captive?
He aimed the ARES at the floor but didn’t holster it. Stepping clear of the foyer, he lowered his voice so as not to startle her. “Are you okay?”
She jumped at the sound, then glanced tentatively over her shoulder. Her back curled with fear, her expression vulnerable. She looked Hispanic, but he couldn’t be sure in the dim light.
“Who are you?” she said.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“Why are you here?”
He drew closer slowly, not wanting to scare her. “It’s a long story.”
“Can … can you help me?”
He holstered the pistol but stayed alert. “Who put you here?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember. I … I…”
Her posture suddenly snapped into shape, a bundle of coiled muscle. She pivoted into a vicious leg sweep, leading with the hard edge of her heel, sweeping both of his boots out from under him.
As he accelerated into weightlessness, he saw the glint in her eye matched by the glint of the fixed-blade combat knife in her right hand. A sharpening stone lay on the carpet, the stone she’d been crouching over, scraping away when he’d walked in. Already she’d rotated, spinning up onto her feet, readying to drive the blade through his sternum.
He struck the floor, the wind knocking from his lungs in a single clump, and it occurred to him just how badly he had misjudged the situation.
11
Enemy of My Enemy
Evan’s first focus was the knife.
Darting down at him like a shiv stab, all blade, nothing to grab.
Laid out on the carpet as if he were a corpse, he swept the bar of his forearm protectively across his chest, hammering the girl’s slender wrist and knocking the knife off course just before it broke skin. The tip skimmed his shirt above the ribs, slicing fabric.
His second focus was her fist.
Which she’d cocked and deployed even while her knife hand had still been in motion. He had a split-second to admire the technique—knuckles following blade with double-tap timing—before she broke his nose.
He rolled his head with the punch, tumbled gracelessly up onto his feet. She grabbed the back of his shirt, but the magnetic buttons gave way—click-click-click—and he spun right out of it. His eyes watered from the blow to the nose, but the escape bought him a much-needed second to blink his way back to some version of clarity. She flung the shirt aside and launched a barrage of kicks.
He parried, parried, parried, bruising his forearms and knuckles, holding his attention mostly on the knife.
She came at him again, a jailhouse lunge, but now he was ready for it. His hands moved in blurry unison, a bong sau/lop sau trap that simultaneously blocked and grabbed her arm. He clenched hard, slid his fist up the length of her forearm, and hit the bump of her wrist with enough force that her fingers released and the knife shot free.
They were nose-to-nose, her mouth forming an O of perfect shock. He had a wide-open lane to her windpipe—one elbow strike and she’d be over—but Jack’s Eighth Commandment sailed in and tapped the back of his brain: Never kill a kid.
He barreled her over and pinned her with a cross-face cradle, a grappling move that left her locked up, her knee smashed to her cheek, arms flailing uselessly to the sides.
“Get off me!” she shouted. “I will kill you! I will fucking—”
He pressed his forehead to her temple, immobilizing her head and shielding his eyes. “Breathe,” he said.
She inhaled sharply.
“Again.”
She obeyed.
“Where is the package?” he asked.
“What?”
“What’d you do with the package?”
“The hell are you talking about?”
“You saw the message. You beat me here.”
“Can you get your knee out of my ribs?”
Evan eased off the pressure. “What’d you do with it?”
She gave no answer. Each breath rasped through her contorted throat.
Blood was trickling from Evan’s nose, tickling his cheek. “I’m gonna let you go, and we’re gonna try this again, okay?”
Her answer came strained. “Okay.”
“I’d prefer not to have to kill you.”
“I’d like to say the same, but I haven’t decided yet.”
He released her, and they stood. They kept their palms raised, halfway to an open-hand guard. She drew in deep lungfuls, her cheeks flushed. She was expertly trained but still green.
He got his first clear look at her. Her hair fell to her shoulders, thick and dark and lush. The right side had been shaved short, but it was mostly hidden by the tumbling length of her locks, a surprisingly subtle effect. She was lean and fit, her deltoids pronounced enough to show notches in the muscle.
“I’m gonna put my shirt back on,” he said. “If you come at me, it won’t go well for you.”
Keeping his gaze on her, he backed up and put on his shirt. Next to the rucksack, a ragged flannel rested on the carpet. He tossed it to her.
She tugged it on.
Keeping a bit of distance, they stared at each other. A wisp of agitated piano reached them from outside, the concerto hitting the third movement.
“Let’s cut to it,” Evan said. “I see how you move. I know you’re an Orphan. I know who sent you.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“What’s the package?”
She answered him with a glare.
He risked a fleeting look at her rucksack. “Is it in there?”
“No.”
He crouched over the rucksack.
“Don’t touch my stuff.”
He rooted around in it, sneaking quick glances down. Clothes, a few toiletries, a shoe box filled with what looked like personal letters.
“Put those down.”
“Is there some kind of code in these papers?”
“No.”
He armed blood off his upper lip. “Is the package something on the laptop?”
“No.”
“If you’re lying, I can hack into it.”
Her mouth firmed into something more aggressive than a smirk. “Good luck.”
As he started to reach for the laptop, it suddenly alerted with a ping, the screen saver vanishing.
Four surveillance feeds came up, tiling the screen. It took a moment for Evan to register that they were streaming different angles of the outside of the apartment complex.
The bottom-left feed showed two SUVs blocking the horseshoe of the parking lot. Teams of geared-up operators charged for the front gate.
“Your backup’s here,” the girl said. “What—you couldn’t handle me yourself?” Her voice stayed tough, but her chest heaved with the words. She was scared, and this time he knew she wasn’t faking it.
Evan stared at the screen. The operators displayed a similar military precision to that of the men in the Black Hawk. Evan counted six of them.
Seventeen rounds. Six men.
Just don’t put all the holes in the same place.
On-screen the lead operator kicked the front gate, and it clanged open. Evan heard it in stereo, registered the vibration in the floor.
He and the girl watched as the men poured into the ground-floor corridor.
He said, “They’re not with me.”
His eyes met the girl’s, and he saw that she believed him.
Her voice was hammered flat
with dread. “You left the gates unlocked behind you.”
Clang. The stairwell gate flew open, courtesy of Evan’s ill-spent twenty-five cents.
The men throttled up the stairwell. The girl’s eyes darted from the screen back to Evan.
“Enemy of my enemy,” he said.
She gave a nod.
He drew his ARES. “Get behind me. Pick up your knife.”
The girl moved, but not for the knife. She shot over to the mattress and lifted it, revealing a hatch cut through the floor. She looked at him, eyes wild, hair swinging. “My stuff,” she said. “Get my stuff.”
The clamor of the men reached the second floor, spilled onto the corridor.
Evan snapped the laptop shut, rammed it into the rucksack, tossed the combat knife in after. She slipped through the hatch and disappeared. The mattress fell back into place, covering the hole. He didn’t hear her land. He sprinted across the room.
As he yanked up the edge of the mattress, he heard the front door smash in. Snatching the rucksack behind him, he shoulder-rolled beneath the mattress, free-falling. A thump announced the sealing of the hatch above.
He rotated to break his fall, but a soft landing caught him off guard. His boots struck another mattress, positioned on the ground floor directly beneath the one above. He tumbled off the side onto the carpet.
He looked up.
The girl was waiting.
She wrenched the rucksack from his grip, pistoned her leg in a heel stomp directed at his throat. He caught her foot in both hands and twisted hard, flinging her aside. She bounced up off the floor like a cat, shot across the room, flung open the window.
As she leapt through, he grabbed a strap of the rucksack, halting her momentum. She jerked back and banged against the outside wall, one arm bent over the sill. She wouldn’t let go of the rucksack. They were both off balance, caught in a ridiculous tug-of-war across a windowsill.
Boots drummed the floor above. It was only a matter of time before one of the men looked under the mattress.
Evan dove through the window, collecting both the rucksack and the girl in a bear-hug embrace. They sailed past the elderly artist, their fall cushioned by the blanket covered with his paintings. The Cadillac’s radio blared away, the C-major coda galloping along in presto.
Evan hopped to his feet, broken frames falling away, the cubist pieces now cubist in three dimensions. Through the window Evan saw a beam of light appear, a golden shaft piercing the gloom of the ground-floor apartment.
The upstairs mattress, pulled back.
He looked helplessly across the street at his rental car.
Thirty yards of high visibility through traffic.
He’d never make it.
The artist rose from the sidewalk, his flat cap askew. “What kind of damn-fool nonsense is this?”
The girl thrashed free of Evan, landing on all fours. She scampered across the blanket to get away, but it bunched beneath her knees, impeding her progress.
Evan grabbed her arm, spun her up and around, and dumped her into the Cadillac’s open trunk, shattering her straight through a painting of a dissected bassoon. He slammed the trunk an instant before she started battering at it.
He snatched up the rucksack, slung it through the open rear window. “If they hear you, they’ll kill you.”
Her muffled shout came through the trunk. “How do I know you’re not gonna kill me?”
“Because I would’ve done it already.”
He hopped into the car. The keys waited in the ignition, enabling the radio and a pleasing whiff of air-conditioning.
As the concerto tinkled to a close, Evan looked out the open passenger window at the old artist. Through the window over the man’s shoulder, he saw the first shadow tumble from the ceiling.
“Sorry about your art,” Evan said, and peeled out.
He wheeled around the edge of the complex, blending into traffic, coasting past the open mouth of the horseshoe. He looked back at the building.
In the center of the parking lot, a man stood facing away, his head tilted up to take in the second floor. Waiting. He would have looked like an ordinary guy were it not for his posture; he stood with the perfect stillness of the perfectly trained.
Orphan.
One of the operators stepped out through the splintered door of 202 and gestured to the man with two fingers—He’s on the run, went down and out.
The traffic light turned red, and Evan hit the brakes, peering back transfixed as the man in the parking lot sprang into motion. He hit the front gate with his foot, vaulted up, ran four pounding steps along the high fence top, then leapt onto the outside of the stairwell cage. With a series of massive lunging leaps, he scaled the cage and then swung around onto the third-floor corridor. He jumped up, grabbed the hanging roof ledge, and spun himself onto the roof, where he stood with the command of a mountaineer claiming an apex.
He’d parkoured his way up the entire route in under six seconds. Evan allowed himself to be impressed.
The man peered down, evidently picking up the commotion on the sidewalk outside apartment #102. He began a slow rotation, pivoting like a weather vane, his eyes scanning the streets below.
Evan turned back around in the driver’s seat, cranked the sideview mirror to a severe tilt, and watched the man’s reflection. The man finished his rotation, staring down at the mass of cars at the traffic light. It seemed like he was looking directly at Evan in the Cadillac, but of course there was no way it was possible from that distance.
The light turned green, and Evan drove off.
12
Increasingly Rural Tangle
Keeping the needle pegged at the speed limit, Evan drove a circuitous route to the nearest freeway and ran past four exits before hopping off and shooting west through an increasingly rural tangle of desolate back roads. Gray clouds pervaded the sky, heavy with the promise of rain. Sure enough, a few drops tapped the roof, quickening to a rat-a-tat, ushering dusk into full night. Decreased visibility was good; it went both ways. Local law enforcement had undoubtedly already issued a Be On the Lookout for the Cadillac.
He had to change vehicles, but first he needed to get a good distance between himself and the men who’d raided the apartment compound. Then he would regroup, determine what the package was, and deal with the problem in the trunk and the myriad questions that came with it.
He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, settled his shoulders. He blew out a breath, opened his eyes, and reset himself, assessing everything as if he were confronting it for the first time.
Jack’s dying message.
A package.
An address.
A girl who was an Orphan—or at the very least Orphan-trained.
Who was hostile.
But not allied with the crew of men, led by another seeming Orphan, who had raided the apartment complex in pursuit of her, the package, or Evan himself.
A crew that had Van Sciver’s fingerprints all over it.
Which left a whole lot of questions and very few answers.
The rain thrummed and thrummed. The girl in the trunk banged a few times, shouted something unintelligible. The windshield wipers groaned and thumped.
First order of business was to do a quick equipment appraisal.
Evan’s scuffed knuckles, a fetching post-fight shade of eggplant, ledged the steering wheel. His nose was freshly broken, leaking a trickle of crimson. Nothing bad, more a shifting along old fault lines.
He inspected his nose in the rearview, then reached up and snapped it back into place.
The Cadillac’s alignment pulled to the right, threatening to dump him into the rain-filled roadside ditch. The seat springs poked into the backs of his thighs, and the fabric, dotted with cigarette scorch marks, reeked of menthol. The dome light housed a bare, burned-out bulb, the brake disks made a noise like an asphyxiating chicken, and the left rear brake light was out.
He should have stolen a better car.
Rain dumped down.
That was Portland for you. Or—if he was being precise—a country road outside Hillsboro.
Big drops turned the roof into a tin drum. Water sluiced across the windshield, rooster-tailed from the tires.
He sledded around a bend, passing a billboard. A moment later smeared red-and-blue lights illuminated the Caddy’s rear window.
A cop.
The broken brake light.
That was inconvenient.
Especially on this car, since a BOLO had likely been issued. The cop would be running the plate number now if he hadn’t already.
Evan blew out a breath. Leaned harder into the gas pedal.
Here came the sirens. The headlights grew larger.
Evan could see the silhouette of the officer behind the wheel. So much like a shooting target—head and chest, all critical mass.
Hillsboro prided itself on being one of the safest cities in the Pacific Northwest. Evan hoped to keep it that way.
As he popped the brakes and jerked the wheel, the heap of a car rocked on its shocks, fanning onto an intersecting road.
Two more cop cars swept in behind him from the opposite direction.
Evan sighed.
Three patrol cars lit up like Christmas, sirens screaming, spreading out across both lanes and closing in.
That was when the thumping from the trunk grew more pronounced.
He checked the wheel, loose enough to jog two inches in either direction with no effect on the steering. He was going to have to attempt tactical driving maneuvers in a car that should not be highway-approved.
Evan had spent a portion of the summer of his fifteenth year on a specialized course in the sticks of Virginia with Jack in the passenger seat keeping one hand on the wheel, steering him through everything from evasive driving to acceleration techniques in challenging traction environments.
Just another kid out with his old man, learning to drive.
In their final conversation, he’d told Jack, I wouldn’t trade knowing you for anything. He felt it now not as a sentiment but as a warmth in his chest. He was glad he’d gotten the words out.
Hellbent--An Orphan X Novel Page 6
