Hellbent--An Orphan X Novel

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “Thanks, Jack.” Her fingers skittered across the keyboard. It was like watching someone play an instrument. “I’ll tell you this, you certainly couldn’t.”

  “Yes or no, Joey.”

  “There are maybe a handful of people in the world who could hack this,” she finally said, “’n’ I’m one of them. But it’ll take some time. And a fast Internet connection.”

  “Van Sciver knows you’re with me. So we have to assume he knows you can get to whatever information’s guarded in there. He trained you.”

  “Please. I was better than him to begin with. It’s the only thing I had, growing up. We’re talking sixteen, eighteen hours a day online, checking out 2600, using the darknet and stuff. I put in lots of private IRC hacker chat-room time, too, like, browsing the chans, vulns, and sploit databases, fooling around with Scapy, Metasploit, all that. It was one of my selling points. Back when I was, you know, a wanted commodity. Before I was useless.” She grinned and closed the lid. “He knows I’m good but has no idea how good.”

  “Once we hit L.A., I’ll set you up in a safe house. I want what’s in that laptop as quickly as possible.”

  “I’m gonna require a crate of Red Bull and a Costco tub of Twizzlers.”

  “You’ll have what you need.”

  “And Zac Efron. I want Zac Efron.”

  “Who’s Zac Efron?”

  “God, you’re old.” She smiled, and it was like turning on a light, her face luminous. She observed him observing her. “What?”

  “I haven’t seen you smile.”

  She looked back at the road. “Don’t get used to it.”

  * * *

  As the Civic filled with gas, Evan scanned the parking lot and the freeway. Joey climbed out and stretched like a cat, slow and luxurious.

  “Want any road food?” she asked.

  “Road food?”

  “Corn nuts, Slim Jims, Mountain Dew?”

  “I’m good.”

  She brushed past him, heading inside. “Don’t leave me here.”

  He looked at her. “Why would I leave you here?”

  She shrugged, not breaking stride.

  They were heading south on the I-15, Idaho ten exits away. Borders were always tricky—choke points, easy to surveil. So far it had been smooth sailing, but so far hadn’t been long.

  The gas pump clicked off, and Evan got back into the car to wait for Joey. Her rucksack tilted in the passenger-side foot well. Another greeting card had fallen out.

  Evan leaned over and picked it up.

  A cartoon of a nervous-looking turkey against a backdrop of orange and yellow leaves. Fresh concern pulled at Evan. He opened the card.

  Sweet Girl,

  I hope you have lots to be thankful for this Thanksgiving of your 16th year! Know that even though we’re apart, I miss you and hold you in my heart.

  Xoxo, M.

  Again it seemed that Joey had read the card many times. Creases, wrinkled corners, a patch of ink worn off where she’d held it.

  Thanksgiving. Your 16th year.

  That was troubling.

  He set the card on her seat and waited.

  She approached, chewing gum, and opened the door. She spotted the card, hesitated, then picked it up and climbed in slowly. She stared straight through the windshield at the air pump. She smelled like Bubblicious.

  “Why are you going through my stuff?”

  “It fell out of your rucksack.”

  “Answer my question.”

  “There are more important questions. Like who is M and how did she have your address?”

  “What do you mean ‘my address’?”

  “This is a Thanksgiving card. Thanksgiving was last Thursday. You were in the apartment Jack had set up for you. And Jack was in Alabama. No one should have known how to reach you.”

  “No one did know how to reach me.”

  “Joey, what if this is how they found your apartment?”

  “Look, I promise you, it’s okay.”

  “Who is M?”

  Scowling, Joey grabbed her hair in a fist and pulled it high, showing the shaved side of her head.

  “Joey, we have to have total trust. Or none of this works.”

  She took in a lungful of air, let it out slowly. “She’s my maunt.”

  “Your maunt?”

  “My aunt, but more like a mom. Get it?”

  “Yes.”

  “She raised me until she couldn’t, okay? Then I went into the system for a lotta years. Until Van Sciver’s guy pulled me out.”

  “How did she know where to send you this Thanksgiving card?”

  Joey’s eyes filled with tears. It was so sudden, so unexpected that Evan’s breath tangled in his throat.

  She said, slowly, “It’s not a risk, okay? I promise you. If we have total trust, trust me on this.”

  “They can track anything, Joey.”

  She tilted her head back, blinked away the tears. Then she turned to him, fully composed. It was a different face, stone cold and rock steady, the face of an Orphan. “I am end-stopped there. Completely end-stopped.”

  He stared at her a moment longer, deciding whether or not he believed her. Then he fired up the engine and pulled away from the pump.

  * * *

  Evan’s focus intensified as they neared the border. He kept it on rotation between the mirrors, the on-ramps, the cars ahead. He changed speeds and lanes.

  Meanwhile Joey changed channels on the radio, responding with enthusiasm or disgust to various songs that Evan found indistinguishable from one another.

  Despite everything, she was still sixteen.

  A hunter-green 4Runner had been behind them for a while now. White male driver, wispy beard. Evan pulled to the right lane and slowed down, timing it so another car shielded them from view as the 4Runner drove past. The driver did not ease off the gas or adjust his mirror. Which meant he was either not interested or well trained.

  Ensuring that passing drivers didn’t get a clean look at them was no easy task on a seventeen-hour road trip. Van Sciver’s people would be looking for a man traveling with a teenage girl—not an uncommon combination but not common either. The Honda’s windows had been treated with an aftermarket tint, which helped decrease visibility. The sun was near its peak, turning the windshields into blinding sheets of gold, another momentary benefit.

  A truck pulling a horse trailer sidled up alongside them. Evan tapped the brake, tucking into the blind spot.

  “Hold on,” Joey said, cranking up the volume. “Listen—this is my jam.”

  He listened.

  It was not his jam.

  The horse trailer exited. He watched it bank left and amble up into the hills.

  At last the billboard flashed past: WELCOME TO IDAHO! THE “GEM STATE.”

  While Joey bounced in the passenger seat, the Gem State flew by in a streak of brown. Scrubby flats, a few twists carved through hills, more scrubby flats.

  The gas needle had wound down to a quarter tank by the time he pulled off. The service plaza was at the top of a rise, a mini-golf bump in the terrain with good visibility in all directions.

  A single strip of parking lined the front of the plaza, which made for easy scouting. Of the vehicles only a blue Volvo pinged Evan’s mental registry, but when it had passed twenty miles back, he’d noted three children quarreling in the back.

  After he’d filled the tank, he and Joey went into the plaza, splitting up as was their protocol. Joey drifted up the junk-food aisle while Evan dumped four bottled waters and a raft of energy bars before the register. As the woman rang him up, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirrored lenses of a pair of cheap sunglasses on the counter display.

  The bruises beneath his eyes made him conspicuous. Memorable.

  He snapped off the price tag, laid it on the counter, and put on the glasses. They’d be helpful for the moment, but he’d require something less obvious. He remembered Lorilee in the elevator, how she’d concealed the finger
marks where her boyfriend had grabbed her.

  “Just a second, please,” he told the lady at the register.

  One aisle over he found a cheap beige concealer.

  Joey appeared, pressing a bag of Doritos to his chest. She took in his sunglasses with amusement. “Nice look,” she said. “Did you misplace your fighter jet?”

  “Don’t worry. I’m getting this.” He held up the concealer wand. “I’d ask to borrow yours, but I didn’t figure you for the makeup type.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call our last few outings makeupworthy,” she said. “But you couldn’t use mine anyways. I’m browner than you. Thank God.”

  He headed back to the counter and laid the concealer and chips on top of the energy bars.

  The woman gave a smile. “Picking up some makeup for the missus?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She handed him the plastic bag.

  Joey was waiting outside, her arms crossed, staring through a patch of skinny trees down the long ramp to the freeway.

  “What?” Evan asked.

  She flicked her chin.

  A hunter-green 4Runner exited the freeway and started up the slope toward the service plaza.

  30

  Do Your Business

  Evan pulled Joey around the side of the building. They stood on the browning grass beneath the window of the men’s room, peering around the corner at the travel plaza’s entrance. A good vantage.

  “That truck,” she said. “Kept time with us for at least forty miles.”

  He thought of her bobbing in her seat, singing along to the radio. “I didn’t think you were paying attention.”

  “That’s my superpower.”

  “What?”

  “Being underestimated.”

  The men’s-room window above them was cracked open, emitting the pungent scent of urinal cakes. Through the gap they heard someone whistle, spit, and unzip. Evan set the shopping bag on the ground.

  They waited.

  The 4Runner finally came into view, cresting the rise.

  It crept along the line of parked vehicles, slowing as it passed the Civic. The driver eased forward, closer to the pumps, and stopped with the grille pointed at the on-ramp below.

  “Hmm,” Joey said.

  Evan leaned closer to the building’s edge, Joey’s hair brushing his neck. They were thirty or so yards away from the 4Runner.

  Leaving the truck running, the driver climbed out, scratching at the scraggly blond tufts of his beard. Cowboy boots clicking on the asphalt, he walked back to the Civic, approaching it from behind. As he neared, he untucked his shirt. His hand reached back toward his kidney, sliding under the fabric. He hooked the grip of a handgun, slid it partway out of the waistband.

  It looked like a big-bore semiauto, maybe a Desert Eagle.

  Not a law-enforcement gun.

  The man approached cautiously, peering through the windows, checking that the car was empty. Then he let his shirt fall back over the gun and entered the travel plaza.

  “He didn’t see us,” Evan said. “Not directly, not from behind us on the freeway. At best he could tell that we were a man and a young woman. He’s trying to confirm ID.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “You don’t do anything.”

  “I could handle that guy.”

  “He’s bigger than you,” Evan said. “Stronger, too.”

  In the bathroom a toilet flushed, the rush of water amplified in the cinder-block walls. A moment later they heard the creak of hinges and then the hiss of the hydraulic door opener. A sunburned man waddled into sight around the corner and headed off toward his car.

  Joey snapped her gum. “I could handle him,” she said again.

  “We’re not gonna find out,” Evan said. “Stay here.”

  “You’re going into the plaza?”

  “Too many civilians. We’ll let him come to us. He’ll check the bathrooms next.”

  Sure enough, the driver emerged from the plaza and started their way. They pulled back from the corner.

  Evan moved his hand toward his holster. “Don’t want to use the gun,” he whispered. “No suppressor. But if I have to—”

  She completed the thought. “I’ll have the car ready.”

  A crunch of footsteps sounded behind them. Was there a second man? Evan put his shoulders to the cinder block, flattening Joey next to him, and switched his focus to the rear of the building.

  A Pomeranian bobbed into view, straining a metal-link dog leash. It sniffed the grass, its rhinestone-studded collar winking.

  Evan came off the wall.

  The little dog pulled at its chain, producing an older woman clad in an aquamarine velour sweatsuit. She frowned down at the dog. “Do your business, Cinnamon!” She looked up and saw Evan. “Oh, thank God. Excuse me. Can you watch Cinnamon for me just for a second? I have to use the ladies’ room.”

  Evan could hear the driver’s boots now, tapping the front walkway behind him, growing louder. “I can’t. Not now.”

  Creak of hinges. Hiss of hydraulic door opener.

  The woman said, “Maybe your daughter, then?”

  Evan turned around.

  Joey was gone.

  He tapped his holster through his shirt.

  Empty.

  He hissed, “Joey!” and leaned around the front corner.

  He caught only a flicker of brown-black hair disappearing through the men’s-room door as the hydraulic opener eased it shut.

  The woman was still talking. “Teenagers,” she said.

  Evan stood at the corner, torn. If he shouted Joey’s name, he’d give her away. If he barreled in after her, he could alert the driver and get her killed. As it stood, she had Evan’s gun and the element of surprise.

  On point, he strained to listen, ready to charge.

  The woman misread his agitation, her face settling into an expression of empathy. “I raised three of them,” she went on, holding up three fingers for emphasis. “So believe me, I know. It’s hard to learn to let them go.”

  The dog yapped and ran in circles.

  “What with the driving and drinking,” the woman said. “Making choices about their bodies.”

  Through the cinder-block walls, Evan heard a thud. A grunt. In the window just over the woman’s shoulder, a spatter of blood painted the pane, and then the man’s face mashed against the glass, wisps of beard smudging the blood.

  The woman cocked her head. “Do you hear that?”

  “I think they’re cleaning the bathroom,” Evan said.

  Another pained masculine grunt and the snap of breaking bone.

  “Deep cleaning,” Evan said, as he shot around the corner.

  He shouldered through the men’s-room door.

  The first thing he took in was Joey facing away, her tank top slightly twisted, arms raised, shoulders flexed. He couldn’t see her hands, but his ARES pistol was tucked in the back of her pants.

  The man was on his knees, his cheek split to the bone, his front teeth missing, his chest bibbed with blood. One arm dangled loosely at his side, broken. The other hand was raised palm out, fingers spread. Evan took a careful step forward, bringing Joey into full view. She was standing in a perfect Weaver stance, aiming the man’s own Desert Eagle at his head, the long barrel made longer by a machined suppressor.

  Joey’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  Evan held out a hand calmly, stilling the air. “Joey,” he said.

  The man ducked his head. Blood dripped from his cheek, tapped the floor. The acrid smell of his panic sweat hung heavy.

  “Lower the gun,” Evan said. “You don’t want to cross this line.”

  “I do.” Her eyes were wet. “I want to prove it.”

  “There’s nothing to prove.”

  The barrel trembled slightly in her grasp. Evan watched the white seams of flesh at her knuckle.

  “It’s just one more ounce of trigger pressure,” Evan said, “but it’ll blow your whole world a
part.”

  “What’s the difference?” she said. “If I do it or you do it?”

  “All the difference in the world.”

  She blinked and seemed to come back to herself. She inched the gun down. Evan stepped to her quickly and took it.

  He faced the man. “A directive came from above to have me killed. I want to know where it came from.”

  The man sucked in a few wet breaths. He didn’t answer.

  Evan took a half step closer. “Who’s Van Sciver taking orders from now?”

  The man spit blood. “He keeps us in the dark, I swear.”

  Evan shot a glance at the bathroom door. Time was limited. “How’d he find you? Are you former military?”

  The man tilted his face up to show a crooked smile, blood outlining his remaining teeth. “Now, that would give away too much, wouldn’t it? But it’s your lucky day, X. I can help you. I’ll send a message to Van Sciver.”

  “Yes,” Evan said. “You will.”

  He shot the man in the chest. The suppressor was beautifully made, reducing the gunshot to a muffled pop. The man jerked back against the tiles beneath the window and sat in a slump, chin on his chest, head rocked to one side.

  Eleven down.

  Fourteen to go.

  Evan dropped the gun, took Joey’s arm, and walked out. No one at the gas pumps had taken notice.

  He flipped Joey the keys to the Honda. “Get your rucksack and the laptop.”

  She jogged off to the right, and he veered left.

  When he stepped around the corner to check on the woman, she was bent over the dog, scolding it. “Do your business, Cinnamon. Do your business!”

  She sniffed at him. “You know, there was a time when strangers helped each other.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, picking up his shopping bag. “It’s the teenager. Unpredictable.”

  Her face softened. She returned her focus to the Pomeranian.

  Evan walked swiftly past the gas pumps to the 4Runner, which waited for them, motor still on, already angled downslope for a quick getaway. Joey met him there, climbing in as he did, tossing her rucksack ahead of her.

  She was still winded from the fight and the adrenaline rush, her clavicles glistening with sweat.

  He said, “You are a powerful young woman.”

  He pulled out onto the freeway and headed for home.