Orphan X

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “But you didn’t want to take me out there. Too many cops.”

  “That’s right. The place was inundated. As you saw. Impressive gymnastics on the balconies and the roof. I didn’t think you were gonna pull it off.”

  Once again Evan’s mind scrolled through various potential enemies. A successor to a Hezbollah arms chief he’d zeroed out during the security-zone conflict in Lebanon. The bitter widow of an oligarch who’d trafficked in fissile material. An uncle of a serial rapist he’d put down in Portland.

  He said, “I don’t suppose you care to tell me why you’re after me?”

  “I’m afraid that’s not my call.”

  “Right. Gun for hire.” Evan walked the edge of the kitchen, letting the living wall tickle his arm. “Does your employer wish to reveal himself?”

  “No.”

  “How’d you get on to me? To begin with, I mean?”

  “Oh,” Slatcher said, “I’m good at what I do.”

  Evan crossed the poured-concrete stretch of the great room, leaned against the treadmill, looking out at the glowing yellow squares of the apartment windows opposite him. “You started with Morena?”

  “We could’ve started with someone before that,” Slatcher said. “You never know who we know. Maybe we’ve got someone in place in your building right now.” His tone was conversational, but Evan felt the barbed words twisting in his gut.

  A disinformation tactic? Evan decided it was. If Slatcher knew where Evan was, his door would have been kicked in by now.

  “What makes you think I’m in a building?” Evan asked.

  Slatcher laughed in reply. That part of the conversation was closed.

  “I watched surveillance from the loft,” Evan said. “Two former Orphans working together. Now I’ve seen everything.”

  “Well,” Slatcher said. “Almost everything. Just wait.”

  Evan had only been guessing at Candy’s provenance, but he took Slatcher’s words as confirmation. “I wasn’t aware they made a female model,” he said.

  “Oh, a few.”

  Evan drifted past the treadmill and stopped before the periwinkle sunscreen, gazing over the south balcony at apartment 19H in the facing building. The fine interlocking chain mail of the screen fuzzed his view only slightly. He could see Joey Delarosa reclining on his faux-leather couch, remote control resting on his thigh, a scoured Weight Watcher’s tray sitting on the footrest. From the angle of Joey’s head and the regular rise and fall of his shoulders, Evan gleaned he’d fallen asleep. The light of the TV mapped patterns on the walls around him, turning the room into something living.

  “You don’t want Katrin,” Evan said. “She’s just bait.”

  Slatcher’s voice, loud in his ear: “This is true. We want you.”

  “I’ll be happy to oblige.”

  “Confident, aren’t you?”

  “We both want the same thing,” Evan said.

  “What’s that?”

  “To kill each other.”

  “Right,” Slatcher said. “So how do we approach this?”

  Down below in the neighboring building, Joey Delarosa’s front door burst open. A balaclava-masked man flew in, the momentum of the battering ram carrying him several steps into the apartment. Two more men in matching black-job gear and Candy McClure poured in on his heels. Joey’s hands exploded up into view, a heretofore hidden bag of popcorn showering its contents across the couch. Candy was on him instantly, pouncing like a great cat, frisking and securing him.

  “Well,” Evan said. “Now that you have Katrin, you’ll want to hold a beat. Get any information that she’ll give up. She doesn’t have any. It’s a waste of time, but you’ll have to do it. Perhaps you could spare her some harshness by having faith that my operational judgment is sound. I’d never expose myself by trusting her with anything useful.”

  He could hear Slatcher breathing. Down below, the men began clearing the apartment, room by room. Evan watched them vanish, then appear again in the different windows of 19H. He lifted his hand, set it gently on the fine mesh of the titanium screen.

  “Leaving Katrin aside, you’ll want to see what angles you can run down,” Evan said. “You’ll want to exhaust every resource trying to pick up my trail. In fact, you’re probably doing that right now.”

  Candy remained in Joey’s living room, peering at a handheld device. She followed it to a spot in the wall next to the TV. She punched a fist through the drywall and came out with the mobile phone that Evan had entombed there, sucking its charge from a spliced wire. The phone had mobile Wi-Fi hot-spot enabled and it served as a bridge for the very call he was on, picking up the digital packets sent through Joey’s router and bridging the signal into the LTE network, the trail literally vanishing into thin air.

  Candy stared at the phone in disgust, dangling on its cords and chargers, and then she let it sag against the wall.

  Wearing a fed-up expression, she punched something into the handheld device. A text message?

  “Right you are,” Slatcher said.

  Sure enough, Evan heard a brief hum over the line, Candy’s message coming through to Slatcher.

  Slatcher exhaled faintly with annoyance. Then he said, “I can’t give you the meet spot this far in advance. You’ll have too much time to set up your counterattack.”

  “Right,” Evan said. “Better to wait so we don’t both have to waste time moving it around.”

  “We’ll be in touch,” Slatcher said. “When we are prepared for you. You’re too dangerous.”

  “I understand,” Evan said. “I’d do the same.”

  Slatcher had the upper hand now. Rather than risk going after Evan in a high-profile operation as at the restaurant and the motel, he had switched tacks. He’d make Evan come to him.

  In the other building, Candy and her men vanished through the door, and a moment later Joey struggled up onto his feet and stumbled red-faced for his telephone.

  “In the meantime you’re gonna try to locate her,” Slatcher said. “You’re gonna try to get to us first.”

  Evan thought of the ace up his sleeve, the microchips in Katrin’s stomach. “Yes,” he said, at last turning away from the twinkling city lights and heading into the dark heart of his condo.

  “Well, I suppose we’ll be seeing each other, then,” Slatcher said.

  “Sooner or later,” Evan replied, and severed the connection.

  38

  A Shield of Killers

  The sound of a woman sobbing never failed to get under his skin.

  Danny Slatcher remained one hall over from the empty office where Candy had secured Katrin White, but still the whimpering carried. They’d set up in an unrented and seemingly unrentable building off the 101 near Calabasas. The isolated structure, situated back behind a big, empty parking lot, had an impractical V-shaped design. The two long halls led to various offices, the meeting rooms tacked onto the rear, facing a scrubby hillside.

  A kitchen-atrium, suffused with the reek of dead ferns, was wedged gracelessly in the junction, caught in the throat of the building.

  Standing now in the miasma of rotting plants, Slatcher wore the RFID-tagged press-on nails and the fully pixelated contact lens seated on his right eyeball.

  The blinking virtual cursor finally turned from red to green.

  Top Dog texted a single symbol:?

  Slatcher’s fingers moved in a flurry through the air. WE’VE SECURED HER. WILL USE HER TO LURE HIM IN.

  TD texted, HOW IS ORPHAN V PERFORMING?

  TD loved the code names, the pedigree.

  Slatcher typed, FINE.

  THE FREELANCERS?

  NOT SO FINE.

  RUNNING THROUGH THEM, AREN’T YOU?

  THERE’S A REASON THEY’RE FREELANCERS, Slatcher typed. WE NEED THEM TO CORRAL THE TARGET.

  TD texted, ORPHAN X IS SMARTER THAN THE AVERAGE BEAR.

  YES, SIR. HE IS.

  The cursor converted back to red.

  TD wasn’t big on sign-offs.
<
br />   Danny peeled off the comms gear, placed it back in its slender metal box, and left the stink of the forsaken atrium, heading down the hall toward the sobs.

  The cluster of new hires had gathered in the lobby. With their squared-off heads and PED-swollen muscles, they were all military-gone-bad, though this didn’t bother Slatcher in the least. He’d long ago learned that the dishonorably discharged were often the meanest and sharpest assaulters. Slatcher wanted a shield of killers in place around Katrin White and Candy McClure until Orphan X lay dead at his feet.

  The conversation ceased as Slatcher cut through the men and headed down the adjoining hall. The door to the utility office was ajar. Candy squatted inside the dank concrete rectangle of a room, lovingly checking her plastic jugs of hydrofluoric acid concentrate. She stepped out to join Slatcher as he kept on.

  “Should we tell her?” Slatcher asked.

  Candy nodded. “Let’s tell her. It’ll motivate her to behave.”

  They entered the last office on the left. Katrin, blissfully quiet at last, remained where they’d left her, shackled to a desk. Beside her, an untouched bag of McDonald’s. The window that looked out onto the hill was nailed shut. Sweat matted Katrin’s sleek bangs to her forehead, and her face was swollen from crying. Slatcher’s backhand had ballooned her left cheek, a red-wine spill creeping into her eye.

  “You’re not gonna eat?” Candy asked.

  Katrin’s eyes barely lifted. “I’m not hungry.”

  Slatcher crouched over her. “Sam is alive and well,” he said. “We needed to scare you. We needed you to cry real tears. In front of Evan.”

  Katrin’s lips parted, but she made no sound. “No,” she said. “No. You’re lying. You’re lying to me.”

  “We did what we had to do to get Evan where we needed him. Emotionally. We needed him reckless. Willing to take more risks.”

  Katrin’s eyes were running. Her thin arms shook uncontrollably. “You did that to me just to convince him … to convince him…”

  “Look at me. Look at me.” Slatcher’s huge hand clamped down over Katrin’s chin. He jerked her face to his. “If you cooperate fully with us, Sam will live. Do you understand me?”

  Katrin nodded in his viselike grip, her tears dampening his knuckles. “I just want it all to be over.”

  “It’ll be over when Evan is dead.”

  Slatcher released her, and Katrin’s muscles went slack. She melted to the floor, her cheek pressed to the thin carpeting. Grease spotted the fast-food bag by her face, the smell turning her stomach.

  As Slatcher came off his haunches, he seemed to keep rising and rising.

  He exited.

  Candy remained behind, leaning back on the desk and examining her nails, her pert pretty face wearing a look of mild boredom.

  Katrin sucked in one shallow breath after another but couldn’t seem to find any air.

  “Shitty Russian hit men,” Candy said, “focus on destroying dentals. Then they chop off their victims’ fingertips and put them in a glass of beer to erase the prints. But me? I’m not a shitty Russian hit man. I don’t go for that penny-ante crap.” With a fluid motion, she pulled herself off the desk, her body seeming to roll forward onto her feet. Her boots planted themselves delicately in front of Katrin’s face, and then she leaned down, bringing a waft of girly perfume. “I prefer to erase the entire person. We may not have done that to Sam yet.” She nestled her lips against Katrin’s ear. “But I’m dying to.”

  She stood over Katrin, those shapely legs sturdy and spread, Colossus of Rhodes with a bleach job. “So please,” she said, “don’t cooperate.”

  Even after she walked out, Katrin couldn’t catch her breath.

  39

  A Noise that Kept Not Coming

  Lying on the floating slab in the inky darkness of his bedroom, staring at the void of his ceiling, Evan concentrated, replaying his and Slatcher’s conversation word for word.

  You never know who we know. Maybe we’ve got someone in place in your building right now.

  Slatcher was trying to psych Evan out, put him on the run where he’d be more visible.

  Here he had sundry alarms and weapons, base-jumping parachutes and tactical rappelling rope, reinforced walls and windows. He was safe enough right now.

  But Katrin was not.

  He pictured how they’d lain together on the futon, his finger tracing the slope of her hip. Those three asymmetrical stars tattooed behind her ear. The kanji strokes on her left shoulder blade. Those spots of blood on the floor of the loft. The promise he’d made: I will find you.

  Two feet from his ear, the RoamZone charged on the nightstand. He’d been waiting for the sonar ping to announce Katrin’s location, bracing himself for a noise that kept not coming.

  The night suddenly felt colder than it was.

  Promise me. Crimson filming his fingertips. Where are you, Evan? The shattered burner phone. The sob tangled in Katrin’s throat. Where are you, Evan?

  Where are you?

  He threw back the sheets, dressed, and made his way to the Turkish rug. He sat cross-legged, veiled his eyes, and tried to meditate.

  For the first time in his life, he could not.

  40

  Blind Spots

  By first light of morning, Evan had already run a full check of his security systems, fine-tuning the motion detectors’ sensitivities, testing the alarms, assessing the surveillance camera angles, and searching out blind spots.

  Right now he could not afford any blind spots.

  Still no GPS ping from Katrin’s microchips. Had they already broken down and passed from her body? Was she not being fed? Had she sweated off the hidden patch behind her ear? Perhaps she was being held underground, the signal muffled by concrete walls.

  He kept moving. He extracted the SIM card from his RoamZone and dropped it down the garbage disposal, letting the blades whir until he heard only bits tumbling. He pulled them out and trashed them, then jumped online, moving his phone service from the outfit in Bangalore to one in Marrakech. No longer could he rely on domestic-violence-inclined Joey Delarosa. After Joey had called 911 last night, the cops had arrived and removed the excavated mobile phone from between the studs, puzzling over it as if it were an artifact from outer space.

  After slotting a fresh SIM card into his phone, Evan grabbed a Pelican case from a cabinet beside his weapons locker and took it up onto the roof. He selected a hidden spot behind the metal shed protecting the generator. Despite the Southern California blaze overhead, a December wind numbed his fingers as he worked.

  From the top of the case, he telescoped out a yagi directional antenna, then plugged in a coaxial cable with an omni stubby antenna mounted on a tripod. He pointed the yagi at the horizon and—voilà. His very own rogue GSM site. The little base station dodged all authentication between itself and the nearest cell tower, making it untraceable—literally off the grid. Next Evan enabled the Wi-Fi hot spot on his RoamZone, forming a gateway to the LTE network. Ordinarily he would power up the base station only when making a call, turning it off immediately afterward, but he’d have to leave it running until he received Slatcher’s call.

  “Evan? Is that you?”

  He rose quickly in time to see Hugh Walters approach.

  “What are you doing up here?”

  “Oh,” Evan said. “It’s a hobby of mine. Trying to track comets. I always hoped to discover one, have it named after me.”

  Hugh brightened with an inner light that Evan hadn’t thought him capable of. “I was in the shortwave-radio club at my prep school,” he said.

  “Were you, now?” Evan said.

  “I was indeed.”

  “Look, I know it’s outside of regs for me to—”

  Hugh waved him off. “Hey, let’s call it a secret between amateur scientists.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Evan said. “It’s a bit embarrassing.”

  Hugh offered a hand, and they shook on it.

  Evan asked, “What
are you doing here?”

  “Checking the roof. I need to be mindful of any and all repairs before going into an HOA meeting. Today’s is right about…” A gold Rolex shot out from beneath Hugh’s cuff. “… now. I assume you’ll be in attendance this time?”

  “Today’s not the best for me,” Evan said.

  Hugh punished him with a well-directed frown. “Why? You’re off for the holidays, aren’t you? What’s so pressing that you can’t attend?”

  “Just some personal issues.”

  Hugh nodded soberly. “Well, I can tell you one person who’ll be disappointed you won’t be there.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Mia Hall.” Hugh mistook Evan’s expression of surprise. “That’s right, fella. I know there seems to be some interest between you two. But this morning she seemed…”

  “What?” Evan said.

  “I don’t know. She just wasn’t her usual self. She seemed really upset about something.”

  “I’d imagine being a single parent isn’t a breeze.”

  “It’s not that,” Hugh said. “She seemed scared.”

  Evan felt the breeze cut right through him.

  Hugh wet his lips. “Maybe you could drop by the HOA meeting and check on her?”

  Evan’s mind assembled snippets of his conversations with Mia over the past couple of weeks. As a DA I sometimes get threats. I have a work emergency. This is a real crisis. As in life or death.

  He pushed the thoughts away. He didn’t have time for this. This wasn’t the mission. It wasn’t his concern. There was Katrin to consider and the Seventh Commandment and a whole lot more.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t.”

  * * *

  Evan took a seat halfway down the length of the imposing conference table, perpendicular to Mia so he could watch her without being obvious. She’d offered him a cursory nod as he’d entered, averting her eyes. Odd. Peter was nowhere to be seen.

  Piped-in “Jingle Bells” played softly through hidden speakers, Hugh’s pleased grin leaving little doubt that the cheery Muzak stylings were his handiwork.