Which it promptly did under the ministrations of the pick set. The two men vanished inside, holding their total time in the outdoor camera’s field of vision to under ten seconds. A skillful team.
This was not their first entry.
A few inches from Evan’s mouse pad, the matte black Wilson 1911 waited in its holster.
He clicked to locate the appropriate interior camera, picking up the two-man team hustling through the rear service corridor. There was enough light inside to capture their features, the facial-recognition software scrolling the results across the screen.
Michael Marts and Axel Alonso.
Evan’s eyes swept their criminal histories. They’d worked together since their late teens, a string of petty B&Es culminating in the robbery of a taxi driver. That bought them five years in Chino, but they’d been released early—four months ago—for good behavior.
They were in the service elevator now, riding up.
Keeping his eyes on the screen, Evan reached across the desk, his hand claiming the holstered gun. He clipped it at his hip and rose, leaning over the monitors, setting his knuckles on the sheet metal.
He moused over to the sentencing report for the robbery in the first degree and clicked to bring up the name of the prosecutor.
District Attorney Mia Hall.
The confirmation sent a prickle through the nerves of his back. The men were coming after her for putting them away.
Sure enough, the service elevator stopped at twelve.
Evan brought up a hall camera just in time to catch the men strobing by en route to Mia’s place. He could no longer pick them up. Castle Heights had no eyes on the door of 12B, which meant that Evan didn’t either.
His heart was hammering. Impatience simmered, a low boil.
He stared at the blank RoamZone. Nothing from Katrin. He had to be ready to move the instant that ping came in. That was his contract. His law. The sole thing he’d been honed to do for two and a half decades.
But Mia. And Peter.
What could he do? What could he not do?
He realized that—for the first time—the answer would lie neither in his brain nor in his training but somewhere else.
A security alert sounded on one of his screens.
A balloon, bumping against his bedroom window. Magic Markered across it in bold letters: SKARY MEN R HERE. HELP.
The men were inside her apartment already. Their focus would be on guarding that front door.
Evan started out of the Vault. Then froze, agitated, his hand pressed to the hidden door.
A lifetime of training told him he couldn’t reveal himself to Mia. That would risk not just the mission.
It would risk everything.
And yet.
Could he risk not doing this?
It wasn’t really a choice.
He’d go, all right.
Just not through the building.
43
Scary, Scary Man
Evan stood on the side of Castle Heights, invisible against the dark exterior, his feet planted on the stone. The view, twenty-one stories straight down. The wind was less powerful than loud, roaring across his eardrums, all but drowning out the traffic sounds below.
He paid out black rappelling rope from the mechanical descender, straps biting into his torso as his weight strained the harness. The improvised abseiling system was not designed for him to lower himself from his bedroom window in controlled fashion.
It was designed for him to run down the side of the building.
He tested the holds once more, then began his sprint down the dangling length of black rope, his boots tapping across windows and stone. The bluish glow of 20B’s television blurred underfoot, then the aquatic green of the fish tank in 19B, followed by the pitch-black windows of 18B. Way below, streetlights blinked from red to green and car horns bleated, the river of headlights lurch-stopping along Wilshire Boulevard. Next 17B whipped by; the sixteenth floor passed in a flash, and then the fifteenth too was a memory. High-tensile-strength nylon cord zippered through various figure eights on Evan’s torso, frictioning through his gloves as he slowed, slowed, the twelfth floor flying up at him.
Peter’s bedroom window was open, kite string still tailing up to the balloon above, and Evan kicked off the stone, swinging out from the building, turning in a slow half rotation, his Original S.W.A.T. boots aimed at the two-foot gap at the top of the pane.
He swung through the window, landing on his feet on the bright blue area rug beside the race-car bed, already unclipping from his harness. Peter cowered against the footboard, covering his ears, his eyes squeezed shut. His desk chair was jammed beneath the doorknob. One of the men was knocking on the door—hard, but not too loud. They didn’t want to alert the neighbors.
At the sound of Evan’s landing, Peter’s eyes opened. He did a literal double take, one hand sliding up across his blond hair, leaving it askew.
“Holy crap,” he said.
Evan held a finger to his lips.
A raised voice carried through the door: “—what you can do is give me the last four fucking years of my life back.” And then a harsh whisper: “Get the kid outta the bedroom. Now.”
The knocking persisted. Then a new voice came, muffled against the wood. “Listen, kid. You gotta open up. Or I’m gonna kick down the door.”
The first man again. “We’re not kicking down any doors. Open the door or we’ll break your mom’s fingers.”
There was a sound of a brief struggle, and then Mia shouted, “Don’t you do it—” before her words were stifled.
Footsteps moved away from Peter’s bedroom, the second man seemingly going to help with Mia.
Evan quietly pulled the chair from the doorknob, setting it down gently on the rug. As he turned back, Peter grabbed his arm.
“I’m scared,” he said in that rasp of a voice.
“Don’t be.” Evan twisted the knob slowly, retracting the latch. “Everything’s fine now.”
He eased the door open and peered through the crack. Mia was struggling violently, both men doing their best to restrain her. Marts tried to hold her from behind, one tattooed hand clamped over her mouth. His other hand held a .45, but it was aimed at the floor, not at Mia’s head, which Evan took as a good sign regarding his intentions. The lack of a suppressor was another positive. The last thing Marts would want to do was fire a gun inside the building. It was also the last thing Evan wanted to do in close quarters with hostages present. Keeping his Wilson holstered, he slipped through the doorway.
Mia bucked and thrashed, Alonso trying to rein in her kicking legs.
Evan slipped up behind him and tapped him on the back. “Excuse me,” he said.
Surprised, Alonso turned.
The shoulder joint is largely a myth. It’s less a joint, more of a bony fit held together with musculotendon tension and a modest bit of cartilage. It is extremely mobile. And highly vulnerable.
Alonso was still rotating around, his mouth frozen in an O of shock, when Evan threw a right hammer-fist punch, clubbing the fragile left collarbone. The destruction blow shattered the collarbone, the sound like the pop of a dinner plate dropped on an anvil. Alonso simply went limp and went down, striking the floor like something inanimate. As he fell away, he cleared Evan’s view to Mia’s wild rolling eyes, her expression more shocked even than Marts’s.
Marts flung her to the side, his gun hand coming up, but Evan caught the inside of his wrist and snapped it palm-up, supinating the elbow, which gave way with a muted crackling. The .45 popped loose from Marts’s limp fingers, and Evan snatched it from the air, his hands field-stripping it even as it fell, its momentum barely slowing until it rained down in pieces on the stained carpet—slide, operating spring, barrel, frame, magazine.
Marts got off a jab, but Evan scooped it to the outside, spinning his body open. With spear-straight fingers, he drove a bil jee strike into Marts’s eyes, and Marts gave a cry that sounded neither human nor animal, but like a we
t structure caving in on itself. As Marts reeled back, Evan grabbed his flailing arm and spun him in a half rotation, seizing him from behind with a single snakelike strike that locked him in a police choke hold. Marts’s neck was pinched in the crook of Evan’s right elbow, crowded between the biceps and the meat of the forearm, Evan’s left hand palming the back of his head.
At their feet Alonso groaned into the carpet, a sheet of tendons standing out in his neck. Mia had scooted herself across the floor so her shoulders were pressed against the base of the couch. Her legs were still churning, propelling her nowhere as she watched with a mixture of horror and fascination.
Marts struggled in Evan’s grasp. “You motherfucker, do you have any—”
With his left hand, Evan applied a hint of pressure, forcing Marts’s head into the pincerlike vise, cutting off the flow of the carotid arteries. Marts went marionette-limp in Evan’s arms.
Evan let off the pressure, and a moment later Marts snapped back to life.
“We done?” Evan asked.
“No, we’re not fucking—”
Pressure on.
Marts tilted forward again, limp in Evan’s arms.
Pressure off.
Marts woke up again.
“Are you ready to listen?” Evan asked.
“I’ll listen as soon as you—”
Repeat.
This time when Marts’s head rolled back atop his shoulders, he said hoarsely, “Okay, okay. I’ll listen.”
“I need you both to listen. Got it?” Evan set a boot on Alonso’s wrecked shoulder, and the man arced on the floor as if an electrical current had been run through him. He nodded furiously.
Evan said, “There are two choices. You ride down in the service elevator to the parking level with me calmly and quietly. Or I will drop you down the trash chute. We are on the twelfth floor. What’s it gonna be?”
Marts said, “Service elevator.”
Evan hoisted Alonso up, and he stood beside Marts, shuddering in pain.
Mia’s legs still cycled, though now in slow motion, trying in vain to move her through the couch. Evan said to her, “Don’t call the cops. Please. I’ll come back.”
Though her stomach was undulating, racked with silent sobs, she stared at him blankly.
He said, “Okay?”
Her nod looked like a tremor.
As he propelled the men toward the door, she scrambled for Peter’s bedroom. Evan peered through the peephole, checking that the corridor was clear before steering the men out. Closing the door behind them, he heard the sound of Peter’s muffled crying and the low murmur of Mia’s soothing voice.
He got Marts and Alonso into the service elevator and down to the parking level without incident. With every step Alonso jerked in a shallow breath. Marts had sweated through his shirt. They demonstrated the cooperation of broken POWs.
Evan removed a set of keys from Marts’s front pocket. “Your car,” he said. “Where’d you park?”
“Two blocks that way.”
They crossed the parking level and exited up a rear stairwell. Marts and Alonso drag-walked up the steps with their torsos contorted against the pain, a Walking Dead bearing.
Lights shone from various apartments, but the neighborhood was pedestrian-free, one of the advantages of car-centric Los Angeles. They made it to the car, a beat-to-shit Buick, without incident. Evan popped the trunk, then yanked out the spare tire and tossed it onto the weedy sidewalk buffer.
“No,” Marts said. “Oh, no.”
“Please,” Alonso said.
Evan just looked at them.
They climbed into the oversize trunk, adjusting themselves with slow, excruciating movements.
Marts’s voice floated up, reedy with exertion. “Can you maybe just—”
Evan slammed the trunk.
He drove up the 405, exiting at Mulholland, and curled west, turning off where the famous drive gave over to dirt. He forged up into the canyons, passing the defunct Nike missile facility, wending along the tortuous trail. The tires hammered over uneven ground, and more than once pained whimpers emanated through the backseats. Evan reached a clearing overlooking the Valley, the Sepulveda Basin a puddle of black spilled on the blanket of lights below.
He parked and opened the trunk, helping the men climb out. Their tattoos shiny with sweat, they stood gingerly, craning their necks to take in the surroundings. Tall chaparral and oaks rose all around. Dust from the tires textured the air, drifting ghostlike through the darkness. An owl hooted from somewhere overhead.
“You’re gonna kill us,” Marts said.
In the light of the moon, Alonso’s face looked bloodless. His fragmented collarbone had not broken the skin, but a shaft poked out his shirt in the front. “We weren’t gonna hurt her bad,” he said. “We just wanted to rough her up, scare her. Let her know what she cost us.”
“If I didn’t believe you,” Evan said, “you’d already be dead.”
“Then…” Marts’s words faded into a dry cough. He tried again. “Then why are we here?”
“Mulholland is three miles back that way.” Evan pointed. “I’ll leave your car where the blacktop picks up.”
With glazed eyes the men stared into the darkness where he was pointing.
“I know you know tough guys,” Evan said. “Guys above you. And they have guys above them. But the people you can get to? They won’t rise to a level that will be a problem for me. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Both men nodded obediently.
“Consider me Mia Hall’s personal guardian angel,” Evan said. “If she ever so much as hears your names again, I will put you in the ground.” Spinning the keys around his forefinger, he started for the car.
He turned the Buick around in a tight three-point, the headlights sweeping the men’s wan faces. They stayed rooted to the ground, shuddering. Kicked-up dirt gusted across their scarecrow frames.
Evan hit the brakes beside them, rolled down his window. “Start walking,” he said.
Painstakingly, they turned to face the gloomy hike back.
Marts said, “You are a scary, scary man.”
Evan drove off. He watched their stooped forms diminish in the rearview. It seemed they couldn’t yet muster the energy to move.
44
Self-Fueling Engine
Katrin sat in the empty office, her back to the wall, regarding the untouched fast-food bag beyond her feet. Her window, her sole luxury, had been taken from her, boarded with plywood and reinforced with steel bars. When she moved, the thick plastic zip-tie bit into her ankle. It was hooked to the metal leg of the desk above a sturdy crossbar, and in the hours she’d passed here alone, she’d made zero headway on the heavy screws. Truth be told, she’d given up after several attempts and a broken thumbnail. The screws weren’t going anywhere, and neither was she.
Stress was taking her apart, bit by bit. Her slow-burning terror had materialized as nausea, swelling at intervals, then receding. The thudding at her temples competed with bouts of light-headedness. She knew that she was dehydrated and calorie-depleted, but the thought of food brought on a fresh wave of queasiness. The smell of carpet cleaner choked the air and seemed to coat her mouth, her lungs.
She could hear heavy boots thunking around down the hall and the grumble of deep voices. Once in a while, she heard Candy as well, a feminine murmur and then bursts of laughter from the men.
Slatcher had stripped Katrin of her possessions, including her watch and phone, so she had no way to keep track of the time, but it seemed that Candy came every few hours to take her to the bathroom.
Which is why now, only twenty or so minutes after her last trip to the toilet, Katrin was confused to hear those hefty boots tapping up the hall.
Confused and not a little scared.
Candy entered now on a breeze of perfumed air. In her hand swayed a fresh McDonald’s bag. Replenishments.
“Your Gandhi hunger-strike routine isn’t gonna get you anything but weak
,” Candy said. “And I don’t think you wanna be weak. For you or for Sam. So what say you grow the fuck up and deal a little, ’kay, partner?” She flashed her dimples and lofted the new bag across the room. It landed with a wet thud at Katrin’s side.
Candy turned around, her hips somehow playing an outsize role in the simple act, and vanished through the door.
Katrin stretched for the bag, static fuzzing her vision. She was weaker than she thought. But when she unfurled the greasy cheeseburger wrapper, the rising smell forced her to lay it aside. She breathed the carpet-cleaner air for a time.
Then she reached for a french fry. Trying to fight her stomach into place, she held it before her face.
* * *
For the entire taxi ride back from Mulholland, Evan kept his RoamZone open to Katrin’s tracking screen. It remained infuriatingly stagnant.
He asked the driver to drop him several blocks from Castle Heights, then jogged back and went straight to the penthouse, hauling up his rappelling rope and harness before anyone noticed them blowing in the wind. The act brought to mind pulling up a drawbridge, a metaphor Jack might have appreciated—Evan, alone in his fortress once again.
He pit-stopped in the Vault to fuzz out damning intervals of the building’s surveillance footage from earlier in the evening. The footage, sparingly monitored in real time by Joaquin over the top of his Maxim magazine, was rarely reviewed after the fact, but Evan preferred never to rely on luck. Exiting the penthouse with his recharged RoamZone in hand, he rode the elevator down to Mia’s place and tapped gently on the door, having no idea what to expect.
A darkness occluded the peephole, and then the door swung open. Her curled hair tamped down from a shower, Mia looked at him, then gestured to the couch. Peter’s door was closed, the boy presumably asleep.
Evan walked to the couch and sat. Mia took an armchair opposite him, pulling her legs in under her. The pieces of Marts’s gun had been collected in a Ziploc freezer bag, which rested on the coffee table between them, positioned like a conversation piece.
Orphan X Page 24
