Orphan X

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Which, Evan supposed, it was.

  Mia’s voice was husky from crying. “Did you … kill them?”

  “No,” Evan said. “But they’ll never bother you again.”

  “Thank you for protecting me. Thank you for protecting Peter. And I mean that—deeply and sincerely.”

  “But?” he said.

  She leaned forward, lifted the Baggie a little, and let it clunk back onto the table. “You took this gun apart so fast I couldn’t even see your hands move. You beat those men—seasoned violent offenders—like nothing I’ve ever seen. You swung in through Peter’s window like friggin’ Spider-Man. What are you?”

  Evan broke eye contact, looking away. It was a conversation he’d never had before, and there was no way to begin it now. On Peter’s door the pirate-themed KEEP OUT! sign was torn from Alonso’s banging, and Evan considered the boy sleeping safely in the room beyond.

  When it became apparent that he had no ready answer, she said, “No one knows anything about industrial cleaning supplies.”

  “No.”

  “So no one can ask you anything about your job.”

  “I suppose not,” he said.

  “Evan Smoak. Is that your real name?”

  “Yes and no.”

  Her mouth opened and closed a few times. “You do understand what my job is, right? I can’t know that you … that you…”

  He waited.

  “I can’t know whatever it is that I don’t know about you.” She smacked her forehead with a palm. “Jesus, this is insane. I sound insane. But whatever you did with those men…” Angrily, she blew a wisp of hair off her forehead. “I am a district attorney, Evan. I took an oath. Several, in fact. That job is how I support my child. And it’s contingent on—no, it’s predicated on my not breaking the law.”

  “So you want to try to prosecute me?”

  “If I said yes?”

  “I’d be gone.”

  “We’d find you.”

  Evan slowly shook his head.

  “I’m going to call my boss right now.” She stood. “See how we can untangle this mess. See how we can make it right.”

  But she made no move for her phone. They looked at each other. The silence stretched out and out.

  Evan asked, “Who called you when you left the HOA meeting today? You said it was your brother. But it wasn’t his ringtone.”

  She blinked slowly, from exhaustion or confusion. “My boss. Telling me that the threats from those guys had escalated. We’ve been tracking them these past few months.”

  Evan thought about that Jaws ringtone sounding on Mia’s phone, again and again. All those agitated conversations, her pacing intense circles on her brother’s front lawn. He remembered washing dishes side by side with Mia at her sink. The idiots these days, they brag about everything on Facebook. What they’ve done, what they’re gonna do.

  Evan said, “That’s why you just moved here, even though your husband’s life-insurance money cleared years ago. Better security.”

  Her weary gaze sharpened. “How do you know that? About when I got the money from Roger’s policy?”

  He hesitated. There were so many things he couldn’t tell her, and yet he owed her something. “There are a lot of people who would like to kill me,” he began cautiously. “So I have to keep my eyes open.”

  She coughed out a note of disbelief, sinking back into the armchair. “And you question me about lying?” Hunching forward, she rested her elbows on her knees. “Wait. You knew about Roger’s cancer. His life-insurance policy. So that means … that means you know everything about me, too? Peter’s adoption. My income. Where I work. You spied on me?”

  His silence was answer enough.

  “You were faking? The whole time?”

  “No.”

  “With Peter—”

  “No.”

  “—my freckles—”

  “No.”

  “—about being surprised. When I told you things about myself. That my husband had died. You already knew.” Her lower jaw sawed back and forth, her teeth grinding. “You knew.”

  “I did.”

  A tear spilled over the brink of her eye. Just one. “How sad for you that you see everyone this way. As potential threats. As liars. When it’s you. It’s really you.”

  His hands were off his lap, trying to shape the air, but into what he was not sure. He lowered them.

  “People build trust, Evan,” she said. “That’s how relationships work. That’s what they are.”

  It spread through him like something physical—a pervasive sadness that this was something he had never learned and did not know.

  That was the curse of paranoia. It became a self-fueling engine, heating up the more it consumed.

  Evan started to reply when a sound cut him off.

  A sonar ping.

  At first he thought he’d hallucinated it. But no, there it was again, Katrin’s GPS coordinates chiming in his pocket.

  He was standing already.

  Across from him Mia’s head remained turned away. She was studying the cordless phone on the counter.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Do whatever you have to do. But I have to leave now.”

  She gave a faint nod without looking at him. He hesitated a moment, then picked up the Ziploc bag containing the field-stripped .45 and started out.

  The Post-it beside the wall-mounted phone had been replaced. The new one read: “Make friends with people who want the best for you.”

  He thought, What a goddamned luxury that would be.

  45

  Human Hive

  Slatcher’s voluminous form was crowded between the metal plates high above the ground. Though the hum of electricity filled his head, the phone connection remained pristine, an earbud receiver collecting Evan’s voice.

  Evan had been breathing hard when he’d picked up, as if he were rushing somewhere. Slatcher had made it clear that he was controlling the board now, telling Evan where he needed to rush to.

  “Universal CityWalk,” Slatcher said. “The plaza by the movie theaters.”

  “Nice choice,” Evan said. “Hard to imagine a more crowded location.”

  Slatcher spoke using a microphone patch over his larynx that pulled his voice directly through the skin, filtering out all ambient noise. “Thank you. I assume you’re close enough to make it by midnight.”

  “I can make it by midnight.”

  That was good. Slatcher wanted to provide Evan with enough time to case the area. But not too much time.

  “Good. I’ll take you to Katrin from there.”

  “It’s not gonna go down that way,” Evan said. “I will approach you once I’ve made sure I’m safe. In the plaza you will show me FaceTime footage of Katrin—proof of life in real time. On your cell phone, I will watch your men release her in a public place. Then I’ll go with you.”

  “You’re willing to die for her?”

  “I am,” Evan said.

  Slatcher felt a grin tug at his mouth. “That’s what it’ll take.”

  “Unless I kill you first.”

  “Sorry, Orphan X. You’re not that good.”

  “We’ll find out,” Evan said. “I have one condition: no field teams. Just me and you. That’s the rules. If I see that you brought anyone—and you know I’ll identify them—I’m in the wind. You’ll miss your shot. And I will not surface again.”

  “I thought you said you were willing to die for her.”

  “I didn’t say I was willing to commit suicide for her.”

  Neon flashed dizzyingly all around Slatcher’s face. He hoisted his bolt-action Remington M700, manipulating it carefully in the claustrophobic space, and checked the Leopold variable power scope. Too much light for the night-vision attachment. “Fair enough,” he said.

  “Talk to you soon.”

  Click.

  But Slatcher wasn’t planning on talking. From his roost inside the two-story-high guitar outside the Hard Rock Cafe, he was planning o
n ending the conversation before it began.

  The clamor of the crowd rose up to him, a continuous mob streaming past, pouring in and out of restaurants, bars, and nightclubs, queuing for the Cineplex, tracing glow bracelets through the air. From this height he could hear the clacking of roller coasters in the amusement park behind.

  He stuck the tip of the rifle through the sound hole of the giant suspended guitar, peering through the scope up the length of CityWalk. With its escalators and leaping fountains, tourists and street performers, brewhouses and sing-along piano bars, it hummed with movement, a human hive and grand temple of capitalism. Enough flashing signage bathed the monstrosity of a promenade to shame Times Square. One block down, a glowing blue King Kong hung off the side of a building. Beyond the iMax line, a teenager fluttered above a giant fan in a sky-jumping tube as his friends looked on, slurping Jamba Juice and chewing Wetzel’s Pretzels.

  Slatcher switched comms to the radio channel and keyed the primary channel. “Big Daddy to Field Teams One and Two. Abort. Abort. I’m gonna fly solo.”

  A moment later a crackle. “Field Team Leader One. You sure? I thought your employer requested body recovery.”

  “Can’t risk it,” Slatcher said. “Target’s already late to the dance. I’m in position, holding high ground. He can scout all he wants, but he won’t stand a chance.”

  Slatcher spotted the team leader, dressed in a paramedic uniform, on the second deck of the food court by Tommy’s Burgers. He watched the man’s lips moving on a slight delay. “Confirm, Big Daddy. Team One out.”

  Another voice chimed in: “Team Two out.”

  “Go back to base,” Slatcher said. “Watch the package and provide backup to Hot Mama.”

  The sweeping scope captured the second team leader on the patio of a Mexican joint, slurping a fishbowl-size margarita. “Confirm, Big Daddy.”

  In the green-tinted night-vision wash, he watched the freelancers disperse. Slatcher couldn’t risk having Orphan X identify one of his men.

  Evan would arrive as soon as possible and scrutinize the central plaza from every angle. But against the backdrop of all the lights and motion, a sniper scope would vanish like a blue sequin dropped into the ocean. Slatcher had miscalculated once before in Chinatown. It would not happen again.

  He dialed back the magnification and moved the crosshairs from one face to the next as they floated across the plaza beneath him.

  Now all he had to do was wait.

  46

  Pyrotechnic Horrors

  The blinking dot of Katrin’s GPS had long since vanished, but Evan had it locked in the RoamZone’s memory. In his Ford F-150, which he’d taken for muscle, he’d looped several times past the unrented building off the 101. After killing his headlights, he found a spot past the edge of the dark parking lot where he could observe the place through a head-high hedge of night-blooming jasmine. The accent lighting in the halls threw enough glow to turn the faintly tinted windows transparent, though it was hard to make out anything but shadows from this distance.

  Somewhere behind those windows, Katrin White waited, held against her will.

  He played the Fourth Commandment in his head until he felt a healthy tactical remove.

  A few minutes past eleven, a pair of midnight blue SUVs pulled in to the lot and four men spilled out of each.

  The field teams returning to base, as he’d hoped.

  Above all else, Evan had two things going for him: He’d separated Slatcher, the greatest threat, from the rest of the crew. And no one was expecting him here.

  In his lap rested a Benelli M1 combat shotgun, black as night. It had more robust internals and faster cycling than an M4, the higher capacity giving him seven shells plus one in the chamber, a bonus round ghost-loaded on the lifter. He eschewed the trendy pistol grip, the classic stock better for going around corners. The first three shots were seven-eighth ounce shells, each holding a single solid lead slug, the better to focus the total energy dump on wiping out a door hinge. Beneath those were nine-pellet buckshot loads, ready to go once he’d breached the building. The pellets would inflict multiple traumas, expanding into a blow radius that could turn a rugby scrum into pink mist. A Jack-ism sprang to mind: You don’t want all the holes in the same place.

  Given the numbers he was facing, Evan had gone with the Benelli over his Wilson pistol, choosing brute power over precision. A shotgun was a fight-stopper, a hit even to an extremity usually proving fatal.

  Evan shouldered through the jasmine hedge and did a surveillance pass around the building’s perimeter, noting the layout of rooms and halls. The men had substantial firepower—Glocks and AK-47s—but they weren’t patrolling in any formal fashion. They milled around in the lobby and meeting rooms, eating and bullshitting. Candy McClure kept her distance, tending to something in what looked like a utility room in the western hall, emerging from time to time to take a breezy lap through the admiring men. Slatcher, nowhere to be seen, was likely teed up in a sniper’s nest somewhere above Universal CityWalk. But he’d be back once it was clear that Evan had no-showed.

  With his back to the hillside, Evan crept along the rear of the building. Five or so rooms down the corridor from Candy’s utility closet, one window had been blacked out. Risking a closer peek, he saw that it had been fortified from the inside.

  Katrin’s cell.

  He’d counted eight men and Candy. To get in and out cleanly, he needed them spread throughout the bird-in-flight V of the building. He located the breaker box near the terminus of the eastern corridor. Through an atrium of some sort at the juncture of the two hallways, he watched the guns-for-hire comparing weapons in the lobby. He wanted to get some of them moving down the eastern corridor—away from Katrin’s room.

  He’d brought only stun grenades, not wanting to risk the collateral damage caused by frags. He lifted the metal lid of the breaker box and let it clamp back down over the body of the flashbang, an upside-down alligator clamp that held the grenade in place. Slotting a finger through the pin, he pulled it. Then he sprinted across to the rear of the western corridor.

  He raised the shotgun, aiming it at the top hinge, and waited. The night breeze blew slow and steady. In the side of his neck, he felt the pulse of his heartbeat like the tick of a clock’s second hand.

  Across the way the flashbang detonated, the building going black.

  Evan fired the three hinge-removers—boom, boom, boom—the door sagging open, and then he was inside, barreling along the corridor. Down by the junction of the lobby, four of the men appeared, heading toward Katrin rather than toward the explosion, a savvy tactical move.

  Though Evan was out of range, he shot a warning blast up the hall to push them around the corner. He sprinted for the utility closet, each jarring step rocking the doorway back and forth.

  He was ten meters away when Candy burst out, her raised fist firing muzzle flares. With no time to lift the shotgun, he slid onto his back, rocketing forward on the slick floor, on a collision course with her legs. He scissor-kicked for her Achilles, but she leapt over him, her hand swinging to aim as he popped to his feet. He lunged inside her reach, grabbing the gun as it grazed his cheek. Her hand blocked the rising shotgun. For an instant they were nose-to-nose, locked up, and then her lips pursed in a smirk and she yanked the trigger, the pistol report sounding inches from Evan’s head. The noise filled his skull, his field of vision tilting violently out of frame, a painting knocked askew. He jerked back, and she drove her face forward, hammering his temple with a head butt, her teeth-clenched screech laced with the scent of strawberry bubblegum.

  He spun away from her, barely holding on to the shotgun. Her stainless-steel pistol shimmered as she raised it for the kill shot. Rather than fight his momentum, he threw himself into the rotation, whipping his leg up and around, his shin striking her square in the sternum. Her gum ejected from her open mouth as she flew back through the doorway into the utility closet.

  The utility closet, filled with plastic j
ugs.

  They broke her fall.

  Liquid flew up around her, sloshing freely from the cracked jugs, and she gave a piercing scream. Evan heeled the door shut, firing again down the hall to drive the men back into the lobby. The spent case ejected from the Benelli, spinning to the floor. With the side of his boot, he swept it across the tile, wedging the plastic end beneath the utility closet’s door, trapping Candy inside.

  Her screams continued, rising to inhuman decibel levels. She banged on the door, the sounds getting wetter. Vapor crept from beneath the door, not wood smoke but the smell of sulfur and flesh.

  At the corridor’s end, an AK held in a gloved hand made a puppet appearance, firing rounds off the walls and ceiling. Blind cover fire as the field teams readied to make their charge.

  Evan would not give them that chance.

  Combat shotgun cinched between his shoulder and cheek, he sprinted toward the lobby.

  This was not going to go well for them.

  * * *

  The corridor sounded like a hall of pyrotechnic horrors—blasts and shrieks, splintering wood and bellows of pain. Katrin fought to press herself up against the wall, though the zip-tie around her ankle held her leg straight out in front of her. It was impossible to separate her own shuddering from that of the building.

  The bloodbath continued in sound and vibration only.

  Boom.

  A warbling cry torn off midstream.

  Boom.

  A heavy thump and then a death rattle of leaking air.

  She covered her ears, closed her eyes. Even through the walls, she could smell smoke, the scent burning the back of her tongue.

  A sob-warped pleading penetrated the walls. “Hang on—just hang on, let me—!”

  Boom.

  One kneecap pressed into her chin. Still she tried to draw her other leg to her chest, but the plastic tie sliced the flesh of her ankle. She was crying, but she couldn’t hear herself.

  A thunderclap of the door being kicked in. Her mouth opened, and this time she heard herself screaming. When she opened her eyes, the upper hinge was already knocked clear of the screws, the lower one snapping free as the door cartwheeled inward.