Orphan X: A Novel (28 page)

Then she’d be lost for good.

Next he called up the surveillance footage from the loft. He watched Katrin pacing around the kitchen island as she was prone to do. A creeping unease found its way beneath Evan’s skin, the slow-burn horror of observing a person unaware that something terrible was about to happen to her.

Katrin moved to the tinted wall of glass, and then her body stiffened with terror. She scrambled for the cell phone, half slipping on the slick floor.

Evan watched her dial with trembling fingers. Watched her mouth move frantically, the conversation branded in his memory. The sound, fuzzy yet audible:
People are here—the ones from the motel.

She listened to him, ran to the door, glanced through the peephole. Her hands were fumbling at the dead bolt when the door flew in violently, knocking her back. She staggered but managed to keep her feet.

Slatcher flashed inside, backhanding her. Though his blow seemed almost an afterthought, Katrin’s head snapped around as if her neck were a well-greased swivel. The phone skittered away.

The woman, Candy McClure, was at Slatcher’s heels, a battering ram swinging playfully at her thigh. With a casual, hip-swaying gait, she crossed to the phone and smashed it with one of her chunky heeled boots. Slatcher gathered Katrin up. She lolled in his grip. Candy went to her other side, flipping Katrin’s arm so it slung drunkenly over Candy’s shoulders, and they sailed out the door.

The entire intrusion took eleven seconds.

Evan watched it through again. And again.

Oh, my God! Where are you, Evan? Where are you?

He rewound. Hit
play
.

Where are you, Evan?

Rewound.

Where are you, Evan?

He listened to Katrin’s plea until it became a mantra of rage, firing his insides.

His thumb punched in the remembered number. It rang and rang, but Slatcher did not pick up.

He was likely trying to backtrace the number and would return the call only once he’d made some headway. As a former Orphan, Slatcher would have considerable skills and resources to run down Voice over IP protocols and digitized switchboards. It would be interesting to see how far along the trail he could get.

Keeping the lights off, Evan walked the perimeter of his dark penthouse, RoamZone in hand. His shoulder scraped along the walls as if marking the boundaries of his fortress, delineating safe ground. The sunshine charcoaled by degrees, and then a postcard orange bled through the sky, and soon enough only man-made lights prevailed, pinpricks in the black sea of the city.

As expected, the phone rang. Evan clicked
TALK
, put it to his ear. “Orphan O,” he said.

“Orphan X.”

“Let me talk to her.”

“Of course,” Slatcher said.

A moment later Katrin came on the line, her voice husky from crying. “I’m sorry, Evan. I’m so sorry I dragged you into this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I couldn’t get the dead bolt locked. I couldn’t get to the bathroom.”

“There are two things I need you to remember. None of this is your fault. And I will find you. Repeat them to me.”

She jerked in a few breaths. Then she said, “None of this is my fault. And you will find me.” She stifled a cry. “Promise me?”

“I promise. Now, hand the phone back to the man.”

Slatcher came on the line again.

Evan said, “You’re happy to let us talk, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

Evan paced along the hall, letting his fingers trickle across the space where the mounted katana once hung. “Because you’re tracing this call. Right now.”

“Trying to.”

“Good luck,” Evan said, not insincerely.

“Nice diversion with the dry-cleaning van,” Slatcher said.

“Thank you,” Evan said. “Beautiful move planting the digital transmitter in the wand. You put it there in Chinatown?”

“I did,” Slatcher said. “While you were in the apartment getting onto my trail, I was in the trunk of your car getting onto yours.”

“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.

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.”