Orphan X: A Novel (30 page)

“Listen,” Evan said. “I have to get back to work.”

Johnny lowered his head and began sobbing.

Evan looked at the ceiling.

Fuck.

“Where are they?” he asked. “These guys.”

Johnny pointed up the ramp. “Outside. Just waiting.”

“Put the knife away.”

“Look, man.” Johnny wiped at his cheeks. “This is seriously dangerous, street-level shit. Be grateful you don’t deal with this kind of stuff.” The flush had crept up his face, turning his forehead shiny, making the hair plugs stand out. “I’m not really a tough guy. If I don’t bluff ’em down, they’ll fuck me up bad.”

“Call the cops.”

“I can’t do that. That’s a pussy move.”

“You’re gonna talk yourself right into a body bag.”

“You don’t understand these guys, Evan. They’ll just wait. They’ll just wait and come back for me later.”

Evan took a breath. Exhaled through clenched teeth. “Then I’ll go with you. To talk to them.”

Johnny’s laugh turned to another sob halfway through. “Evan. This isn’t some … some
business
dispute like whatever you’re used to. These guys are savages.”

Already Evan was walking toward the slope. Johnny followed him up, still pleading with him. Evan waved his foot in front of the sensor, and the gate rattled open.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Johnny said. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

They emerged into the midday sun. Up on the sidewalk, three men in their twenties waited, wearing sleeveless shirts despite the cool weather. Wiry builds, compact muscles, gelled hair. They looked to be of Indonesian descent. The smallest wore a protective nose splint.

Evan gestured to the loading-dock area behind the building, and the brothers drifted in that direction, keeping a good distance ahead, disappearing around the corner.

“You don’t want to do that,” Johnny said. “You
really
don’t want to go back there where no one can see us.”

They stepped around the corner. Midway down the rear façade of the building, the brothers had assembled. Arms crossed, matching scowls, like something out of a bad import rap video.

As Evan approached, Johnny lost a half step, edging behind him. The men stood in formation, stone-faced.

Evan said, “I understand my friend here screwed up.”

The oldest-looking brother’s lips pursed, anger piercing the mask. “He broke Reza’s fucking nose. I’d say that qualifies as screwing up.”

Reza, his lips twisted in a scowl, lifted a hand to the splint, his chest rising and falling rapidly beneath the thin shirt. His shoulders were glossed with perspiration.

Evan looked from brother to brother, taking his time. “You’re hoping for fight or flight,” he said. “But there are other options here, and to be honest, I don’t have time for this right now. Let’s find an easier solution.”

A vein pulsed in the middle brother’s arm. “We’re not here to fucking
talk.
”

Johnny’s voice, husky with fear, came from behind Evan’s shoulder. “I
told
you.”

Evan stared at the oldest brother. “I know you think you’ve got this under control. But you’re breathing hard. Your heart rates are up right now. Blood pressure, too. You’re sweating, all three of you. The emotional centers of your brains are going haywire. Your stomachs are tightening as we speak, all those stress hormones coursing through you.” He stepped forward. “You’re not in control as much as you think you are. If a fight breaks out, you won’t be happy with the result. You’ve got numbers, yes, and you’re hoping I’m as nervous as you are, that I’ll fight rashly, that I’ll make mistakes. But I want you to look at me. And tell me: Do I look scared?”

The siblings’ heads swiveled as they regarded one another, some unspoken communication passing between them.

“Andreas already told you,” the oldest said. “We’re not here to talk.”

They fanned out, forming a semicircle around Evan. Their hands came up, open, ready to throw.

Evan released a breath, annoyed. “Really?”

He oriented toward the oldest, knowing he’d be the first to engage. He watched the man’s feet shuffle, read the positioning. He anticipated the low, sweeping kick before it came, a test-the-waters first strike, and he simply raised his own leg and pivoted it outward. Evan’s shin shield hammered the driving ankle, sending a painful vibration up his attacker’s leg. The oldest brother skipped back on his good foot.

The lesson would be simple: Every time one of the brothers struck, he would feel pain.

Andreas threw next as predicted, a right cross, but Evan shot his elbow up into a spear and leaned into the punch. As Andreas swung, the soft union of his pec and shoulder impaled on the bony tip of Evan’s ulna, and Andreas gave a cry of pain, his arm dangling numbly at his side.

Reza was in motion already, pivoting into a roundhouse kick. Evan caught the leg softly with both of his hands and slammed it down into the top of his own rising femur, the knee smash bruising the tibia and gastrocnemius, stunning the limb into uselessness.

The oldest had rebounded to attack again, Evan stepping into his punch, driving the heel of his hand hard into a shoulder post before the arm could swing around. The brother staggered back, then recovered, countering with a tight jab. Evan’s hands moved like horizontal buzz saws in a kali deflection, clapping the arm from either side, his palm slap-guiding the fist, his knuckles digging into the soft meat of the biceps. The oldest brother grunted and spun away, Evan letting him tumble into Reza, knocking him over.

Andreas had already wound up for a high kick, but Evan shot his lead leg up and straight out, letting Andreas’s momentum carry his crotch into Evan’s foot.

A clod of air left Andreas in something like a bark. “Ouch!” he said, and sat down next to his brothers.

Evan had responded only with blocks and deflections, making not a single offensive move.

From somewhere behind him, he heard air hiss through Johnny’s teeth.

The brothers cradled various limbs and breathed raggedly, more stunned than injured.

Now Evan stepped forward and offered Reza a hand. Reza looked to his oldest brother, who nodded, and then Reza grasped Evan’s hand and allowed himself to be helped to his feet. The other brothers stood on their own.

“Okay,” Evan said. “Let’s try this again.” He turned to Johnny, who was watching, mesmerized, his mouth slightly ajar. “Johnny?”

No response.

Evan snapped his fingers in front of Johnny’s face, and Johnny reanimated. “Yeah? What?”

“Apologize to Reza for punching him after the whistle. It was a dishonorable thing to do.”

“I’m sorry,” Johnny said. “Really sorry.”

“Shake his hand.”

Johnny held out his hand, and Reza took it.

“That nose has been properly reset,” Evan said. “By a doctor. You will pay all his medical bills. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Johnny said. “I agree.”

Evan looked at the oldest brother. “Are we done here?”

The brother stared at him for a time, trying for implacable, though everyone knew it was already over. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re done.”

Evan gave him a nod, then turned and hustled back for the garage.

Johnny followed at his heels. “Holy shit holy shit
holyshitholyshit.
How’d you
do
that?”

They rounded the corner of the building, moving toward the porte cochere.

“I fought some as a kid,” Evan said, giving the valet an affable nod.

“Who the fuck
are
you?”

Evan halted, Johnny bumping into him from behind. Evan turned, his eyes inches from Johnny’s. “This never happened. Understand me?”

Johnny held out his hands. “I understand.”

Evan slipped through the glass front doors, leaving Johnny in the shade of the drive-through.

42

The Inside of a Conspiracy Theorist’s Mind

Five-twenty and still no ping from Katrin White’s GPS signal.

Locked down in the Vault, Evan raked through the databases, scouring every corner of the universe for trails that might lead to Danny Slatcher or locations he’d used in the past. He dug and pried, trying not to watch the clock.

His mistrust of Katrin might have cost her her life.

With ex-Orphans on his trail, Evan had had to doubt everything and everyone, see the lie beneath every sentence, betrayal beneath every smile. Over the past two weeks, he’d been pulled increasingly into the ordinary world with all its human complications, real people with real problems, and it was harder and harder to tell what was authentic and what was a strategic simulation of authentic. He’d charted connections and coincidences, creating webs of partial logic that resembled nothing so much as the inside of a conspiracy theorist’s mind. Assessing the genuine in the everyday was his particular blind spot, as he had never lived in the everyday. Katrin did. And his inability to decipher the language of the everyday, to read her correctly, might prove to be the tear in the fabric that would unravel them both.

This mission had been a death trap from the start, the foundation caving in beneath his feet, the Commandments crumbling one after another. Only one mattered anymore, the Tenth and most holy Commandment:
Never let an innocent die.

He pounded at the keyboard, hacking through files as if forging through brush with a machete. But Slatcher lived up to his reputation. Traceless. Invisible. A ghost.

Six oh-seven and still no ping from Katrin White’s GPS signal.

Evan cocked back in his chair with an aggravated sigh. Only now did he realize that Vera had died. The aloe vera plant, companion through so many adventures and witness to his sins, had turned brown and brittle. He lifted her from her bed of pebbles. The size of an artichoke, she fit neatly in his palm, as light as a bird’s nest. She deserved more of a send-off, but she got only the trash compactor. When he looked up, he saw that the living wall, too, was expiring, a wide swath of the herbs long gone, the floor beneath dusted with fallen leaves and sprigs. The drip system looked to be clogged, another repair to add to the list along with the katana’s scabbard. He stared into the malnourished rise of plants as if it were a mirror.

The wall and Vera were the only lives fully in his care, and he hadn’t even managed to keep them afloat.

Seven-sixteen and still nothing.

He debated reviewing his own past assignments and missions to determine which had given rise to someone seeking vengeance in the form of Danny Slatcher, but there were too many, and every last one had left a contrail of lethal enemies.

Three past eight. Nothing and nothing.

And then he spotted something.

But not on the monitors he’d been focused on.

One of the south-facing outdoor surveillance cameras picked up two men approaching the loading dock where Evan had squared off with the brothers earlier in the day. These men were big specimens in dark, loose-fitting clothes, tattoos showing on their hands and necks. Evan initiated the facial-recognition software, but it was too dark behind the building for a clean capture.

They wouldn’t be outside long.

As they approached the security door next to the giant roll-up loading gate, one of the men pulled out a pick set and the other went up on tiptoes. As the second intruder reached up, a thin piece of metal flashed in his hand. Evan knew what it was immediately—a magnet shaped like a stick of Wrigley’s chewing gum. Each exterior door of Castle Heights was alarmed with a mag strike in the gap between the top of the door and the frame. Sliding a magnet to cling to the top strike would ensure that no broken-connection alert would be sent when the door opened.

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.