Hellbent--An Orphan X Novel

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Orphan V turned around.

  In the shaft of light falling through the kitchen window, she looked quite striking. As she murmured something to Thornhill, she reached over her shoulder and scratched at a spot on her back. Evan thought of the burned flesh beneath her shirt and felt a jagged edge twist inside him.

  Palms pressed to the splintering fence, he breathed the rot of the wood and watched the freelancers watching whoever was in that blind spot, two attack dogs waiting for a command. Beside him Joey shifted her weight uncomfortably, rolling one sneaker onto its outer edge. She was humming with nervousness.

  The person in the blind spot stepped out of the blind spot and into view.

  That broad form, the thin copper hair, the muscular forearms and blocky wrists. But it wasn’t just Van Sciver who made Joey’s breath hitch audibly in her throat; it was what he was carrying.

  David Smith’s frail form draped across his arms.

  Van Sciver dumped the body onto a tarp on the floor. His arms were swollen with exertion, bowed at his sides. The lines on the right side of his face caught the shadows differently—perhaps scarring, perhaps a trick of the light. Evan hadn’t laid eyes on him, not directly, since they’d shared a tense drink in Oslo nearly a decade ago.

  Seeing him now in the stark light of day, Evan felt emotions shifting along old fault lines. They’d spent so many years circling each other from the shadows that some small piece of Evan wondered from time to time if he’d conjured Charles Van Sciver entirely.

  But there he was, in the flesh.

  And the body of the boy who used to be David Smith.

  “He’s dead,” Joey said. Despite the cool December air, sweat sparkled across her temple, emotion flushing her cheeks.

  Staring at the motionless, slender form on the tarp, Evan felt heat pulse in his windpipe, fired by a red-hot coal lodged in his chest.

  He pushed away from the fence, looked down at the tips of his boots. He pictured the crowded bunks of Room 14 at McClair Children’s Mental Health Center. A Lego rebel riding a Snowspeeder across a rusting radiator. Jorell, too smart for his own good. In another life Jorell would be a lawyer, a philosophy professor, a stand-up comedian. In another life David Smith would be sitting down to dinner with a real family. In another life Jack was still alive and he and Evan had plans on the books to share a meal in a two-story farmhouse in Arlington.

  “Wait,” Joey said. “Evan—he’s breathing.”

  Evan’s head snapped back up. He watched as the boy stirred and rolled onto his side.

  Evan’s jaw had tightened. That red-hot coal singed the inside of his throat, fanned with each breath. “We have to get him.”

  “There are three Orphans and four muscleheads in that house,” Joey said. “Armed to the teeth. And we’re out here in the weeds with your girly gun.”

  “Yes.”

  “So how do you plan on getting to him?”

  Evan fished the Samsung Galaxy from his pocket. “By telling Van Sciver where we are.”

  He thumbed the Signal application.

  A moment later a xylophone chime of a ringtone carried to them on the breeze. Evan put his eye to a knothole and peered into the house.

  Van Sciver lifted the phone from his pocket and looked down at the screen. Candy and Thornhill alerted to his expression and went to him, the three of them standing in a loose huddle by the kid’s body.

  They were in close enough proximity that a tight grouping of nine-millimeter rounds could take them down.

  If they weren’t Orphans, Evan might consider hurdling the fence and rushing the house to get within range. But he knew he wouldn’t get three steps past the rusting barbecue before they alerted to him.

  Van Sciver’s thumb pulsed over the screen, and he lifted the phone to his face. Evan watched his lips move, the familiar voice coming across the line on a half-second delay; there was a lot of encryption to squeeze the single syllable through. “X.”

  “Now you’re catching on.”

  “I suppose you’re calling about the boy.”

  From the remove of one backyard and a disintegrating fence, Evan watched Van Sciver turn. Through the phone he heard the rustle of the big man’s boots on the tarp. Candy had one hip cocked, directing the two freelancers to keep eyes up. Thornhill’s muscles coiled, thrumming with energy, ready to go kinetic. He walked to the front of the house to alert the others.

  Van Sciver said, “You took one of mine…”

  Joey must’ve heard the words from the receiver, because she stiffened at the mention of herself.

  “… so I took one of Jack’s,” Van Sciver continued. “But he doesn’t have Joey’s weaknesses. He’s like you and me. Tabula rasa. Jack found him and tucked him away somewhere safe. Now we have him. Like a gun without a serial number.”

  “Disposable,” Evan said. “You’ll train him up, spend him when you need to.”

  “That’s what we’re for, Evan, remember?”

  “Orphan J. Orphan C. Orphan L. Jack. Joey. And now this boy. All to get to me.”

  “That’s right.”

  Candy was close at hand, hanging on Van Sciver’s words, her lips pursed into a shape evocative of a kiss. But the eyes told a different story, of dark appetites unsatiated.

  Van Sciver’s stare picked across the backyard and snagged on the rear fence. His eyes looked lopsided even from this distance, and it took Evan a moment to realize that it was because the right pupil was larger. Evan could have sworn Van Sciver was looking through the knothole right at him. It was impossible, of course, and yet Evan still pulled back a few inches from the wood.

  He knew that look, the same one Van Sciver used to issue when they gathered on the cracked asphalt of the basketball courts across from Pride House, a group of punk-ass kids with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

  A look like he was trying to see inside you.

  Evan took a breath, eased it out. “How ’bout you get around to telling me what makes me so special?”

  Again he watched Van Sciver’s lips move, the dubbing off from the voice coming through the line. “You really haven’t put it together?”

  Evan didn’t reply.

  Van Sciver laughed. “You don’t really think this is just personal?”

  Evan didn’t indulge him. Their earlier conversation played back in his head. You have no idea, do you? How high it goes?

  “It’s amazing,” Van Sciver said. “You don’t even know how valuable you are.”

  He pivoted slightly, meeting Candy’s loaded gaze. She was clearly read in on whatever reason had escalated the hunt for Evan.

  Van Sciver’s shoulders rose, his neck corded with muscle, his blocky hand firming around the phone. “They sent me to the Sandpit a few times, needed to pick another name off that deck of playing cards. I caught up to him in Tikrit. Shitty little compound in Qadisiyah, jungle-gym bars and rusty Russian munitions. We’d already rained down with aerial munitions, but Habeeb’s still strolling around his little fenced-in yard, lord of his domain. I was set up with my .300 Win Mag on a rooftop at twelve hundred meters, ready to shoot the dick off a mosquito. And Habeeb comes around the yard into sight. I have the head shot, clear as day. But at the last minute, I move the crosshairs from his face to his arm, take it off at the shoulder.” His breath came as a rush of static across the receiver. “He’ll bleed out, right? But I wanted it to be slow. Guess why.”

  Evan said, “To draw out the other targets.”

  “No,” Van Sciver said, his voice simmering with latent rage. “Because I wanted him to know.”

  Evan let the silence lengthen.

  Van Sciver said, “When I catch up to you, Evan, you’re gonna have time also. To know. All your questions? I’ll fill you in at the very end. When you’re bleeding out on the ground at my feet.”

  His whole body had tensed, but Evan watched him try to relax his muscles now, a snake uncoiling.

  “I am hot on your trail,” Van Sciver said.

  “And I’m h
ot on yours,” Evan said, the Samsung pressed to his cheek. “Can you feel my breath on your neck?”

  Van Sciver’s expression turned uneasy. He walked into the kitchen, peered out the window into the backyard once more. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah,” Evan said. “We’ve got a lock on the kid.”

  Next to him Joey bristled. Her hands flared wide—What are you doing?—but he held focus on the house.

  Van Sciver muffled the phone against his shoulder and snapped his fingers. The freelancers readied M4s and spread around the interior, taking up guard positions. Thornhill drew an FNX-45 from his hip holster and ambled out of sight.

  Van Sciver kept his pistol in his underarm tension holster. He moved the phone back to his mouth. “If you want him,” he said, “come and get him.”

  Evan said, “Okay,” and hung up.

  “What the hell?” Joey hissed. “Now they’re on high alert. If they come back here—”

  Evan pulled out his RoamZone, pressed three buttons, held up a finger to Joey while it rang.

  A feminine voice came over the line. “911.”

  “Yeah, hi,” Evan said. “I work at the McClair Children’s Mental Health Center in Church Hill. A man and a teenage girl have been lingering around the building all morning. One of our nurses said she saw that the man had a gun. Can you please get someone here right away? Hang on—Shit. I think they’re approaching.”

  He hung up.

  Joey gestured for him furiously, pointing through the gap. Crouching, he peered again through the knothole.

  Candy swung through the kitchen, heading for the rear of the house. He couldn’t see her body until it filled the doorway to the backyard.

  She held an M4.

  She moved swiftly across the porch and strode out to recon the yard.

  Joey backpedaled, her sneaker tamping down the foxtails loudly. She cringed at the noise, wobbled to avoid landing her other foot. Evan shot out a hand and grabbed her arm. She was frozen with one leg above the dead weeds. The brittle foxtails stretched all around them, an early-warning system that would broadcast to Candy any move they made.

  Firming his grip on Joey’s biceps, Evan swung his head back to the fence. He peered through the knothole, now a foot away. The perspective had the effect of lensing in on the yard.

  Candy, twenty yards away and closing.

  With his free hand, Evan reached down and tugged his ARES 1911 from the holster. He kept his eyes locked on the knothole.

  Candy passed the rusted barbecue, the bore of the M4 facing them, a full circle of black.

  She swept toward the fence.

  Evan lifted the pistol and aimed through the silver-dollar-size hole.

  54

  Illegal in Police Departments from Coast to Coast

  Evan’s torso twisted, pulled in two directions, Joey’s weight tugging him one way, his drawn ARES aimed the other. He felt a pleasing burn across his chest, ribs unstacking, intercostals stretching.

  If he pulled the trigger, he’d drop Candy but the sound would alert Van Sciver and his men. Then he’d be in retreat with a sixteen-year-old and eight in the mag, pursued by six trained men armed with long guns.

  Not ideal.

  But he’d handled not-ideal before.

  Candy neared the rear fence. He sighted on the hollow of her throat. Her critical mass filled the knothole, blocking out everything else.

  His finger tightened on the trigger.

  “V!”

  Van Sciver’s voice from the house halted her in her tracks. She pivoted, M4 swinging low at her side.

  She was no more than four feet from the fence line.

  The gun was steady in Evan’s hand, aimed at the fabric of her shirt fluttering across her back. He’d punch the round through her marred flesh, two inches right of her spine beneath the blade of her shoulder.

  Despite Evan’s grip, Joey wobbled on her planted foot, her other arm whipping high as she rebalanced herself. In Evan’s peripheral vision, he sensed her raised boot brush the tips of the foxtails.

  “We just picked up a 911 call!” Van Sciver shouted across the yard. “Armed man and a teenage girl at McClair Children’s Mental Health Center.”

  “They’re one step behind,” Candy said.

  “Let’s meet them there.”

  Candy jogged back toward the house, her figure shrinking in the telescope lens of the knothole. As she receded, Evan released Joey’s arm. Joey eased her other foot down to the ground, the weeds crackling softly. She came to Evan’s side to watch through the fence.

  At the house Van Sciver swung out of the rear door, keys in hand. Thornhill and Candy flanked him across the yard, Delmonico and Shea in their wake.

  The two other freelancers had been drawn onto the back porch by the commotion.

  “Hangebrauck—wipe the notebook,” Van Sciver called out to the bigger of the two, a hefty guy with an armoring of muscle layered over some extra girth.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bower, eyes on the front.”

  Bower, a lanky man with sunken eyes, scratched at his neck. “Yes, sir.”

  Across the yard Delmonico slid back the gate, the rusty wheels screeching. Van Sciver and Candy hopped into the Tahoe, Shea and Thornhill into the nearest Suburban, and they backed the SUVs out. The Suburban idled in the driveway, waiting on Delmonico as he closed the gate, wiping himself from view.

  There was a moment of stillness, Hangebrauck’s head tilted back as he sniffed the ash-tinged air. And then he went into the house again.

  Bower met him in the kitchen with a red notebook.

  It looked just like the notebook Evan had found in the Portland headquarters.

  Hangebrauck carried it into the kitchen. Then he placed it in the microwave. The lit carousel spun, rotating the notebook.

  Joey looked over at Evan, her brow furled.

  Bizarre.

  As Bower disappeared once again to the front of the house, Hangebrauck walked into the living room and stared down at David Smith. The boy lay quietly, half off the tarp, his cheek smashed to the floorboards, his thin shoulders rising and falling.

  Hangebrauck slung his M4 and sat on the high end of the decline bench, a bored expression on his face. He dug something out from beneath a thumbnail.

  Joey leaned toward Evan, her sneakers crackling in the weeds. “There are still two of them,” she whispered.

  Evan smiled.

  * * *

  Evan didn’t have a suppressor. A gunshot would alert the neighbors. He would have to use his hands.

  He moved silently along the side of the house and came up on the open back door. Hangebrauck remained on the decline bench, gazing blankly through the sole uncovered rear window into the yard. A dark hall led to the front of the house and to Bower.

  Evan waited.

  After a time Hangebrauck stood and stretched his back, his shirt tugging up and showing off a pale bulge of flesh at the waistband. He gave a little groan. Resting his hand on the butt of the carbine, he walked to the window.

  Over his shoulder Evan’s reflection ghosted into sight in the pane.

  Evan’s right elbow was raised, pointing at the nape of Hangebrauck’s neck.

  The big man’s eyes barely had time to widen before Evan reached over his crown, grabbed his forehead, and yanked his head back into his elbow.

  The bony tip of Evan’s ulna served as the point of impact, crushing into the base of Hangebrauck’s skull, turning the medulla oblongata into gray jelly.

  A reinforced horizontal elbow smash.

  The man didn’t fall so much as crumple.

  Evan stripped the M4 cleanly from Hangebrauck as he dropped out of the sling.

  The thump made a touch more noise than Evan would have liked.

  He tilted the M4 against the wall and moved quickly down the hall. He got to the entryway just as Bower pivoted into sight, rifle raised.

  Evan jacked Bower’s gun to the side, the man’s grip faltering. He spun Bower into t
he momentum of the first blow and seized him from behind, using a triangular choke hold made illegal in police departments from coast to coast. Evan bent Bower’s head forward into the crook of his arm, pinching off the carotid arteries on either side. Bower made a soft gurgling sound and sagged, heavy in Evan’s grip.

  Evan lowered him to the floor.

  Thirteen down.

  Twelve to go.

  Evan walked back to David Smith. Crouching, he found a strong pulse on the boy’s neck. He noticed a slit on the forearm, recently sutured, but otherwise the kid looked fine. He’d probably gotten sliced during the snatch and Van Sciver had patched him up.

  The room looked to have been recently cleaned, but despite that a bad odor lingered. Sporadic water spots darkened the walls, the plaster turning to cottage cheese. Scrub marks textured the floorboards. The bristles had left behind a thin frothed wake of bleach, the white edged with something else not quite the shade of coffee.

  Evan knew that color.

  He stepped into the kitchen. The glass plate was still spinning inside the microwave. He stopped the timer, grabbed the red notebook from inside, and shoved it into his waistband.

  He went back to David Smith, slung him over his shoulder, and walked out the front door into broad daylight.

  Joey had the minivan on the move already, easing to the front curb, the side door rolled back. Evan set the boy down gently inside, climbed in, and they drove off.

  55

  Vanished in Plain Sight

  They were halfway across Richmond when the kid woke up.

  Puffy lids parted, revealing glazed eyes. David Smith lifted his head groggily, groaned, and lowered it back to the bench seat of the minivan.

  Joey peered down from the passenger seat, concerned. “He’s up. Pull over.”

  Evan parked across from a high school that stretched to encompass the entire block. He killed the engine and checked out the surroundings. On the near side of the street, magnolias fanned up from a verdant park, their crooked branches bare and haunting. A man-made river drifted beneath the low-swooping boughs, white water rushing across river stones to feed an elaborate fountain at the center. There were speed walkers and young couples and dogs chasing Frisbees—a good amount of activity to get lost in.