Orphan X

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Most of the usual suspects were in attendance, except for Johnny with his martial-arts warm-ups. Johnny’s father, with the strained pride of a parent accustomed to inflating his child’s achievements, explained that he was belt-testing today. For the next black stripe.

  Several measures had been robustly voted on already—enhancing the porte cochere with outdoor carpeting, new boxwood hedges for the north wall of the building, amending the morning beverage initiative in light of the kombucha disappointment. Selecting the new cushion colors for the lobby had pitted Mrs. Rosenbaum and Lorilee Smithson against each other in a vicious battle. Throughout the proceedings Evan kept his attention on Mia, who held her gaze tensely downward, her mouth set.

  Ida Rosenbaum was yet again irritated. “—with what we pay in fees, the manager can’t fix the frame to my front door? It’s falling to pieces.”

  “Again with the doorframe,” Botox-riddled Lorilee said. “I thought your son was handling that for you.”

  Mrs. Rosenbaum’s cheeks quavered—a flash of emotion she tried to cover. “He can’t make it this year. He’s very busy, very important. He wanted to be here for the holidays, said he’s coming first thing in the New Year.”

  Lorilee chewed her gum triumphantly. “We’ve heard that before, haven’t we, Ida?”

  Mrs. Rosenbaum seemed to deflate in her chair. Her lips parted, but no response was forthcoming. The remark had cut the legs right out from under her.

  Even Hugh took pity on her. “I will speak to the manager for you, Ida,” he said. “As soon as things settle down in the New Year, we will get your door fixed.”

  Clearly devastated, she managed only a quick jerk of a nod.

  Evan peered across at Mia to see if she noticed the exchange, but she was uncharacteristically oblivious, lost in the haze of her thoughts.

  “Moving on,” Hugh said, directing a stare at the twenty or so weary souls in attendance, impressing upon them the gravity of the upcoming matter. “As I’ve intimated for some time, everyone will need to be assessed three thousand dollars for the new earthquake policy.”

  A chorus of complaints erupted. Pat Johnson clutched his chest as if to contain a bout of angina.

  Hugh rapped his empty coffee mug on the fine-grained tabletop a few times to restore order. “I know,” he said. “Hear me out. Hear me out, people.…”

  Evan watched Mia, the only one not responding. Her gaze was low, aimed beneath the lip of the table, presumably fixed on the iPhone in her lap. She chewed her lip anxiously.

  The muscles of Mia’s face tensed, and then, faintly over the commotion, Evan heard the theme from Jaws. Mia held the phone to her face silently, her expression implacable, then slipped it secretively back into her purse, pushed away from the table, and rose to leave.

  Evan stood as well, following her out.

  He caught her at the elevator, waiting for the car, drumming her hands impatiently on her thighs.

  “You okay?” he asked. “Rushing out of there?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”

  He watched her eyes and knew her to be lying. “Where you headed?”

  “My brother’s,” she said. “He just called. I have to pick up Peter.”

  Her brother’s ringtone was Peanuts, not Jaws.

  She pulled a tangle of curls off her forehead, exposing that birthmark on her temple. Her faint freckles were barely visible across her nose.

  “You know,” he said, “if something’s wrong or you need help…”

  Her gaze darted back to the illuminated floor numbers. “Thanks, Evan. But this isn’t the kind of problem you can solve.”

  He thumbed the UP button and waited silently at her side.

  The down car arrived first, and he let the doors close behind her.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. Katrin. The mission. Upstairs.

  He thought of Peter’s husky voice, that sloppy Gonzo Band-Aid on his forehead. Thanks for covering for me.

  Goddamn it, kid.

  Evan jogged for the service elevator. It arrived promptly, and he rode it down to the parking level.

  It let out near the trash bins, and he stepped unseen onto the dim floor. He heard Mia’s footsteps before he saw her. A clipped, fast walk to her car, the iPhone out again and at her cheek.

  Moving toward his truck, he cut behind the trunks of various German sedans, holding parallel to her across the parking level. She climbed into her Acura, pulling out fast enough that the tires chirped on the slick concrete. He emerged from cover, reaching for his driver’s door, when he heard heavy breathing behind him.

  Slowly, he half turned, Johnny Middleton coming visible in the shadows to his side. Brass knuckles laced one of his fists; the other held a T-handled fighting knife. He stepped toward Evan, his face flushed, his stocky form wrapped in that martial-arts sweat suit.

  “I’m sorry, Evan,” he said.

  41

  Emotional Centers

  Evan squared up in the narrow space between vehicles as Johnny shuffled forward. His eyes were bloodshot; one lid throbbed spasmodically. Evan’s own eyes stayed on the fighting knife, waiting for it to rise, but Johnny held it low at his belly. Only secondarily did it strike Evan that he’d brought nothing but fists to a knife fight.

  He gauged the angle to collapse Johnny’s throat with a finger-thrust strike, but then Johnny’s arms went loose at his sides. Unexpectedly, he started to cry. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Johnny’s parking space was two slots over, the trunk of his BMW open. He hadn’t been lying in wait, Evan realized, but he’d been interrupted from something.

  “What happened?” Evan asked.

  “It was in the combat-training room last week,” he said. “I broke a guy’s nose. It might have been after the whistle. He’s got older brothers. They’re serious fighters. Grew up with it, I mean. It’s a bad fucking scene. I thought we were cool, but I showed up today for belt testing and they were waiting. All three of them. I took off, but they followed me back here. I don’t want my dad to know. Jesus—if he found out…”

  Evan exhaled, frustration seeping in. First he’d made a quick exception to help Mia, and now here Johnny was, whining like a slapped bully. Maybe that’s what real life was, one problem bleeding into the next. How had Mia put it? Life would be boring if we didn’t have other people around complicating everything. He had Mia to worry about now in addition to Katrin. The last thing he could do was add Johnny to the mix.

  “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 mi
dday 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.