Orphan X

by Gregg Hurwitz

  A black boot materialized from the dust-filled haze of the corridor, and then Evan melted into sight.

  “We gotta move,” he said.

  * * *

  She looked a mess, her choppy bangs sweat-matted to her forehead, her face blanched, her lips dry and cracked. Wearing a thin tank top, she curled forward as if striving for the fetal position, her collarbones pronounced. Evan moved to her, letting the shotgun drop to the carpet, his hand in his pocket, digging for the Strider knife. The black-oxide blade flicked up with a snap, and he sliced through the plastic zip-tie, her freed leg retracting into her body as if spring-loaded.

  He’d killed five of the eight operators and taken Candy out of commission. Which still left him outgunned.

  Deep in the building, he heard running, shouts, bursts from radios. For now the remaining men were diverted to the eastern wing near the breaker-box explosion, bracing for a second-front attack. He let out his breath. The first moment of respite since his entry.

  “Katrin, listen to me.” He cradled her face in his hands, one fist still gripping the Strider, the blade sticking up next to her cheek. “We have to move quickly.”

  “Did you kill the big guy?” she asked.

  “No. He’s not here. But other men are.” He sensed he was talking too loudly over the ringing in his ears. “Stay behind me, touching distance. We’re gonna head to the hillside, then loop back around.”

  She nodded, tried to stand, her legs failing her.

  In his pocket the black phone vibrated. After an instant of frozen shock, he yanked it free, tearing the lip of his cargo pocket. He glanced at the screen, expecting Slatcher’s untraceable number. Instead the screen announced a pay phone with a 702 area code. Las Vegas.

  Morena Aguilar.

  Had Slatcher gotten to her, claiming another hostage even as Evan freed Katrin?

  Still in a crouch, he snapped the phone to his face. “Morena? Are you safe?”

  “Yeah, no thanks to you.” Her voice came rushed and angry. “Why can’t you all just leave me and my sis alone? You said we’d be done.”

  From the eastern corridor, he heard doors banging open, the men searching room by room. It wouldn’t be long until they realized that their western contingent had been demolished.

  With his free hand, he dropped the locked-open Strider and grabbed the shotgun, training it on the doorway. “I have to go. Call back. Leave a number. Your life depends on it.”

  As he pulled the phone away from his ear, he heard her fading voice: “—did what you said, okay? I found a guy. That was the deal.”

  The ringing in his head amplified. Everything decelerated—the throbbing at his temple, the dragon swirl of smoke in the doorway, the guttering blue of the emergency light from the hall. The phone drifted back up to his ear, also in slow motion.

  “Guy?” he said.

  The realization was still rattling through him, making its way to his brain. Awareness hit, and he whipped around in time to see Katrin slip his own knife into his abdomen just beneath the ribs.

  47

  One Breath

  Blood spurted through his shirt, matting the fabric to his flesh. The pain, merged with the ringing in his ears, shut out the world, a few seconds of mind-numbing overload. Her bird-thin shoulders hunched inward, Katrin backed away from him in seeming horror, one fist pressed over her sobbing mouth. Her pixie-round face, flushed red in near-perfect circles at the cheeks, looked even more doll-like. He stared at her uncomprehendingly. The phone trembled in his hand, lowering, lowering, until he dropped it into his gaping front cargo pocket. His fingers drew to the warmth spilling from his body.

  “I’m sorry.” She was shaking her head, as if to negate what she’d just done. “I didn’t want to do any of it. But they … they made me. They made me do all of it.”

  He staggered back a step, the weight of the shotgun tugging his arm downward until the barrel tip struck carpet. He leaned on it like a cane. His other hand came off the wall of his gut, a red palm spread before him.

  Katrin’s voice, wobbly with emotion, was still coming at him. “Slatcher said he won’t stop, that Sam won’t be safe until you’re dead. And the call, Morena—you were gonna find out.”

  Morena’s final words over the phone had saved him. If he hadn’t jerked away at the last minute he’d be down on the floor, bleeding out. When it came to a stomach puncture, every millimeter brought a fresh hell.

  Nonetheless, he was hurt badly. Just how badly remained to be seen.

  The ringing in his head fuzzed out all sound. Katrin half turned away, the strokes of that kanji tattoo spreading like spider legs from beneath the rear strap of her tank top. Her lips moved, shaping words: I didn’t want to, Evan.

  Still she held the blood-streaked Strider knife, but there seemed no risk she’d use it again. Turning his back on her, he staggered for the doorway. Fumbled along the wall and out into the corridor, still aswirl with Sheetrock dust, the shotgun low at his side, the tip trickling along the floor. He picked his way through the trail of bodies, this one propped against the base of the wall, that one lying in a glossy puddle, its three remaining limbs spread in a snow-angel sprawl. A fire sprinkler doused Evan’s left side. He no longer sensed Candy’s pounding on the jammed utility door behind him, but shadows flickered across the lobby at the end of the corridor ahead.

  He veered into the first office to his left. To raise the shotgun at the window, he had to kick the barrel, the effort releasing a cry of pain. The recoil almost knocked the Benelli from his grip, but his aim was close enough. The shards flew away, sucked outside as if by a vacuum.

  Somehow he rolled over the jagged sill and onto the marshy weeds. Rather than move toward the hill, he headed for the lobby, charting the straightest line to his truck. The back door of the atrium stood open, the grass around it trampled from some earlier search. Evan stumbled inside, assailed by the odor of dead plants.

  He moved through a neat industrial kitchen and peered into the lobby. Empty. The glass doors waited ahead and beyond, the promise of the parking lot and his pickup.

  As he stepped from cover, running sounds echoed down the corridor, more than one set of boots. Gasping for air, he shouldered hard into the wall by the doorframe. It took everything he had to hoist the Benelli. He couldn’t hold it properly, but he seated the stock against his shoulder and rested the barrel on the crossbar of his forearm. Firing it would hurt. The boots grew nearer, nearer, and then Evan swung around the jamb and pulled the trigger.

  The recoil knocked him backward, spinning him down onto one knee. Heat crept over the waist of his pants. He drooled a little. From the corridor he heard wet gasping. When he managed to look back up, two bodies lay still.

  He forced himself to his feet and banged out through the glass doors. A neat line of SUVs faced outward from the near curb, an offensive line in formation. He tottered between two of them, his shoulders knocking the sideview mirrors.

  The parking lot played visual tricks on him, stretching out like an asphalt football field. Through the full-body ache, he sent out a hope that the remaining operator would stay with Katrin rather than pursue him. Trudging across the open blacktop left him wildly exposed; he’d be gunned down here without a fight. Each breath seared his lungs; every step radiated a sense-memory echo of the stabbing through his torso. He told himself to keep walking, and his legs somehow stayed under him.

  At last he fell through the jasmine hedge, his shoulder striking the wheel well of his trusty Ford. He tossed the shotgun into one of the truck vaults between a tray of ammunition and the cracked scabbard of the katana, then smeared himself around to the driver’s seat.

  Squeezing the wheel, he tore out of the spot and lurched into the parking lot, circling for a pass at the row of SUVs. He aimed his rugged bumper assembly at the line of shiny hoods, clipping the grilles one after another, jarring him painfully in his seat. The mini-collisions would activate inertia-sensing switches in the SUVs’ bumpers, shutting down the p
ower to the fuel pump and ensuring that no one could pursue him.

  Rather than U-turn to use the lot exit, he hammered over the outer curb directly onto the overpass, bouncing high enough for his hair to skim the roof. Swiping sweat from his eyes, he rode the wide sweep of the lane up and around, veering onto the freeway. As he merged, he looked across the divider to the opposite lanes and spotted a purple Scion peeling up the exit toward the building. Odd that Slatcher hadn’t yet ditched the car. As it flashed by, Evan caught a glimpse of the big man overflowing the driver’s seat, one meaty arm pressed to the window.

  He did not look happy.

  The red taillights ahead blurred together into a stream, traffic slowing, and Evan braked abruptly, barely avoiding a rear-end. His face contorted, braced against the throbbing. Staying this tight was no good; it compounded the agony. He cast his mind back through the years to his first instructor, the bearded man in the barn. Those lessons taught with the tip of a knife.

  Expectation of relief from pain would increase the opioids in his brain, an analgesic effect. Mind over reality.

  He fought to move his focus away from the pain, to find the anchor of his breathing.

  One breath.

  There is no more pain to handle beyond this moment. Get through this moment and this moment only.

  One breath.

  There is only this moment. There is not the next moment or tomorrow.

  One breath.

  In this moment there is no pain.

  Static crowded his vision from the edges, and he blinked against it, the black strip of the freeway fading in and out, a TV show that refused to come into focus.

  48

  Shot-to-Shit

  Slatcher stood in the lobby, sparks from a shot-to-shit overhead light cascading across the yoke of his shoulders. He drew in a deep breath, rising into a rare moment of perfect posture, a grizzly on hind legs.

  He moved into the west corridor, knowing already what he’d find.

  White walls smeared with dark streaks. Tattered cargo pants. The sticky floor tugging at the soles of his boots.

  He stepped across a prone form and then another. Corkscrewing away from a body at an exotic angle, an arm shone fish-white in the guttering glow, the fingers upthrust like some rare underwater creature.

  He passed the boarded-up room and saw where the door had been kicked clear off the frame. The White woman stood backed into the corner, trembling violently, gasps escaping her bloodless lips. She held a folding knife in her limp grasp, the blade still wet. Her eyes were blank, holes in a mask with no face behind it. The mask tilted forward and dry-retched a few times without so much as a change of expression. There’d be no answers from her right now.

  Slatcher brushed past the doorway, surveying the wreckage. From the meat-and-fabric bulks sprawled beneath the flickering lights to the hinge-blasted rear door lying flat on the floor, the damage was comprehensive.

  Slatcher wasn’t wearing a hat, but if he had been, he would have tipped it to Orphan X.

  Not the best. But maybe—at last—an equal.

  A faint scratching noise reached him. He cocked his head. Pulled his boot free from a black slick and headed for the maintenance closet.

  There it came again, a desperate sound, almost plaintive. Fingernails against wood.

  He opened the door, the smell hitting him in the face. Looking at the sight within, he felt his dark admiration transform into rage.

  49

  Scarlet Trail

  The static haze lifted, Evan’s vision clarifying in time for him to recognize that he was pulling through the ridiculous porte cochere. Yawning in his director’s-chair perch, the valet started to rise, but Evan dismissed him with a nod. Fighting the wheel, he pulled down to the parking level and into his spot, barely missing a concrete pillar.

  The dark stain enveloped the left side of his shirt, saturating the belt line of his cargo pants. He couldn’t afford caution. He was, as the corpsmen were wont to say, bleeding like stink. If he didn’t get upstairs immediately to stop the flow, he’d die. Wobbling toward the stairs, he almost lost his footing on an oil slick.

  He didn’t even register them until they were on top of him.

  Mia and Peter.

  She clutched a pharmacy bag, her son standing glumly beside her wearing a bathrobe over Riddler pajamas. Though she stared at Evan in shock, Peter was focused elsewhere, gazing anxiously up the stairs, tugging at her hand. “C’mon, Mommy. My heart’s still pounding.”

  Instinctively, Evan turned away, hiding his bloody side from the boy.

  Mia’s expression stayed frozen, but somehow she managed to answer her son. “The Ativan should kick in soon, sweetheart. It’ll help you settle down. It’s been a horrible night.”

  Peter looked up at her, then across at Evan. His mouth popped open.

  Evan white-knuckled the railing, pulling himself up step by step. He tugged the sleeve over his other hand, trying to wipe off the blood as he went, but it was no use.

  Mia broke from her trance, moving up the stairs at his side. “Jesus Christ, Evan,” she said. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  His head swam from the blood loss, his skin clammy and trembling. His heart redlined, each pulse reverberating through his chest. A dizzy spell staggered him, Mia shouldering some of his weight.

  “Yes.” He pulled himself upright. “Good.”

  “Is this from Marts and Alonso?”

  The pain stole the word from his mouth, so he shook his head no.

  Mia tucked Peter behind her, trying to block his view. “You’ve got to get to a hospital.”

  Evan moved hand over hand along the wall toward the service elevator, leaving bloody prints. No time to clean, to cover his tracks. “No. No.”

  “This isn’t a choice.”

  “I’ll be killed.” One breath. “Men after me.” One breath. “Go.” Breath. “Away.”

  The car arrived, and he tilted into it. Blood dripped off the hem of his shirt, tapping the floor.

  Leaning heavily on the elevator rail, he looked back at her. Her forehead furled with concern. One tooth pinched her bottom lip. She looked like she might cry.

  “Please,” he said.

  The doors wiped her face from view.

  Moving on autopilot, he let his breathing blot out everything. Muscle memory guided him to his front door.

  A cold gust rolled up his torso, cooling his sweat-drenched face, and he realized he was inside his condo now, standing at the open refrigerator.

  He pulled a saline IV bag out of the fruit drawer. From the butter shelf, he grabbed a bottle of Epogen, nearly dropping it. He battled his legs to get him across the poured-concrete expanse, down the hall. His sock squished inside his boot.

  At last he spilled onto the bathroom floor. Flinging open the cabinet beneath the sink, he yanked out the First Responder kit. The magnetized buttons on his shirt gave way readily beneath his weak tug, an ancillary benefit. He doused a washcloth and wiped at his stomach, getting his first clear look at the wound.

  The knife had penetrated his stomach two inches left of the midline, level with his rib cage, slicing the superior epigastric artery. The artery was just shallower than the abdominal wall muscles, which looked to be unscathed. A centimeter or two deeper would have added a host of untenable complications, puncturing his stomach, intestines, or diaphragm. Through the gash he watched blood spurt finely from the artery at intervals.

  Doing his best not to anticipate what was coming, he pulled out the suture kit and readied the needle. One breath. One breath. One breath.

  He entered a tunnel of torment, lost to time. Electricity jolting up nerve lines. Sweat tickling his jawline. Fingertips pulsing like crimson slugs.

  And then it was done, or had been for some span of time, an ugly stitched seam of skin staring up at him. Somehow he’d thrown silk whipstitches around the bleeder and sutured off the slice above.

  He breathed for a few moments, wanting to give himself a break, b
ut then he started to drift off and knew he had to snap to. One-handed, he started an IV in the bend of his elbow. He spiked the bag of saline and started it feeding into his arm to up the fluid volume in his circulatory system until he could replenish his blood. Grabbing a syringe, he drew up a dose of Epogen from the bottle and sank the needle into his thigh, the injection burning as he depressed the plunger. An anemia med, Epo stimulated the marrow to produce more red blood cells, something he sorely needed given the quantity he’d left behind on the floor of the office building, in the footwell of his truck, on the walls of Castle Heights.

  He stared longingly over at the hidden door in the open shower enclosure, but he knew he’d never make it into the Vault to scrub the surveillance footage. Even if he did, there was no way he could clean up the blood in the parking level, the rear hall, the service elevator.

  The scarlet trail led right to his door, but he could do nothing about it right now. He’d have to add Castle Heights to his long list of burned locations and move on as soon as he was able. The pain in his chest at the thought of this wasn’t physical; it was something deeper, buried close to his heart. Unable to base-jump, to abseil, even to drive away, he found himself in that rarest of places—at the mercy of chance, powerless to help himself.

  He dragged himself to the floating platform of his bed. With a final effort, he hung the IV bag from his reading lamp. Then he collapsed into blackness.

  50

  The Ghost of Her Lips

  In the cold, pale light of morning, Evan rides in the passenger seat of the dark sedan. He is a boy, early in his training with Jack, and they are headed to another surprise session. Acclimated to the vicissitudes of stress and adrenaline, Evan has learned not to brace himself. There is no point. In twenty minutes he might be shoved off a bridge onto a landing pad (fun), drownproofed in cold water with his hands and feet bound (not fun), or shot full of sodium pentothal (disorienting but ineffective).