Orphan X

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Evan recalled building his own first operational alias with Jack, toiling by the light of the birch fire in the farmhouse. Jack had taught him to assemble the cover story using more truth than lies, giving him less to remember and less to forget. Evan had learned to align himself with his false persona as closely as possible, forging a true emotional attachment so his instincts would respond accordingly. He’d learned to fall into a role and forget the part of himself that did not believe it.

  Slatcher and his crew had done this for Katrin. After acquiring her in Vegas, they’d traumatized her, coercing her into a damaged state that matched what they needed her to display. After Slatcher had seemingly shot and killed Sam, Evan remembered holding Danika on the motel bed, how she’d wept herself hoarse against his chest. Slatcher and his crew must have threatened Samantha’s life, promising to hurt her if Danika didn’t come through. They’d ensured that the guilt and terror thrumming through her body were real. They had to be to allay Evan’s suspicions.

  A former Orphan, Slatcher had tailored her cover story to suit Evan. A terrorized woman up against impossible odds, in desperate need of his help. The father with his life on the line, dying because of Evan’s miscalculation. Katrin had laid Evan’s own secret guilt bare. I made a stupid fucking mistake, and my dad’s paying for it, she’d said. Do you have any idea how that feels?

  Yes.

  This indicated that Slatcher—and his employer—knew about Jack. Had they been behind his death? Evan followed the chain of logic all the way down to the depths and did not like where it led him.

  Danika had all but dared him to check her passport, pointing out that she had it on her, leaving it in clear view in her purse at the loft. The salient fact that Slatcher’s employer could generate a real passport as well as a full network of backstops in the databases was not lost on Evan.

  He set his elbows on the sheet-metal surface of his desk and rubbed his eyes.

  Sam’s dying words to his daughter over the phone had only set the hook deeper: Whoever you’re with, I hope he protects you. Through his suspicions, against his judgment, Evan had protected her. Though their location had been tipped off to their pursuers time and time again, though the Commandments had crumbled away one after the other, Evan had stuck with her right up until she’d skewered him with his own knife. Who better to fill that role than a poker player, skilled at analyzing others, reading scenarios, bluffing for gain? Ultimately, Danika had summed it up best herself.

  You’re not playing your hand, she’d told him. You’re playing the other guy’s hand.

  * * *

  Dangling from his pull-up bar, Evan practiced knee raises to break up the fresh-forming scar tissue in his stomach. He moved slow and steady, breathing through the pain. He was focused so intently that he didn’t at first hear the RoamZone ringing.

  Jogging to the kitchen counter, he snatched it up.

  Vegas. Pay phone.

  “Morena?”

  “You okay?”

  He was genuinely confused. “What?”

  “Last time I called you, you sounded hurt. Bad.”

  He breathed, felt the scar tissue strain. “I was,” he said. “Not bad.”

  “Okay. I thought you might be dead or something. I just wanted to check.”

  Evan restrained his urge to press her, trying to imagine how Jack would’ve played this out. He’d always had that knack—when to take up space, when to give it.

  Evan walked along the row of sunscreens, patches of muted light rolling across him. “Is that the only reason you called?”

  “At first I thought it was his cop friends, you know? Coming after us for revenge. You and me, we’re the only ones who knew anything about what happened to William Chambers, so I knew I had to get away from my sis and my aunt.”

  “That was brave. And wise.”

  “But these aren’t his cop friends, are they?”

  “No,” Evan said. “They’re much worse.”

  “They think I know something. I don’t know nothing. My life, it’s over. But Carmen, she can have a good life, maybe.”

  “You will, too,” he said.

  “I can’t go near you again. If I stick my head up, they’ll get me.”

  Evan fought an urge to argue with her. Walking a lap around the great room, he did his best to channel Jack. I will never lie to you. If there was not trust, there would be nothing else.

  “Yes,” Evan said. “They will.”

  Wet breathing. A hiccup of a sob. “I’m scared. I should be scared, right?”

  “Yes. You should.”

  “It’s hard living like this. Invisible to the world. Apart from everyone. Like I don’t even exist.”

  He thought of Mia in her bedroom, swaying to the Oscar Peterson Trio. “Yes,” he said. “It is.”

  She cried some more, muffled gasps. Seventeen years old, targeted by a world-class assassin. Rage rose in Evan’s throat, but he choked it off.

  “If you don’t tell me where you are,” he said, “I can’t protect you.”

  When Morena spoke again, her voice was heavy with sadness. “I know,” she said.

  53

  A Backstroke with No Water

  Excitement pulsed to life in Slatcher’s spacious chest when he saw Morena Aguilar switch buses. Slowing the Scion, which had been trailing the northbound Downtown Express, he noted that she wasn’t catching a connection but crossing the street to hop onto a southbound bus. Reversing course back to the Strip. A basic diversionary move that would have been advised by Orphan X prior to a meet.

  For three days and nights, Morena had remained under Danny Slatcher’s watchful eye. She’d visited her sister once more on the playground and slung chips and guac at a shitty fast-food joint accustomed to paying under the counter. But until now there’d been no break in her routine that indicated that Evan was back in play.

  Flipping a U-turn, Slatcher immediately roused his remaining man in the field, who through some cruel parental oversight was actually named Don Julio. “Big Daddy to Tequila One. Pull off the little sister and track my location.”

  With a giant thumb, he enabled a phone app that sent his coordinates.

  “T-One to BD. Be to you in … seven minutes.”

  Even around lunchtime the logjam leading to the Strip rivaled rush-hour L.A. Angling all the air-conditioning vents toward himself, Slatcher patiently hung three vehicles back from the bus, making sure at each stop to account for all the passengers as they got off.

  How dull and achromatic Vegas looked by daylight never ceased to surprise him, a collection of odd-shaped buildings smeared in a vague row like a line of dusty Legos that had been crushed underfoot. Sahara Avenue crept by, the Stratosphere looming like an alien antenna from a seventies sci-fi flick. In the rearview Slatcher noted the slate gray SUV swing around behind him.

  Again he keyed the radio. “You take point when she moves. She’ll recognize me.”

  “Copy.”

  The bus came up on Sands Avenue, approaching Treasure Island with its skull-and-crossbones marquee, the pirate ship slumbering in Siren’s Cove waiting for its nightly shows. Another Strip meeting seemed in the making for Evan and Morena—plenty of activity, plenty of witnesses, plenty of cameras. The bus veered east, carving between the Wynn and the Palazzo, hugging the edge of an extravagant golf course. Just before Paradise Road, the bus halted and ejected Morena through the yawning doors, her head lowered. Hands balled in the pockets of her coat, she moved at a rapid clip, shooting nervous glances all around. She passed in front of a giant outdoor parking structure, rising seven stories from the pavement like a concrete corncob, and skipped through the automated doors into the lobby of La Reverie. A purple glow uplit the soffits of the new hotel-casino, reflecting off the shimmering glass and competing with the Nevada glare.

  Parking tickets be damned, Slatcher left the Scion at the curb in front of the corncob structure, positioned for a quick post-kill getaway. The SUV drifted past him, and a half block ahead
he saw Julio valet at La Reverie, hop out, and slice through the smoked-glass doors. Above Slatcher’s head an open footbridge forged across from the parking structure’s top level, plugging into the side of La Reverie. For an instant he debated taking that route to come at the meet from a different angle, but having no idea where Orphan X was set up, he bolted for the casino lobby instead.

  As he spun inside, he noted the elevator doors closing. On cue, a text chimed into his phone.

  T1: 8TH FLOOR.

  Julio had made it into the car and was riding up beside her.

  Slatcher banged through the wide door into the stairwell and lunged up three stairs at a time. Despite his giant frame and extra girth, he was well conditioned, a physiological marvel. Near the fifth floor, a few spindle-legged party girls clomped their way down on improbable stilettos, and he bowled past them, flattening them to the wall. By the time he reached the eighth-floor landing, his breath burned in his chest. He waited behind the door, heard the elevator doors rumble wide. A moment later, through the tempered-glass panel above the lever handle, he watched Morena dart by, less than three feet away. Behind her, Julio ambled, light on his feet, his blend-in biz-casual suit holding the contours of his basic-training body with nary a rumple.

  Easing the handle down, Slatcher leaned out of the doorway. Morena kept on with a charged walk, her hands forming fists at her sides, seemingly too focused to check behind her. Though Julio held a relaxed pace, his long legs kept him a few steps off her heels. Slatcher stepped clear of the stairwell and moved swiftly behind them both, using Julio’s breadth to block Morena’s line of sight should she decide to shoot a look over her shoulder. If he and Julio timed this right, they’d stack the doorway all at once, Morena serving as a shield for any return fire.

  Midway down the hall, she tapped on a door, then turned the handle and entered. Slipping a hand beneath one impeccable lapel, Julio drew a pistol and accelerated the final two steps to the door. His own pistol now in hand, Slatcher turned on a sprint, closing on Julio, his momentum carrying him into perfect position.

  They aligned to crash the room in tight order, a three-car train pulling in to the station at last.

  * * *

  Eight stories up from the balcony window of the gaudily decorated hotel room, Evan had watched the sluggish convoy lurch along Sands Avenue—first the wheezing bus, then the purple Scion, then a dark SUV. He’d tied a length of rappelling rope around the balcony post, letting it dangle above the open-air footbridge one story below. He’d parked his Ford F-150 on the roof of the parking structure across the bridge, backed into the space to allow for speedy egress. From the window he could see the rear of the waiting pickup, its truck vaults gleaming in the bed.

  The high vantage had allowed him to watch Morena hop off the bus and scurry out of view toward the lobby. He’d noted Slatcher unpack himself from the illegally parked Scion, the SUV gliding by to pick up Morena’s tail. Then he’d walked to the door of Room 8124, unlocked it, and backed midway to the balcony. Given Slatcher’s size, Evan had debated bringing the Benelli combat shotgun, but this plan called for greater precision. Jack’s voice came to him: Shot placement trumps all calibers.

  Drawing his Wilson 1911, Evan assumed a modified isosceles stance, aiming the tip of the suppressor at the door. Slatcher had been hoping that Morena would lead him to Evan.

  He was about to get his wish.

  Evan waited, reading vibrations through the floor. In his stomach the healing wound glowed, an excited heat spreading out beneath his rib cage.

  The lever handle clicked down, and it all went live.

  Morena flew through the door, immediately diving into a somersault, moving along the path Evan had cleared through the furniture. As she whipped past his calf, the bulky freelancer filled the doorframe and Evan shot him twice in the chest and put a third bullet through his nose. He dumped right there, clearing the view to Slatcher.

  Behind him Evan heard Morena scrambling over the balcony, seizing the rope, starting her one-story descent to the footbridge.

  Unlike the freelancer, Slatcher had barreled into view with his pistol not just raised but ready to fire, so Evan’s first round went to the gun hand. Slatcher’s pistol pinwheeled to the side, and then the big man kneed his collapsing operator forward, forcing Evan to skip back to avoid being toppled by him.

  The scar tissue tugged in his gut as he raised the gun, a slight hitch that cost him. Slatcher’s eyes were locked on the barrel of Evan’s Wilson, assessing the precise line of fire, and he lifted his massive arms as he charged, catching the bullets as Evan fired.

  The first round deflected wetly off the meat of Slatcher’s forearm, raised to cover the bridge of his nose, the second stigmataed his right hand, buying him a millisecond to whip his forehead out of the path.

  He did not slow.

  His bullet-torn forearm hammered Evan’s wrist like a steel pipe, the shotokan blow knocking Evan over. He rolled with the blow, grabbing a whirligig view of his Wilson 1911 skittering off the edge of the balcony and, far below, Morena’s form darting across the footbridge to safety. Even as he spun back up onto his feet, he recalculated. He’d trained once with a shotokan master who’d toughened his hands, feet, and shins into iron, pounding nails into the floor with his fists. The master had spoken of executing one-punch kills, and Evan knew from Slatcher’s opening salvo that he was capable of the same. The last thing he could afford was to be in this tight with a man this big.

  They circled each other in the arena of the suite, both striking open-hand guards, palms turned in, fingertips floating above the upper temples. Given the size disparity, Evan had to disrupt Slatcher’s nervous system, going for the centers—eyes, nose, ears, throat. But the biggest organ was the skin. He needed Slatcher to feel pain now, not tomorrow.

  He attacked with pencak silat, an open-hand Indonesian fighting style, feinting left, then thunderclapping Slatcher’s right side with a palm-heel ear smash. The big man’s eyes showed mostly white until the pupils rolled back into view, a robot reanimating. Evan waited for Slatcher to lash out defensively, then sidestepped, parrying with a dagger thumb to the eustachian tube at the hinge of the jaw. He felt his thumb sink pleasingly into the soft skin at the target, but he’d slipped too far inside Slatcher’s reach in order to get off the shot and knew instantly it would cost him.

  Slatcher’s hands blurred, the wrecked one throwing flecks of blood upon impact. Evan did his best to cage his head, drawing the bars of his forearms together, but he was getting rained on. Despite the battering, he fought to stay inside the range of the devastating hook.

  There was no break to capitalize on; Evan would have to create one. He rotated his elbow as he whipped the blade of his forearm upward like a greaser slicking back the side of his hair. The tip of his ulna, positioned like a cutting diamond, split Slatcher’s chin to the bone. Blood ribboning from the wound, Slatcher tilted back and sucked in a breath.

  They were fighting in different languages, an around-the-world street brawl, Filipino deflections countering Japanese double-hand parries. They careened back through Indonesia, open-hand slaps and bone-grinding arm-break holds, Evan’s front kick finally shoving them back to standoff distance.

  Crimson snakes curled around Slatcher’s arms, the bullet gashes glittering. Evan felt his right cheek swelling and prayed it wouldn’t obstruct the eye. The luxurious carpet, spotted and trampled, might have been pulled off an auto mechanic’s floor. Someone darted by the open door, shrieked, and kept on. With one foot Slatcher flipped the dead field agent’s corpse to the side, clearing space. His rocklike shoulders bulged beneath his shirt. Despite the gunshot wounds, he barely looked winded. If Evan didn’t get out soon, Slatcher was going to take him to pieces.

  He charged Evan now with a shotokan lunge punch. Evan intercepted it with a muay thai teep, the ball of his lead foot clawing forward to thrust into the tendons of the lower abdomen. Given Slatcher’s substantial gut, this had little effect, but it did shif
t Slatcher’s weight forward, putting his head within reach.

  Evan threw an arm clench over the big man’s head, his hands locked in a lace hold across the back of the impossibly broad neck, his forearms squeezing to crimp the carotids. Yanking Slatcher’s face downward, Evan threw tangs, knee strikes hammering through Slatcher’s raised, tattered forearms into his cheeks, his nose. At the same time, he torqued Slatcher from side to side, trying to keep him off balance by rocking him onto one leg, then the other.

  No such luck. Slatcher was too strong—he simply picked Evan up and bulled him through the dressing mirror. Evan’s stomach screamed, the wound reopening, scar tissue tearing. The glass shattered around him, shards cascading over his shoulders.

  Evan hit the carpet, and Slatcher reared back, allowing a tiny window of freedom. Evan bolted, leaping across a toppled armchair and out onto the balcony. Slatcher struck him from behind, power-driving Evan into the balusters, but Evan let his body flip over the handrail, grabbing for the rappelling rope. He caught it, lost his grip, caught it again, slid a few palm-burning yards before his hands released of their own volition. The last six feet were a free fall, the footbridge flying up to bludgeon his tailbone and shoulder blades. Before the pain could announce itself, Slatcher blotted out the sun, dangling from the rope and then letting go, size-seventeen boots growing larger by the instant.

  Evan rolled up over his shoulders, shot a quick look around for his fallen Wilson—no such luck—and lurched off for the parking structure and his truck. Slatcher’s landing shook the footbridge. Within seconds the thundering steps behind Evan had quickened to a drumroll.

  Despite the dagger of pain in his gut and the full-body ache from the drop, Evan stayed in a sprint, trying to dig in his pocket for the key to the truck vault. He skidded sideways onto the roof of the parking structure, nearly losing his footing as he made the turn for his truck.