“Yes. You tell them about me.”
“Like Nicole Helfrich’s dad when he found me in the 7-Eleven?”
“Like that. You find someone. Tell them I’ll be there on the other end of the phone.”
That was the final step for his clients. A task, a purpose, an act of empowerment that transitioned them from victim to rescuer. Evan knew all too well that some wounds never healed, not fully. But there were ways to contain the pain, to take ownership over the scars, and this was one of them.
Anna lunged at him and wrapped him in a hug. For a moment his arms floated a few inches above her thin back. He was unaccustomed to this kind of contact. In the moonlight he could see the wine-colored streak on his forearm, the dark half-moons beneath his nails. He didn’t want Hector Contrell’s blood on her clothes, in her hair. And yet Anna’s embrace tightened, her face pressed into his chest.
He lowered his arms. She was warm. He felt the wetness of her cheek through his T-shirt. She clung to him.
Her voice came muffled. “How do I thank you?”
Evan said, “Be with your family.”
He’d meant it as the next instruction, but it struck him that it was also the answer to her question.
She stepped back to wipe her eyes, and he took the opportunity to slip away.
3
War Machine
Lurching from stoplight to stoplight, Evan dreamed of vodka. He had a new bottle tucked into the ice drawer of his Sub-Zero, waiting to greet him when he got home. From the outside his Ford F-150 pickup looked like any one of the millions on the roads of America. But with its laminate armor glass, self-seal tires, and built-to-spec push-bumper assembly, it was actually a war machine.
Up ahead, his building came into view. Branded with the inflated title of Castle Heights, the residential tower pinned down the easternmost spot on the Wilshire Corridor, giving his penthouse condo an unbroken view of downtown Los Angeles. Castle Heights was posh but dated, as easily overlooked as Evan’s truck. Or Evan himself.
Recruited out of the projects of East Baltimore as a kid, he’d spent seven grueling years training under the tutelage of his handler. To say that Jack Johns had been like a father to him was an understatement. Jack had been the first person to treat Evan like he was human.
Evan had been created by the Orphan Program, a deep-black project buried inside the Department of Defense. It had identified the right kind of boys lost in the system of foster homes, covertly culled them one by one, and trained them to do what the U.S. government could not officially do in places where it could not officially be. A fully deniable, antiseptic program run off a shadow budget. Technically, Orphans did not even exist.
They were expendable weapons.
As Orphan X, Evan had been given bursting bank accounts in nonreporting countries. His assignments spanned more than a decade. Rarely sighted, never captured, he was known only by the dead high-value targets he left in his wake and the alias he’d earned for moving unseen among the shadows.
The Nowhere Man.
At one point, though, he’d wanted out. It had cost him dearly. But it had left him with virtually unlimited money, a rare skill set, and time on his hands. And while he was done being Orphan X, he’d discovered that there was still work he should do as the Nowhere Man.
Pro bono work.
He’d lost the government designation but kept the alias given to him by his enemies.
Evan had heard that the Orphan Program had been dismantled, but last year he’d discovered that it was still operational. The most merciless of the Orphans had taken over. Charles Van Sciver. His new directive: to track down and eliminate former Orphans. According to those holding Van Sciver’s leash, Evan’s head contained too much sensitive information to remain connected to his body.
One thing had been made clear in their last bloody confrontation—Van Sciver and his Orphans would not stop the hunt until Evan was dead.
In the meantime Evan stayed off the grid and stayed vigilant.
At last he finished the gauntlet crawl through Wilshire Boulevard traffic. Turning in to Castle Heights, he whipped through the porte cochere past the valet and descended to the subterranean parking lot, drifting into his spot between two concrete pillars.
He grabbed a black sweatshirt from the back, tugged it on to cover the dried blood on his arm, and headed across the floor. He always took a moment outside the lobby door to close his eyes, draw in a breath, and ready himself for the transition into his other persona.
Evan Smoak, importer of industrial cleaning supplies. Another boring tenant.
Given the hour, the lobby was quiet, the air fragrant with the scent of lilies. Evan crossed briskly to the elevator, nodding at the security guard. “Evening, Joaquin.”
Joaquin looked up from the bank of monitors running live feeds from the building’s perimeter and hallways. Castle Heights prided itself on its security, an additional selling point to attract moneyed middle-aged tenants and flush retirees.
“Evening, Mr. Smoak. You have a good night?”
“Typical Thursday,” Evan said. “Burgers with the guys.”
Joaquin controlled the elevators from behind the high counter—another safety measure—and his shoulder dipped as he pressed the button for the car. Evan lifted a hand in thanks, noticed the flecks of dried blood beneath his fingernails, and lowered it quickly. He stepped inside, the button for the twenty-first floor already lit.
The doors were just sliding closed when he heard a familiar voice call out, “Wait! Hold the elevator, Joaquin—please.” The patter of footsteps. “I meant the ‘please’ to come first so I didn’t sound all ordery, but—”
The doors parted again, and Evan came face-to-face with Mia Hall. Her sleeping nine-year-old was slumped in her arms, his chin resting on her shoulder.
Mia’s eyes rose to meet Evan’s, and she froze.
She was rarely caught off guard, but now her mouth was slightly ajar, a flush coming up beneath the faint scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
They’d had an almost-relationship last year. He’d saved her life, and she’d saved his ass. In the process she’d learned more about him than she should have. Which would have been a problem even if she hadn’t been a DA for the City of Los Angeles.
They blinked at each other.
She shifted, straining under Peter’s weight.
“Want me to take him?” Evan asked.
There was a time when that would have been normal.
“No,” she said. “Thanks. I got him.”
They rode up to her floor in silence. Remembering the traces of blood beneath his nails, Evan curled his hands into loose fists. He caught the faintest whiff of lemongrass—the scent of Mia’s lotion.
Peter’s cheek was smooshed into a half pout, his blond hair stuck up on one side, his lips blue with lollipop residue. When the doors parted with an arthritic rattle, Peter lifted his head sleepily. The smile touched his charcoal eyes first, then his mouth.
“Hi, Evan Smoak.” His voice, even raspier than usual. Before Evan could answer, the boy’s lids drooped shut again.
Mia carried him out, and Evan watched them walk up the corridor until the closing elevator doors wiped them from view.
4
Clean as a Scalpel
When Evan turned the key, the lock to Condo 21A unbolted with a clank, various security bars releasing within the steel door concealed behind the homey wood-paneled façade. As Jack used to say, Ball bearings within ball bearings.
Evan muted the alarm and walked to the kitchen area. He passed the living wall, a drip-fed vertical garden that sprouted mint and sage, parsley and chamomile. The pleasing scent and splash of green were the sole aspects of the corner penthouse that could be described as cheerful.
The floor plan was largely open, seven thousand square feet of poured concrete split by workout stations, sitting areas, a freestanding fireplace, and a steel staircase that twisted up to a loft. Countless safeguards hid
inside the sleek, modern space. The windows and sliding glass doors that turned two walls into a city panorama? Bullet-resistant Lexan armed with shatter-detection software. The periwinkle retractable sunscreens? Woven titanium armor. The quartz-rock-layered balconies cupping the sides of the condo? Secondary alarms rigged to detect the audio signature of an unwelcome guest’s boots compressing the stones.
Evan slipped around the island to the Sub-Zero. Nestled among the ice cubes, a fat bottle of Karlsson’s Gold beckoned. The handcrafted Swedish vodka, comprising seven kinds of potatoes, was uniquely made, distilled a single time through a copper-lined still. Evan poured a few fingers into a rocks glass over a spherical ice cube and garnished the drink with a single twist of ground pepper from a stainless-steel mill.
Clean as a scalpel up front. Hint of mineral on the finish. Lingering bite of pepper.
Perfect.
Evan walked to the fireplace, fired up the pyre of cedar logs, then peeled off his mission clothes and fed them to the flames. With the rocks glass dangling at his side, he padded naked across the vast space and down the brief hall, passing the spot where his dear departed nineteenth-century katana used to hang. The bare wall hooks reminded him that he’d recently won an online bid for a replacement samurai sword, one that dated back to the Early Edo period. The shipment was due to arrive soon from the Seki auction house.
He stepped through his bedroom into the bathroom and tapped the frosted-glass shower door, which recessed into the wall on silent tracks. Turning the water up as hot as he could stand, he ducked into the stream. He scrubbed. The water ran dark, a crimson swirl circling the drain.
It took a wire brush and some effort to get his fingernails clean.
After drying off he headed into the bedroom and dressed in the same outfit he’d worn before. Dark jeans, gray V-necked T-shirt. Before turning away from the dresser, he hesitated over the bottom drawer.
Emotion came up under his skin, a flush of heat.
He tugged the drawer open and used his thumbnail to lift the false bottom.
Beneath, a blue flannel shirt, blackened with old blood.
Jack’s blood.
There wasn’t a night in the past eight years that Evan didn’t turn off the light, close his eyes, and watch Jack bleed out in his arms.
Evan shut the drawer and rose, trying to dissipate the tightness in his chest. He sat on his bed, a Maglev that literally floated two feet off the floor, the slab held airborne by neodymium rare-earth magnets. Closing his eyes, suspended between floor and ceiling, he focused on his breathing, dropped inside his body, felt the weight of his bones inside his flesh. It usually helped him find tranquillity.
But not tonight.
Images strobed through the darkness behind his eyelids. Hector Contrell’s shoulders jerking back as if yanked by strings. Ink pooling in the hollow of his neck, a punctuation mark for the FUCK YOU tattoo. Those mighty legs collapsing, a slow-motion avalanche crumble. The mess on the floor upstairs around the mattress—residue-stained Styrofoam ramen bowls, empty burrito wrappers, crumpled protein packets. The rib cage of the house, bare studs scrolling by as Evan crept inside. The hall telescoping out like some Kubrickian horror, each empty doorframe replaced by another and another.
Evan’s eyes flew open.
No doors. Which meant no door handles. That was what had been nagging at him. The house was open to the world, fluttering tarps in place of walls.
No locked area for the kidnapped girls.
The logistics of moving them around the world were complicated. There had to be a holding area somewhere off premises.
Which meant the possibility existed that another young woman remained in it.
Evan hopped off the bed and moved back into the bathroom, stepping into the shower. He squeezed the lever handle for the hot water, and a moment later came a faint click. The lever, keyed to his palm print, doubled as a doorknob. He turned it the wrong way, and a door, disguised by the tile pattern of the shower wall, swung inward.
He stepped into the Vault.
Four hundred asymmetrical square feet crowded by the underbelly of the public stairs to the roof, the walled-off storage space served as Evan’s armory and ops center. From the weapon lockers to the sheet-metal desk burdened with monitors, servers, and cables, it contained all the tools of his trade. The screens displayed pirated security feeds of Castle Heights. Every hallway, every stairwell, every access door.
He breathed in the smell of damp concrete, dropped into his chair, and rolled to the L-shaped desk to access the law-enforcement databases. All the major criminal and civil records, forensic files, and ballistics registers—anything that the local police could dig up on the Panasonic Toughbook laptops wired into their patrol cars—Evan could access.
His training had consisted of learning a little bit about everything from people who knew everything about something. He was hardly an expert hacker, but he’d broken into a few cruisers and uploaded a piece of reverse SSH code into their laptops—a back door for him to get into the system anytime he beckoned.
He beckoned now, searching Contrell’s known associates, past residences, former cellmates. Nothing raised a red flag. A few hours later, the watered-down vodka sat forgotten beside the mouse pad, pepper grinds floating like ash.
Through the DMV site, Evan grabbed the license-plate number of Contrell’s Buick Enclave. Another series of backstage maneuvers got him into the vehicle’s GPS records. He printed out the data captures—longitudes and latitudes listed in an endless scroll.
As the LaserJet spit out page after page, he started breaking down the pauses between the Enclave’s movements.
Contrell’s destinations.
Evan’s work was not done.
The Tenth Commandment: Never let an innocent die.
5
The Eyes of the Data-Mining Beast
The room could have been anywhere. Midway up a high-rise. At the distal end of a mansion’s wing. Underground, even.
It was big.
The size of a movie theater, but without the rows of chairs. There wasn’t a screen.
There were hundreds of them.
Lining three walls, stacked top to bottom, the most elaborate display of computing power this side of DARPA. Each monitor scrolled an endless stream of code. The screens were the eyes of the data-mining beast; the banks of servers bunkered behind the bomb-resistant fourth wall were the brain.
Guttering light from the monitors strobed across the dim room, living camouflage. It was hard to see anything aside from the screens. Everything melted together—the rugs, the consoles, the sparse furniture. Even the few visitors with clearance to enter—usually a not-fully-read-in engineer making tech adjustments—seemed to disappear, fish blending into rippling water.
Charles Van Sciver liked it in here. Liked it for the darkness, through which he could drift alone and unseen.
There were no windows. No mirrors either, not even in the adjoining bathroom. He’d covered them up. The occasional visitor was made to stand at a distance so Van Sciver could stay bathed in the protective anonymity of the flickering lights.
It was safe and contained in here. Just him and his algorithms.
It wasn’t fair to say that all the computing power was directed at locating Orphan X.
Only 75 percent.
Or 76.385, to be precise.
After all, as the head of the Program, Van Sciver did have other mission responsibilities.
But none as important as this.
For better than a decade, Evan had been the top asset in the entire Orphan Program. He didn’t merely know where the bodies were buried. He had buried most of them.
Though the naked eye couldn’t process a sliver of the information whipping across the monitors, Van Sciver liked to watch the large-scale data processing in real time. Though he knew the buzzwords—“cluster analysis,” “anomaly detection,” “predictive analytics”—he couldn’t even comprehend what was before him. But he could grasp the
output reports, which he checked meticulously on the hour, searching for filaments in the ocean of cyberspace. These threads of the Nowhere Man had to be delicately backtraced. If Van Sciver allowed the slightest quiver showing that he had something on the hook, the line would snap.
Lately his team of engineers had been focused on data warehousing, piecing together bits of information from offshore bank accounts, trying to reconstruct enough of the mosaic to point them in the right direction. They had leads on Evan, of course. A few floating strands on the water. But every time they tugged slack out of the line, they came up with more slack, a money transfer zigzagging off into the depths, a shell corp vanishing behind a mailbox corporation, another trail ending at a disused P.O. box off some dusty Third World dirt road.
Van Sciver paced the perimeter of the room, his ever-paler skin drinking in the antiseptic blue glow of the screens. The lack of human contact ensured that he would never be deterred from his goal. Ultimately it would come down to discipline and abstinence, and so he had cleared out any distracting clutter from his existence. His willingness to deny all pleasure and warmth was why he would win. That was why he would beat his nemesis. Victory would be pleasure enough.
Van Sciver halted. Facing the horseshoe of the rippling walls, he basked in the power represented before him. Time was meaningless in here. The present was spent reconstructing the past and extrapolating the future, a dragon ever swallowing its tail, an infinity of numbers that summed to zero.
But one day they would add up to everything.
One day they would search out the right thread of ones and zeros that would lead to Orphan X.
It was only a matter of time.
6
Struck Oil
Evan noticed everything when he drove. Especially gray Ford Transit Connect vans with no side windows and dealer plates. Like the one that had been hovering in his rearview mirror for the past few blocks.
He threw on his right-hand turn signal. The van did not. Either it wasn’t following him or it was driven by a pro unwilling to take the bait. Evan drove straight past the entrance of the Norwalk FedEx office, and the van kept right on behind him. Evan muted the signal, keeping his head down but his eyes nailed to the rearview. He waited a few beats and then abruptly veered off onto a side street. The van coasted by, not even slowing.
The Nowhere Man--An Orphan X Novel Page 2