The Nowhere Man--An Orphan X Novel

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Evan watched them go, then waited for the patrol to rotate one more time. When they passed, he broke cover and darted for the barn.

  The first ten paces left him in full view of the tower, but the guard there stayed focused on the northern slope, rifle scope pressed to his face. Evan sprinted for the cover of the barn, at last falling under its shadow.

  The rear door was unlocked. He cracked it, peering inside, wind whistling across the back of his neck. The G-Wagons and the Rolls were parked among a scattering of mechanic’s tools. The gear lockers rimming the interior sported hefty padlocks. Though he could see no one, he heard the echo of voices somewhere inside.

  Footsteps crunched the fresh snow along the adjacent side of the barn—the patrol returning. The breeze carried the sound of the dogs’ panting, and then plumes of breath wisped around the corner a few feet off the ground.

  Evan slid into the barn, eased the door closed.

  The open space was broken only by a small box of an office that was little more than two thin walls and a flimsy door in the corner. Through the interior window, he spotted movement, so he hit the floor and lay still, breathing grease fumes.

  Cold air drafted beneath the rear door, blowing against his face. He heard the patrol approaching and tensed in case the guards detoured inside. The sounds grew near, and then shadows dotted the gap beneath the door—broad blocks for the men’s boots, flickering spots for the Dobermans’ paws.

  They passed.

  Evan rolled behind the nearest G-Wagon, then rose to a crouch and peered through the vehicle’s windows into the office. All he could make out now was a sturdy arm leaning against a cabinet, the back of the hand tattooed with a too-wide grin.

  A voice carried over. “What is he planning?”

  It sounded like Nando.

  He heard Despi answer from somewhere in the office. “I don’t know.”

  Nando again. “Will he wire the money tomorrow?”

  “He won’t tell me.”

  “What does he tell you?”

  “Nothing. He tells me nothing. He is a hard man.”

  “Maybe you’re not good enough. Maybe we need to replace you. With your sister.”

  If Despi replied, Evan couldn’t hear it. His eyes picked across the scattered gear, finally lighting on what he was looking for.

  A car jack.

  The one he’d spotted Samuel using two days earlier to prop up the Rolls-Royce.

  When the handle was turned, the scissor jack cranked open into a diamond, but when closed it was relatively thin. Thin enough, he hoped, to hide beneath his bulky sweaters and smuggle back into his room. Given that Manny and Nando no longer came within twenty feet of him, he had a decent shot. He just had to sneak back to the woods, circle around, and then emerge casually from the tree line.

  But first he had to get his hands on the jack. It rested in the open just beyond the hood of a Mercedes, three steps onto the wrestling mat.

  If he made a move for it, he’d be briefly but completely exposed.

  “We send a man by her apartment now and then, watch her watering her tomatoes on the balcony,” Nando was saying in the office. “Beautiful hair, just like yours.”

  Despi’s reply was muffled by the walls.

  Evan crept from cover. One step, setting his boot down silently, rolling from heel to toe. Another brought him onto the blue rubber mat. He leaned over, reaching for the jack. His fingertips had just reached the metal when the door flew open and Despi filled the frame, her face burning.

  Dex and Nando remained behind her in the office, though their gazes were not yet lifted.

  Despi stared at Evan, trying to process his being here.

  Crouched over the jack, he stared back.

  Her expression held a mix of dark emotions; it was unclear which would win out. Keeping his eyes locked on hers, Evan started to retreat behind the hood of the G-Wagon, moving out of Dex and Nando’s view.

  That’s when he heard the rear door open behind him.

  Claws scrabbled against the concrete floor. The Dobermans erupted in snarls. He was hidden between the two big SUVs, but not for long.

  Despi remained unmoving as a statue in the doorway, her lips slightly parted, one hand still raised from when it had shoved open the door, her eyes flared wide. She blinked, swallowed hard.

  He held up his hands and nodded at her: Go ahead.

  The dogs’ barks grew louder. On the far side of the G-Wagon, the narcos shouted in Spanish. He sensed movement behind Despi, Dex and Nando drawn toward the commotion.

  Evan gestured at her more firmly: Do it.

  She raised her arm. Pointed at him. It took two tries for her voice to work. “Here! He’s here!”

  She’d done an admirable job conveying panic.

  Nando knocked her aside, barreling past her, his heavy coat flicking high in his wake. Already he held the transmitter aloft, pinching the button with his thumb.

  Evan registered barely a half thought—Oh, fu—and then the current surged into him, radiating through his head and torso.

  Convulsing on the floor, he sensed the dogs’ snapping jaws inches from his face. Confused, they barked and snarled; humans weren’t supposed to twitch like that. As they strained their leads, their handlers leaned back to keep them from tearing into him.

  A command rang across the concrete from the far side of the barn: “Off.”

  The Dobermans waddled back a few steps and sat, panting around wide grins. Ropes of saliva necklaced the sleek, dark fur of their chests.

  Evan rolled his head on the rubber mat, catching an upside-down view of René silhouetted in the opening made by the pushed-back barn door.

  He said, “You don’t stop, do you?”

  Evan made a noise intended to convey assent.

  “No more walks for you. No more exercise. And no more time.”

  “Until what?” Evan’s words came out fuzzy.

  “Until you wire me my money. Open of business tomorrow.” René continued in and stopped behind the Dobermans, stroking their heads. “Good boys. Good, good boys.”

  He fished treats from his pocket and rewarded them.

  “Do you like dogs?” René asked Evan.

  Evan coughed hoarsely into the mat.

  “It’s their loyalty that gets me,” René observed. “Purer than love. You know the joke. Lock your dog and your wife in the trunk of your car for twenty-four hours. When you open it, which one is happy to see you?”

  The Dobermans bared their teeth. Their marble eyes stayed locked on Evan, who’d managed to shove himself to a standing position, his hands on his knees. The skin of his neck prickled, angry and raw. Behind Nando, Despi caught his eye, her forehead twisted in anguish. He looked down quickly, not wanting to give away their rapport.

  “Put him in his room,” René said to Dex. Then, as he breezed past Evan, “Be showered in time for dinner.”

  Evan shook his head, trying to clear the static. Too late he realized he was smirking.

  René halted. His face reddened. “Is something amusing, Evan?”

  “No.”

  “Why are you grinning?”

  “Because I get it now.”

  “Get what?” René waited, growing impatient. “What do you think you get?”

  Evan squared to him. “I think you want to be a psychopath, René. But you’re not. I think what you are is lonely. I think the only way you can get guests to your dinner table is by paying them or forcing them. I think you believe you can buy your way out of your misery, and that isn’t amusing—it’s profoundly fucking pathetic.”

  René drew his head back, his chin doubling. His flush deepened, color seeping unevenly along the nipped-and-tucked lines of his face. Then his expression hardened, the vulnerability clamped behind a mask of controlled rage.

  He walked across the barn, through the rolling door, and out into the blazing white. Evan was watching him fade into the lightly falling snow when another jolt of the collar cut his legs out from u
nder him.

  32

  Ready

  Evan sat cross-legged on the floor, his shoulders bowed. He hadn’t gotten the car jack. Without the car jack, he couldn’t break out of his room. If he couldn’t break out of his room, he couldn’t help Alison Siegler and the boy.

  Evan was down to his last few hours.

  He reminded himself how much he could get done in a few hours.

  One way or another, he was getting out of this room. And out of this chalet. He would fight his way over the snowy peak of the mountain, leaving a trail of bright arterial blood in his wake.

  A noise issued overhead, startling him from his thoughts. The hissing gas had come so much earlier than usual, the sun not yet kissing the western horizon. This was his punishment for laying René bare in the barn—to bed without dinner. René was done taking chances; he was going to knock Evan out and revive him at the deadline in a few hours to make the wire transfer.

  Holding his breath, Evan rushed to the sliding glass door and threw it wide. He stepped outside, but the clean air quickly turned bitter, the gas being drawn through the open door. Rushing back inside, he lay on the bed and buried his face in a pillow.

  His breathing grew heavy. A wave of grogginess came on. He fought to stay conscious. The hissing finally stopped, but he kept his face buried, waiting for the air to clear.

  That’s when he felt the vibration.

  The RoamZone beneath the mattress. The boy calling him.

  Another vibration signaled the second ring.

  Evan lifted his face. He could still taste the halogenated ether riding the back of his throat.

  Third ring.

  He rolled off the bed, his kneecaps banging the floorboards. Shoved an arm beneath the mattress. Came out with the wrecked RoamZone.

  The high-power-density lithium-ion battery was still going strong. The kid’s number guttered across the cracked screen.

  Just in time Evan thumbed the green icon and held the phone to his face. Somehow the circuit board held together. “Hello?”

  “It’s me.” Same voice as before, but even more hushed.

  The connection was bad, static fuzzing the line.

  Evan swallowed hard. His head was swimming from the gas he’d inhaled, but he fought his thoughts back online. “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trapped here. There’s never enough food. I don’t want this life. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask for any of it.”

  “What are they doing to you?”

  “That’s not even the worst part,” the boy said.

  “What is?”

  “I’m nothing here. That’s the worst part.” His hushed voice held a kind of awe. “No one cares. If you don’t exist, then it doesn’t matter, right?”

  “No. That’s not right. Look. Listen.” Evan blinked hard, rubbed his eyes, forging through the muddle in his head. “Whatever’s being done to you, it’s wrong. It’s not your fault. And you’re not the only one.”

  “I know it happens to other kids,” the boy said. “I see it, even. But when it happens to you, it feels like you’re the first person it’s happened to in the whole world.”

  “I know.” Evan felt emotion pressing at the back of his face. “You’re resourceful. Scrappy. Like I was.” The ether had loosened his inhibitions. He heard his words drawl, knew he was saying more than he should.

  He was supposed to be the Nowhere Man, armored in his role as savior and hero, indomitable and distant and safe.

  But right now he felt like none of those things.

  The static grew to a roar, and for a moment Evan thought the call had dropped. But then the kid’s voice came back in. “—can’t talk about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m scared to. It’s not safe.” A wet breath.

  Evan took a breath of his own. Held it. Then, “Can you get out?”

  “Nowhere to get to.”

  “Find help?”

  “No one can help me.”

  “Can’t you run away and go to the cops?”

  “No. I need you.”

  Locked on the third floor of a guarded chalet at the base of a snowy valley, Evan nodded. “I’ll get to you,” he said. “I’m coming soon.”

  In the silence he could hear the boy breathing across the phone.

  Finally the kid said, “I have to go now. I’ll try ’n’ call back if I can.”

  “When you do,” Evan said, “I’ll be ready.”

  33

  The Inexpressible

  Parking Level 3, submerged in a sea of crimson.

  Evan is underwater, trapped inside his own locked-down body. His lips stitched shut. Drowning in Jack’s blood.

  Jack ripples across from him like some hard-bitten merman. His arm is raised. The fine hairs of his forearm waver like tendrils of seaweed. His finger points at Evan.

  You.

  Evan strains and struggles. His muscles bulge but cannot move. Paralyzed.

  For the first time, he lifts his gaze to brave Jack’s stare directly. Jack’s eyes are not what Evan expects. They are filled not with accusation but with love.

  Yet the finger still points.

  And Evan realizes.

  Not: You did this.

  But: You hold the key.

  Evan feels it roiling inside him, years of pent-up anguish and guilt and grief, an age-old whirlpool of despair. It is every feeling he had consigned to the depths of his gut, every unspoken word he has packed down his throat.

  It reaches a vomit pitch, and he understands that it will no longer be denied.

  Acid burns up his esophagus and claws crablike into the back of his mouth.

  His lips strain at the sutures.

  And then rip free.

  It breaks through, a howl cracked out of the hidden core of himself, expressing the inexpressible.

  It says, Help me.

  34

  What It Is You Do

  Evan bolted awake, aware of a presence in the dark room.

  He’d meant only to lie down for a moment after the boy’s phone call, but the lingering effects of the sleeping gas must have put him out briefly.

  Someone stood at the end of the bed.

  Was he out of time?

  He sat up, blinking rapidly to stimulate his night vision, the shock collar shifting painfully around his neck.

  The form emerged from the darkness, curved and feminine beneath a thick bathrobe from the spa.

  She parted her robe. Beneath it one arm clutched something to her stomach.

  Drawing near, she set the object on the edge of the bed, out of view of the remaining surveillance camera.

  The car jack.

  “Make them pay,” Despi whispered.

  He stared at the slender tool indenting the sheets.

  “You were trying to get it,” she said. “I don’t know what for. But you have it now. So do what it is you do.”

  “I can’t take this. If he finds out—”

  “He’ll what? Hurt me?” She gave a quiet little laugh. “Hurt me more?”

  “You. Your family. You have too much to lose.”

  “As do you,” she said. “You have one hour until he comes for you.”

  He felt it then, the swirling blackness at the heart of himself, the inner whirlpool from his dream. “Don’t help me.”

  “No. You don’t get to tell me this. You don’t get to decide.”

  Evan stared at the car jack, wanting it desperately. For himself, yes. But even more for Alison Siegler, for the boy waiting for his help.

  He said, “But he’d kill you, your family. You can’t take that risk.”

  “I can’t? Or you can’t?”

  He thought of Jack’s eyes, conveying urgency and love. His finger pointing at Evan through the crimson sea. You hold the key.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t be responsible for something that could hurt you.”

  She gave a laugh that held no humor. “We don’t get to choose that. That’s par
t of being human.”

  He looked down at his hands, clenched loosely in his lap.

  “You can’t do it on your own,” Despi said.

  She studied him, one eyebrow arched in an unspoken question. Her robe hung open, showing the slope of her divine belly—Venus at the Bath. She was waiting to knot the sash again and leave, either with the car jack or without.

  He looked down at it there on the sheets. If he accepted it, he had to accept all the responsibility that came with it.

  He looked back up at Despi.

  He nodded.

  35

  Into the Snowy White

  In a single shirt and sweater, Evan felt less bulky than on his previous excursions. He had to be for what he was about to do.

  He stepped out onto the balcony. The moonless sky was black as pitch, broken only by flurries of snowflakes that swept through the welded bars. A trio of guards clustered around the fire outside the barn, warming their hands, Kalashnikovs resting at their sides. They did not look over.

  He had a limited window of time out here in the dead of night. His gloveless hands already felt cold, and the more numb they got, the more useless they’d be.

  Raising the scissor jack, he jammed it between two of the bars. Then he cranked the handle. The jack expanded, irising open with enough force to lift a four-thousand-pound car.

  The bars bowed. Evan kept rotating the handle, leaning into the effort. The sounds of creaking metal intensified. The resistance grew stronger, his forearms straining. And then two of the bars gave way at the welded joints, popping free. One struck him lightly in the chest and clanged to the floor of the balcony. The other plummeted into the snowy white.

  He shot a glance at the guards by the barn, but they were telling stories, focused on the flickering light of the fire, not the darkness beyond. Sticking his head through the gap, Evan looked down, but the fallen bar was lost to the white bank below, the thin black slot in the ground already being layered over.