Where are you from?
I don’t know. I don’t remember.
Do you have a family? Parents?
I don’t … I don’t know. It’s been so long.
Machinery revved up outside. A jackhammer screamed into asphalt. Gears clanked, a bulldozer lurching forward, blade lifted like a metal claw.
Will you help me? Will you?
Evan had sworn a promise to his twelve-year-old self: I’ll get to you. Here he was. But what did he want?
The echo of the voice came again: You have to remember me.
He walked to the doorframe. Carved into the wood with Papa Z’s trusty pocketknife were the boys’ height markers. The undertaking had lasted one summer month, until it became clear that given turnover and growth spurts, the notches would chew up the entire jamb.
Evan ran the pads of his fingers over the nicks and the carved initials next to them.
There at the top, the highest by a good six inches, were three letters: CVS.
Charles Van Sciver.
Then Ramón. The others descended in a cluster, the initials overlapping, turning the wood into a crosshatched mess.
Way down at the bottom, as far below the scrum as Van Sciver’s was above, there was a solitary notch.
It has to be you.
Evan had to crouch.
There it was, the E still holding on after the years, though the initial of his original surname had long been effaced.
How small he’d been. He’d known it back then, of course, but he’d never let himself recognize it. He’d been too busy scrapping and fighting for his life, for his sanity, for a way out. He had neither size nor strength, so he’d had to rely on grit and tenacity. Only these he could control. Everything else he had to ball up and cram down deep inside himself.
It has to be you.
That nick, set apart so far below, made it undeniable. His vulnerability. His powerlessness. His loneliness.
What had he hoped for back then? What kind of future had he dreamed of when he’d stared up at the lightning-fork crack in the ceiling? Had it been visions of Wilson Combat 1911 pistols and encrypted virtual private-network tunnels and trauma surgeries to patch himself back together? Drinking vodka at his counter, sharing each night with a wall of herbs and a city view? Sleeping inside a penthouse prison cell of his own making?
He’d been desperate enough to grab the first ticket out. Had he stayed behind, he’d be in prison by now, long dead, or jackaled out from the streets or drugs. Jack Johns had saved his life as surely as when he’d swooped in on that Black Hawk. And yet Evan hadn’t looked back since climbing into Jack’s dark sedan as a scared twelve-year-old kid. Hadn’t reconsidered whether the tooth-and-claw skills that had gotten him out of East Baltimore were still the best ones to carry him forward. When he’d driven off with Jack, the world had yawned open to him like a summer day, but a part of him had been put on pause, as stalled as a stuck DVD.
He fought his way back to that scared little kid, pried open the rusty hatches, and looked at what was locked inside. It was hard to acknowledge, harder yet to feel.
And yet crouching here in a slant of afternoon light filtered through a filthy window, he felt it.
This part he wasn’t very good at.
It has to be you.
He wiped his mouth. His throat felt parched, his voice husky. “Okay,” he said. “I see you.”
On his way out, he adjusted the charge wrapping the beam in the hall.
Standing in the crowd a few minutes later, another anonymous body jockeying for position behind the sawhorses, he watched the building crumble. A slow-motion cascade, all that rot and mold collapsing inward until nothing remained but a heap and a cloud.
You have to come.
I got here, he thought. I promised I would.
One moment he was in the heat of the crowd. The next he was gone.
This part he was good at.
64
The Slender Man
The slender man always got excited as the hour neared. All the cues for arousal were there. The big cranes, the smell of diesel, the containers lined up like giant dominoes.
It meant that soon he would claim his prize.
Entering JAXPORT, he felt like one of Pavlov’s dogs, salivating at the bell. His heartbeat quickened as he took in the sights, breathed the muggy wet of the St. Johns River, which crept by in the background as dark and lazy as lava. He was perspiring through his dress shirt.
His Town Car purred along the roadway. He sat in the back, a bottle of champagne icing in a bucket. It was a celebration sixteen days in the making. Resting on the seat next to him were a set of fleece-lined wrist cuffs and a ball gag. Also, a chilled bottle of Fiji. Hector Contrell would have arranged nourishment for the journey, but the slender man found that they generally arrived parched.
His bodyguard and driver, Donnell, knew not to speak, not to say anything that might break the spell of this magical time.
The drive up, you see, even this was part of the foreplay.
Donnell turned off the main road to a rear cargo zone, the designated area where a series of under-the-table payments had determined that intermodular Container 78653-B812 would be set down. That was the beauty of it. Most everyone who worked at a port took bribes. No one had any idea what the container held.
It was there waiting, placed alone on an apron of asphalt.
Donnell got out first, his coat jacket shifting around his bulk, pulled tight across the holster.
The slender man emerged and took a moment there in the midnight silence. He tilted his head back and drew in a deep breath of fresh air. It was a starless night, the sky an impenetrable sheet of black, save for the moon, which beamed with an intensity that reminded him of the comic-book illustrations of his youth.
He recalled the photographs of her from the online catalog and reminded himself to lower his expectations. They didn’t always arrive in the best shape. But once they were cleaned and rested, they were usually restored to their previous condition, good for several months. Even then he could most often fetch a decent price selling them used. For people with lower standards, there was still value to be extracted.
The slender man nodded at Donnell, who produced a key, moved forward, and fussed with the massive cargo-door lock. Then he swung out the leverage handles, the lock rods clanking in their holds. He stepped back, a magician revealing the prestige. After so much planning, the theatrics were essential. Nothing could shatter the mood.
As the doors creaked open, Donnell eased farther back out of the sight line and stood beside the slender man, leaning against the driver’s door with his hands folded.
This was the slender man’s favorite part, when he let them out of the dark box they’d been living in for weeks. He was their keeper, their owner, their God.
But this time something was different.
The inside, it wasn’t pitch-black.
A rod of light dropped from the roof of the container unit. Had Contrell installed a light for her journey?
The slender man blinked but could make out nothing in the darkness beyond. It looked like a spotlight on a stage. The aesthetics rather suited him.
“Don’t be shy, my love,” he said. “Step forward.”
A rustling issued from the shadows, a form emerging.
She was bigger than he would have thought. Broad-shouldered.
She was also a he.
And the “he” was holding what appeared to be a nine-millimeter submachine gun of German design.
The slender man felt his throat clutch when he realized that the light on the ceiling wasn’t a spotlight at all. It was the golden light of the moon, shining through a hole that had been cut in the top of Container 78653-B812.
In the gleam of the muzzle flare, he saw the actual Ms. Siegler crouched in the back corner of the container behind the man, hair matted down across her eyes.
Beside him Donnell danced a little jig, the rounds jerking his limbs this way and that.
There came a moment of silence, a curl of cordite rising from the muzzle, during which the slender man grappled with the fact that the carefully curated mood was in fact shattered.
He tried to say something, but the sound he forced through his dry throat was an inhuman croak. He’d never known that terror could feel like this, a physical sensation running through every vein, inhabiting every cell, threatening to explode from the core of you straight through your skin.
The silence stretched out longer yet as the barrel drifted casually to face him, the bore waxing into a full moon to match the one above.
And then he sensed his body flying back against the side of the Town Car, the safety glass of the windows cascading around him, and he tried to make out the face of the man behind the weapon that was tearing him to shreds.
The face was nothing but a silhouette, as black as the darkness that surged up and claimed him.
65
Fragile Little Bond
The cab swept into the porte cochere, delivering Evan to Castle Heights. He spilled out of the car, raw from pain and two days of grueling travel, his bedraggled appearance undercutting the grand entrance. When he reached for the heavy glass door to the lobby, a dagger of pain shot across his ribs. He lowered his arm and staggered a half step to the side, nearly colliding with Ida Rosenbaum of 6G.
The wizened woman, crusted with makeup and built like a fire hydrant, glowered up at him. “Careless, aren’t you?”
“Sorry, ma’am. I’m just…”
“You’re just what?”
He tried to let his right arm hang normally. “Just a little jet-lagged.”
“Jet-lagged? Had a rough business trip, did you?”
He ducked his head to hide the band of skin on his neck that still bore scabs from the shock collar. “You could say that.”
“My Herb, may he rest in peace, worked his fingers to the bone and never complained a day in his life. We knew what hardship was, our generation.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We weren’t kvetchers.”
“No, ma’am.”
She clutched her purse to her jacket, a shade of red not found in nature. He realized she was waiting for him to open the lobby door for her. To avoid doing a close-quarters pirouette, he had to reach for the handle with his right hand.
He braced himself, opened the door through the fireworks exploding inside his shoulder, and smiled with gritted teeth. With a waft of rose water, she passed beneath his arm. And with great relief, he released the door and stepped into the cool air of the lobby.
“Evan Smoak!”
As he pivoted at the sound of the raspy voice, Peter collided into him with a hug. Wincing, Evan patted his back.
The boy wore true-blue jeans with a toy gun and holster on one hip and a lasso on the other. A shoved-back cowboy hat completed the John Wayne vibe.
“You like my Halloween costume?”
Evan gave a nod, shuffle-stepping for the elevator. He needed to get upstairs and peel off the dressings before he bled through. “Can’t beat the classics.”
When he looked up, Mia stood right there, holding an empty pillowcase. “Hi, Evan.”
“No costume for you?”
“This is my costume.” She flared her arms theatrically. “It’s called ‘Single Mom Without the Time-Management Skills to Comb Her Hair.’”
He caught himself noticing the birthmark kissing her temple, the way her curly chestnut hair fell across her shoulders, and reined in his focus.
Elevator. Upstairs. Now.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Mia said. “What mysterious things have you been up to?”
“Too mysterious to recount,” Evan said.
She took him in more closely, her forehead twisting with concern.
Peter tugged at Mia’s sleeve. “Can he come over for dinner tonight instead of Ted?”
Ted?
“Can he? Mom—can he?”
Mia colored. “No, honey.” Then, to Evan, “He’s a … friend.”
Evan gave another nod, took another step toward the safety of the elevator doors.
“Then can he go trick-or-treating with us?”
“Peter, I’m sure Mr. Smoak has better—”
“I’m gonna shoot horse thieves and bad guys. You should totally come.”
The toy gun was out of the holster, and Evan was staring at it, a hard edge of discomfort rising inside him, something he was unaccustomed to feeling in the floral-scented lobby of Castle Heights. “I can’t—”
“What did you dress up as when you were a kid?”
“I didn’t … I didn’t really celebrate Halloween.”
“Why not?”
Evan was eight hours from his last dose of Advil, the pain starting to cramp his peripheral vision. “Don’t aim that gun at me.”
His voice startled all three of them.
Peter lowered the toy gun. “You don’t have to be mean.”
“I wasn’t being mean.”
“Yes,” Peter said. “You were.”
Mia slung an arm over Peter’s shoulder. “C’mon, sweetheart. Let’s get you some candy.”
They withdrew. Evan stood a moment before turning to the elevators.
By the time he got upstairs, the headache had crept down into his neck, meeting the fiery nerve lines shooting up from his shoulder. He went straight to the kitchen, tugged open the freezer drawer of his Sub-Zero, and assessed his options. A single bottle of Stolichnaya Elit remained. Triple-distilled, the vodka was purified through a freeze-filtration process that dropped its temperature to zero degrees to eliminate the impurities. He wasn’t sure his arm could inflict the abuse he generally put a martini shaker through, so he poured two fingers over ice, palmed a trio of Advil, and took a sip.
As crisp as it was clear. It struck him that his vodka indulgence was something like a purification ceremony. After all the blood and filth he’d waded through, he didn’t drink to numb his senses. He drank to try to cleanse himself from the inside out.
He pressed the frozen bottle to his shoulder. It stung. He let it.
Leaning on the poured concrete of the center island, he glanced across at his vertical garden, the wall textured with herbs and plants. The mint was taking over, as it did. This wall, the sole splash of green amid the metals and grays, was his one stab at living with life. The attempt struck him as poignant and pathetic at the same time.
I wanted you to get out. I wanted you to have a chance.
At what?
At a life! That isn’t this.
He pushed away Jack’s voice, exhaled through clenched teeth.
Whatever Jack had hoped for him couldn’t be worth as much as the sight of Alison Siegler being tended to by paramedics. Her shoulders had been hunched and she’d started at the touch of the paramedics, but when she rose to walk to the ambulance, she’d stood tall, unbroken. Evan had been across the St. Johns River by then, watching from an unlit pier on the opposite bank.
He took another sip, let the Stoli blaze a path through his insides. After the past couple weeks, he couldn’t get his muscles to believe that it was safe to relax. The alarm was set, the front door barred, the windows armored. Even the walls here had been upgraded—half-inch residential Sheetrock replaced with five and eight-tenths commercial-grade, which provided better sound attenuation and more structural rigidity in the event that someone tried to breach the place. He considered how much of his life he’d spent bricking himself in.
A wife. Maybe even kids. I tried to free you. I didn’t think you’d scurry right back to it.
What else did he know? For his entire adult life, he’d been one of those rough men standing ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do harm. A sentry willing to go up against the Hector Contrells and René Cassaroys, the Assim al-Hakeems and Tigran Sarkisians. If not him, then who? Maybe now that he’d been freed from the guilt of killing Jack, he’d be freed from seeking endless absolution for his sins. Freed from bein
g the Nowhere Man.
Which meant he could be someone.
Someone real.
He thought of Mia and Peter out in the neighborhood right now, going door-to-door, collecting Kit Kats and M&M’s.
He downed the last of the vodka, studied the empty glass, trying to ratchet himself back to reality.
He had to get a new RoamZone up and running in the event Anna Rezian had found the next client requiring his help. He owed her, and he owed whoever would call.
Plus, René was out there. Which meant Evan still had a job to do. As Evan sat here waxing philosophical over an empty tumbler, René was no doubt already laying the foundations for his next operation, another kidnapping, the next gruesome medical lab. If Evan wanted to finish René, he’d have to beat the FBI to him while dodging Van Sciver and his attack-dog Orphans.
He owed as much to Despi. She’d brought him a tire jack, and her entire family had been slaughtered for it. I don’t know how to live with this, she’d told him. With what I saw.
René was a devourer of lives. Evan couldn’t let him continue, not with the wreckage he’d leave in his wake.
And yet … that birthmark, a kiss on Mia’s temple. Peter’s charcoal eyes, his croaky voice.
Evan washed the glass and then made his way down the hall, passing the empty brackets where the new katana was supposed to hang. Over the past few days, he’d learned to remove his bandages and undress with minimal pain.
Standing naked at the threshold of the shower, he flashed back to that bathroom at the chalet. The floor sloping to a drain. Bar of soap and a folded towel. Prison toilet, trash-can liner to the side.
Of their own accord, his fingers had moved to his scabbed neck.
He ducked into the warm stream. The first hit of water always stung the collarbone, but the burn quickly abated. He breathed hard, reminded himself that he was home.
He was, he realized, barely holding it together. His weight tugged him to the side, the wall cool against his ribs. He let the hot water beat against his crown.
The Nowhere Man--An Orphan X Novel Page 28