How she missed him. How she missed them all.
She stepped inside through the breeze-swept curtain and set down the watering can.
Evan stood in her living room.
Her mouth moved, but no sound came out.
He removed a heavy-looking white envelope from his back pocket.
“What is that?”
“Pictures of the men who killed your family,” he said. “Who were watching you.”
“I was being watched?”
“You were.”
“What do the pictures … show?”
“Corpses,” he said.
She swallowed.
“Where did you … How did you find them?”
“I found their names in a condo in Zagreb,” he said. “Where I caught up to René.”
“He’s dead?” she asked.
“Worse.”
She noticed that she was wringing her hands in her dress, and she made herself stop. She gestured at the envelope. “What am I supposed to do with those?”
He said nothing.
“I don’t want those. I don’t want to see them.”
He stuffed the envelope back into his pocket. “I didn’t think you would. But I don’t always know what people want.”
She looked at the watering can. “I have nothing left. How am I supposed to rebuild a life?”
She’d seen him in a shock collar. She’d seen him beaten by men. She’d seen him on his knees. This was the first time she’d seen him powerless.
“I can’t help you with that,” he said.
“Right,” she said. “You’re only good at destroying things.”
She put her face in her hands and wept. When she looked back up, he was gone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, though there was no one to hear it.
* * *
No matter how many times Evan had been to the Parthenon, it never ceased to take his breath away. The rocky outcrop thrusting above Athens, the ruined temple thrusting up even above that. Veins of mica and pyrite running through the marble, lending it a golden tinge. The perfection of the design, as precise as anything designed by computer. The ancient Greeks had even slimmed the Doric columns at the tops, an optical illusion to make it look as though the heavy roof were bowing the supports.
Evan came around a block of scaffolding and spotted him from behind, sitting at a tiny café table in the shade of a food-stand umbrella, sipping from a demitasse.
Leave it to Jack to find espresso in an ancient citadel.
Perspiration spotted Jack’s shirt between the shoulder blades. Evan walked up from behind. As he drew near, Jack set down his demitasse.
“Evan,” he said without turning around.
Evan sank into the chair opposite him.
“Thanks for coming,” Evan said.
Jack nodded.
Two German kids ran by, tiny fists gripping bottles of Fanta Limon. Evan waited for their laughter to fade away and then said, “I thought maybe we could start over.”
“Okay,” Jack said.
“You said you don’t understand why I still do what I do after I left the Program. Why I didn’t just disappear, lie on a beach somewhere, sip umbrella drinks.”
“Not my precise phrasing.”
“But the gist.”
“Yes.”
Evan struggled to find the words. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been out in the cold, nose up to the glass, looking in. I may not get to come inside, Jack. But I’m sure as hell not gonna let the wolves in at everyone else. No. That’s one thing I’m good for.”
Jack looked heartbroken. He studied Evan. “You don’t owe anything, son. For what I tasked you to do. It’s on me. You’ve got nothing to atone for.”
“I pulled the trigger, Jack,” Evan said. “Every last time.”
For a few minutes, they sat and listened to the wind rush around the ancient stone. Jack pinched the crinkled skin beneath his eyes. When he looked back up, his gaze was clear.
“People talk about starting over,” he said. “But you can’t start over. All you can do is change direction.”
“Maybe we could do that,” Evan said.
Jack gave his non-smile, that slight bunching of his right cheek that said he was pleased. He tilted his face to the Mediterranean sun. “Funny that we’re meeting here in the shadow of the gods. Destiny ringing from the stones. The old stories.” He blinked a few times and suddenly looked much older. “Can we break it?”
“What?” Evan asked.
“The cycle.”
“I don’t know.”
Jack looked across at him. “Are you willing to try?”
Evan said, “Yes.”
Jack drained the last of his espresso, set down the glass, and stood up. Backlit, he looked down at Evan. “Would you like to take a walk?”
Evan rose to join him.
73
Resolute
Anna Rezian looked nothing like the wrecked sparrow of a girl Evan had seen just a few months ago. She stood in a circle of girls on the high-school quad, laughing and sharing pictures on her iPhone. Her hair had mostly grown back, covering the patches she’d plucked out.
Sitting in his idling F-150 pickup, Evan watched her through a rise of chain-link fence. He didn’t generally go near a client once he’d completed his mission, but he wanted to see her, wanted to be reminded of the good in the world.
A brief article had appeared online this morning. An American expat had been discovered in a high-end luxury condo in Zagreb along with a dead body. He’d been in terrible shape. The story had carried a single photo of the police leading him out.
The man looked to be in his nineties, his strawlike hair gone white, his loose skin bagging around his face, his joints angled arthritically. He hadn’t yet recovered his capacity for speech, and one of the physicians remarked that he didn’t know what the man could have encountered to have aged him so violently.
No one had any idea what had happened behind the gate of the high-end complex or whether it was related to the nearby street explosion that had claimed a life a week ago.
The school bell rang, the sound crisp in the November breeze. Evan drew in a breath of fresh air and watched Anna walk to class with a friend.
Maybe she wouldn’t bother finding the next client to pass on the Nowhere Man’s number to. The next client who would find the next client who would find the next. Evan found himself wondering if Anna might just let it go and move on with her life.
No.
Not wondering.
Hoping.
* * *
For the first time since he’d built the compound, Charles Van Sciver powered down the monitors. One wall at a time until all three had gone dark, his eternal horseshoe dimmed at last. The warmth of the screens vibrated the air, the afterglow of something just killed.
The act was largely symbolic. The computing power still churned in the banks of servers behind the concrete wall, and he could reignite the monitors at a moment’s notice. But sometimes symbolic was good.
Sometimes you needed to drench yourself in darkness.
In the darkness his thoughts and desires clarified. In the darkness the path ahead was illuminated.
It was time to leave the foxhole.
He prepared himself. Then reached for the telephone.
* * *
One of three heavy black phones rang on the Resolute desk. Fashioned from the timbers of the British frigate that was its namesake, the desk had been gifted to the United States by Queen Victoria. American seamen had saved the ship after it had been frozen in Arctic ice, and the desk had pinned down the oval carpet ever since.
The seal on this carpet was rendered in bas-relief like Truman’s, the cut pile trimmed to different lengths to delineate the eagle and stars. It was monochromatic, shadows within shadows.
A handsome man in his fifties excused himself from the assembly on the couch, crossed to the desk, and answered.
This was the only call on which Va
n Sciver didn’t dare use his anonymizing voiceware. “We lost him, Mr. President.”
The handsome man pouched his lips and paused. If there was one thing he’d learned in office, it was the value of a two-second pause before responding. “Get him back in play.”
He leaned to hang up, but Van Sciver’s voice came through, so he moved the phone back to his face.
“Next time,” Van Sciver said, “I’ll handle it personally.”
The president allowed another two-second pause.
Then hung up.
74
Overlord of Everything and Nothing
It was hard to pick up the trace of sun-dried raisin in the vodka, but it was there, lingering behind the aftertaste. Handcrafted in small batches, Dash organic vodka was distilled seven times, filtered through coconut shells, and then micro-oxygenated until it was smoother than velvet.
Sitting on his black suede couch, Evan sipped it now, looking past the slit in the floor that housed his retractable flat-screen TV and focusing on the view beyond.
Los Angeles, a constellation of nearly 4 million lights. All of them seemed to be on display tonight. Checkering the neighboring apartments, running up and down the high-rises of Downtown, headlighting the cars Tetris-ing their way through the gridlocked streets below.
And Evan floating twenty-one stories up, observing it all with his glass of vodka, an overlord of everything and nothing.
Alone.
The congestion on the streets looked thicker than usual, and he realized: It was Thanksgiving.
He thought of Anna Rezian, her life back in motion. The RoamZone bulged in his pocket, charged and ready to go. What would next week bring? And the week after? How many more Hector Contrells would he face? How many seedy doorsteps would he darken, steeling himself for whatever atrocities waited inside? How long had he been stuck here inside this fortress-prison, inside this trope, this story? He thought about breaking out of the narrative, about time moving along and—for once—him moving along with it. Unclicking that pause button and stepping into life with all its ordinary wonders and concerns.
You can’t start over.
The drink had lost some of its charm.
All you can do is change direction.
And then Evan was up and walking. Through the door, up the corridor to the elevator, riding down nine floors. He moved briskly to 12B, tapped on the door before he could convince himself not to.
He sensed a shadow at the peephole, and then the door pulled open, a trace of lemongrass presaging Mia’s appearance in the gap. From behind her, soft lighting and the smells of a laden table.
“Evan, it’s—”
“If I stopped it all, would you consider letting me in?”
She stood in the doorway, confused. “I—Wait—What? You’d do that? For me?”
“No,” he said. “For me.”
She blinked at him. Peter leaned forward from his chair onto his elbows, his face poking into view, angled above a still-steaming bowl of mashed potatoes.
“That’s what you’re saying?” she asked. “That you’re willing to stop it all?”
He stared at her, feeling the pull of a thousand buried instincts as they fought their way to the surface. He opened his mouth to reply.
In his pocket the RoamZone vibrated.
Time decelerated, his senses on overdrive. Ahead, a room glowing with warmth, a table set with cheer. Behind, the cool of the dark hallway lifting the hairs on his neck. The phone in his pocket, calling him to duty.
It had taken so much to get him here, to the threshold. He couldn’t bring himself to retreat from the door, to tear himself away.
He dug for the phone, lifted it to his ear, spoke the words. “Do you need my help?”
A draft from the hall blew in, snuffed out the yellow and orange candles on the table. Black smoke spiraled up from the wicks. Mia searched his face, as if looking for something she could no longer find.
Through a staticky connection came a single syllable: “Yes.”
It took a split second for Evan to recognize the voice.
It was Jack’s.
Keeping the phone pressed to his face, Evan dipped his head apologetically and backed away from the light.
Acknowledgments
Last year, Orphan X introduced Evan Smoak to the world. It is no small feat in this day and age to bring a new character to readers, and I would like to thank the exceptional crew at Minotaur Books for doing it so beautifully. Andrew Martin, Hannah Braaten, Hector DeJean, Jennifer Enderlin, Paul Hochman, Kelley Ragland, Sally Richardson, Martin Quinn—Evan and I look forward to working with you for many years to come.
I must also acknowledge Rowland White at Michael Joseph/Penguin Group UK, as well as Izzie Coburn and the sales team, Ellie Hughes, Lee Motley, Matt Waterson, and their counterparts in Australia and New Zealand, for an equally astounding job.
And my reps, the best in the business:
—Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron Priest, John Richmond, and Melissa Edwards of the Aaron Priest Agency
—Caspian Dennis of the Abner Stein Agency
—Trevor Astbury, Rob Kenneally, Peter Micelli, and Michelle Weiner of Creative Artists Agency
—Stephen F. Breimer of Bloom, Hergott, Diemer et al, and Marc H. Glick of Glick & Weintraub
And Evan’s circle of consultants:
—Geoffrey Baehr, the brain
—Billy S____, the muscle
—Brian Shiers, the fighter
—Michael Borohovski (cofounder and CTO of Tinfoil Security), the intrusion engineer
—Melissa Hurwitz and Bret Nelson, the M.D.s
—Philip Eisner, the wordsmith
—Eddie Gonzalez, the translator of street slang
—Maureen Sugden, the (finest) copyeditor
—Bob Mosier, the automobile virtuoso
—Tore Saso, the banking expert
—Dana Kaye, the publicist (who fought Evan’s every effort to stay off the grid)
All errors are mine. These folks don’t make mistakes.
I’m also compelled to thank readers, booksellers, and librarians for embracing Evan Smoak the way you have. You make it all worthwhile.
And my family—Delinah, Rose, Natalie, my parents, my sister, and Simba and Cairo. I’m blessed to have you.
Also by Gregg Hurwitz
FEATURING EVAN SMOAK
Orphan X
OTHER NOVELS
The Tower
Minutes to Burn
Do No Harm
The Kill Clause
The Program
Troubleshooter
Last Shot
The Crime Writer
Trust No One
They’re Watching
You’re Next
The Survivor
Tell No Lies
Don’t Look Back
FOR YOUNG ADULTS
The Rains
About the Author
Gregg Hurwitz is a New York Times bestselling author of fifteen thrillers, including, most recently, Orphan X. Critically acclaimed, Hurwitz is a two-time finalist for the International Thriller Writers’ Best Novel prize and a finalist for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Steel Dagger. Hurwitz is also a screenwriter, TV producer, and comic book writer. The first book in the Evan Smoak series, Orphan X, has been published in twenty-one languages. Hurwitz lives in Los Angeles. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
1. What He Needs to Know
2. The Social Contract
3. War Machine
4. Clean as a Scalpel
5. The Eyes of the Data-Mining Beast
6. Struck Oil
7. The Inevitable Gurgle
8. His Own Dollhouse
9. Our Lady of Holy Death
10. The Strange Language of Intimacy
11. No Longer the Same Place
12. Magical Machinations
13. Last Glance Back
14. Rambo in a Bespoke Shirt
15. Back-Alley Philosophers
16. Faithful Companions
17. Beautiful Monster
18. Flesh and Bone
19. Somewhere Much, Much Worse
20. No End Point
21. In Trouble
22. Divine Right
23. Destroying Angel
24. A Complex, Sticky Business
25. Not Very Nice
26. Man or Nature
27. Six in Total
28. The Grim Reapress
29. Your Bad Self
30. Someone’s Idea of a Library
31. A Hard Man
32. Ready
33. The Inexpressible
34. What It Is You Do
35. Into the Snowy White
36. A Real Fighter
37. More Animal Than Human
38. A Bad Night’s Work
39. To the Brink
40. People Who Deserve It
41. No Ready Answer
42. Corners of His Mind
43. Unleash Hell
44. Celebration
45. A Different Kind of Ruckus
46. All the Honey
47. Collision Avoidance
48. Some Bizarre Mating Dance
49. Flicker of Coldness
50. Making His Preparations
51. A Shout into the Abyss
52. Some Kind of Advantage
53. Some Delicacies
54. Bad Dogs
55. Almost There
56. Mostly Certain
57. A Very Persuasive Call
58. Cold
59. Reborn
60. The Only Person Worse Than Us
61. To Do Harm
62. That Gnawing Feeling
63. The People No One Wants
64. The Slender Man
The Nowhere Man--An Orphan X Novel Page 32