He looked down, and the grass got blurry and the walkway and the roses and the street beyond.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not that smart.”
He turned around.
And he lifted his gaze.
64
A Forever Fall
After loading up the truck vaults with the required gear, Evan stopped by Joey’s on his way to the desert. Construction trucks lined the block, and workers busied themselves installing a premium steel-front door and replacing the broken light fixtures.
Evan stepped past them, heading for the stairs, and climbed to the second floor. Joey’s door was open, and she was ushering a repairman out, holding Dog the dog by the collar so he wouldn’t scramble to freedom. His stitches had come out, the horseshoe scar marking his chest proudly.
Evan entered, and Dog rammed his nose into his crotch until Evan crouched and scratched behind his ears. A big fluffy red dog bed lay beneath the pull-up bar, a new addition.
“God,” Joey said. “All the construction’s been a friggin’ nightmare. They’re putting in new security windows on every floor.”
“Yeah,” Evan said. “I saw a notice downstairs.”
He sensed Joey’s attention sharpen and kept his gaze on the dog.
“Right,” she said. “From the new owner.”
Evan examined a hangnail.
“Do you know where this new owner’s from?” she said. “I mean, that’s the sort of thing you’d research, right?”
“I guess a consortium out of Abu Dhabi.”
“A consortium,” she said. “Out of Abu Dhabi.”
He could feel her eyes lasering through him.
“I can just move up the block, you know,” she said.
Evan kept petting Dog. “I can buy that building, too.”
She let her hands slap to her sides. “You’re beyond impossible.”
Evan said, “I’m thinking that things might change soon—”
“What does that mean?”
“For the better. That my life might get … more peaceful.”
“Peaceful?” Joey said. “Who wants peaceful?”
“And I want to know you’re safe, too.”
“What are you talking about, X? What are you gonna do?”
“I’ll tell you once it’s done.”
He headed out, and she yelled after him, “Given your peaceful new life, maybe you could take the stupid dog!”
He shut the door behind him.
Outside, he hesitated and listened. Through the door panels, he heard Joey’s footsteps creak the floorboards. The crack of her knees as she knelt.
And then she spoke in a baby voice he’d never have imagined she was capable of. “Who’s a good boy?” He heard the jingle of Dog’s collar as she petted him. “Who’s the best, best, most lovey-faced puppy in the whole wide world? Yes, you are! Yes, you are!”
Grinning, he descended the stairs.
As he climbed into his truck, the RoamZone dinged with a text from Joey.
It said, I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU BOUGHT THE BUILDING. U’D BETTER CHILLAX.
Evan typed his one-word response. Before sending, he stared at the screen, a smirk curling his lips. Then he deleted the message, took off the caps lock, and typed again.
kay.
* * *
As Evan rode the 60 Freeway east into the Mojave, the sun set with blistering beauty. By the time he pulled off into the arid scrubland, the earth was lit with oranges and pinks. He drove until there was not a road or building in sight and then another twenty minutes after that.
When he finally stopped, the sun had freshly vanished, the sky backlit with an ambient glow. From the truck vault, he grabbed a three-man tent, popped it up on the dirt, and then lowered shades over the mesh windows to seal them tightly.
If there was to be a live video feed, he couldn’t afford to have anything in the background. No star positions, no distinctive geographic features in the landscape, no sourceable plant life indigenous to the region.
He went back to the truck, hauled out a Pelican case, and brought it inside the dark nylon dome. He pulled up the yagi directional antenna and then set up the SMA connector and the omni stubby antenna. Within seconds the tiny makeshift GSM base station had stealthily hooked into the network.
Teasing the RoamZone from his pocket, he turned it on and enabled the Wi-Fi hot spot, joining the LTE network. Before leaving Castle Heights, he’d slotted in a brand-new SIM card and moved the phone service from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to Istanbul.
It was full dark outside, the tent lit only by the phone. The cicadas were going at it aggressively, and he played with audio filters until he’d dampened all background noise.
He dialed the number and told the switchboard operator, “Dark Road.”
After the click he punched in the extension.
It rang a half dozen times.
And then President Victoria Donahue-Carr answered. “I’m glad you reestablished contact,” she said. “I’m going to give you another number enabled for video feed.”
Evan did not answer.
She read off a number.
He hung up.
He dialed the second phone number through an encoded videotelephony software program.
The line gave a spritely trill, and then the president appeared.
She was sitting on a high-backed couch in the Oval with a Secret Service agent at her side. Having been broken up into digital packets and bounced around the world, the connection was grainy, and when Evan leaned closer, he saw that the agent was not rank-and-file but Special Agent in Charge Naomi Templeton.
Broad shoulders, tough bearing, bluntly cut blond hair.
She was one of the few people to have seen Orphan X in the flesh.
“We can’t make anything out,” the president said. “It’s just black.”
Evan moved the RoamZone closer to his face, showing only the strip of his eyes and the bridge of his nose.
Naomi looked over at Donahue-Carr. “That’s him, Madam President.”
Donahue-Carr straightened on the couch. Her hands were resting open on one knee. A practiced pose to disguise her tension. “Thank you,” she said to Naomi. “That’s enough.”
She and Evan waited while Naomi exited the Oval through a panel door that disappeared seamlessly as it shut.
The president said, “Have you considered my offer?”
“What are the conditions?” Evan said.
It was the first time he’d spoken, and his words had an impact. Donahue-Carr’s hands flared up from her knee, but then she remembered herself and settled her posture once more.
“We can’t pardon you, not officially, since you don’t exist,” she said. “But we’ll stop coming after you if you stop coming after us.”
Evan said nothing.
“Think about it, Orphan X. You could have a normal life. Live like a human being.”
Evan thought about Mia in his doorway last night. Her hands on his cheeks. The taste of her mouth.
“Are you still there? I’m seeing only blackness.”
Evan said, “I’m here.”
“There is one more condition,” she said. “There can be no more extracurricular activities. Of any kind. You’ve been rumored to run missions of a … personal nature.”
She waited for Evan to respond, but he gave nothing up.
“We cannot have a former government asset with your training operating in any capacity,” she added. “Understand?”
“Yes,” he said, and hung up.
* * *
When he arrived back at Castle Heights, a late-night get-together was in full swing in the so-called social environment. A number of residents slurped Nespresso and gabbed on the armless love seats.
Johnny Middleton told an animated story, and at the punch line Hugh Walters threw back his head and slapped his knee. Even the Honorable Pat Johnson from 12F had made a rare appearance, throwing some ham-handed flirting in the direction of Lorilee Smithson.<
br />
Mia wasn’t among them. But Evan figured that given his newly minted status, they’d have time enough to resume the conversation they’d begun in his doorway.
Johnny shifted, and Evan caught a glance of Ida Rosenbaum sitting in the center with queen-bee aplomb. Her feet were up on the synthetic leather ottoman, her hands folded across her purse. Her vintage marcasite-and-amethyst necklace was on proud display against her white cable-knit sweater. Now and then her fingertips crept up to find assurance that it was still there.
Bathed in the sounds of laughter and conversation, Evan walked from the garage to the elevators.
None of them noticed him.
* * *
Once home he headed straight for the kitchen and liberated the bottle of CLIX from its horizontal recline in the freezer drawer. He shook it over ice until his palms stuck to the stainless steel. Then he wrapped a towel around the cocktail shaker and gave it another trouncing.
He poured the vodka into a martini glass frosted opaque from the freezer and plucked a single basil leaf from the living wall for garnish.
He sipped.
White pepper, a hint of cinnamon, and something else bordering on sweet. Vanilla? It was as clean a finish as he could remember, competitive with Kauffman, which was high praise indeed.
He’d kept the lights off, the workout pods looming in the darkness of the great room like slumbering beasts. He wondered what exactly he would do with all his newfound time.
He drifted over to the floor-to-ceiling windows. For once the Los Angeles night seemed not expansive and filled with opportunity but vertiginous, a forever fall into a chasm.
If he wasn’t the Nowhere Man, who was he?
He supposed he was going to have to start finding out.
He stood there at the wall of glass, staring through the heart of Beverly Hills to the jagged teeth of the downtown skyline as he finished his drink.
It was almost sufficient, twenty hours later, to clear the aftertaste of Smirnoff from his palate.
When he was done, he washed the glass and cocktail shaker, dried them, and put them away. He looked around.
It was as though no one lived here.
He wandered through the darkness back to his bedroom, once more giving the heavy bag a spin kick that jounced it on its chain.
In the bedroom he pulled his shirt off with a groan. As he looked at his floating mattress, exhaustion hit him in the face like a shovelful of wet cement.
The pocket of his cargo pants vibrated.
The RoamZone.
Odd.
Before driving home, he’d already shattered the SIM card he’d used to contact the president and replaced it. He hadn’t tasked Max with finding the next client. Which meant that no one should be making use of this phone number.
Now or ever again.
Orphan X had received a pardon. The Nowhere Man was retired.
Caller ID showed a familiar international number with Argentina’s country code. The missed call from earlier.
Puzzled, Evan thumbed to pick up. The line was thick with static.
He was accustomed to answering as he always did: Do you need my help? He paused, momentarily speechless. How did ordinary people answer the phone?
He said, “Hello?”
“Evan?”
It was the same voice he’d heard on the voice-mail recording, feminine and slightly throaty. As the shock of hearing his name reverberated, he didn’t say anything, and for a moment she didn’t either.
“Evan,” she said again. “It’s your mother.”
Acknowledgments
This year I lost a dear friend, my attorney, Marc H. Glick, who was the first person to sign me as a writer when I was a mere twenty-one years of age. François Mauriac observed, “Each of us is like a desert, and a literary work is like a cry from the desert, or like a pigeon let loose with a message in its claws, or like a bottle thrown into the sea. The point is: to be heard—even if by one single person.” For me, Marc was that single person, that first single person. The meaning of that to me is inexpressible. May we all live up to his example; may we all try to be the one who hears a new voice and, in joining our voice to it, gives it the strength and courage to speak alone.
I also wish to express my thanks to the squad of operators who backed X in his latest mission:
—Keith Kahla, Andrew Martin, Sally Richardson, Don Weisberg, Jennifer Enderlin, Alice Pfeifer, Hector DeJean, Paul Hochman, Kelley Ragland, and Martin Quinn at Minotaur Books
—Rowland White, my superb editor, as well as Louise Moore, Laura Nicol, Ariel Pakier, Jon Kennedy, Christina Ellicott, Bethan Moore (spirits consultant), and the rest of my fine team at Michael Joseph/Penguin Group UK
—Maureen Sugden, my world-class copyeditor in the west
—Lisa Erbach Vance and Aaron Priest of the Aaron Priest Agency
—Caspian Dennis at the Abner Stein Agency
—Trevor Astbury, Rob Kenneally, Steve Lafferty, Joel Begleiter, and Michelle Weiner of Creative Artists Agency
—Stephen F. Breimer of Bloom, Hergott, Diemer et al.
—James Bennett, my federal-deputy friend, who was instrumental in helping me get X behind bars
—Lauren Crais, who weighed in with legal counsel and aided me in getting everyone into an exceeding amount of trouble
—Billy Stojack, who lives on in Tommy
—Kurata Tadashi, for always covering X’s six o’clock
—Geoff Baehr, Philip Eisner, Dr. Melissa Hurwitz, Dana Kaye, and Dr. Bret Nelson
—Simba and Cairo, 225 pounds of menace and delight
—RLSBH, know that you are loved
—NCH, the Best in the West
—Delinah Raya, endless grit, endless heart
And to my readers:______ _ __ ___ _____. (To receive the cipher to read this message, sign up for the Orphan X comms newsletter at www.gregghurwitz.net.)
Also by Gregg Hurwitz
THE ORPHAN X NOVELS
Orphan X
The Nowhere Man
Hellbent
Out of the Dark
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
YOUNG ADULT NOVELS
The Rains
Last Chance
About the Author
Gregg Hurwitz is the author of the New York Times bestselling Orphan X novels, most recently Out of the Dark. Critically acclaimed, his novels have been international bestsellers, graced top ten lists, and been published in thirty languages. Additionally, he’s sold scripts to many of the major studios, and written, developed, and produced television for various networks. Hurwitz lives in Los Angeles. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
1. The Terror
2. Puzzles He Didn’t Know How to Solve
3. Ordinary
4. A Healthy Touch of Paranoia
5. Social Environment
6. So Much More to Wreck
7. Like Torn Rubber
8. Complicated
9. Bedside Manner
10. Area of Expertise
11. Much More Force, Very Specifically Directed
12. A Thousand Brittle P
ieces
13. The Badness of My Heart
14. Take Names
15. Predacious Douchenozzle
16. System Overload
17. Right Side Up and Upside Down
18. The Terrible Intimacy of the Mundane
19. Not That Fight
20. Living Plaything
21. I Know What You Did
22. Not Yet
23. The Snack Docent
24. Amphetamized
25. An Unusually Painful Slip
26. Small Talk
27. The Edge of Visibility
28. Eleventh-Hour Surprise
29. A Man Moves Through the Night
30. Trapped Sweat and Spilled Blood
31. The Whole Story
32. Awful Shit
33. Reduced
34. Nightmare Scenario
35. Into the Lion’s Mouth
36. Deadweight
37. Whac-a-Mole
38. Worse to Come
39. No Margin for Error
40. Your Average Lowlife
41. Your Usual Four-Alarm Emergency
42. A Nice Visible Presence
43. Arrangements of a Muscular Nature
44. Mantrap
45. Deploying a Mop-Based Weapon
46. Some Martha Stewart Shit
47. Kill You Tonight
48. I Saw What You Did
49. An Orphan’s Best Friend
50. Contingency Plans to Our Contingency Plans
51. A Troubled Son of a Bitch
52. Last Resort
53. Fallout
54. Urgent
55. An Elaborate Piece of Business
56. The Fucking Mary Kay Lady
57. Taking Steps
58. Beautiful, Furtive Choreography
59. Guardian Angel
60. Fly Away
61. Speechless Terror
62. God or Fate or Whoever Runs the Universe
63. Tipping Point
64. A Forever Fall
Acknowledgments
Also by Gregg Hurwitz
About the Author
Copyright
Into the Fire Page 36