Evan stood beneath the cover of the oak trees, staring across the weed-addled front yard, holding his emotions in check.
Jack had ministered to this house scrupulously, showing it the kind of rigor that for him expressed love. He’d once spent an entire morning polishing the door hinges with white toothpaste and an old gun cloth. When he was done, each plate threw off a reflection as clear as a mirror.
How you do anything is how you do everything.
Evan remembered waking up that first morning of his new life, how the dormer bedroom seemed to float above the forest, above Earth itself. A comfortable bed with clean sheets. Shelves holding books ordered by height. The surface of the desk polished to a high shine. A bouquet of unsharpened pencils rising from a mug, the bloom of possibility itself.
It had been the first place he could ever call his own.
A blue jay hopped from branch to branch overhead, plumed head nodding as it emitted a balloon-losing-air squeal. The dusky scent of the woods filled Evan’s nostrils. He knew the smell of this place in his bones.
He gazed at the front window until he pictured Jack standing there gazing out, baseball-catcher build and bulldog head, his bunched crow’s-feet lending his eyes that perennial hint of amusement. Jack, who always knew the answers before Evan did. Jack, who’d cracked open the world and served it to Evan on a platter. Jack, the closest thing to family he’d ever known.
Jack beckoned impatiently with a hand. Waiting for a red carpet, X? C’mon, let’s get ’er done.
Evan stepped out of the tree line onto the apron of cleared land.
Keeping his face pointed at the ground, he walked to the center of the front yard and paused in the wide open, exposed to the heavens.
There were eyes up there.
* * *
The four men approached from the points of the compass rose, a knot tightening around the two-story farmhouse.
Wade Collins.
Two cousins.
One Orphan.
Communicating through Secret Service–issue earpieces, they paused in their respective spots at the forest’s edge.
North, south, west, east.
Holt gave the order, and they closed in.
* * *
Evan perched on a wooden stool he’d found on its side in the kitchen, its edges smoothed and oiled by the touch of countless hands. Jack had once sat watch on this very stool in this very spot at the rear of the entryway facing the front door, his back to the dark cavern of the kitchen.
Evan remembered his quiet focus across the seventy-two-hour span, the way the shotgun lay across his knees, how he’d drunk from a thermos and otherwise never moved. His vigilance had allowed seventeen-year-old Evan to more or less go about his normal existence, training in the garage, studying in his bedroom, eating over the kitchen sink. The threat had passed, but the image of Jack’s sentinel form on the stool, unbudging and proficient, had stayed with Evan.
It said, This is how we protect what is dear to us.
Soon enough, given Naomi’s order to keep the farmhouse under constant satellite surveillance, Evan would have a chance to follow Jack’s lead.
Night had descended on the patch of Virginia forest. Aside from a pale starlight glow at the windows, the house was full dark. Most of the furniture had been carted off already, leaving the floors bare and unacceptably dusty. Evan felt as though he were inhabiting the shell of his former life.
He knew the sounds of this house. Every last creaking board, every squeak of a doorknob.
He sensed the men’s approach before he heard them. A vibration of the floor. A scent in the air. A pressure against his skin.
He heard the melody of a slender rake tickling lock cylinders at the back door. Beneath the kitchen window, a boot tread compressed a dead leaf. In the living room, the pane issued a complaint as it pressed against the frame. Straight ahead, the doorknob turned silently.
They were attacking from the cardinal points, requiring him to cover 360 degrees. But it also disadvantaged them, since they’d have to mind their crossfire. Evan guessed that Orphan A would hold back, use the Collins boys for cannon fodder, and strike once Evan’s attention was compromised.
One thing was certain: When it went down, it was going to go down fast.
Evan lifted the .357 from its resting place on his thigh.
And he closed his eyes.
Listening as if he were a newborn, as if he were hearing every sound for the first time.
The back door was breached first, creaking inward. There came a loud snap and then a muffled cry of pain as the heavy-duty rattrap taped over the light switch deployed.
Evan wheeled off the stool, striking a modified Weaver stance, sighting across the kitchen island. With the rush of bracing air, an earthy forest smell gusted in at him. Beside the partially open door, a dark form was silhouetted against the slice of night blackness, one elongated hand flapping in agony, his chest presented conveniently wide, spread like a shooting-target.
Evan put a round through his thorax and chased it with a head shot.
The man fell away and landed with a peaceful puff on the fallen leaves outside.
Behind him Evan heard the front door yawn open, and he threw himself to the side, rolling over his shoulder and coming up in a high-kneel shooting position.
The man—the last Collins cousin—came in with the FN P90 already barking, chewing up the stool that Evan had occupied a half second before. Evan shot him through the hollow of the throat.
Oil welled from the hole, and the man went to his knees, shuddering the planks of the foyer, his mouth agape.
Evan put the next shot between his teeth, knocking him back across the threshold onto the porch.
Evan’s position by the front door ensured that friendly-fire concerns would prevent the two remaining men from lighting up the entryway.
Already he heard the whine of the compressed floorboard in the living room, the spot where the corner of the Navajo throw rug used to lie. He started to pivot when he sensed a wall of movement flying in from the side, Wade Collins gripping the compact submachine gun in both hands, punching the butt end at Evan.
Evan wouldn’t have time to bring the barrel around, so he ducked the blow, clenched the steel frame of the Smith & Wesson, and brought knuckles and steel to bear in an upper cut. He connected squarely, the jaw giving off a pleasing crack.
He was alarmed at how little the big man swayed from the impact.
Wade was gargantuan, sheathed in muscle, his torso the girth of a refrigerator. If Evan allowed him to get his bearings, he’d be destroyed.
Before Wade could recover, Evan dug his feet into the floor to firm his base and threw a horizontal elbow into the broken bone, knocking Wade’s jaw right off the hinge.
This drew a reaction.
Bellowing through his shattered face, Wade grabbed Evan, toppling onto him and smashing him into the floor. The FN P90 clattered away. Wade’s earpiece popped free, bouncing on its clear coil. Evan’s gun hand was pinned beneath Wade’s mass, his finger wrenched clear of the trigger guard.
Ramming the bar of his forearm across Evan’s throat, Wade pressured down with all his weight, then clutched at his hip holster and came up with a SIG P229. With his free hand, Evan caught Wade’s wrist, forcing the pistol to the side. It fired into the floorboard a half foot from Evan’s head.
Evan’s ears screamed, a barbed hum shearing through the center of his skull. He caught a twisted, upside-down view of the doorway to the kitchen just as Orphan A pivoted around the corner, submachine gun raised.
Evan’s gun hand was trapped beneath Wade’s leg, the revolver out of reach.
Wade’s forearm crushed into Evan’s windpipe, cinching off air.
The P229 wobbled in Wade’s massive grip as he forced it through Evan’s resistance back toward his face.
Evan couldn’t hold him off much longer; the meat of Wade’s biceps was the size of a softball. He stared up into the broken maw of Wade’s mouth,
a few teeth loosed from the gums.
Behind him he sensed Orphan A clear the threshold into the entryway.
Evan slowed everything down.
He sensed the trickle of sweat making a snail-like crawl down his temple.
Watched the drop of blood fall from Wade’s lip and splash against his forehead.
Noted the descent of Orphan A’s lead boot to the floor.
Evan took the predicament apart and put it together again to his own liking.
The moves went faster than the beats of a drumroll.
He released Wade’s gun hand, the abrupt lack of resistance causing the SIG to swing straight across Evan’s face to the other side before Wade could react and pull the trigger.
The bullet bucked the floor two inches from the left side of Evan’s head, pain stunning his eardrum. Wade’s weight shifted, his gun hand flailing and then thumping to the floor as he righted his balance.
Evan lunged for the dropped submachine gun on the floor and squeezed off a burst at Orphan A. The FN P90 was designed for the smallest kick possible, allowing Evan to get off a good number of rounds even one-handed, even stretched out flat on his back, even firing upside down.
The rounds flew wild, peppering the ceiling, but they were sufficient to make Orphan A dive back into the kitchen, pinball off the island, and scramble for cover.
The shells ejected out of the bottom of the inverted FN P90, spouting up into the air, the hot brass pinging off Wade’s ruined face.
Wade knocked the submachine gun from Evan’s grip, and Evan rolled with his lunge, the two men tussling on the floor. Evan’s revolver slid off by the stairs, both men gripping Wade’s pistol, which wavered beneath their faces, the barrel rising parallel to their noses.
The slide was actuated from the last shot, the hammer back in single-action mode. Once the gun was aimed, the trigger would require only 4.4 pounds of pressure.
Given Wade’s size, the arm-wrestling match could end only one way. Before Wade could force the muzzle to Evan’s head, Evan relaxed pressure, jerking an elbow into the wreckage of Wade’s jaw. As Wade recoiled in pain, Evan flipped them once more so he was on top.
He couldn’t overpower Wade to turn the gun, so he reared back and then jammed his full weight down on the SIG, pressing its side into Wade’s cheek.
Wade’s eyes flared as Evan tugged the trigger.
As the pistol fired off blindly into the kitchen, the slide snapped back an inch and three-quarters, its sharp lower edge gouging through Wade’s cheek.
Instinctively, Wade released the pistol, flinching away, and Evan rotated the gun around and shot him through the side of the head.
He looked up to see Orphan A staring back from the kitchen, his eyes poked up over the top of the island, submachine gun aimed.
Evan dove off Wade, rolling for the stairs, gathering his Smith & Wesson along the way.
Rounds chased him to the second floor, chewing up the balustrade and rails. He dove across the landing, tumbling gracelessly down the length of the hall and smashing through the door of his old dormer bedroom.
He had a single instant to take in his cramped childhood room—the single bed now missing the mattress, the desk yanked out from the wall, the rows of empty bookshelves looking down like toothless mouths.
He heard Orphan A slot a fresh fifty-round mag into his weapon downstairs. Rising, he looked wildly around. There was nowhere to go.
He had a wheel gun with two bullets, and he was up against a fellow Orphan brandishing a submachine gun that would bring nearly a thousand rounds a minute.
The familiar nighttime view looked back at him from the window, unmarred by any screen.
He eased the pane up and stepped outside, the heels of his boots finding the half-inch ledge of flashing securing the first-floor gutter. Gripping the peeling shutter with one hand, he eased the window closed and flattened to the side of the house just as Orphan A’s shadow darkened the hall.
One heel slipped off the tiny ledge, and Evan strained to force it back. Tightening his grip on the shutter with his right hand, he aimed the Smith & Wesson at the window with his left.
A bank of clouds obscured the moon, disseminating its glow across the oak-tree canopy, a blanket of silver.
He tried not to breathe too hard.
He tried not to breathe at all.
A burst of rounds nearly startled him off the side of the house. They shattered out the window, erupting through the wall just above his head.
He ducked hard, the shutter wobbling away from the wall, swinging him out onto one heel again. The shutter started to give.
Even over the high warble of the ringing in his ears, he heard chunks of the wall hitting the floor inside.
He tried to edge himself back onto the ledge but saw now that the top shutter hinge was pulling free of the wall, the screw protruding enough to show off a finger’s width of threading.
As Evan stared helplessly at the loosening hinge, Orphan A’s boots creaked into the bedroom.
62
Final Look Back
Rotated out away from the second-floor wall, a leg swinging in the open air, Evan fought to keep one heel dug into the flashing. His fingers cramped around the top of the shutter. The hinge plate strained against the screw, forcing it out another quarter twist. If Evan fell, he’d either break a leg or wind up an open target on the ground below.
He rammed the gun through his belt, yanked his knife from a cargo pocket, and snapped it open. With his full weight fighting against him, he seated the tip of the knife in the flathead slot of the screw, cranking it a half turn to the right. He adjusted his grip on the knife handle and cranked it again, the screw tightening back into the wall.
Just enough for the hinge to hold.
A darkness fell across the sill.
Evan dropped the folding knife.
Yanked the pistol from his belt.
As the shutter swung him wide once more, he fired through the window.
He heard the smack of lead hitting meat.
The submachine gun knocking against the floor.
The hinge ripped the screw loose, the shutter tearing away from the wall. Evan grabbed for the window, his hands landing on the lower frame, the teeth of the remaining shards slicing through his flesh.
But he didn’t let go.
He hauled himself up over the sill, jagged glass scraping his stomach, and tumbled into his old bedroom.
No sign of Orphan A.
A pool of blood glimmered on the floor by Evan’s face. The FN P90 rested over by the desk, still rocking. Near the doorway Orphan A’s pistol lay discarded.
Evan stood.
He walked out into the hall.
The drops of blood made Orphan A easy to track. A streak pointed into Jack’s room, the second on the left past the stairs.
Evan followed. Before he could reach the doorway, he heard the thump of Orphan A’s shoulders hitting the wall right beside him.
He heard the man slide to a sitting position.
Evan put his own shoulders to the wall and lowered himself to sit back-to-back with him.
Two Orphans, separated by a single wall.
Evan said, “How you doing?”
“Not so hot,” Orphan A said. “Thanks for asking.”
A dull ache throbbed in Evan’s eardrums, the volume turned down on the world, his head stuffed with gauze. He checked his palms. Broken glass glinted in the bloody slits. “Critical?” he asked.
“Gut shot, so yeah. Looks that way.”
Four and a half inches away, Orphan A’s head tilted back to thump his side of the wall.
Evan said, “I was told you had a score to settle with me. Beyond Bennett, I mean.”
“You could say that.” Orphan A’s breaths took on a wheeze. “It was that woman you killed.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in.
“The heroin addict?” he asked. “The one I left in the abandoned textile factory?”
“What?
No. No.”
Evan waited for Orphan A to catch his breath.
Finally A spoke again. “I was developing her as an asset, but it developed into more than that. Like it does, I guess. I don’t know. Never happened to me before. Never since.” A few more ragged breaths. “A Chechen girl. Man, she was a princess-warrior all right. Jet-black hair down to the middle of her back. Hazel eyes that glowed. I was supposed to gather DNA from her. You know, strands of hair. Cells from her toothbrush.” Orphan A paused. “A copper-washed steel shell of a sniper round with her fingerprint on it.”
Evan would have thought that the last strain of punishing revelations had hardened him against further injury, but there it was, a new blade twisting between his ribs.
Orphan A continued. “She was pregnant, turns out. I didn’t know till later. The Russians caught up to her soon enough, put her in a forced-labor camp in Krasnoyarsk.” He coughed a few times. “Chechen women don’t do so well there. Pregnant Chechen women do even worse. They kept locking her in the ice insulator—a cold-punishment cell the size of a roomy coffin. She was tough. She made it through the first fifteen-day sentence. And the second.” His labored breaths filled the pause. “It was the fifth that got her.”
Evan cradled the revolver in his hands.
Down to one round.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I never knew I was supplying the shell that would get her killed,” Orphan A said. “Guess I never wanted to know. It’s my fault, really. For thinking I could have more in this life.” Another wet cough. “At the end of the day, isn’t it always our fault?”
Evan placed the snub nose of the revolver against the dry wall to his side.
“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
He fired.
He heard Orphan A’s body absorb the shot and then slump over onto the floor.
He sat for a while breathing the scent of his old house.
It was all so goddamned sad if he thought about it.
He imagined Jack emerging from his bedroom door, brow twisted in disdain. You done bellyaching yet? That’s good, because you got work to do. On your feet, son. On your feet.
Out of the Dark Page 33