Orphan X: A Novel (38 page)

Hopping back into his truck, he pulled out and drove away just as the screaming cruisers screeched onto the scene. As he waited on the clogged freeway ramp, he pulled up his shirt to check his stomach. The sutures had torn through the skin, the wound gaping, but the artery had not ruptured.

He ran the freeway for a solid hour before pulling off and checking the silver box.

Ten fingernails. A contact lens.

He poked at the lens, and it animated, shimmering with a computer screen glow.

Okay, then.

He drove to a CVS pharmacy and bought contact solution. Back in his car, parked at the edge of the lot, he soaked the lens thoroughly in case it had been poisoned.

Then he popped it into his eye.

The fingernails pressed on with ease.

He waited.

A cursor appeared. It blinked red for a time.

And then green.

Evan waited, motionless.

A single line scrolled into existence.
ORPHAN O?

NO
, Evan typed, and logged off.

55

Silent Work

Later that night, after restitching his wound at home and cleaning himself up, Evan exited the elevator at the sixth floor of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center on Sunset Boulevard. Smiling at the charge nurse posted at the station, he lifted two weighty bags filled with mediocre food from the cafeteria downstairs. “Just coming back in with chow for my fellow car-crash victims.”

She noted his black eye and nodded him past.

A research session in the Vault had fulfilled his worst expectations, leading him here.

Strings of silver tinsel adorned the halls, Christmas decorations that felt more like an afterthought. Room 614 came up on his right, and he snatched the chart off the door and shouldered through the curtains, unsure how bad it would be.

A man lay unconscious, his head mummy-wrapped, his right arm in a cast, one leg in traction. A tracheal tube disappeared down his throat, but a quick glance at the screens showed him to be breathing above the ventilator.

Memo Vasquez had finally landed in the system.

Evan eyed the charts, noting the fractures, contusions, the collapsed lung, the intestinal perf. The drug dealers had exacted a payment for their missing drugs from Vasquez’s body. But had they also fulfilled their promise?

Evan set a hand gently on Memo’s arm, and a moment later the man stirred. Dark eyes peered out from beneath the bandages. His hand lifted an inch above the sheets, and Evan took it. Memo squeezed weakly. His head was cocked back at an uncomfortable angle.

Evan said, “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” He braced himself, then asked, “Did they take Isa?”

The ventilator shoved air into Memo’s lungs. Memo released Evan’s hand and made a small writing gesture. Evan brought him a pen and pad.

In a trembling hand, he wrote,
“sí.”
Then, painstakingly, he wrote,
“yor face?”

“You should see the other guy,” Evan said. “Now, can you tell me where to find the bad men?”

The hand moved again. It took the better part of five minutes for Memo to write out the location of a warehouse. Not an address but a rough set of directions, a mix of Spanish and phonetic English. It would be sufficient.

Evan tore off the top sheet of paper. “Everything will be fine now.”

Memo gestured again for the pencil. With a loose grip, he etched a few more words.
“they will deport us. i hav no kard i am ilegul.”

Evan set down the pad by his hand. “Not anymore,” he said. “Your name found its way onto the approved list in Immigration Service’s database. They’ll be mailing a green card to your house in the morning. A gift for the holidays.” He gave the chart a last glance and set it down on the tray. “They really worked you over.”

The stubby pencil scratched some more.
“U shud see ather guy.”

Evan smiled. He sensed a glimmer of amusement in Memo’s eyes before they darkened with concern.

“Rest up,” Evan said. He patted the wrapped hand and turned to leave. “I got this.”

*   *   *

From the asbestos roof of the condemned warehouse, Evan slipped through the high, double-hung window, pivoting to grab the inside sill. His boots dangled ten feet above the concrete floor. He pushed off and landed on bent knees, letting his body collapse to the side so it wouldn’t absorb the impact all at once.

Though there was a torn twin mattress in the corner, the girl was sleeping on the floor. The small storage room was vacant, an excellent makeshift cell.

Bare walls conveyed the sounds of men arguing from the dilapidated manager’s office down the corridor. Through a skylight Evan had observed the three of them squabbling over digital scales—teardrop tattoos and prison ink and a security camera that possibly streamed to an off-site location. The rest of the former sweatshop was abandoned, one wall of the main floor collapsed, rubble strewn across rusted industrial looms.

Rising to his feet in the tiny space, Evan walked quietly to Isa, not wanting to startle her. As he drew near, he saw that she had forsaken the bed so her stuffed animal could sleep there. The pink teddy bear with the chewed ear was tucked in cozily beneath the sole sheet, its head resting on a pillow.

Evan rested a hand gently on the girl’s shoulder.

She roused. She might have been fourteen or fifteen, but it was hard to tell given her condition. The upward slant of her eyes, like they were smiling.

“Your father sent me,” Evan whispered.

She nodded, her tongue protruding slightly over her bottom lip.

He gestured to the pink teddy bear. “What’s her name?”

“Baby.”

“You’re taking care of her well.”

The words came soft and slurred. “
Sí.
She get scared easy.”

“She’s lucky to have you,” Evan said.

A bright, proud smile and a stubby thumbs-up.

“I’m going to go,” Evan said. “You stay here with her and make sure she feels safe, okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

Evan reached into his cargo pocket. “I’m gonna put this mask on now. Don’t let it frighten Baby. It’s not to frighten her.” He pulled on one made of black Polartec that covered his face, save for the band of his eyes.

“A mask.” She beamed up at him. “Like a superhero.”

“Like a superhero.” Evan unfolded his monocular night-vision headgear. It fit snugly, hugging his scalp, the high-res lens positioned over one eye, leaving both his hands free.

“Are you okay here alone for a little while?”

She pointed to the bed. “I’m not alone.”

“Of course.”

The sheathed combat knife pulled reassuringly at his belt. Gunshots would scare her. His work was going to have to be silent.

He set his hands gently on her shoulders and looked down at her with his Cyclops eye. “The lights are going to go off. But the cops will get here really soon after that. I’ll make sure of it. Okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

He drew the lock pick from his back pocket and tapped it against his knuckles. “You are a very brave young woman,” he said, turning to focus on the door handle.

“La puerta,”
she said. “It’s locked.”

“That’s okay.” He jiggled the torsion wrench, sliding the rake pick home. “I can go through doors.”

She blinked, and he was gone.

*   *   *

Later that night, back home in the open enclosure in his master bathroom, Evan set his palms against the tile, leaning into the punishingly hot blast. Water poured from the rainfall showerhead, washing dried crimson flecks from his face. He scrubbed at his hands and forearms, freeing rivulets of red. There was a lot of blood.

None of it was his.

56

The Tenth Commandment

Evan was enveloped in a deep, satisfying sleep when the buzz of his cell phone pulled him to the surface. He rolled off the floating ledge of his bed and reached for the RoamZone, fresh sutures straining in his stomach.

Before he could speak, Danika’s voice came at him. “Help me. Evan,
please.
I know I betrayed you, but I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have a choice.”

Her words came in bursts, and she was breathing hard, as if she were running.

“There are always choices,” Evan said.

“I don’t have anyone else.” Her footsteps grew louder, echoing off tight walls. A stairwell? “They don’t need me anymore. I’m expendable now.”

“Who’s after you?”

“The guy above Slatcher, I think. The guy behind everything.”

The chill of the concrete floor numbed his bare feet, and he realized only now that he was standing.

“I’m at your place,” she said.

Slowly, he turned his head to the bedroom door. “My place?”

The sound of a door slamming shut, and then she was panting in his ear. “The loft.”

He eased out a breath through clenched teeth.

“I came looking for you,” she said.

He moved through the bathroom, into the shower enclosure, through the tiled wall. “They know that location.”

“I’ve got nowhere else to go.” She was sobbing. “They paid off my loan. They owned me. If I didn’t deliver you, they were gonna—”

“I know all this.” Evan’s fingers were a flurry across the keyboard, and then the loft surveillance feeds came up.

There was the woman he still thought of as Katrin, her back to the closed front door, one arm flattened at her side as if she could hold off a battering ram, her other hand pressing what looked like a cheap prepaid phone to her cheek. Her chest surged with breaths, a flush creeping up the ivory skin of her neck.

“They promised me that every gunshot I heard would be a bullet through one of my daughter’s limbs.” She was crying freely now. “When we were in the motel, I thought they’d started already. I thought that’s what I was hearing. They were going to
maim
her. She may not want to see me, but she’s my daughter. My
daughter.
The only good thing I ever did. I fucked up and fucked up being a mom, but I couldn’t let them do it. No matter what, I couldn’t let them hurt my daughter.”

She moved off the door into the loft. And then, keeping the phone to her ear, she looked directly up into one of the surveillance cameras. An icy fingernail skimmed up Evan’s spine. She’d known about the cameras all along. For the three days he’d observed her, she hadn’t shown a single tell, those thousands of hours at poker tables serving her well.

“The man after you,” Evan said. “He gave you the passport?”

“No,” she said. “I never met him. Slatcher took me to pick it up.”

“Where?”

“The Federal Building. In Westwood.”

That fingernail returned, skimming the back of Evan’s neck, tightening his skin.

The Federal Building confirmed everything.

The cold of the Vault seeped into Evan’s bones, and he had to fight the urge to shudder.

“They told me what to do,” Danika said. “They told me everything to do. But now I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“You know too much,” Evan said. “They will find you as surely as I would.”

A few silent sobs racked her chest. “Please, Evan. I never made it right with Sammy. I don’t care if I die anymore, but I just want that chance first. I need you. I need your help.”

The Tenth and most important Commandment looped in his head:
Never let an innocent die.
She wasn’t innocent, but she was still
an
innocent. Every instinct in Evan’s body fought him. Decades of habit, muscle memory.

He had to force the words out. “I can’t help you.”

She was staring at the lens as if she could see him through it, though of course she could not. “
Can’t
or
won’t
?”

He stopped fighting the cold and let himself shiver. “Yes,” he said.

She stepped closer to the camera embedded in the hanging kitchen cabinets, peering up dolefully. “You’re gonna just leave me to them?”

Milk-white skin.

The curve of her hip.

Those plush, bloodred lips against his.

“I would’ve helped you,” he said. “If you’d trusted me, I would’ve fixed everything.”

“I know. I know that
now.
” Tracks glittered on her cheeks. “But they got me first.”

Over the line he heard a screech of tires, and then her gaze shot over to the giant glass wall.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “He’s here now. He’s pulling up. Evan, what do I do?”

Terror emanated off her.

Emotion welled in his throat. “I’m sorry, Danika.”

“Evan, tell me what to do. What do I do?” She ran across to the window, straining on her tiptoes to look down. Then she darted to the front door. She opened it, shrieked, slammed it closed again. “He’s in the hall, Evan!” She scrambled to the middle of the loft, craning her neck to look up, seemingly into his eyes. “Please. Goddamn it, Evan—help me,
please
!”

Never

let

an

innocent—

The front door rocketed open, a suppressed report sounded, and her head snapped to the side. She collapsed to a hip, her hands catching the floor, her stiff arms sliding her down gracefully, and then she lay on her side, expired.

A broad form eased into the room, shutting the door quietly behind him, shoulders turned to the main surveillance feeds. A few splinters cactused out where the dead bolt had torn through the inner frame. Though both locks were shot, the door could still close. From the hall nobody would notice anything amiss. Keeping his head lowered, the man walked over and put another suppressed round into Danika’s chest, her torso bucking. The pistol spun, clipping up into a tension-hold underarm holster, and then the man crouched to pick up Danika’s still-live prepaid phone.

As he stood, Charles Van Sciver lifted the phone to his face, looked into the main surveillance camera, and smiled.

“Hello, Evan,” he said.

57

Another Lit Window

A few more pounds on the frame, his cheeks even fuller, the ruddy complexion more pronounced.