Hellbent--An Orphan X Novel Page 10

  It would never be enough.

  The phone chimed, the call routing in through Signal, an encryption app developed by Open Whisper Systems. Every call, made over a Wi-Fi or data connection, was end-to-end protected, the only encryption keys controlled by app users. As he did with all security measures, Van Sciver had gone above and beyond, tweaking the code slightly, altering the protocols.

  He eyed the screen, which displayed two words: ADDER LUSTFUL.

  He thumbed to answer. “Code,” he said.

  He heard a rustle as Orphan R eyed the words displayed on his end. “‘Adder lustful.’”

  The matching code verified that the call was secure; no man-in-the-middle attack had occurred.

  Van Sciver said, “Is the package in hand?”

  Orphan R said, “We didn’t get her.”

  “Because?”

  A hesitation spoke to Thornhill’s dread. “X showed up. Took out four of my men.”

  Van Sciver found himself actually using his kerchief to mop sweat off his neck. “How many men did you have at the train station?”

  “Four.”

  Van Sciver had no response to that.

  “We thought it was just the girl. The surveillance cameras picked up only her. Alone. We thought it’d be a quick snatch-and-dash, and then we could use her to lure him in.”

  “Instead he lured you in.”

  “Seems that way.”

  Van Sciver leaned forward in the rocking chair, set his glass down on the uneven planks of the porch. “We have unfinished business here. I want you back.”

  “Shouldn’t we stick around in case X rears his head?”

  “Leave your team in place there. But you won’t find him. He and the girl are gone. You missed your shot.”

  There was an even longer pause. “I’m on a plane.”

  Van Sciver hung up.

  He picked up his glass and tossed the remaining tea into the hydrangeas.

  The time for celebrating was over.

  20

  Wayward Pieces

  It took some doing, but Evan found a motel on par with the beauty in Cornelius. Stale cigarette smoke oozed from the bedding, the towels, even the popcorn ceiling. The toilet was missing the tank lid. A pull-chain table lamp with a yellowed shade threw off a jaundiced glow. The comforter sported a stain the color of dried blood, which Evan hoped it was, given the less appealing alternatives. He’d rented the room for three hours, which explained everything worth explaining.

  Now he sat cross-legged on the floor, the Hertz NeverLost GPS unit before him. Still attached to the metal stalk, it resembled a dismembered antenna. The lookout’s wallet and Samsung were laid on the floor beside the stalk, parallel to each other, edges aligned.

  Order helped him think.

  Joey leaned her shoulders against the bed, her hand working what seemed to be a steroidal Rubik’s Cube that she’d produced from her rucksack. She spun it with the speed and focus of a squirrel stripping a walnut.

  Evan opened the lookout’s wallet. It contained four crisp hundred-dollar bills and nothing else. All the slots and crevices were empty. He set it back in its place.

  Then he turned on the Samsung and checked the contacts. There were none. E-mail was empty, as was the trash folder. No recent calls. No voice mail.

  The clacking of Joey’s Rubik’s Cube continued, grating on his nerves. Without looking up, she said, “No luck, huh?”

  He ignored her, powering on the NeverLost GPS. When he searched the settings, he saw that everything had been deleted from this device as well. No saved locations, no last destinations, no evidence that the unit had ever been used.

  Clack-clack-clack-clack—

  “Can you please stop that?”

  She halted, cube in her hands. The thing had exploded outward into different planks and beams, an architectural scribble.

  He frowned at it. “What is that thing?”

  “This?” She turned the monstrosity in her hands, showing off its various dimensions. “It’s a three-by-three-by-five. Cubers call it a shape-shifter.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Gives you a headache.”

  “Like you.”

  She flashed a fake grin. Let it fall from her face.

  She returned her focus to the cube. Her hands moved in a flurry, whipping the various planes around. “You have to solve the shape first. Wait, wait—see?” She held it up. She’d wrangled it back into form. It looked like a miniature tower. “Then you solve the colors. This part’s easier. There are algorithms, sequences of steps.…”

  To him it was just a blur of primary colors.

  “You have to look for the wayward pieces, find the patterns that make them fall into place. Like so.”

  She held it up, finished, gave it a Vanna White wave with her free hand.

  “Impressive.”

  “They say girls suck at geometry, but they forgot to tell me that.”

  “You would’ve ignored them anyway.”

  She tossed the cube into her rucksack, flicked her chin at the GPS unit. “How’s it going with that?”

  “They wiped everything. Can I use your laptop? I need to get into this thing.”

  She shrugged. “Sure.” She retrieved her laptop and a USB cable, watched him plug in the NeverLost. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Even if they deleted everything, the GPS still has coordinates, destinations, and deleted routes stored internally somewhere.” He set to work. “First step of a forensic recovery is to image the data. It’s called mounting the file-storage system. Then you make a copy of the device’s internal memory in your computer but contain it so it can’t infect your own data. Then I’m gonna wade through it, determine the data structures, see where and how the data’s stored, what kind of encryption I’m dealing with. Like jailbreaking a phone. Understand?”

  She tilted her head at the screen, taking in his progress, then looked at him with an expression he couldn’t read. “What grampa taught you to hack? You learn that when COBOL and IBM S/370 were state-of-the-art?”

  This joke seemingly amused her.

  He said, “What?”

  “Maybe you could use a dial-up modem. Or, like, we could get a bunch of hamsters on wheels to power the software.”

  He stopped, fingers poised above the keys. “You have a better approach?”

  “You’re using a memory-dumper program,” she said. “Why don’t you spin up a new local virtual machine like any idiot would, image and then boot the virtual device inside it, use the Security Analysts desktop code to do the heavy lifting?”

  Blowing hair out of her eyes, she spun the laptop around to face her. Her fingers moved across the keyboard, a virtuoso pianist hammering through Rachmaninoff. Then she flicked the laptop back around to him.

  The screen was doing lots of things and doing them speedily.

  She settled back against the bed again, as bored as ever. He read the coding here and there, catching up to it well enough to start directing the software.

  “Lemme see the phone,” she said.

  “I already checked it. It’s been wiped.”

  “Two sets of eyes are better than one. Especially when the second set is mine.”

  “Trust me. There’s no point.”

  She plucked up the Samsung, started thumbing at it.

  The laptop spit out some results. It took Evan a moment to decipher them.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Hmm?” The phone made little tapping noises, its glow illuminating her round face.

  “Looks like they used a secure erase tool,” he said. “Layered over the data with twelve hours of alternating ones and zeros.”

  “There is a shortcut, you know.”

  He closed the laptop a touch harder than necessary. “What’s that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe the Waze app on his phone.” She held up the Samsung to show the nav application lighting up the screen. “It shows where the cops are, accidents, traffic jams. You know, use
ful stuff for lookouts and getaway drivers. Why did you think he had a phone?”

  Heat rose beneath Evan’s face. “To make calls.”

  “To make calls,” she said. “That’s so cute.”

  “The app—it has all the routes?”

  “Yeah. But we don’t need them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because look what happens when you touch the smiley car.” She pressed the icon. A column of recent destinations came up. The second one down, an address in Portland’s Central Eastside, was labeled HQ.

  “That’s what we in the spy business refer to as a clue,” she said.

  Evan rubbed his eyes.

  “You really need to watch your nonverbal tells,” she said.

  He lowered his hands to his lap. “You have location services turned off on that phone, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Power it off anyway. Just to be safe.”

  She did. Then she tossed it back onto the worn network of threads that passed for a carpet. “When you said they could pick me up on the surveillance cameras at the train station, I thought you were being paranoid. But it’s not paranoid when you’re right, is it?”

  “I need to get you far away from here before we put you on any kind of public transportation. I’m talking multiple states away.”

  “What about the headquarters?” She tapped the phone. “I mean, we’re forty minutes away. You drive me to Idaho and come back, they’ll be cleared out by then.”

  “What am I supposed to do with you?”

  She just looked at him.

  “No. No way.”

  “Give me your gun.”

  She stared him down, unblinking. Finally he unholstered the skinny ARES and handed it to her. She regarded the slender 1911 with amusement, turning it this way and that. “Nice gun. They make it in pink?”

  “Only if you special order it.”

  “It goes well with your hips.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You should accessorize it with, like, a clutch purse. Maybe a string of pearls.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Just about.”

  He waited.

  She said, “If you pull the trigger, does a little flame come out the end? Or a flag that says ‘Bang’?”

  “Joey.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “Go to the lamp.”

  He rose and walked over to the table lamp.

  “Turn it off, count five seconds, then turn it back on.”

  He pulled the chain, the room falling into darkness. A five count passed, and he turned the light back on.

  The 1911 rested in front of her crossed legs. It had been fieldstripped. Frame, slide, bushing, barrel, guide rod, recoil spring, spring plug, and slide stop. In a nice touch, she’d stacked the remaining four rounds on end on the magazine.

  Her gaze held steel. “Again,” she said.

  He tugged the chain once more, counted to five, clicked the lamp on.

  The pistol, reassembled.

  She had a tiny dimple in her right cheek even when she wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t smiling now.

  “You can be my lookout,” he said. “But only because it’s safer for you to be near me than on your own.”

  “Gee,” she said. “Thanks.”

  She stood, twirled the gun on her palm, and presented him with the grip. He took the ARES and clicked it home in his high-guard Kydex holster.

  “What if they’re expecting you?” she asked.

  “Even if they are,” he said, “it won’t help them.”

  21

  Quick and Easy

  Central Eastside was an industrial district checkered with low-rent housing. Evan coasted in the stolen Subaru with the switched rear license plate, watching a parade of radiator shops, commercial laundries, and wholesale construction-supply joints march by. The streets were pothole-intensive, shimmering with broken glass. A few spots had been taken over by brewpubs and distilleries, gentrification doing its cheery best, but they were out ahead of the curve here and—from the looks of the clientele and graffiti—in over their heads.

  Joey took in the streets and seemed not uneasy in the least.

  She wore a half squint, her taut cheeks striking, the youthful fullness of her face turned to something hard and focused. Evan found himself admiring her. She was a medley of contradictions, surprises.

  They drove for a time in silence.

  “I need a shotgun,” Evan said.

  “I’m sure we could rustle one up in these here parts.”

  “Last thing we need is to go down the rabbit hole dealing with local criminals and wind up with a rusty Marlin Goose Gun. We need something well maintained, and we need it quick and easy.”

  “Where you gonna find a shotgun like that on no notice?”

  “The police.”

  “Of course. Quick and easy.” She cast a glance across the console, did a double take. “You’re not joking, are you?”

  Evan pulled over beneath the green cross of a marijuana dispensary, fished out his RoamZone, and dialed 911.

  * * *

  The cruiser pulled up, and two venerable cops emerged, slamming the doors behind them. The driver hit the key fob, the car putting out a chirp-chirp as it locked.

  Joey sat on the steps of the dispensary, holding Evan’s phone and pretending to text. Her dark wavy hair fell across her face, blocking one eye, an artful dishevelment.

  “What are you doing here?” the officer said. He had a dewlapped face, eyes gone weary from seeing too much shit for too many nights.

  “My pops works here,” Joey said.

  The second cop, a tough-looking redhead with sun-beaten skin, stood over Joey. “We had an anonymous report of shots fired on this block.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “You hear anything?”

  “All the time.”

  An annoyance passed between the cops. “Care to elaborate?”

  Joey sighed. Pocketed the phone. “C’mere.” She brushed past the redhead, took the driver by the arm, walked him to the curb, and pointed across the street. “See that alley there? There’s a auto-salvage yard at the end of it. That’s where to go if you need a piece on the down-low. A shitty little .22, something like that. That’s what everyone says around here. People test the goods before they pay up.” She stood back, crossed her arms. “So yeah, I heard shots fired. Tonight and every night.”

  The redhead let out a sigh that smelled of coffee and cigarettes. “Let’s go.”

  She and her partner headed across the street and disappeared up the alley.

  Evan emerged from the darkness at the side of the store. Joey flipped him the keys she’d lifted from the driver’s pocket.

  Evan thumbed the fob, popped the trunk to reveal a mounted gun-locker safe.

  Also remote-controlled.

  He thumbed another button on the key chain, and the gun locker opened with a brief metallic hum.

  Inside, cartons of shells and a Benelli M3 combat shotgun.

  His favorite.

  He grabbed two cartons, took the shotgun, then closed the gun locker and the trunk. He pointed at a spot on the sidewalk. “Drop the keys there.”

  Joey did.

  They walked over to the Subaru and drove off.

  22

  Dead Man’s Pocket

  The headquarters were on Northeast Thirteenth at the very tip of Portland proper in a long-abandoned pest-control shop sandwiched between a trailer lot and a precast-concrete manufacturing plant. The drive over had been a descent into rough streets and heavy industry—truck parts, machining, welding. Gentlemen’s clubs were in evidence every few blocks despite the absence of any actual gentlemen.

  The small pest-control shop, no bigger than a shack, had been retrofitted as a command center. Evan recognized the make of steel door securing the front entrance—the kind filled with water, designed to spread out the heat from a battering ram’s impact. A ram would buckle before it would blow through a door like
that. That was incredibly effective.

  When there wasn’t a back door.

  Which Evan watched now. At the edge of the neighboring lot, he’d parked the Subaru between two used trailers adorned with cheery yellow-and-red sales flags. He had the driver’s window rolled down, letting through a chilly stream of air that smelled of tar and skunked beer. Joey sat in the passenger seat, perfectly silent, perfectly still.

  Two cartons of different shotgun shells were nestled in his crotch, the shotgun across his lap. He had not loaded it yet.

  A few blocks over, a bad cover band wailed an Eagles tune through partially blown speakers: Some-body’s gunna hurt someone, a’fore the night is through.

  Evan thought, You got that right.

  A Lincoln pulled up to the rear curb of the building. Evan sensed Joey tense beside him. A broad-shouldered man climbed out of the sedan. He knocked on the back door—shave and a haircut, two bits. Even at this distance, the seven-note riff reached the Subaru through the crisp air.

  A speakeasy hatch squeaked open, a face filling the tiny metal square.

  A murmured greeting followed, and then various dead bolts retracted, the door swung inward, and the broad-shouldered man disappeared inside.

  Now Evan knew how he wanted to load the shotgun.

  One nine-pellet buckshot load for the chamber, two more on its heels in the mag tube. He followed those with three shock-lock cartridges and had a pair of buckshot shells run anchor.

  He popped in the triangular safety so it was smooth to the metal, the red band appearing on the other side. When he pumped the shotgun, he felt the shuck-shuck in the base of his spine.

  “Stay here,” he said. He reached for the door handle, then paused. “You may not like what you’re about to see.”

  He got out, swung the door closed behind him.

  He walked across the desolate street, bits of glass grinding beneath his tread. The midnight-black Benelli hung at his side.

  He could feel Jack fall into step beside him, hear Jack’s voice, a whisper in his ear. It’s too late for me.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Evan said quietly.

  I want to know that I’m forgiven.