Hellbent--An Orphan X Novel Read online

  31

  Sprint the Marathon

  By the time they arrived at Evan’s Burbank safe house twelve hours and twenty-nine minutes later, they were driving a Prius with the license plates of a Kia. Bottlebrush and pepper trees shaded the street of single-story midcentury houses. Evan’s sat apart at the end of the block behind a tall hedge of Blue Point juniper. When he’d bought it, one of a half dozen he kept at the ready, the neighborhood had been affordable, the houses charming if slightly ramshackle. But owing to Burbank’s fine schools and proximity to the studios, the block’s gentrification had reached a fever pitch; now remodels perennially clogged the quiet street. He’d been planning to unload the place and would do so as soon as he and Joey were done with each other. He maintained a labyrinthine and impenetrable network of shell corporations that allowed him to shuffle and discard assets without fear of being traced.

  He parked in the garage next to a decade-old Buick Enclave that had served him loyally. The garage door shuddered down, and then he and Joey were cocooned in darkness, safe.

  He started to get out when she said, angrily, “What does it matter?”

  “What?”

  “Whether I kill someone?”

  He took a moment to consider. “It changes you in ways you can’t understand. You’d never be able to have a normal life.”

  “A normal life? So I can … what? Hang out at the mall? Go to prom? Take a thousand fucking selfies?”

  Her voice held an anger he did not understand.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’d fit right in.”

  “It’s about more than that,” he said. “We’ve talked about the Tenth Commandment. ‘Never let an innocent die.’ But maybe there’s another part to it: ‘Never let an innocent kill.’”

  “I’m not an innocent.”

  “No. But maybe we could get you back there.”

  She did not seem satisfied with that.

  She made no move to get out of the car. Sitting in the Prius, they stared through the windshield at nothing.

  “I’m weak,” she said.

  Her face cracked, contorting in grief, a flicker so fast that he’d have missed it if he’d blinked.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I couldn’t pull the trigger on the guy in the duffel bag. I couldn’t do it at the rest stop either.”

  “That’s not because you’re weak,” Evan said. “It’s because you’re stronger.”

  “Than who?”

  He hadn’t seen where the words were headed, not until now. He set his hands on the wheel, breathing the dark air.

  “Than me,” he said.

  * * *

  For Evan, maintaining the safe houses was a part-time job. Every few days he watered the landscaping, cleared flyers off the porch, took in the mail, programmed the lighting-control systems. Each location had what Jack called “loadouts”—mission-essential gear and weapons.

  He entered the Burbank house, disarming the alarm system. The interior was dark, hemmed in by trees, the backyard shaded by a steeply sloped hillside. The house always smelled slightly damp, moisture wicking up through the foundation.

  Joey walked from room to room, mouth gaping. She came back into the living room, let the rucksack drop on the thick brown carpet along with a bag of junk food he’d bought her at the last gas station. Twizzlers and Red Bull, as promised, as well as instant ramen packs, Snickers bars, and sandwiches in triangular plastic containers.

  “You just have houses everywhere?”

  “Not everywhere.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “That’s off-limits.”

  She held up her hands. “Whoa, cowboy. I got it. X’s place—off-limits. But how do you have so much money?”

  “When I was operating, they set me up with an excess of resources. They wanted me to have no reason ever to be heard from. It was a huge investment, but it paid well.”

  “Paid well?”

  “How much is regime change worth?” Evan said.

  Joey pursed her lips.

  He said, “A well-placed bullet can change the direction of a nation. Tip the balance of power so a country’s interests align with ours.”

  She shook her head as if shaking off the thoughts. “How has Van Sciver not tracked you down through your bank accounts?”

  “He’s tried.”

  “But you’re too good.”

  “No. Jack was too good. He set everything up, taught me what I needed to know about keeping it untraceable.”

  “But things have changed since then.”

  “Right. I’ve refined the practices. After an unfortunate event last month, I diversified a little more. Bitcoin mining.”

  She smiled. “Because it’s delinked from government regulation and oversight.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So. That’s why you can afford to have safe houses everywhere.”

  “Not everywhere.”

  She spun in a full circle, taking it all in. “And I can stay here?”

  “Yes. And work.” Evan fired up the Dell laptop, set it on a round wooden table that, along with a mustard-colored couch, passed for the living-room furniture. “I need what’s in here. Getting Van Sciver? It’s a marathon, not a sprint. But we want to sprint the marathon. Understand?”

  She folded her arms. “Let me explain to you what we’re looking at here. This Dell Inspiron is using a crazy strong encryption algorithm.”

  “So you can’t brute-force the key?”

  She gave a loud, graceless guffaw that was almost charming. “We’re talking a substitution-permutation cipher with a block size of sixty-four bits and key sizes up to two hundred and fifty-six bits. So no, we can’t brute-force the key unless you’ve got like a hundred or so years.”

  “What’s the best way to get the key?”

  “With a hammer from someone who knows it.”

  “Joey.”

  She sigh-groaned, sat down, and pulled the laptop over to her. “What’s your password to get online?”

  He told her. Waited. Then asked, “What are you doing?”

  Her fingers blurred. “Downloading the tools I need.”

  “Which are?”

  “Look,” she said, “going up against the algorithms could take weeks. We have to figure out the key. Which in all certainty will be composed—at least in part—of words or specific numeric sequences that are familiar to these guys in some way. So I need lists. I’m talking every name in the English language, European names, nicknames, street addresses, phone numbers, combinations of all of the above. Did you know there are only one and a half billion phone numbers in North and South America?”

  “I did not.”

  But she was barely listening. “There’s this newish thing from Amazon? Called an AMI—an Amazon Machine Image. Basically it runs a snapshot of an operating system. There are hundreds of them, loaded up and ready to run.”

  Evan said, “Um.”

  “Virtual machines,” she explained, with a not-insubstantial trace of irritation.

  “Okay.”

  “But the good thing with virtual machines? You hit a button and you have two of them. Or ten thousand. In data centers all over the world. Here—look—I’m replicating them now, requesting that they’re geographically dispersed with guaranteed availability.”

  He looked but could not keep up with the speed at which things were happening on the screen. Despite his well-above-average hacking skills, he felt like a beginning skier atop a black-diamond run.

  She was still talking. “We upload all the encrypted data from the laptop to the cloud first, right? Like you were explaining poorly and condescendingly to me back at the motel.”

  “In hindsight—”

  “And we spread the job out among all of them. Get Hashkiller whaling away, throwing all these password combinations at it. Then who cares if we get locked out after three wrong password attempts? We just go to the next virtual machine. And the one after that.”

  “H
ow do you have the hardware to handle all that?”

  She finally paused, blowing a glossy curl out of her eyes. “That’s what I’m telling you, X. You don’t buy hardware anymore. You rent cycles in the cloud. And the second we’re done, we kill the virtual machines and there’s not a single trace of what we did.” She lifted her hands like a low-rent spiritual guru. “It’s all around and nowhere at the same time.” A sly grin. “Like you.”

  “How long will this take?”

  “Not sure. I have to oversee the control programs, check results, offer the occasional loving guidance. After all, they are just machines.”

  “Okay. I have to get back. Towels in the bathroom. The fridge is stocked with food.”

  “Wait—you’re leaving me here?”

  He crossed to a cupboard, pulled out a burner cell phone, and fired it up for the first time. “Only call me. You know the number?”

  “Yeah, 1-855-2-NOWHERE. One digit too long.”

  “Yes.”

  “So that’s it?” She looked around at the blank walls, the mustard-colored couch. “This is my life?”

  “For now.”

  “Is there a TV?”

  “Nope.”

  “What do I do?”

  He picked up the keys to the Enclave from a dish on the kitchen counter. He’d left his Ford F-150 in a long-term parking lot at Burbank Airport; he’d do one last vehicle swap before going home. “Get into that laptop.”

  “Okay,” she said. “And when I do?”

  He headed for the garage. “Then I follow the trail.”

  “No—I mean, what happens to me?”

  He spun the keys around a finger once and caught them in his fist. He started out. “Just crack it, Joey.”

  “So what? We’ll just figure out me later?”

  “This isn’t about you, Joey. It’s about Van Sciver. You understand what I need to do here. That’s my only concern.”

  He held her eye contact. She gave a little nod.

  And he left her.

  32

  Cleaning Agent

  Home.

  Evan nudged the big Ford pickup into his spot between two concrete pillars, killed the engine, and released a sigh. Castle Heights’ subterranean parking level was vast and gloomy and more pristine than any garage had a right to be. A pleasing whiff of oil and gasoline lingered beneath the aggressive lemon scent of environmentally friendly floor cleaner. The cleaning agent, part of the HOA’s “go green” initiative, had passed by a narrow margin after a heated debate at the monthly meeting, a debate that Evan—as the resident industrial-cleaning-supply expert—had been roped into. His tie-breaking vote for the more expensive ecological product had drawn the ire of some of the older, fixed-income residents.

  That was life in the big bad city.

  At times he found the inner workings of Castle Heights—the rivalries, squabbles, and bureaucratic maneuverings—to be more exhausting than eluding teams of hit men.

  He stayed in the truck. It was so quiet here in the garage.

  He took a moment to inventory his body. His broken nose looked passable but still ached across the bridge. The cut in his gums from the exploded windshield had mostly healed, but it gave an angry throb when he ran his tongue across it. Lower back, still stiff from the collisions with police cruisers on the road outside Hillsboro. A sharp pain under his armpit, maybe a cracked rib. His hands, scuffed from swinging off the metal overhang on the train platform. His shoulder injury, exacerbated by the recoil of the Benelli shotgun. All of which he could cover up.

  But his eyes were still sufficiently bruised to elicit inquiries.

  Turning on the dome light, he took out the concealer wand and dabbed a bit of beige makeup on his lower eyelids. As he smudged it with his fingertip, he couldn’t help but grin a bit.

  He’d let down his guard and a sixteen-year-old had broken his nose. Joey had played him perfectly. Crouched against the wall to hide her combat knife, that wounded-bird glance over her shoulder. Can you help me?

  He got out of the truck and climbed the steps to the lobby. As he passed the mail slots and headed to the elevators, he spotted Lorilee outside in the porte cochere, waiting for the valet to bring around her car. She was arguing with her boyfriend, a fit man with long hair who looked to be in his late forties. He grasped her biceps, making a point. Evan’s focus narrowed to the fingers curled around Lorilee’s arm. He didn’t like the laying on of hands in a dispute.

  But this was none of his business.

  Joaquin sat cocked back in an Aeron at his security desk. He was pretending to monitor the bank of security screens, but his eyes were glazed and Evan saw that he had one earbud in, hidden beneath his cap.

  Evan said, “Twenty-one, please, Joaquin.”

  The guard bounced forward in his chair, tapping the control to summon the elevator and specify its destination, an old-timey Castle Heights security convention. “Got you, Mr. Smoak. How was your business trip?”

  “Another day, another airport lounge. But I got a lot done.”

  “That’s good.”

  “What’s the score?”

  Joaquin colored slightly. “Twenty-six–fourteen. Golden State.”

  “Sorry.”

  “’Member when the Lakers used to be good?”

  Before Evan could respond, Joaquin pulled out his earbud and straightened up abruptly. Ida Rosenbaum, 6G, walked through the front door, shuffling along. She was bent forward, oversize purse pinned beneath one elbow as if it were at risk of fluttering away.

  Evan turned to face the elevator, praying it would arrive before she made it across the lobby. In the dated brass doors, his reflection came clear.

  Thanks to the unforgiving light of the lobby, he saw now that his nose was still out of alignment. Not much, but it was shifted a few millimeters to the left, noticeable enough for the sharp eyes of Ida Rosenbaum.

  As she neared, presaged by the smell of old-lady violet perfume, he reached up and cracked his nose to center.

  It stung enough to make his eyes water.

  “You again,” she said, sounding less than delighted.

  He stayed facing forward, blinking back the moisture; if he made his concealer run, that would provoke another conversation entirely. “Good morning, ma’am.”

  “Again with the ‘ma’am,’” she said. “Call me Ida, already.”

  “Okay,” Evan said.

  The elevator arrived, and he got on, holding the door for Mrs. Rosenbaum. He felt heat building up in his sinuses and prayed his nose wouldn’t start bleeding. The pain of the rebreak radiated out beneath his cheekbones.

  “This weather,” Ida said as the elevator started to rise. “It’s playing games with my allergies. You wouldn’t believe the aggravation. Feels like I’m snuffling through hay.”

  The blood was coming now—he could feel the warmth inside his nose. He didn’t want to reach up and pinch it, so he tilted his head back slightly and gave a sharp inhale. The floor numbers ticked by in slow motion. His eyes no longer watered, but moisture still welled at his bottom lids, threatening to spill and wreak havoc with the concealer.

  “And my hip. Don’t even get me started.” Ida waved a dismissive hand at him. “What would you know about it? My Herb, may he rest in peace, always said that no one in your generation learned how to handle pain. Everyone’s off to get a massage or smoke medical marijuana.”

  He tried to compress his nostrils. “Yes, ma’am.”

  The elevator at last reached the sixth floor, and she stepped out, casting a final look back at him. “Slow learning curve, too,” she observed.

  As the doors glided shut, the bumpers blocking out Mrs. Rosenbaum, Evan tilted his face into his hand just in time to catch the blood.

  * * *

  In Evan’s freezer drawer, one bottle of vodka had remained untouched for several years.

  Stoli Elit: Himalayan Edition.

  Evan opened the walnut chest and beheld the Bohemian hand-blown glass bottle.
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  Made with the finest variety of winter wheat from the Tambov region and water tapped from reservoirs buried beneath the famed mountain range, the vodka underwent a sophisticated distillation process, after which it was frozen to minus-eighteen degrees Celsius to segregate any additives or impurities. It came accompanied by a gold-plated ice pick. Given the price of the bottle, the best use for the pick was presumably to defend oneself against would-be vodka bandits.

  Evan cracked the seal and poured two fingers over a spherical ice cube.

  He lifted the tumbler to admire the clarity of the liquid. It smelled of ice and nothing more. The mouth feel was velvety, and the aftertaste carried a surprising hint of fruit.

  Vodka’s original purpose was to cleanse the palate after eating fatty foods. But Evan loved it for its quiet ambition. At first glance it looks as plain as water. And yet it strives to be the purest version of what it is.

  He set the tumbler on the poured-concrete surface of the kitchen island, leaned over it, and exhaled.

  An image came to him unbidden, the wind tearing through the Black Hawk, fluttering Jack’s shirt, his hair. He’d taken a wide stance, steady against the elements.

  Always steady against the elements.

  Evan lifted the glass halfway to his mouth, set it back down.

  His cheeks were wet.

  “Goddamn it, Jack,” he said.

  He closed his eyes and dropped into his body. Became aware of its shape from the inside. Felt the pressure of the floor against the soles of his boots. The coolness of the counter beneath his palms. He stayed with his breath, feeling it at his nostrils, in his windpipe, his chest. Drew it into his stomach, belly-breathing a count of ten.

  Right now, in this moment, there was no Nowhere Man mission, no Van Sciver, no sixteen-year-old stashed in a safe house. There was no past or imagined future, no bone-deep ache of grief, no figuring out how to live in a world without Jack.

  There was only the breath. Inhale, exhale. His body doing what it did twenty thousand times a day, except this time he was mindful of it.

  And this time.

  And this time.

  The brief meditation and the vodka sent warmth through his veins. He felt decontaminated.

  He opened his eyes and headed to the Vault.