Buy a Bullet: An Orphan X Story Read online

He stands over her, wide-postured, legs spread. “Hell ain’t a place. It’s a state of mind.”

  He walks out. She waits frozen for a few moments and then clamps a palm over her mouth and sobs into it. Finally she rises, weak on her legs, clutching her shattered eyeglasses. She pokes her head through the doorway, then moves quietly down the hall and turns left. The watcher loses her, not knowing which feed to pick up. He finds her in the maid’s quarters, where the housekeeper looks stunned to see her. Leanne asks her to read the Bible with her, and the woman nods. They kneel together at the side of the bed before the worn book. Leanne holds up one intact lens to read through. She laces her free hand in the housekeeper’s.

  In the living room, Radack gathers his H&K 94 and his bodyguards. They head to the screening room first and find Leanne missing. They begin a march through the house, prowling, opening doors.

  Leanne reads faster. Her body tenses. Her eyes squeeze shut. The housekeeper looks terrified.

  The hunting party nears. The door to the maid’s quarters opens.

  Radack says, “Go home, Marisol.”

  Marisol rises. She has to pull her hand free of Leanne’s. Marisol nods respectfully to Radack and slides out through the men. Rushing down the hall to the foyer, she begins to weep soundlessly.

  In the room, Leanne has still not looked up. Her eyes remain closed; her lips are moving soundlessly. Radack steps forward and places the muzzle of the submachine gun to her forehead.

  The watcher knows now. She is the one.

  She is the catalyst for his reinvention.

  Leanne’s lips stop moving but even now she does not open her eyes.

  “The killings in Rwanda,” Radack says. “Know what the Hutu tribesmen did? They made their victims buy the bullets they’d be killed with if they didn’t want to get hacked to death.”

  Behind him, Kane laughs at the thought of this.

  “So,” Radack says. “What do you say, Leanne? Wanna buy a bullet?”

  Leanne remains very still for a long time, maybe a full minute. Finally she shakes her head. He clocks her with the barrel of the carbine, knocking her over. Then he tugs down his pants and advances. The bodyguards look on. He finishes and rises. There are smiles and high fives.

  As Radack exits, he says, “Have a go.”

  The men are willing. They step forward, already unbuckling, and set upon her like dogs. The watcher does not flinch. He does not look away.

  When it is over, he turns to the window. It is night.

  Night is good.

  He packs up, walks downstairs, and checks out. The receptionist says, “How was everything?” and he smiles and says, “Fine, thank you.”

  He drives over to Radack’s estate, abiding the speed limit, and parks on the quiet street behind the compound. A check of the laptop shows Radack shirtless, playing a first-person-shooter video game in the living room, the real submachine gun resting on the cushion beside him. He has seemingly ordered Leanne to the facing couch, for she lies there fetally, shuddering. Padilla mixes margaritas on the kitchen island behind them, and Kane patrols the halls. Both bodyguards wear satiated grins. There are white lines on the coffee table before Radack and white lines on the granite slab of the island and the three men’s motions have more zip than seems standard.

  The watcher applies Superglue to his fingertips, covering the prints, and then pops the hood and trunk. He climbs out, removing the floor mat and hanging it over his open door. He takes the battery from the engine and jumper cables from the back and throws them over the fence. He pays the security cameras no mind; he will make sure later that no footage from tonight exists. In the archives, it will appear as though Padilla shut down the security cameras altogether during his visit to the study at 15:31.

  The watcher slings the floor mat up to cover the spikes and scrambles over the fence.

  The wet wind is blowing out, buying him time before his scent travels. He slices through the maze of the gardens, darting between pea planting beds. Emerging from a row of corn stalks, he sprints for the fish pond.

  At the bank, he kneels. He has just attached a jumper cable to the positive terminal on the battery when he hears the dogs’ snarling approach. He slings the other cable into the pond and trawls it, a few paralyzed fish rolling up to the surface.

  The Dobermans explode into view. He drags the cable clear of the water to preserve the battery for his ride to Los Angeles, and puts the pond and its offerings between him and the dogs. Sure enough, they catch sight of the fish and their interest is diverted. They wade heavily into the pond, dip their snouts, and come up with dinner. He walks boldly between them, signaling his fearlessness. They pause from gnawing, their eyes rolling to track him.

  “Sit,” he says in a low, hard voice.

  They sit.

  He walks to the house. The front door opens, Kane ambling out onto the porch, already shouting: “Thor! Zeus! C’mon, b—”

  Kane stops, on his heels.

  The watcher is ten feet away.

  Now five.

  Kane’s hand flies to his shoulder holster and the revolver is out, swinging toward the watcher’s head. Hopping the step onto the porch directly into the path of the muzzle, the watcher grabs the gun around the wheel, clenching so the cylinder cannot rotate and the weapon cannot fire. For a split-second, he is staring straight down the bore. Kane is still tugging the trigger, confused, when the watcher torques Kane’s gun hand, forcing him to spin to keep the elbow intact. The watcher slides neatly behind him. His free hand hooks to Kane’s front right pocket and he rakes the Emerson knife free, knowing that the shark-fin hook riding the blade top will snare the pocket edge and snap the knife open. Kane is arched backwards, his vitals bared, and the blade work is direct and efficient. The scents of tequila and deodorant are joined by a fresh, coppery tang.

  The watcher eases the collapsing form to the concrete and pivots to the door, his momentum barely slowed.

  He is inside.

  The house smells of teak and lavender—it smells of money. He strides through the foyer but Padilla is already stepping into view from the living room on the far side, surprising him. It is clear now just how large Padilla is.

  The men halt and consider each other across the six-foot span.

  “What the hell?” Radack calls out from behind. “Where’d Kane go?”

  The watcher lunges before Padilla can go for his hip holster. Padilla leads with a jab and the watcher sidesteps and flicks the Emerson. But the big man is well trained, parrying the swipe and countering with a cross that whistles overhead. The watcher lunges with the blade and Padilla catches his arm midflight, one giant hand crushing his wrist. His arm and the knife are going nowhere; the men are locked up. Padilla draws back his fist, but before he can swing, the watcher does the unexpected; he opens the hand clenched around the knife handle. The blade tumbles past their eyes, their chins, their chests, Padilla seeming to realize what is coming an instant before it does.

  The watcher’s free hand darts forward, grabbing the tumbling knife as it falls between them and driving it into Padilla’s gut. He punches it two more times up Padilla’s left ribs—smack smack—and the man falls away in slow motion.

  The watcher is already gliding down the steps into the sunken living room, angling for the kitchen. As the watcher hoped, Radack has the H&K 94 in hand. He swings the submachine gun blindly as the watcher hip-slides across the sleek granite slab and drops behind the island.

  Radack dumps all thirty-two rounds in a single wild burst. Wine bottles shatter. Bullets ping off the Sub-Zero. The Viking stove crumples inward and emits a puff of gray smoke. Lighting fixtures spark overhead. Chunks of the ceiling dump down. Somewhere on the floor beside the couch, Leanne screams.

  The island remains, predictably, untouched. The watcher could have stood in plain view and every last bullet would have sailed overhead.

  He rises now and crosses to Radack, who struggles to drop the magazine from the useless gun, his panic tangible. Dro
ps of sweat cling to the tips of his disheveled hair. As the watcher nears, Radack gives up on the mag and clubs at him with the barrel. The watcher knocks the weapon wide and, with the butt of his palm, delivers a single stun blow to the heart.

  Radack makes a noise like a bark and veins pop in his throat. He takes a step back, his clawed hand hovering an inch off his chest. The skin has gone to scarlet, the sutures scars standing out in defiant white. He lean-sits against the couch back and his eyes widen and widen some more and then his head lolls forward and he is dead.

  The room is thick with smoke and dust billowing from the torn-open ceiling.

  Leanne resolves through the debris-filled air. She lies on her stomach, half twisted over one hip like the crippled girl from that Wyeth painting.

  The watcher says, “You’re safe now.”

  He takes the knife and balls it into Radack’s hand for the prints, then lets it fall to the carpet by his bare feet.

  “Radack went crazy,” he tells her. “Hopped-up on coke. They beat and raped you. Then he went paranoid. Killed his own guards and shot up the place. The security cameras will be wiped.”

  She pulls herself up to sit against the base of the couch, holding one hand to the side of her head. Bruises are coming up around her left eye and there are small cuts where Radack shattered the eyeglasses against her temple earlier. Tears stream, though she makes no noise.

  He crouches, keeping a distance, not wanting to crowd her. In the air is the familiar hot-metal taste of a gunfight’s aftermath. “You’re free.”

  Her face is tilted to the ceiling and her lips move in a quiet murmur. It seems she is speaking more to herself than to him. He thinks he makes out her hoarse whisper.

  —thank God thank God thank—

  “I have to go now. I have one thing to ask of you. Only one thing. So please listen carefully.”

  She tries to speak but coughs dryly instead. Then she squints at him through the swirling dust. “Who are you?”

  He hesitates. He hasn’t used the name, not in several years and never in this context.

  “The Nowhere Man,” he says.

  Read on for an extended excerpt of the next Orphan X thriller

  The Nowhere Man

  Available January 17, 2017

  Chapter 1

  What He Needs to Know

  A naked selfie.

  It starts with that.

  Hector Contrell sends a seventeen-year-old kid to troll middle schools in East L.A. The kid, improbably named Addison, makes for fine bait. Seedily handsome, starter mustache, pop-star cheekbones, dirty blond hair flipped just so. He wears a hoodie and rides a skateboard, the better to look like he’s fifteen. He says he’s a pro skater with a contract. He says he’s a rapper with a deal at a major label. He’s really a pot-smoking dropout who lives in a rented garage with his older brother and his friends, spends his nights playing Call of Duty and hitting a green glass water bong named Fat Boy.

  He hangs out near campuses at lunch, after classes, his skateboard rat-a-tat-tatting across sidewalk cracks just barely past school-ground limits. The girls cluster and giggle, and he chooses one to peel off the herd. He tells her to snap pictures. He tells her to get a secret Facebook account, one her parents don’t know about, and upload them there. He tells her that everyone does this in high school, and he’s mostly right, but not everyone is hooked into a scheme like this. He targets Title I schools, broke girls, easily impressed, looking for a dream, a romance, a way out. Girls whose parents lack the resources to do much if they disappear.

  The secret Facebook page links go to Hector Contrell.

  The genius of it is, the girls create the sales catalog themselves.

  From Contrell the links go to all sorts of men with unorthodox tastes. Austrian industrialists. Sheikhs. Three brothers in Detroit with a padlocked metal shed. Online they can peruse the merchandise discreetly and, if need be, ask for more product information—different photographic angles, specific poses. They make their selections.

  Given immigration confusion, gang influence, and splintered family trees, disappearances aren’t rare when you’re dealing with broke ethnic girls. They’re a renewable resource.

  Hector Contrell comes in the black of night, and another girl vanishes off the streets and wakes up in a stupor in Islamabad or Birmingham or São Paulo. Some of the girls are kept. Some are designated for onetime use.

  Anna Rezian is the next prospect. Her father is a plumber, works hard, comes home late and tired. Her mother, a cocktail waitress, comes home later and more tired. Only fifteen, Anna takes care of her younger brothers and sisters, tries to remember to look at her textbooks after she gets the kids down. It’s a hard routine for a girl her age.

  One day after school, Addison’s blue eyes peer out from beneath his scraggly bangs and pick her and only her. That night she touches up her eyeliner, sheds the flat-front Dickies with the worn knees, checks the lighting. This choice, this moment is going to be a portal to a Whole New Her.

  But after she uploads the selfie, nothing magical happens. Staring at the image she has released into the world, she feels an unease begin to gnaw at her.

  She decides to stop after the one photo. But Addison needs more; they’ve been requested from a buyer in Serbia. In a ganja haze, he catches her in the alley outside her family’s one-bedroom apartment. When his low-rent hipster charms fail him, he tells her what she’d better do. Big-shotting in the Crenshaw night, he lets fly that he works for someone who will hurt her and her family if she turns off the tap.

  She stays up all night, trembling in the glow of her ancient laptop, clicking her way through the infinity of Facebook and chasing threads. Friends of friends have heard of friends who have disappeared. Over the top of her laptop, she looks at her sleeping siblings and contemplates what it will feel like if harm befalls them because of her stupidity. She looks at her sleeping parents, exhausted after their long work days. The chasm of guilt inside her widens by the second, pushing her further and further away until she is on an island of her own making, until her family members seem like specks on the horizon. Something awful is coming, either for them or for her. She makes the choice.

  She sends new photos.

  She stops sleeping. She starts plucking out her hair in patches. She cuts herself at school, hoping the pain will wake her from this nightmare. Maybe it’s a cry for help instead, each crimson line across her forearm a smoke signal released in hopes that someone will ride to her rescue.

  Someone does see the signal. One of her classmates’ father, an older man with a cane and a fresh limp, finds her sobbing in the bathroom of a 7-Eleven when she’s supposed to be in homeroom. He gives her a phone number: 1-855-2-NOWHERE. A magical fix-it line.

  She dials.

  Evan Smoak picks up.

  “Do you need my help?” he asks.

  That’s how it works.

  * * *

  Fourteen hours later Evan is standing outside Addison’s rented garage. The air tastes of car exhaust. The streetlights are broken, the stars smeared by smog, the night dark as tar. Evan is a wraith.

  Addison’s brother, Carl, and his crew of friends are out scoring black tar at a park in Boyle Heights. Evan knows this. Addison is alone. Evan knows this, too.

  He has done his research.

  The First Commandment—Assume nothing—demands it.

  The wraith raises a single knuckle, taps the garage door.

  A moment later it creaks upward.

  Stooped, Addison emerges from an effluvium of day-old bong water. He rocks on his heels, gauging Evan.

  By design, Evan is hard to gauge. Thirty-something. Fit but not muscly. Somewhere around six feet. An average guy, not too handsome.

  Addison underestimates him.

  This happens a lot, by design.

  The kid’s lips twitch to the side. He jerks his head, flips his hair out of the blue eyes that have landed many a young woman on a container ship heading for uncharted waters.

>   “The fuck you want?” he says.

  “Hector Contrell’s address,” Evan says.

  The pretty-boy lashes flare, but Addison covers quickly. “No idea who that is. And no fucking way I’d tell you if I did.”

  Evan looks through him. This tends to make people uneasy.

  Uncertainty washes across Addison’s face, but he blinks it away. “I know people, you tool,” he says. “People who can make you disappear like that.” The snap of his fingers, sharp in the crisp air. “Who the fuck you think you are anyways?”

  “The Nowhere Man,” Evan says.

  The kid’s Adam’s apple jerks once. Up. Down.

  The moniker is not widely known. But dark rumors have spread through certain streets like trash blown down graffitied alleys.

  Addison takes a quick step to the side to stabilize himself. His voice comes out husky, pushed through a constricting throat. “That’s just a bullshit story.”

  “Then you don’t have to be scared, do you?”

  Addison didn’t say anything.

  “You do know what happens to the girls,” Evan tells him.

  It takes a moment for Addison to relocate his voice. “They disappear.”

  “To where?’

  “I don’t know. Guys.”

  “Who use them for…?”

  The kid shrugs. Actually muffles a snicker. “Whatever guys do.”

  “The address.”

  “I can’t tell you. Hector will kill me. Literally kill me.”

  Evan’s gaze is steady.

  Addison falters. “No,” he says, a new realization dawning. “Oh, no. Look—I’m just a kid, man. I’m seventeen. You’re not gonna kill me, are you?”

  There is a punch Evan was taught in his early teens by a gruff marine close-quarter- combat instructor.

  It is called the palate breaker.

  A nonlethal blow that fractures the bridge of the nose, the sinus bones, and both orbital sockets, splitting the skull horizontally temple to temple. It leaves the upper jaw floating, unattached.

  Evan’s gaze narrows. He picks his spot.

  You wouldn’t have thought the kid could keep his feet, but there he is, upright on the curb. Something like drool leaks from his lips, the holes of his nose.