Buy a Bullet: An Orphan X Story Page 3

  “No,” Evan says. “I won’t kill you.”

  Addison makes a wheezing noise. With his new face, it will be hard for him to troll for girls anymore.

  “The address,” Evan says again.

  What is left of the mouth tells him what he needs to know.

  Chapter 2:

  The Social Contract

  Evan slipped through the plastic tarp into a new-construction McMansion, the spoils of Hector Contrell’s war on the broke families of East L.A. The house, distanced from its neighbors, topped an inclined driveway at the edge of Chatsworth.

  Evan drifted through doorless frames, making silent progress toward the heart of the house. Studs framing the wide halls and exposed ceiling beams gave him the impression that he was walking into a massive rib cage, into Hector Contrell himself. Sawdust chalked the back of Evan’s throat. Nails protruded from the floor, poking the soles of his Original S.W.A.T. boots. The aggressively checkered gunner grips of a custom Wilson Combat 1911 pistol bit the flesh of his palm.

  He found Contrell in the living room-to-be, ensconced like a pilot within a cockpit of computer monitors and servers from which he ran his flesh empire with impunity. A burly, bearded man wholly unhooked from the social contract, who took what he wanted because he wanted it. The high-tech station with its bluish glow and snaking cables seemed anomalous, sprouting up like a mushroom from the exposed subfloor.

  Hector noticed movement in the shadows and stood, revolver quickly in hand. For a time, it seemed, he kept rising.

  Standing just past the semicircle of pushed-together desks, Evan looked up at him. A FUCK YOU tattoo on the front of Hector’s neck indicated that nuance was not the man’s strong suit.

  Hector said, “I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but I’m gonna give you five seconds to leave before I aerate your torso.” For emphasis he kicked one of the monitors off the desk, which went to pieces at Evan’s feet, sparking impressively.

  Both men kept their guns down at their sides.

  Evan watched the monitor give off a dying spark. Then he lifted his eyes.

  “One of the functions of anger is to convince people of the seriousness of your intentions,” he said. “To signal that you’re out of control. Unpredictable. Willing to do damage. To evoke fear.”

  Hector drew himself even taller. No minor feat. Backlit by the monitors, his meaty left earlobe showed a missing slot where an earring had been ripped free.

  Evan took a step closer. “So look at me. Look at me closely. And ask yourself: Do I look scared?”

  The big man leaned in, the glow of the computers turning his face into a shadow-ravaged landscape—empty eye sockets, pronounced jowls, the curve of one cheek. His thick lips pulsed, the first show of hesitation.

  Evan’s gun remained at his side, just like Hector’s. They faced each other across the desk.

  When Evan was fourteen, Jack had trained him how to fast-draw. It wasn’t with High Noon theatrics—unholster, lift, and aim. It was a two-millimeter tilt and 3.5 pounds of index-finger pressure.

  The shadows shifted across Hector’s face. His beefy hand twitched above his gun. He moved first.

  The plywood walls gave off a good echo.

  * * *

  Later that night Evan eased into the alley that ran behind the dilapidated apartment that accommodated Anna Rezian’s family. A sheen of blood had hardened on his left forearm, cracking like dried mud when he moved. He’d washed his hands and his face but could feel the leftover flecks on the side of his neck.

  There’d been backspray.

  He lifted his black phone from his pocket. It was a RoamZone model, encased in fiberglass and tough black rubber, the screen protected by Gorilla Glass. He kept it on him.

  Always.

  It was a lifeline. Not to him, but to those who called it.

  He sent a text to Anna: OUTSIDE.

  As he waited, a concern niggled at the base of his skull. He had seen something in Hector’s house—he didn’t know what it was, but it was wrong. Was his client in danger? No. He’d been thorough. Not a threat to her. Not a threat to him. Something else. Something important but not immediate.

  Anna’s backlit silhouette appeared at the mouth of the alley about ten yards away. She wore a nightie, her spine hunched, her dry hair sticking out. The alley formed a wind tunnel, the October air whipping at her brunette tufts, making them wag stiffly.

  “You’re safe now,” he told her.

  Her feet were bare. He could see the tremble in her knees.

  “I thought you were one of them coming to get me,” she said. “I thought walking down here would be the last thing I ever did. But then … but then it was you.”

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” he said.

  “What does it mean? That I’m safe?”

  “You don’t have to worry anymore,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “Any of it.”

  “Addison?”

  “Has other concerns now.”

  “And his boss? The guy behind it all?”

  “He died.”

  Anna trudged forward, her scalp shiny in the spots where she’d plucked out her hair. Her face held the same look he’d seen in his other clients, a worn-through, hollowed-out expression that came from falling out of the slipstream of life.

  “Albert is safe?” Her voice cracked. “And Eduard?”

  “Yes.”

  Anna came closer yet, her cheeks glinting. “How about Maria? They won’t hurt Maria?”

  “There’s no one left to hurt Maria.”

  Openly sobbing now. “Mayrig? Hayrig?”

  “Your mother and father will be fine.”

  He thought of her family in their beds and wondered at the serenity they might offer her. At her age he hadn’t had much, which meant he’d had nothing to leave behind. As a twelve-year-old, he’d stepped off a truck-stop curb into a dark sedan and blipped off the radar. Back then any gamble was worth the taking. This one had gotten him out of East Baltimore. He’d been to Marrakech and St. Petersburg and Cape Town, and he’d left his mark in blood at every stop. But he’d never had what Anna had waiting for her upstairs. The chill breeze brought with it the realization that he’d devoted his life to preserving for others what he couldn’t have himself.

  “The pictures of me,” she said. “They’ll be so ashamed.”

  Before leaving Hector’s place, Evan had safed the house, finding little more than construction materials, empty beer bottles, a few hefty dumbbells in the garage. Fast-food wrappers layered a mattress thrown on the floor in one of the bare-bones rooms upstairs where Hector was living during the construction. Evan had gone back down to the comms center and dragged the considerable body out of the way. Once the cockpit was clear, he spent a few stomach-churning minutes navigating the databases, clicking through the files of past “eligibles” to locate the matching buyers. Client information was sparse and coded, but he forwarded it on to the local FBI field office. But not before wiping all information about Anna Rezian off the servers.

  “The pictures are gone,” Evan said. “No one will have to know anything.”

  Anna took an unsteady step to the side and lifted a hand to the cracked stucco wall. “Eduard. He’s safe now. He’s safe.” Still working it through, thawing out of denial.

  “You’re all safe.”

  Anna’s face wobbled, and for a moment it seemed she might come apart entirely. “I don’t know how I can face them. Knowing what I almost did to us all. I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “That’s up to you.”

  She looked stung by his response. Tears clung to her lashes. She bit her lips. Her chest rose, her nostrils flaring. Deep breath. Exhale. The tears did not fall.

  “You’re not to call me again,” Evan said. “Do you understand? This is what I do. But it’s all that I do.”

  “Albert and Maria are okay now.” Her lips barely moved. Her voice, little more than a whisper. “Mayrig and Hayrig. And Eduar
d. Eduard.”

  “Anna, I need you to focus. Look at me. Look at me. I have one thing to ask of you before I leave.”

  Her eyes found a sudden clarity. “Anything.”

  “Find someone who needs me. Like you did. It doesn’t matter if it takes a week or a month or a year. You find someone who is desperate and has no way out. Give them my number.”

  “Yes. 1-855-2-NOWHERE.”

  Every call was digitized and sent over the Internet through a series of encrypted virtual private network tunnels. After pinging through fifteen software virtual telephone switch destinations around the globe, it came through his RoamZone.

  “Yes. You tell them about me.”

  “Like Nicole Helfrich’s dad when he found me in the 7-Eleven?”

  “Like that. You find someone. Tell them I’ll be there on the other end of the phone.”

  That was the final step for his clients. A task, a purpose, an act of empowerment that transitioned them from victim to rescuer. Evan knew all too well that some wounds never healed, not fully. But there were ways to contain the pain, to take ownership over the scars, and this was one of them.

  Anna lunged at him and wrapped him in a hug. For a moment his arms floated a few inches above her thin back. He was unaccustomed to this kind of contact. In the moonlight he could see the wine-colored streak on his forearm, the dark half-moons beneath his nails. He didn’t want Hector Contrell’s blood on her clothes, in her hair. And yet Anna’s embrace tightened, her face pressed into his chest.

  He lowered his arms. She was warm. He felt the wetness of her cheek through his T-shirt. She clung to him.

  Her voice came muffled. “How do I thank you?”

  Evan said, “Be with your family.”

  He’d meant it as the next instruction, but it struck him that it was also the answer to her question.

  She stepped back to wipe her eyes, and he took the opportunity to slip away.

  Chapter 3

  War Machine

  Lurching from stoplight to stoplight, Evan dreamed of vodka. He had a new bottle tucked into the ice drawer of his Sub-Zero, waiting to greet him when he got home. From the outside his Ford F-150 pickup looked like any one of the millions on the roads of America. But with its laminate armor glass, self-seal tires, and built-to-spec push-bumper assembly, it was actually a war machine.

  Up ahead, his building came into view. Branded with the inflated title of Castle Heights, the residential tower pinned down the easternmost spot on the Wilshire Corridor, giving his penthouse condo an unbroken view of downtown Los Angeles. Castle Heights was posh but dated, as easily overlooked as Evan’s truck. Or Evan himself.

  Recruited out of the projects of East Baltimore as a kid, he’d spent seven grueling years training under the tutelage of his handler. To say that Jack Johns had been like a father to him was an understatement. Jack had been the first person to treat Evan like he was human.

  Evan had been created by the Orphan Program, a deep-black project buried inside the Department of Defense. It had identified the right kind of boys lost in the system of foster homes, covertly culled them one by one, and trained them to do what the U.S. government could not officially do in places where it could not officially be. A fully deniable, antiseptic program run off a shadow budget. Technically, the Orphans did not even exist.

  They were expendable weapons.

  As Orphan X, Evan had been given bursting bank accounts in nonreporting areas. His assignments spanned more than a decade. Rarely sighted, never captured, he was known only by the dead high-value targets he left in his wake and the alias he’d earned for moving unseen among the shadows.

  The Nowhere Man.

  At one point, though, he’d wanted out. It had cost him dearly. But it had left him with virtually unlimited money, a rare skill set, and time on his hands. And while he was done being Orphan X, he’d discovered that there was still work he should do as the Nowhere Man.

  Pro bono work.

  He’d lost the government designation but kept the alias given to him by his enemies.

  Evan had heard that the Orphan Program had been dismantled, but last year he’d discovered that it was still operational. The most merciless of the Orphans had taken over the program. Charles Van Sciver. His new directive: to track down and eliminate former Orphans. According to those holding Van Sciver’s leash, Evan’s head contained too much sensitive information to remain connected to his body.

  One thing had been made clear in their last bloody confrontation—Van Sciver and his Orphans would not stop the hunt until Evan was dead.

  In the meantime Evan stayed off the grid and stayed vigilant.

  At last he finished the gauntlet crawl through Wilshire Boulevard traffic. Turning in to Castle Heights, he whipped through the porte cochere past the valet and descended to the subterranean parking lot, drifting into his spot between two concrete pillars.

  He grabbed a black sweatshirt from the back, tugged it on to cover the dried blood on his arm, and headed across the floor. He always took a moment outside the lobby door to close his eyes, draw in a breath, and ready himself for the transition into his other persona.

  Evan Smoak, importer of industrial cleaning supplies. Another boring tenant.

  Given the hour, the lobby was quiet, the air fragrant with the scent of lilies. Evan crossed briskly to the elevator, nodding at the security guard. “Evening, Joaquin.”

  Joaquin looked up from the bank of monitors running live feeds from the building’s perimeter and hallways. Castle Heights prided itself on its security, an additional selling point to attract moneyed middle-aged tenants and flush retirees.

  “Evening, Mr. Smoak. You have a good night?”

  “Typical Saturday,” Evan said. “Burgers with the guys.”

  Joaquin controlled the elevators from behind the high counter—another safety measure—and his shoulder dipped as he pressed the button for the car. Evan lifted a hand in thanks, noticed the flecks of dried blood beneath his fingernails, and lowered it quickly. He stepped inside, the button for the twenty-first floor already lit.

  The doors were just sliding closed when he heard a familiar voice call out, “Wait! Hold the elevator, Joaquin—please.” The patter of footsteps. “I meant the ‘please’ to come first so I didn’t sound all ordery, but—”

  The doors parted again, and Evan came face-to-face with Mia Hall. Her sleeping nine-year-old was slumped in her arms, his chin resting on her shoulder.

  Mia’s eyes rose to meet Evan’s, and she froze.

  She was rarely caught off guard, but now her mouth was slightly ajar, a flush coming up beneath the faint scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

  They’d had an almost-relationship last year. He’d saved her life, and she’d saved his ass. In the process she’d learned more about him than she should have. Which would have been a problem even if she hadn’t been a DA for the City of Los Angeles.

  They blinked at each other.

  She shifted, straining under Peter’s weight.

  “Want me to take him?” Evan asked.

  There was a time when that would have been normal.

  “No,” she said. “Thanks. I got him.”

  They rode up to her floor in silence. Remembering the traces of blood beneath his nails, Evan curled his hands into loose fists. He caught the faintest whiff of lemongrass—the scent of Mia’s lotion.

  Peter’s cheek was smooshed into a half pout, his blond hair stuck up on one side, his lips blue with lollipop residue. When the doors parted with an arthritic rattle, Peter lifted his head sleepily. The smile touched his charcoal eyes first, then his mouth.

  “Hi, Evan Smoak.” His voice, even raspier than usual. Before Evan could answer, the boy’s lids drooped shut again.

  Mia carried him out, and Evan watched them walk up the corridor until the closing elevator doors wiped them from view.

  Chapter 4:

  Clean as a Scalpel

  When Evan turned the key, the
lock to Condo 21A unbolted with a clank, various security bars releasing within the steel door concealed behind the homey wood-paneled façade. As Jack used to say, Ball bearings within ball bearings.

  Evan muted the alarm and walked to the kitchen area. He passed the living wall, a drip-fed vertical garden that sprouted mint and sage, parsley and chamomile. The pleasing scent and splash of green were the sole aspects of the corner penthouse that could be described as cheerful.

  The floor plan was largely open, seven thousand square feet of poured concrete split by workout stations, sitting areas, a freestanding fireplace, and a steel staircase that twisted up to a loft. Countless safeguards hid inside the sleek, modern space. The windows and sliding glass doors that turned two walls into a city panorama? Bullet-resistant Lexan armed with shatter-detection software. The periwinkle retractable sunscreens? Woven titanium armor. The quartz-rock-layered balconies cupping the sides of the condo? Secondary alarms rigged to detect the audio signature of an unwelcome guest’s boots compressing the stones.

  Evan slipped around the island to the Sub-Zero. Nestled among the ice cubes, a fat bottle of Karlsson’s Gold beckoned. The handcrafted Swedish vodka, comprising seven kinds of potatoes, was uniquely made, distilled a single time through a copper-lined still. Evan poured a few fingers into a rocks glass over a spherical ice cube and garnished the drink with a single twist of ground pepper from a stainless-steel mill.

  Clean as a scalpel up front. Hint of mineral on the finish. Lingering bite of pepper.

  Perfect.

  Evan walked to the fireplace, fired up the pyre of cedar logs, then peeled off his mission clothes and fed them to the flames. With the rocks glass dangling at his side, he padded naked across the vast space and down the brief hall, passing the spot where his dear departed nineteenth-century katana used to hang. The bare wall hooks reminded him that he’d recently won an online bid for a replacement samurai sword, one that dated back to the Early Edo period. The shipment was due to arrive soon from the Seki auction house.