Hellbent--An Orphan X Novel Page 30

  “Forget Alicia,” Connor said. “She’s fucking wasted.” He gestured at Scotty. “Give her the bong. She needs a hit.”

  “I’m good,” Joey said.

  Connor smiled, his man bun nodding at the back of his head. Though he was clearly several years older than her, his handsome face was still padded with baby fat. His cheeks looked smooth and white, like he barely needed to shave. The smell of bud and Axe body spray wafted off his untucked shirt. “Okay. Give her a beer.”

  Scotty passed Joey a beer, and she cracked it and took a sip. It tasted skunky, but she didn’t make a face.

  “S’good,” she said.

  “Then tell your face,” Alicia said.

  Joey wondered what was wrong with her expression. She was too aware of it now, wearing it like a mask. The bottle suddenly felt large and silly in her hand, a prop. The girls seemed so much older, their frail frames and drugged high lending them an otherworldly aura, as if their feet were floating an inch above the dirt. Joey felt clumsy and common by comparison, a flightless bird.

  Scotty enabled the light on his iPhone and rested it on a concrete ledge by a pile of rusted beer cans. Graffiti covered the walls and ceiling, the bubble letters and vulgar sketches made menacing in the severe light.

  “Alicia,” Connor said, “that was the last beer. Wanna grab the other sixer from the cooler?”

  Alicia’s lips peeled back in a smile. She ran her hand up her throat as if feeling her skin for the first time. “Sure, Connor.”

  She held up a pale fist to Joey. “I was just kidding earlier,” she said. “C’mon, gimme knucks.”

  Joey lifted her hand, but Alicia lowered her fist and turned away, the other girls snickering in a matching low key. Alicia slid an anorexic shoulder along the wall to the hatch, the other girls trailing her, so pale and insubstantial they looked like shades. They slipped through the cramped space without slowing.

  As soon as they vanished, Scotty stepped over, blocking the way out. Joey sensed Connor sidle up behind her.

  Blocking her in.

  All of a sudden, Joey felt her awkwardness lift. She was aware of the scuff of Connor’s shoe in the dirt, the distance to the concrete walls around her, the latent power of her muscles. Her heartbeat ticked in the side of her neck, as steady as a metronome.

  This part wasn’t scary or intimidating, not like drinking beer or bumping fists or figuring out how to smile the right way.

  This part felt like home.

  As she started to turn, Connor grabbed her belt in the front and pulled her close. She let him. He was big enough to bow her lower back, her face uptilted to his. His breath smelled like tea leaves.

  His hand curled over her belt, knuckles pressed into her lower stomach.

  “You know why you came,” he said.

  Joey said, “Let go of me.”

  He kissed her.

  She kept her mouth closed, felt his stubble grate her lips. Behind her she heard Scotty laugh. Connor pulled his face back but kept the front of her jeans clamped in his fist.

  She said, “Let go of me.”

  Connor loomed over her. “I don’t think I want to just yet.”

  She stepped away, but he tugged her buckle, snapping her back against his chest.

  “Oh,” she said sympathetically. “You think you’re in charge.”

  Calmly, she chambered her leg high and pistoned her heel through his ankle.

  The snap sounded like a heavy branch giving way.

  Connor stared down at his caved shin in disbelief. His foot nodded to the side, ninety degrees offset from the ankle.

  Joey said, “Three … two…”

  He screamed.

  Scotty yelled, “Crazy bitch!” and charged her, lowering his shoulder for a football tackle. Sidestepping, she took his momentum and redirected him into the wall. His face smacked the concrete. It left a wet splotch. He toppled over, his legs cycling against the pain, heels shoving grooves in the dirt.

  Joey placed her hand on Connor’s barrel chest and shoved. He fell hard, landing next to Scotty. He was still making noises.

  She squeezed through the narrow hatch, emerging from the cage. As she stepped out, she sensed the world opening up all around her. Starting back down the hill to civilization, she felt a part of her flutter free from the trap inside her chest and take flight against the canopy of stars.

  65

  Not an Innocent

  Joey stepped through the unlocked door of 21A and stared at the cavernous great room. All the lights were off, but the city shone through the giant windows, making the contours of the penthouse glimmer darkly.

  A silhouette rose from one of the bar chairs at the kitchen island.

  Evan.

  He said, “I made up your bed.”

  Joey stepped inside and shut the door behind her. “Thanks.”

  “I’m not very good at it,” he said.

  “What?”

  He gestured from her to him. “This.”

  “You’re better than you think.”

  “I didn’t mean what I said on the phone. What you overheard.”

  “I know.”

  She came forward, and they stared at each other.

  “I went to see that guy with the stupid hair,” she said. “From outside the safe house?”

  Evan nodded.

  “He’s a useless reprobate,” she said. “You were right.”

  Evan said, “I don’t want to be right.”

  She leaned into him stiffly, her forehead thunking against his chest, her arms at her sides. He hesitated a moment and then hugged her, one hand holding the back of her head, her thick, thick hair.

  He said, “Rough night all around, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice rose an octave and cracked. “I think I’m done pretending.”

  “Pretending what?”

  “Acting like I didn’t need anything from anyone. I started after my maunt died, because … you know, I wasn’t gonna get it anyways.” She straightened up. “But I was lying. Now and then I still think about what mighta been. Someone to tuck me in, maybe. You know, ‘How was your day?’ Cute boy in homeroom. A soccer team. All that normal shit. Instead. Instead.” Her lips wobbled. “Do you think I ever could?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not too late?”

  “No. Once we get Van Sciver, we’ll find what comes next for you. It doesn’t have to be this.”

  She blinked, and a tear glided down her flawless brown cheek. “How ’bout you?”

  “It’s not an option anymore for me. It’s different.”

  She looked up at him. “Is it?”

  He nodded.

  “Even after you get Van Sciver?”

  “There will always be Van Scivers.”

  “But what about Mia? And the kid?”

  “There will always be Van Scivers,” he said again.

  She pursed her lips and studied him in the semidarkness. “I remember I was fourteen, bleeding from my ear. Van Sciver put me with a demolition breacher who let me get too close to a door charge. I thought it was a punctured eardrum. He took me back to town and dropped me at a park, you know, for pickup. Anyways, I was worse than anyone thought. I was stumbling along off the trail. And I came up behind a guy on a bench, rocking himself and murmuring. At first I thought he was injured, too. Or crazy. But then I saw he had a baby. His baby. And he was holding it so gently. I snuck up behind him in the bushes. And he was saying … he was saying, ‘You are safe. You are loved.’” Her eyes glimmered. “Can you imagine?”

  Walking behind Jack in the woods, placing his feet in Jack’s footprints.

  “Yes,” Evan said.

  “Maybe that’s all anyone needs,” Joey said. “One person who feels that way about you. To keep you human.”

  “It’s a gift,” Evan said. “It’s also a weakness.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s a vulnerability they can exploit. Jack protecting me. Me protecting you. Us protecting David Smith
. But we’re gonna stop all that now. Instead of letting them use it against us, we’re gonna start using it against them. The Ninth Commandment.”

  “‘Always play offense,’” she said. “But how?”

  “We have what they want.”

  She stared at him, puzzled.

  He said, “Us.”

  Her eyes gleamed. “Use me as bait.”

  Evan nodded. “And we know where to drop the line.”

  * * *

  They left at five in the morning, switched out Evan’s truck for a black Nissan Altima he kept at a safe house beneath an LAX flight path. Seven hours and four minutes later, they reached Phoenix. They did a few hours of recon and planning before pulling over in the shade of a coral gum tree. The car windows were cracked open, and the arid breeze tasted of dust.

  The downtown skyline, such as it was, rose a few blocks away. They were on the fringe of suburbia here, two blocks north of the 10 Freeway, a handful more to the 17. A tall-wall ad on the side of a circular parking structure proclaimed ARIZONA’S URBAN HEART and featured a cubist rendering of a heart composed of high-rises.

  Evan and Joey had worked out a dozen contingencies and then a dozen more, charting escape routes, meet points, emergency scenarios. Because they’d driven from Los Angeles and didn’t have to concern themselves with airport security, he’d brought a trunkful of gear and weaponry, a mission-essential loadout that left him prepared for virtually anything. But at the end of the day, when you went fishing, you never knew precisely what you’d get on the line.

  As if reading his thoughts, Joey said, “Okay. So if they go to grab me. What do you do?”

  “Grab them.”

  She shifted the bouquet of irises in her lap. “And then what?”

  “Make them talk.”

  “How?”

  Evan just looked at her.

  “Right,” she said. “And if we’re not so lucky as to have that work out?”

  “Don’t fall in love with Plan A.”

  The sunlight shifted, and at the peak of the hill above, the arched sign over the wrought-iron gate came visible.

  SHADY VALE CEMETERY.

  This was where Jack had found Joey, visiting her maunt’s grave. As she’d said, he knew how her heart worked.

  Van Sciver knew, too, though not from the inside out. He understood people from a scientific remove, learning where the soft spots were, which buttons to push, where to tap to elicit a reflex.

  He had kept Joey for eleven months, had trained, analyzed, and assessed her. Evan was counting on the fact that Van Sciver was strategically sharp enough to surveil a location that held this kind of emotional importance to her. Whether that surveillance took the form of hidden cameras or freelancers on site, he wasn’t sure.

  For Van Sciver vulnerability was little more than a precipitating factor in a chain reaction. Joey’s maunt would lead to Joey. Joey would lead to Evan.

  Evan thought about the GPS unit Van Sciver had planted in David Smith’s arm and wondered how they’d plan to tag Joey if they caught her here.

  He recalled the Secret Service background of at least two of the freelancers Van Sciver had hired. Van Sciver had never drawn operators from the Service before, and it was unlikely a random choice for him to do so now. Evan’s train of thought carried him into unpleasant terrain, where the possibilities congealed into something dark and toxic.

  Joey screwed in her earpiece and started to get out of the black car. Evan put his hand on her forearm to halt her. A memory flash hit him—the image of himself at nineteen years old climbing out of Jack’s truck at Dulles International, ready to board a plane for his first mission. Jack had grabbed Evan’s arm the same way.

  It was the first time Evan had ever seen him worried.

  Evan reminded himself that he wasn’t worried now. Then he reminded himself again. Joey was looking at him in a way that indicated that his face wasn’t buying what he was telling himself.

  “What?” she said.

  “The Tenth Commandment,” Evan said. “‘Never let an innocent die.’” He paused. “This is a risk.”

  “I’m not an innocent,” Joey said.

  He nodded. For this mission she wasn’t.

  “Plus, they need me to get to you,” Joey added. “Like you said, they want to snatch me, direct the action.”

  “That’s our play, but it’s still a guess. With former Secret Service in the mix, we don’t know how far this reaches. But we know what they’re willing to do.”

  “I’m fast,” she said. “I’ll stay in public, keep my head on a swivel.”

  “If we do this…”

  “What, Evan?”

  “Don’t fuck up.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “After what happened to Jack, nothing will stop me from getting to Van Sciver. Nothing. And no one.” His throat was dry, whether from the dry desert air or the air-conditioning, he didn’t know. “Don’t put me in a position to make that choice.”

  She read his meaning, gave a solemn nod, and climbed out of the car.

  66

  Friction Heat

  Lyle Green handed off the binoculars to his partner, Enzo Pellegrini, who raised them to his face and blew out a breath that reeked of stale coffee. They were sitting in a parked truck, focused on a particular headstone on a rolling swell of grass. It was a shade of green you only got from well-fertilized soil, which meant corpses or gardeners, and Shady Vale had an excess of both.

  Enzo said, “Eyes up, south entrance.”

  Lyle said, “Right, like your ‘eyes up’ on the pregnant broad or the guy with the prosthetic leg.”

  “It was a limp.”

  “Because that’s what you do when you have a prosthetic leg.”

  “Girl, midteens.”

  Lyle pulled the detached rifle scope from the console and lifted it to his face. The girl cut behind a stand of bushes and stepped into view. “Holy shit. That’s her.”

  “Raise Van Sciver. Now.”

  Lyle grabbed his Samsung, dialed through Signal.

  A moment later Van Sciver’s voice came through. “Code.”

  Lyle checked the screen. “‘Merrily dogwood.’”

  “Go.”

  “It’s her. It’s the girl.”

  She drifted close enough that Lyle no longer required the scope. She set a bunch of flowers before the grave and paused, her face downturned, murmuring something to the earth.

  “Do not approach,” Van Sciver said. “Repeat: Do not approach. Track her at a distance in case X is watching. Pick your moment and get her tagged. Let her lead us to him.”

  Enzo dropped open the glove box. Inside were a variety of GPS tracking devices—microdots, magnetic transmitters for vehicle wheel wells, a vial of digestible silicon microchips.

  The girl headed off, and Lyle tapped the gas and drifted around the cemetery’s perimeter, keeping her in sight. “Copy that.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later Lyle sat in a crowded taqueria, sipping over-cinnamoned horchata and peering across the plaza to where the target sat at a café patio table. Lyle had a Nikon secured around his neck with camera straps sporting the Arizona State University logo. Smudges of zinc-intensive sunscreen and a proud-alumnus polo shirt completed the in-town-for-a-game look.

  He pretended to fuss with the camera, zeroing in with the zoom lens on the girl. Scanning across the patio, he picked up on Pellegrini inside the café, leaning against the bar and swirling a straw in his Arnold Palmer. A few orders slid across the counter, awaiting pickup. Pellegrini removed a vial of microchips, dumped them in a water glass, and used his straw to stir them in.

  He’d just resumed his loose-limbed slump against the bar when the waitress swung past and grabbed the tray. As she carried the salad and spiked water glass over to Joey’s table and set them down, Pellegrini exited the café from the opposite side and walked to the bordering street where they’d parked the truck.

  Lyle kept the Nikon pinned on the
water glass resting near Joey’s elbow. From this distance the liquid looked perfectly clear, the tiny black microchips invisible. Once ingested, they would mass in the stomach, where they’d be stimulated by digestive juices and emit a GPS signal every time the host ate or drank. The technology had recently been improved, no longer requiring a skin patch to transmit the signal, which made for easier stealth deployment. But with this upgrade came a trade-off; the signal’s duration was shorter, remaining active for only ten minutes after mealtime. The microchips broke down and passed from the system in just forty-eight hours.

  Van Sciver was banking on the fact that at some point within two days she’d be in proximity to Orphan X.

  The girl poked at her salad, then rested her hand on the water glass. Lyle willed her to pick it up and drink, but something on her phone had captured her attention. She removed her hand, and he grimaced.

  He had to put the camera down to avoid suspicion, so he took another chug of sugary horchata while he watched her thumb at her phone and not drink water.

  His Samsung vibrated, and he answered.

  “Code,” Van Sciver said.

  Lyle checked the screen. “‘Teakettle lovingly.’”

  “Update.”

  “The table’s set. We’re just waiting on her to do her part.”

  “Mechanism?”

  “Water glass.”

  “I’ll hold on the line,” Van Sciver said.

  Lyle swallowed to moisten his throat. “Okay.”

  The silence was uncomfortable.

  Enough time had passed that Lyle could fiddle with his Nikon again without drawing attention. He lifted it up, watched Joey chewing and gazing absentmindedly into the middle distance. The sun was directly overhead, warming the patio. They were in fucking Arizona. Why wouldn’t she just take a sip of water?

  At last she wiped her mouth. She reached for the glass. She lifted it from the table.

  A figure loomed behind her, blurry in the zoom-lens close-up. A hand lifted the water glass out of the girl’s hand.

  Lyle adjusted the focus, found himself staring at Orphan X.

  How the hell did X know the water had been spiked?

  Abruptly, Lyle was perspiring. The ASU polo stuck to the small of his back. X was saying something to the girl.