Hellbent--An Orphan X Novel Read online

  78

  Worth the Trying

  As Evan crossed the lobby of Castle Heights, Lorilee looked up from her mail slot and caught his eye. She was alone. She smiled at him, and the smile held deeper meaning.

  He nodded, accepting her thanks.

  He neared the security desk across from the elevator. “Twenty-one, please, Joaquin.”

  Joaquin looked up, his security hat tilted. “Hey, Mr. Smoak. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  Evan grimaced. “Sales conferences.”

  “Livin’ for the weekend.”

  “You got that right.”

  A voice floated from behind Evan. “Twelfth floor, too, Joaquin.”

  “Sure thing, Mrs. Hall.”

  Evan held the elevator doors, and Mia slipped past him, her curly hair brushing his cheek.

  The doors closed, and they regarded each other.

  He tried not to notice the birthmark at her temple. The line of her neck. Her bottom lip.

  “Sales conferences.” She smirked. “Ever wonder which identity is the real one?”

  He said, “Lately.”

  And now that full grin broke across her face, the one he felt in his spinal cord. “How are you, Evan? Really, how are you?”

  “Good. I’m good.”

  And he was.

  At long last Charles Van Sciver was wiped off the books. All that remained of him was the Samsung in the right front pocket of Evan’s cargo pants, pressing against his thigh.

  Other matters had been put to rest as well.

  Benito Orellana’s next credit-card bill would show a balance of zero, the medical debts from his wife’s illness settled in full. He would still have his primary mortgage, but the second lender who had nailed him with a predatory rate had been paid off. An unfortunate glitch in the same lender’s system had led to the disappearance of a six-figure chunk from the escrow account.

  This morning the McClair Children’s Mental Health Center in Richmond had received an anonymous donation that happened to match the six-figure chunk that had gone missing from the escrow account. The money had been earmarked for improving living conditions, quality of care, and the security system.

  It could also pay for a lot of Lego Snowspeeders.

  The package of letters that Evan had sent would have arrived today, helping kick off a new life for a sixteen-year-old girl an ocean away.

  Jack had always taught Evan that the hard part wasn’t being a killer. The hard part was staying human. He was superb at the former. And growing proficient at the latter.

  It was worth the trying.

  “I’m sad it didn’t work out between us like we hoped,” Mia said.

  “Me, too.”

  “Peter misses you. I miss you, too.”

  Evan thought about a different life in which he could have been another man for them. For himself.

  “I have to look out for him,” Mia said. “No matter what I might want for myself, I have to protect him at all costs.”

  Evan said, “I get it.”

  She tilted her head, seemingly moved. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  The doors opened at the twelfth floor, and Mia got out. She turned and faced him, as if she wanted to say something else, though there was nothing else to say.

  He knew the feeling.

  The doors slid shut between them.

  He rode to his floor, entered the penthouse. He went immediately to the freezer and removed the walnut chest. Opening the hand-blown glass bottle, he poured himself two fingers of Stoli Elit: Himalayan Edition, at about a hundred bucks a finger.

  He’d earned it.

  The penthouse felt vast and empty. A ring remained on the counter from Joey’s OJ glass. He’d have to scrub it in the morning. He thought about the mess of gear awaiting him in the Vault, a mirror for the exquisite complexities inside Joey’s head. The equipment would take days to untangle.

  He paused at the base of the spiral staircase. Her absence flowed down from the loft, a stillness in the air. He found himself listening for the clack of her speed cube. Or the bump of a kite against his bedroom window.

  But now there would only be quiet.

  Drifting to the floor-to-ceiling windows, he let the first sip burn its way down his throat, exquisite and cleansing. He looked out at all those apartments on vertical display. Families were beginning to light up their Christmas trees.

  He heard Jack’s voice in his ear: I love you, son.

  Evan raised his glass in a toast. “Copy that,” he said.

  Only once he’d finished the two fingers of vodka, only once he’d washed and dried the glass and set it back in its place in the cupboard did he remove Van Sciver’s Samsung from his pocket.

  He read the last texted exchange from December 4 yet again.

  VS: AFTER I GET X, CAN THE GIRL LIVE?

  And the reply: NO ONE LIVES.

  The sender of the response was coded as DR.

  Dark Road.

  It was amazing that someone so high up would risk so much because of a mission Evan had carried out nineteen years ago. He didn’t know where the tendrils of that job culminated, but he intended to follow them. They led, no doubt, to the farthest reaches of power. That’s where the darkness was. And the gold.

  He’d raised the question himself, to Joey: How much is regime change worth? A well-placed bullet can change the direction of a nation. Tip the balance of power so a country’s interests align with ours.

  He had fired a number of such bullets in his lifetime. Maybe the round he’d let fly in 1997 had been one of them.

  Clearly he’d been a link in a chain, and he would devote himself now to discerning the contours of that chain, to seeing just how far up it stretched.

  He stared at that text once again: NO ONE LIVES.

  He had something else to devote himself to as well.

  He crossed to the kitchen island where the red notebook waited. He flipped it open, that scrawl standing out in relief where Joey had shaded the page.

  “6-1414 Dark Road 32.”

  A switchboard. A code word. An extension.

  He took out his RoamZone.

  And he dialed.

  * * *

  On the Resolute desk, the middle of the three black phones rang.

  President Bennett was not sitting there waiting.

  He remained on the couch alone, holding a glass of Premier Cru Bordeaux in his famously steady hand.

  No sweat sparkling at his graying temples. His breath slow and steady. The past few weeks would have reduced a lesser man to a stressed-out wreck, but he was Jonathan Bennett and his body obeyed his will.

  He crossed the Oval Office and lifted the receiver.

  He said nothing.

  A voice said, “You should have left 1997 in the past.”

  Bennett gave his allotted two-second pause and then said, “If you look into it, I will crush you.”

  Orphan X saw Bennett’s two seconds and raised him a few more. Then he said, “I think you misunderstand the purpose of this call, Mr. President. Looking into it’s not good enough for me.”

  “What does that mean?” Bennett said, only now realizing he’d rushed his response.

  The disembodied voice said, “You greenlit Jack Johns’s death. And the girl’s death. And so many others.”

  Bennett reseated his eyeglasses on the bridge of his nose, which felt suddenly moist. “I’m listening.”

  Orphan X said, “This is me greenlighting yours.”

  The phone clicked, the line severed.

  Bennett breathed and breathed again. He placed the phone receiver back in its cradle. He circled the Resolute desk, sat down, and set his hands on the blotter.

  They were shaking.

  Acknowledgments

  Despite his propensity for operating alone, Evan Smoak gets a lot of air support. I owe a slew of thanks to my team and to my advisers.

  I am privileged to have an exceptional crew at Minotaur Books. Th
anks to Keith Kahla, Andrew Martin, Hannah Braaten, Hector DeJean, Jennifer Enderlin, Paul Hochman, Kelley Ragland, Sally Richardson, and Martin Quinn.

  And to Rowland White and his team at Michael Joseph/Penguin Group UK, as well as my other foreign publishers who have deployed Evan around the world.

  And to my representatives—Lisa Erbach Vance and Aaron Priest of the Aaron Priest Agency; Caspian Dennis of the Abner Stein Agency; Trevor Astbury, Rob Kenneally, Peter Micelli, and Michelle Weiner of Creative Artists Agency; Marc H. Glick of Glick & Weintraub; and Stephen F. Breimer of Bloom, Hergott, Diemer et al.

  And to my subject-matter experts—Geoff Baehr (hacking), Philip Eisner (early-warning system), Dana Kaye (propaganda), Dr. Bret Nelson and Dr. Melissa Hurwitz (medical), Billy S__ (___), Maureen Sugden (IQ), Jake Wetzel (cubing), and Rollie White (geography).

  And my family. In the words of the Beach Boys, patron saints of the sun-kissed and the charmed: God only knows what I’d be without you.

  Also by Gregg Hurwitz

  THE ORPHAN X NOVELS

  Orphan X

  The Nowhere Man

  OTHER NOVELS

  The Tower

  Minutes to Burn

  Do No Harm

  The Kill Clause

  The Program

  Troubleshooter

  Last Shot

  The Crime Writer

  Trust No One

  They’re Watching

  You’re Next

  The Survivor

  Tell No Lies

  Don’t Look Back

  YOUNG ADULT NOVELS

  The Rains

  Last Chance

  About the Author

  GREGG HURWITZ is a New York Times bestselling author of nineteen novels. Critically acclaimed, Hurwitz is a two-time finalist for the International Thriller Writers’ Best Novel prize and a finalist for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Steel Dagger. In addition, Hurwitz is a screenwriter, TV producer, and comic book writer. The Orphan X series has been published in twenty-two languages around the globe. Hurwitz lives in Los Angeles.

  Visit the author’s website at www.gregghurwitz.net, or sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. No Version of Being Too Careful

  2. Dark Matter

  3. Everything He Held Dear

  4. Are You Ready?

  5. Common Interests Are Important

  6. The Brink of Visibility

  7. Two Graves

  8. Serve with Gladness

  9. From Beyond the Grave

  10. A Goodly Amount of Damage

  11. Enemy of My Enemy

  12. Increasingly Rural Tangle

  13. Dying Only Meant One Thing

  14. A Pang of Something Unfamiliar

  15. Just Geometry

  16. The Turn to Freedom

  17. A Single Hungry Lunge

  18. Short on Time and Short on Crowbars

  19. More Than a Mission

  20. Wayward Pieces

  21. Quick and Easy

  22. Dead Man’s Pocket

  23. Damaged Goods

  24. A Teaching Moment

  25. Honor-Bound

  26. How Can You Know You’re Real?

  27. Never Been and Never Was and Never Will Be

  28. Her Version of Normal

  29. End-Stopped

  30. Do Your Business

  31. Sprint the Marathon

  32. Cleaning Agent

  33. A Lot of Variables

  34. The Job to End All Jobs

  35. Patron Saint of Dispossessed Orphans

  36. Fresh Air

  37. Blood In, Blood Out

  38. Steel Bones

  39. Visions of the Occult

  40. Enhanced Interrogation

  41. Borrowed Time

  42. Undone by Target

  43. Grown-Man Problems

  44. Running the Same Race

  45. A Bit More Incentive

  46. Menu of Even More Specialized Services

  47. The Language of Comfort

  48. Something Akin to Pride

  49. Good Isn’t Enough

  50. The Best Hat Trick

  51. Push a Little More

  52. Chess-Matching

  53. My Breath on Your Neck

  54. Illegal in Police Departments from Coast to Coast

  55. Vanished in Plain Sight

  56. Crimson Firework

  57. What He Thought He Knew

  58. An Ad for Domesticity

  59. All Fucked Up

  60. Not Good

  61. Unacceptable

  62. Not Easy

  63. Devil Horns

  64. Steady as a Metronome

  65. Not an Innocent

  66. Friction Heat

  67. The Pretty One

  68. Locked-Room Mystery

  69. A Drool Not of Saliva

  70. Negative Space

  71. Bring the Thunder

  72. Thin the Herd

  73. The Black Hereafter

  74. Brightness Off Her Skin

  75. The Blackness to Come

  76. Something Flat and Unchanging

  77. Original S.W.A.T.

  78. Worth the Trying

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Gregg Hurwitz

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  HELLBENT. Copyright © 2018 by Gregg Hurwitz. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Cover design by Ervin Serrano

  Cover art: man © Mark Owen / Trevillion Images; bullet hole © Malgorzata Smigielska / Shutterstock.com

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-11917-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-18500-6 (international, sold outside the U.S., subject to rights availability)

  ISBN 978-1-250-19098-7 (signed edition)

  ISBN 978-1-250-11918-6 (e-book)

  e-ISBN 9781250119186

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].

  First Edition: January 2018