Hellbent

51 Push a Little More

Candy’s back was on fire, but she granted her skin no concessions when on a mission. She refused to scratch it, even resisted tugging at her shirt so the fabric would rub against the ruinous flesh and soothe the burn. Candy had pulled Van Sciver into the hall of the safe house to talk to him privately.

Van Sciver was as unyielding a man as she’d ever encountered, but he was still a man, which meant she had a shot at getting what she wanted from him. He’d pulled his pistol out of his underarm tension holster.

An FNX-45 with a threaded barrel and holographic red-dot sights.

A lot of firepower for the skull of a thirteen-year-old.

“The hard part’s over,” Van Sciver said. “We have him now. X knows it or will soon enough. The kid’s served his purpose.”

Van Sciver’s eyes twitched across the threshold to where David Smith sat on the decline bench, a pillowcase cinched over his head, hands pressed between his knees. He hadn’t made a noise since Delmonico and Shea had delivered him. The two men stood by the rear door, guarding it with M4s in case the skinny thirteen-year-old kid went Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on them. The other pair patrolled the front of the house as if working perimeter duty at a presidential inauguration.

L’s corpse had been removed, the spillage from his body more or less cleaned up, though the smell of vomit lingered.

Over in the kitchen, Thornhill stirred something in a pot, humming to himself. It smelled delicious and spicy, and Candy wondered where Thornhill was from, how he’d learned to cook and who for. It brought back a memory from high-altitude SERE training in her seventeenth year. She’d summited a tree-blanketed rise in the Rockies, nearly stumbling onto a family of four picnicking out of the back of their Range Rover. The mom had laid down a blanket, and there were sliced apples in bowls and cold fried chicken and thermoses of hot cider. The daughter was around Candy’s age. Candy had hidden behind the tree line, staring down at the exotic sight before her, scarcely breathing lest she spook them. She’d remained long after they’d driven off, her boots embedded in a film of snow, trying to loose the tangle of emotions that had knotted up her throat.

Thornhill lifted the wooden spoon for a taste, smacked his lips at a job well done. In a holster snugged to his hip, he had an FNX-45 that matched Van Sciver’s. He was so disarming that it was easy to forget how lethal he was. With Thornhill it was a pleasant conversation right up until the minute the bullet entered your brain.

Candy refocused on Van Sciver, keeping her voice low. “I’m saying let’s not have a failure of imagination here.”

“Which means what, precisely?”

“L took the kid out of circulation. And Jack kept him off the books after that. David Smith has got no real record — no files, no fingerprints, nothing. Aside from a few kids in a loony ward, no one knows his face.” She paused for dramatic effect. Pursed her distractingly plump lips. “Which means he’s a blank check.”

Van Sciver’s fair-complected face was mottled from the exertion of the past twenty-four hours, splotches of red creeping up from his shirt collar. That blown pupil was like a void. Candy felt that if she stared long enough, she might fall into it and keep tumbling.

She thought of the beautiful young woman locked in a car trunk in an alley outside Sevastopol. The rattle of her fists against the metal as she bled out. The scraping of her nails.

Candy shuddered off the thought, looked away from Van Sciver’s lopsided gaze so he couldn’t read anything in her face. The pillowcase fluttered in the spot where the boy’s mouth was, the fabric pulsing like a heartbeat, surprisingly steady.

“L acquired him for you initially,” she said. “Now you have your asset back.”

“What if Jack Johns turned him?”

“Jack Johns only had him a few months before dumping him at that facility. Not enough to fully indoctrinate him. But the kid did get the benefit of Johns’s training. Johns is good at that. Maybe the best.”

Van Sciver gritted his teeth, neither confirming nor denying. “What are you suggesting?”

“After we get X, we pick up with the kid where L and Jack left off.”

“I don’t have the time or interest to train some boy myself.”

“I’ll do it. Assuming he’s the right material.”

The dilated pupil pegged her where she stood, that weird, hazy starfish floating in the depths. She wasn’t sure where to look.

Van Sciver said, “This have to do with Sevastopol? Dead girl in the alley?”

“Of course not.” She hoped she hadn’t rushed the words. “We need more arrows in our quill.” She pointed into the living room. “And that could be one of them.”

Van Sciver’s jaw shifted to the side and back. He holstered his .45.

Candy did not let him see her exhale.

He tugged a red-covered notebook from one of his wide cargo pockets and flipped it open. Inside were various intel scribblings and the list of five names.

Orphan J. Orphan C. Orphan L.

All crossed out.

Then Joey Morales, circled twice.

And David Smith.

Van Sciver removed a Pilot FriXion pen from the fold and erased the boy’s name. He lifted that bottomless stare to Candy. Then he tossed the notebook onto a side table and walked into the living room. The former marines stood at attention the way former marines did.

Thornhill pulled the pot off the stove to cool, came around to confer with Candy and Van Sciver.

Van Sciver said, “You got the propofol?”

Thornhill flashed that million-dollar grin. “Now it’s a party.”

He went to a black medical kit and came up with a syringe filled with a cloudy white liquid. They didn’t call it “milk of amnesia” for nothing. The medication provided a quick knockout and a rapid, clear recovery. Push a little, it was an anesthetic. Push a little more and you had a lethal injection.

In all matters Van Sciver strove to have a full range of choices.

How the boy responded in the next few minutes would determine how much pressure Thornhill’s thumb applied to the plunger.

Candy found herself biting the inside of her cheek.

Van Sciver walked over to the boy and tugged off the pillowcase.

David Smith blew his lank bangs off his forehead and took in the plywood-covered windows, the empty jugs of water, the fresh plastic tarp on the floor. Then he squinted up at Van Sciver.

“Is this a test?” he asked.