Orphan X

15 Tick, Tick, Tick

It all checked out.

Katrin White, the divorce from Adam Hamuel, the dead mom, the father in Vegas, even the byzantine contortion of family trusts into which her ex-husband’s money had vanished.

What didn’t check out was the direct-dial number Katrin had for the kidnappers. Camped out in the Vault, chewing a tart Granny Smith apple, Evan traced the eleven digits through various electronic switchboards as they ping-ponged around the globe and then vanished into the Internet ether in a manner he found frustratingly familiar.

They wouldn’t be backtraced any more than he would.

Time was key. There was no point in chasing his tail around Las Vegas searching for an itinerant backroom poker game. Evan had to be in touch with the sniper and his people soon. He didn’t want their vexation to simmer, turn to rage, then desperation.

He ran his hands over his face, gave Vera a look. She looked back from her nest of cobalt blue pebbles, offering nothing. At the base of his brain, he felt the tick, tick, tick of paranoia. His gaze moved from the little plant to the RoamZone phone beside it. He removed the SIM card, crushed it under his heel, and replaced it with a new one. Then he jumped online and moved the phone service from the outfit in Jiangsu to one in Bangalore.

Earlier he’d lifted Katrin’s fingerprints from the passenger-side door handle of the Chrysler sedan, which he’d wiped clean before approaching her in Chinatown. From the databases he knew that she was who she said she was, her story literally battle-tested. Nonetheless, in honor of the First Commandment he went back through everything again, plumbing her Social Security records and bank accounts, looking for the slightest hiccup or red flag.

Nothing.

Though she’d been stoic when he’d left her in the hotel room, he could read the fear in her eyes. He’d returned to bring her food, some toiletries, and new clothes of various sizes, which she seemed to find vaguely amusing. Then he’d driven back to Chinatown.

At least ten police units had been on-site, lights flashing, as well as multiple unmarked sedans. The shattered windows of Lotus Dim Sum gaped, a row of jagged mouths, and shards still littered the sidewalk. Across the street from Central Plaza, cops swarmed the apartment building. Slowing as he drove along Broadway, Evan picked out a solemn congregation of detectives on the balcony of the third-floor apartment, centered almost precisely on the spot he’d picked up the glint of the scope. Getting a look at the crime scene would have to wait. Evan had coasted by, then switched out cars at the safe house and driven home.

In the Vault now, he took one more bite of apple and tossed the core toward the trash bin in the corner. He bricked the shot, the remains bouncing wetly onto the concrete. He stared at the disobedient apple core, his jaw tense. Then he rose, picked it up, and wiped the floor clean.

As he dropped back into his chair, his eye caught on a rugged gray-haired man peeking out from the clutter of open windows on his computer desktop. With a click of the mouse, he brought the DMV photo to the forefront.

Sam White. Katrin’s father.

Held hostage this very minute by men unafraid to fire into a crowded restaurant in broad daylight.

Sam wore a half smile that crinkled his eyes, his skin toughened from sun exposure. He’d worked as a construction manager and looked the part. A guy you’d want to share a beer with, watch a game. Someone to teach you to play poker.

Evan had put Katrin through the paces — changing the location, a bus ride, leaving her car behind, switching her chair at the table. A pattern of movement designed to keep her off balance and himself safe. But one that clearly had aroused the interest of the sniper or the men behind him.

Any meeting that carefully orchestrated obviously went against their wishes and directives.

Katrin’s words returned with a sting: Me calling you? That could’ve killed my father.

A pulse beat in Evan’s temple. The walls of the Vault retained a bit of dampness, enough that he could feel moisture in his lungs on the inhale. Through the vent he could smell tar from the roof. For a time he sat there, that picture of Katrin’s father staring back at him. He thought of the false-bottomed drawer in his bureau and what it contained.

Never make it personal.

Just make it right.

Tomorrow he’d call Sam’s captors. He’d give everyone a night’s sleep to settle down, then engage under the light of a new day. In one fashion or another, he would engage.

Exiting through the shower and walking back to the big room, he sat to meditate, setting his pistol on the area rug beside him. Crossing his legs, he relaxed into his flesh, felt the tug of his bones, the weight of himself against the floor. His eyelids half closed, and beyond the blinds the city lights streaked into comets of yellow and orange.

He inventoried the minor aches from the day, starting with his feet and moving up his body. A slice on his calf carved by a shard from the blown-out window. A bruise on his left hip. Some joint tenderness around the shoulder.

The pain flickered in these spots, warm, pulsing. He focused on the hot points, breathed into them, smoothing them out with each exhalation as if beneath a rolling pin. And then they were gone, everything gone but the rise and fall of his chest, the coolness at his nostrils.

The breath was his anchor.

There was nothing else but his body and the chill air moving through it, feeding the blood in his veins, centering him here in this instant, his life measured one breath at a time. For a while he drifted across a blank slate, mindful and aware and yet without thought.

And then, as if stumbling, he lost the thread of the present, spinning back twenty-five years.