Orphan X

37 Sooner or Later

Evan hurtled recklessly across Downtown, running reds, slicing between cars, veering two tires up onto a sidewalk to squeak past a Volvo. He called up the GPS screen linked to the microchips in Katrin’s system, but no signal showed. A half block from his loft, he screeched into a bus zone and leapt from the Taurus, sprinting for the building with his hand riding the still-holstered Wilson Combat 1911.

He drew the pistol as he crashed through the glass front doors, scattering a middle-aged couple and their two kids as he bolted for the stairs. Running up, he halted at the fifth-floor landing, cracking the door and peering through. The door to his loft was a few inches ajar, the wood crumpled slightly around the dead bolt.

Easing into the hall, pistol raised, he crept along the carpet. He spread his hand on the splintered wood and swung the door silently inward. Leading with the gun barrel, he inched inside, taking in the open space with a sweeping glance.

One of the barstools knocked on its side. The burner cell phone smashed to pieces. He crouched over the electronic entrails, touching the few dark spots on the floor next to them. When he lifted his hand, crimson filmed his fingertips.

The drops were not excessive — maybe a bloodied nose from the slap? He knew that Katrin was alive. They didn’t want her.

Since the loft was burned, he wasted no time leaving, reclaiming the Taurus up the street, and racing back to the Elysium Park house he’d just left. He replayed Vasquez’s cover story in his head. The elaborate tale — humble illegal alien with no one to turn to, evil drug lords, the Down-syndrome daughter to be parted out for organs — now seemed implausible, hitting all the right marks to tug at Evan’s insides. The photo of “Isa” had even been planted in Memo’s wallet in place of a driver’s license, the first place Evan would check.

Slatcher had done his research, building a simulation of a Nowhere Man mission with just the right veneer of desperation and helplessness.

A few minutes later, Evan stood in the dusty interior of the ramshackle house, surveying the scene. A pocketknife on its side, blade pried up. Two sets of severed nylon flex-ties on the floorboards. And no sign of Memo Vasquez.

Disgusted with himself and not at all surprised, Evan started for the Burbank parking lot to swap out vehicles. A question smoldered in him: How had Slatcher located the loft? Evan’s mind spun, cycling through various possibilities.

Midway to Burbank, an impulse seized him, and he screeched off the freeway and pulled in to an alley behind a strip mall. Arid heat blew through the back vent of a dry cleaner, bagged and hung garments cycling on the track inside like disembodied souls.

From the trunk he yanked out the Hardigg Storm Case and put together the nonlinear junction detector. He wanded the Taurus meticulously, lingering over every spoke and panel, even sliding beneath the car on the rough blacktop to check the undercarriage. He ran the circular head over the inside upholstery, decapitated the headrests, yanked every item from the glove box. Tearing out the floor mats, he scanned them as if wet-vaccing the fabric.

The detector gave out only its customary crackle of static.

A few people exiting the dry cleaner offered him curious stares, but he ignored them, focused on his task, his sweat-heavy shirt clinging to him. He tugged out the spare tire and checked it, then disemboweled the first-aid kit, scattering its pieces across the ground. The tire iron was clean, as was the carpeted trunk mat, which he ripped out and exposed inch by inch. He shredded the black foam inside the Hardigg Storm Case, strewing it like wads of cotton across the alley.

Sitting among the wreckage of the car, he breathed hard, catching his breath, at a loss.

His stare pulled to the wand itself. A terrible suspicion pulsed to life in his chest.

Rising, he picked up the detector. Then he hurled it against the asphalt, shattering it to pieces. Stomping with his heel, he fractured the plastic handle.

Inside was a tiny digital transmitter.

Crouching, he plucked up the pea-size tracker, held it between his thumb and forefinger, and glared at it.

Hiding a transmitter within the very wand designed to detect it was an unrivaled piece of tradecraft.

He walked over to the dry cleaner’s delivery van parked beside him, unscrewed the gas cap, and dropped the transmitter inside the tank. That should keep Slatcher and his team running circles around the city for a while.

In the ravaged car, Evan drove to the airport-adjacent parking lot and picked up his truck. He drove home, trying to piece together when Slatcher’s team could have bugged the wand.

The first time Evan had used the Taurus was just before Slatcher’s assault on Katrin’s motel room. The car had been clean then — there was simply no way they could have known about it before. And once Evan and Katrin had fled the motel through the back window, he’d watched Slatcher with his own two eyes. Slatcher had no tracking intel — he was waiting on comms from his field team in the room, and then he’d turned to study the street. No, there had been no transmitter hidden within the car when Evan had first taken Katrin to the loft.

Which meant that Slatcher had planted it when Evan returned to Chinatown to sneak into the sniper’s nest. The scene of the attempted shooting was the most logical place to stake out. Slatcher would have known that Evan would return there eventually.

That burned every location Evan had driven to after Chinatown.

He ran through them in his head. He’d gone to the loft later that night when he and Katrin had sex, though he’d left precipitously after getting the call from Memo Vasquez, likely before Slatcher could scramble his team and set up for the kill. Next Evan had taken the Taurus to Vegas, putting Slatcher back on Morena’s trail at the aunt’s house. Though Slatcher had followed Morena to the Bellagio Casino, he’d been aware that Evan was somewhere on the premises, which is why he’d put Candy McClure into play on the casino floor.

Evan had visited Tommy Stojack as well, but Tommy demanded that his clients park miles away and bus to see him, so his workshop was safe. On the way back from Vegas, Evan had stopped by Memo Vasquez’s house, giving Slatcher notice that Evan had taken the bait on the fake caller. Because Evan had switched vehicles in Burbank before coming home, Castle Heights was still presumably clear.

When he’d returned to the Elysium Park house this morning, Slatcher had probably tracked him by the transmitter the whole way there, then waited to get real-time visual confirmation from the not-so-hidden pinhole camera that it really was Evan. That location put Evan too far away to get to Katrin in time, so Slatcher knew he was clear to crash the loft and take her.

It was pretty goddamned obvious why Orphan Zero was considered the best.

Once home, Evan went immediately to his loft and checked to see if Katrin’s GPS signal had magically reappeared despite the fact that he’d received no alert. It had not.

Until she ate and her digestive juices charged the microchips in her tract, the signal would be dormant. This carried with it a silver lining: If Slatcher wanded her down for a signal — and Evan had little doubt he would — nothing would show up unless he happened to scan her immediately after a meal. Something told Evan that feeding Katrin was low on Slatcher’s list of priorities. But there was a deadline on the signal as well. Katrin likely had one more day, maybe two, before the minuscule sensors passed through her system.

Then she’d be lost for good.

Next he called up the surveillance footage from the loft. He watched Katrin pacing around the kitchen island as she was prone to do. A creeping unease found its way beneath Evan’s skin, the slow-burn horror of observing a person unaware that something terrible was about to happen to her.

Katrin moved to the tinted wall of glass, and then her body stiffened with terror. She scrambled for the cell phone, half slipping on the slick floor.

Evan watched her dial with trembling fingers. Watched her mouth move frantically, the conversation branded in his memory. The sound, fuzzy yet audible: People are here — the ones from the motel.

She listened to him, ran to the door, glanced through the peephole. Her hands were fumbling at the dead bolt when the door flew in violently, knocking her back. She staggered but managed to keep her feet.

Slatcher flashed inside, backhanding her. Though his blow seemed almost an afterthought, Katrin’s head snapped around as if her neck were a well-greased swivel. The phone skittered away.

The woman, Candy McClure, was at Slatcher’s heels, a battering ram swinging playfully at her thigh. With a casual, hip-swaying gait, she crossed to the phone and smashed it with one of her chunky heeled boots. Slatcher gathered Katrin up. She lolled in his grip. Candy went to her other side, flipping Katrin’s arm so it slung drunkenly over Candy’s shoulders, and they sailed out the door.

The entire intrusion took eleven seconds.

Evan watched it through again. And again.

Oh, my God! Where are you, Evan? Where are you?

He rewound. Hit play.

Where are you, Evan?

Rewound.

Where are you, Evan?

He listened to Katrin’s plea until it became a mantra of rage, firing his insides.

His thumb punched in the remembered number. It rang and rang, but Slatcher did not pick up.

He was likely trying to backtrace the number and would return the call only once he’d made some headway. As a former Orphan, Slatcher would have considerable skills and resources to run down Voice over IP protocols and digitized switchboards. It would be interesting to see how far along the trail he could get.

Keeping the lights off, Evan walked the perimeter of his dark penthouse, RoamZone in hand. His shoulder scraped along the walls as if marking the boundaries of his fortress, delineating safe ground. The sunshine charcoaled by degrees, and then a postcard orange bled through the sky, and soon enough only man-made lights prevailed, pinpricks in the black sea of the city.

As expected, the phone rang. Evan clicked TALK, put it to his ear. “Orphan O,” he said.

“Orphan X.”

“Let me talk to her.”

“Of course,” Slatcher said.

A moment later Katrin came on the line, her voice husky from crying. “I’m sorry, Evan. I’m so sorry I dragged you into this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I couldn’t get the dead bolt locked. I couldn’t get to the bathroom.”

“There are two things I need you to remember. None of this is your fault. And I will find you. Repeat them to me.”

She jerked in a few breaths. Then she said, “None of this is my fault. And you will find me.” She stifled a cry. “Promise me?”

“I promise. Now, hand the phone back to the man.”

Slatcher came on the line again.

Evan said, “You’re happy to let us talk, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

Evan paced along the hall, letting his fingers trickle across the space where the mounted katana once hung. “Because you’re tracing this call. Right now.”

“Trying to.”

“Good luck,” Evan said, not insincerely.

“Nice diversion with the dry-cleaning van,” Slatcher said.

“Thank you,” Evan said. “Beautiful move planting the digital transmitter in the wand. You put it there in Chinatown?”

“I did,” Slatcher said. “While you were in the apartment getting onto my trail, I was in the trunk of your car getting onto yours.”

“But you didn’t want to take me out there. Too many cops.”

“That’s right. The place was inundated. As you saw. Impressive gymnastics on the balconies and the roof. I didn’t think you were gonna pull it off.”

Once again Evan’s mind scrolled through various potential enemies. A successor to a Hezbollah arms chief he’d zeroed out during the security-zone conflict in Lebanon. The bitter widow of an oligarch who’d trafficked in fissile material. An uncle of a serial rapist he’d put down in Portland.

He said, “I don’t suppose you care to tell me why you’re after me?”

“I’m afraid that’s not my call.”

“Right. Gun for hire.” Evan walked the edge of the kitchen, letting the living wall tickle his arm. “Does your employer wish to reveal himself?”

“No.”

“How’d you get on to me? To begin with, I mean?”

“Oh,” Slatcher said, “I’m good at what I do.”

Evan crossed the poured-concrete stretch of the great room, leaned against the treadmill, looking out at the glowing yellow squares of the apartment windows opposite him. “You started with Morena?”

“We could’ve started with someone before that,” Slatcher said. “You never know who we know. Maybe we’ve got someone in place in your building right now.” His tone was conversational, but Evan felt the barbed words twisting in his gut.

A disinformation tactic? Evan decided it was. If Slatcher knew where Evan was, his door would have been kicked in by now.

“What makes you think I’m in a building?” Evan asked.

Slatcher laughed in reply. That part of the conversation was closed.

“I watched surveillance from the loft,” Evan said. “Two former Orphans working together. Now I’ve seen everything.”

“Well,” Slatcher said. “Almost everything. Just wait.”

Evan had only been guessing at Candy’s provenance, but he took Slatcher’s words as confirmation. “I wasn’t aware they made a female model,” he said.

“Oh, a few.”

Evan drifted past the treadmill and stopped before the periwinkle sunscreen, gazing over the south balcony at apartment 19H in the facing building. The fine interlocking chain mail of the screen fuzzed his view only slightly. He could see Joey Delarosa reclining on his faux-leather couch, remote control resting on his thigh, a scoured Weight Watcher’s tray sitting on the footrest. From the angle of Joey’s head and the regular rise and fall of his shoulders, Evan gleaned he’d fallen asleep. The light of the TV mapped patterns on the walls around him, turning the room into something living.

“You don’t want Katrin,” Evan said. “She’s just bait.”

Slatcher’s voice, loud in his ear: “This is true. We want you.”

“I’ll be happy to oblige.”

“Confident, aren’t you?”

“We both want the same thing,” Evan said.

“What’s that?”

“To kill each other.”

“Right,” Slatcher said. “So how do we approach this?”

Down below in the neighboring building, Joey Delarosa’s front door burst open. A balaclava-masked man flew in, the momentum of the battering ram carrying him several steps into the apartment. Two more men in matching black-job gear and Candy McClure poured in on his heels. Joey’s hands exploded up into view, a heretofore hidden bag of popcorn showering its contents across the couch. Candy was on him instantly, pouncing like a great cat, frisking and securing him.

“Well,” Evan said. “Now that you have Katrin, you’ll want to hold a beat. Get any information that she’ll give up. She doesn’t have any. It’s a waste of time, but you’ll have to do it. Perhaps you could spare her some harshness by having faith that my operational judgment is sound. I’d never expose myself by trusting her with anything useful.”

He could hear Slatcher breathing. Down below, the men began clearing the apartment, room by room. Evan watched them vanish, then appear again in the different windows of 19H. He lifted his hand, set it gently on the fine mesh of the titanium screen.

“Leaving Katrin aside, you’ll want to see what angles you can run down,” Evan said. “You’ll want to exhaust every resource trying to pick up my trail. In fact, you’re probably doing that right now.”

Candy remained in Joey’s living room, peering at a handheld device. She followed it to a spot in the wall next to the TV. She punched a fist through the drywall and came out with the mobile phone that Evan had entombed there, sucking its charge from a spliced wire. The phone had mobile Wi-Fi hot-spot enabled and it served as a bridge for the very call he was on, picking up the digital packets sent through Joey’s router and bridging the signal into the LTE network, the trail literally vanishing into thin air.

Candy stared at the phone in disgust, dangling on its cords and chargers, and then she let it sag against the wall.

Wearing a fed-up expression, she punched something into the handheld device. A text message?

“Right you are,” Slatcher said.

Sure enough, Evan heard a brief hum over the line, Candy’s message coming through to Slatcher.

Slatcher exhaled faintly with annoyance. Then he said, “I can’t give you the meet spot this far in advance. You’ll have too much time to set up your counterattack.”

“Right,” Evan said. “Better to wait so we don’t both have to waste time moving it around.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Slatcher said. “When we are prepared for you. You’re too dangerous.”

“I understand,” Evan said. “I’d do the same.”

Slatcher had the upper hand now. Rather than risk going after Evan in a high-profile operation as at the restaurant and the motel, he had switched tacks. He’d make Evan come to him.

In the other building, Candy and her men vanished through the door, and a moment later Joey struggled up onto his feet and stumbled red-faced for his telephone.

“In the meantime you’re gonna try to locate her,” Slatcher said. “You’re gonna try to get to us first.”

Evan thought of the ace up his sleeve, the microchips in Katrin’s stomach. “Yes,” he said, at last turning away from the twinkling city lights and heading into the dark heart of his condo.

“Well, I suppose we’ll be seeing each other, then,” Slatcher said.

“Sooner or later,” Evan replied, and severed the connection.