Orphan X

49 Scarlet Trail

The static haze lifted, Evan’s vision clarifying in time for him to recognize that he was pulling through the ridiculous porte cochere. Yawning in his director’s-chair perch, the valet started to rise, but Evan dismissed him with a nod. Fighting the wheel, he pulled down to the parking level and into his spot, barely missing a concrete pillar.

The dark stain enveloped the left side of his shirt, saturating the belt line of his cargo pants. He couldn’t afford caution. He was, as the corpsmen were wont to say, bleeding like stink. If he didn’t get upstairs immediately to stop the flow, he’d die. Wobbling toward the stairs, he almost lost his footing on an oil slick.

He didn’t even register them until they were on top of him.

Mia and Peter.

She clutched a pharmacy bag, her son standing glumly beside her wearing a bathrobe over Riddler pajamas. Though she stared at Evan in shock, Peter was focused elsewhere, gazing anxiously up the stairs, tugging at her hand. “C’mon, Mommy. My heart’s still pounding.”

Instinctively, Evan turned away, hiding his bloody side from the boy.

Mia’s expression stayed frozen, but somehow she managed to answer her son. “The Ativan should kick in soon, sweetheart. It’ll help you settle down. It’s been a horrible night.”

Peter looked up at her, then across at Evan. His mouth popped open.

Evan white-knuckled the railing, pulling himself up step by step. He tugged the sleeve over his other hand, trying to wipe off the blood as he went, but it was no use.

Mia broke from her trance, moving up the stairs at his side. “Jesus Christ, Evan,” she said. “What happened? Are you okay?”

His head swam from the blood loss, his skin clammy and trembling. His heart redlined, each pulse reverberating through his chest. A dizzy spell staggered him, Mia shouldering some of his weight.

“Yes.” He pulled himself upright. “Good.”

“Is this from Marts and Alonso?”

The pain stole the word from his mouth, so he shook his head no.

Mia tucked Peter behind her, trying to block his view. “You’ve got to get to a hospital.”

Evan moved hand over hand along the wall toward the service elevator, leaving bloody prints. No time to clean, to cover his tracks. “No. No.”

“This isn’t a choice.”

“I’ll be killed.” One breath. “Men after me.” One breath. “Go.” Breath. “Away.”

The car arrived, and he tilted into it. Blood dripped off the hem of his shirt, tapping the floor.

Leaning heavily on the elevator rail, he looked back at her. Her forehead furled with concern. One tooth pinched her bottom lip. She looked like she might cry.

“Please,” he said.

The doors wiped her face from view.

Moving on autopilot, he let his breathing blot out everything. Muscle memory guided him to his front door.

A cold gust rolled up his torso, cooling his sweat-drenched face, and he realized he was inside his condo now, standing at the open refrigerator.

He pulled a saline IV bag out of the fruit drawer. From the butter shelf, he grabbed a bottle of Epogen, nearly dropping it. He battled his legs to get him across the poured-concrete expanse, down the hall. His sock squished inside his boot.

At last he spilled onto the bathroom floor. Flinging open the cabinet beneath the sink, he yanked out the First Responder kit. The magnetized buttons on his shirt gave way readily beneath his weak tug, an ancillary benefit. He doused a washcloth and wiped at his stomach, getting his first clear look at the wound.

The knife had penetrated his stomach two inches left of the midline, level with his rib cage, slicing the superior epigastric artery. The artery was just shallower than the abdominal wall muscles, which looked to be unscathed. A centimeter or two deeper would have added a host of untenable complications, puncturing his stomach, intestines, or diaphragm. Through the gash he watched blood spurt finely from the artery at intervals.

Doing his best not to anticipate what was coming, he pulled out the suture kit and readied the needle. One breath. One breath. One breath.

He entered a tunnel of torment, lost to time. Electricity jolting up nerve lines. Sweat tickling his jawline. Fingertips pulsing like crimson slugs.

And then it was done, or had been for some span of time, an ugly stitched seam of skin staring up at him. Somehow he’d thrown silk whipstitches around the bleeder and sutured off the slice above.

He breathed for a few moments, wanting to give himself a break, but then he started to drift off and knew he had to snap to. One-handed, he started an IV in the bend of his elbow. He spiked the bag of saline and started it feeding into his arm to up the fluid volume in his circulatory system until he could replenish his blood. Grabbing a syringe, he drew up a dose of Epogen from the bottle and sank the needle into his thigh, the injection burning as he depressed the plunger. An anemia med, Epo stimulated the marrow to produce more red blood cells, something he sorely needed given the quantity he’d left behind on the floor of the office building, in the footwell of his truck, on the walls of Castle Heights.

He stared longingly over at the hidden door in the open shower enclosure, but he knew he’d never make it into the Vault to scrub the surveillance footage. Even if he did, there was no way he could clean up the blood in the parking level, the rear hall, the service elevator.

The scarlet trail led right to his door, but he could do nothing about it right now. He’d have to add Castle Heights to his long list of burned locations and move on as soon as he was able. The pain in his chest at the thought of this wasn’t physical; it was something deeper, buried close to his heart. Unable to base-jump, to abseil, even to drive away, he found himself in that rarest of places — at the mercy of chance, powerless to help himself.

He dragged himself to the floating platform of his bed. With a final effort, he hung the IV bag from his reading lamp. Then he collapsed into blackness.