Out of the Dark

38 As Long a Long Shot As Ever There Was

Evan was in desperate need of vodka. Aside from the hour-and-fifteen-minute nap he’d grabbed in his car, he hadn’t stopped moving in four days. Driving the speed limit south on the 405, he headed for a long-term-parking lot near LAX, where he’d changed out his truck for the Taurus. He never returned to Castle Heights after a leg of a mission without at least one vehicle switch.

He pictured the slender bottle of Tigre Blanc in his freezer, the smooth French wheat vodka a world apart from the Spirytus he’d utilized in D.C. to scorch his esophagus and to liberate Doug Wetzel’s head from his body.

It was still early in the day, but given his travels Evan hadn’t yet caught up to Pacific Standard Time. Half of his internal clock was set to East Coast time, while the other half readied itself for bed in Europe.

The soporific thrum of his tires across the asphalt was making his head nod. He was just reaching to blast the air-conditioning into his face when his RoamZone gave its distinctive ring.

The car’s hands-free audio system pulled the incoming call through the dashboard, and Evan found himself confronting a mobile number he didn’t recognize on the screen.

The Seventh Commandment decreed that he take only one mission at a time. His last client had already chosen Trevon Gaines, which meant that no one else should be calling the Nowhere Man’s encrypted line.

He clicked to answer, hesitated, then said, “Do you need my help?”

“No…” The familiar feminine voice shattered through his grogginess like a mainlined hit of epinephrine. “But you need mine.”

Over the past few years, Orphan V and Evan had tried to kill each other on numerous occasions. As elusive and deadly as Evan, Candy McClure had an array of specialties, among them making the bodies of her targets disappear. While defending himself, Evan had kicked her onto her own bottles of concentrated hydrofluoric acid, her back and shoulders taking the brunt of the damage.

She’d not forgotten that.

The past half year had brought Evan a number of revelations, among them an awareness that Candy’s allegiances might have shifted away from the Program. The files on the flash drive he’d lifted from Doug Wetzel seemed to bear that out; she was now among the targets on the president’s wish list.

Before making contact with Evan, she’d come to Los Angeles, a decent guess since a number of their run-ins had been in this city. She’d given a meet location and hung up before he could argue.

He parked a full ten blocks away and approached the destination cautiously, taking side streets and cutting through people eddied around gourmet-food trucks.

From the safety of a crowded sidewalk, he stared across Wilshire Boulevard at the entrance to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Restored streetlamps from the 1920s and ’30s formed a large-scale assemblage in the front. The two-hundred-plus cast-iron lamps had been painted a flat gray and placed neatly on a tight grid. At dusk they imbued the air with a Hollywood glow, part dream, part drunken fantasy.

Patrons threaded among them now, a few unoriginal souls striking Gene Kelly poses for iPhone shots. Evan scanned the rooftops, the parked vehicles, the faces in the crowd. When he looked back at the forest of streetlamps, Candy was standing among them, perfectly motionless.

At first glance she was tough to identify, having changed her hair color and appearance yet again. She was masterful at drawing attention to her body — which was worth drawing attention to — and changing her carriage and posture. Today she wore a long-sleeved bodysuit top stretched tightly down into a pair of dark blue jeans. Half circles of skin showed at her hips where the leg holes pulled high above her thick leather belt. Black cowboy boots, dark glasses, glossy pink lipstick. Her hair, dyed a vibrant rose gold, hung down her back in a knotted rope, swaying like a horse’s tail.

Everyone noticed her, yes. But she directed the eye in such a way that not one male or female observer would be able to recall her facial features with any detail.

Before revealing himself, Evan watched her, looking for any tell that she had backup in the area. It was impossible to read her eyes behind the dark shades, and her training was such that she was unlikely to supply any nonverbal cues.

He gave a final look around and stepped out from the cover of the crowd.

She picked him up as he was entering the crosswalk and turned away, casting a glance over her shoulder that in another context would have been seductive. He followed her inside, sidestepping museum visitors to keep her in view. She carved west from the entrance, and he came up behind her, close enough to hear the taps of her boots against the concrete.

They passed through the Sunday throng, children bickering, parents grabbing sippy cups from beneath strollers, a foursome of flirty college kids huddling over a museum-campus map, giddy from the proximity. Evan kept part of his focus on Candy, the rest on the periphery. Orphans operated in the shadows, navigating their way through the underbelly of the world everyone else lived in. But much of their work was also out in the wide open, their footprints invisible to everyone but conspiracy theorists and fellow intelligencers.

Ahead in the LACMA courtyard, a thick multitude of durable tubes fell from a raised steel grid, forming a penetrable sculpture. A few kids spun inside the exhibit, arms spread, the yellow-lime hoses draping their arms and shoulders.

Candy stepped into the embrace of the piece, the tubes rustling and then shaping around her form like dense jungle vines. Evan followed her in, parting the way with bladed hands.

The hoses stretched up a full story, giving them heft, and they tugged at his face and chest as they billowed about him. The effect was whimsical and disorienting, like twining oneself in giant spaghetti.

Reading the car-wash oscillation of the tubes, he could discern Candy’s shape ahead. They cat-and-moused their way through, and when Evan broke free of the curtain’s edge, she was several paces ahead of him, veering for the Broad Contemporary Art building.

She passed a Japanese tour guide waving a telescopic flag, a janitor mopping up spilled coffee, a sign on a distinguished gold stand reading RAIN ROOM CLOSED FOR SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE.

As she brushed up against the janitor, Evan heard her drawl, “’Scuse me, sir.” When Evan passed the spilled coffee, the janitor was still staring after her in a daze.

Evan kept on her as she cut inside the lobby of the Broad. Spinning the janitor’s keys around her index finger, she sidestepped the groups massing for the main exhibit and disappeared up the brief corridor leading to the Rain Room.

As Evan came around the corner, she was gone, but the key remained inserted into the lock, the laden ring beneath it still swaying. A placard on the door read IMMERSIVE ENVIRONMENT.

He stepped forward, turned the key, and entered, already sliding his hand beneath his shirt to unholster his pistol.

Inside, it was raining, a perpetual downpour unleashed by what must have been a network of pump-fed ceiling tiles. The room was dark, lit only by a few pinprick spotlights. Rainfall echoed off the hard interior surfaces, cacophonous and hypnotic.

ARES raised, Evan edged forward, scanning the space. Before him a square of rain paused, clearing the way for him to step forward onto the metal-grate floor. He paused, enchanted, and then accepted the invitation to progress. As he did, the next tile ceased its output overhead, opening up a path. He had no time to contemplate the invisible sensors as he edged farther in, the storm parting for him.

Across the room, through overlapping sheets of falling water, he spotted her.

Her curvy form was backlit like something from an album cover, the pencil-thin streaks of water around her catching the sparse illumination irregularly, flickers of white. He couldn’t see her face, and judging from the light spilling over his shoulder, she couldn’t see his.

She shifted, and her gun hand came visible, raised like his, sighted on his face.

She stepped and paused to match his pace, the two of them spiraling to the center until they stood in a patch of broken downpour, the muzzles of their pistols paralleled.

They had circled each other for so many months that it seemed bizarre to be standing face-to-face at last. Over the years he had built her into something of his own making, and he knew that he represented something mythical to her, too, something bigger than what he was.

“I figured this was a nice spot,” she said. “Romantic.”

The reverberation, he realized, had the benefit of drowning out any potential audio surveillance.

One side of her face intercepted the light, a crescent of smooth cheek, and he thought about the ravaged flesh of her back, burned beyond recognition.

“I like the cowgirl getup,” he said.

“Oh, this old thang?” She smiled. Her mouth was wider than most. “I’m tired of waiting for you to come after me. And I’m not gonna spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. So we either have this conversation now or we kill each other.”

“What conversation?”

“What do you say we lower our pistols? If I was gonna shoot you, I would’ve done it the second you walked in the room. Like I said, I’m here to help you.”

“Hard to take you at your word,” he said. “Given how many times you’ve tried to kill me in the past.”

“I know you stashed the girl in a boarding school in Lugano.”

All at once he was aware of the moisture in the air, the way his shirt clung to his body. It took everything he had to keep his expression impassive. “Is that a threat?”

“God no,” she said. “It’s an offering. I’m the only one who knows she’s alive, remember? I figured out months ago where you parked her. The secret’s safe with me.”

He stared at her a beat longer. Then he eased back the hammer and lowered his pistol. For a moment he stared down the black bore of her gun. He saw her thinking about it.

A stray drop traced the edge of her temple. “It’s not like I’ve forgiven you or anything.”

He said, “Not aware I asked.”

Finally she lowered her pistol as well. “You’re going after Bennett,” she said.

He gave a little nod.

Again with the smile. “Revenge,” she said. “It’s a loser’s game. You’re better than that.”

“It’s not just revenge,” he said.

“It’s what’s right.” Her tone held mockery.

“Yes. And to prevent what’s still to come.”

“The list of targets,” she said. “How many Orphans are left?”

He bit his lip. Around their umbrellaed dome, rain fell unremittingly, hammering the floor, making the metal tremble beneath his boots.

“How many?” she asked again.

“Nineteen. As soon as Bennett finishes with me, he moves on to them.”

“They’re spies. Not innocents. You don’t know them any more than you know the average guy on the street. You’re a professional — or at least you were. When did you grow a conscience?”

Her tone was driven, and he found himself wondering whether she was arguing with him or with herself.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Somewhere along the way, it happened.”

“So you’re gonna stop killing by killing.”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as hypocritical?”

“Yes.”

“So why do it?”

He considered her question, the rain crashing down around them. “It’s the only thing I know how to do.”

She stared at him. He watched her chest rise and fall, the puff of condensation brought by each breath.

“Why do you want to help me?” he said.

“Because I’m one of those nineteen names,” she said.

Evan studied her closely, knew her to be lying. She cared about more than that, but her shifting morality didn’t interest him.

“Once you take out Bennett,” she said, “it’s over. He’s the head of the snake.”

He said, “And?”

“You need another operator at your skill level.” She blinked innocently. “Or better. And we all know there’s only one of me out there. And afterward … who knows?” She licked a raindrop off her lips. “Maybe you and I could move in together and have ninja babies.”

“House with a white picket fence.”

“Join a wine-of-the-month club. Buy a fucking Volvo.”

Evan holstered his ARES. “No wine-of-the-month club, no Volvo. And no working together. I operate solo.”

“Never believe a man’s first reaction,” she said. “It’s one of two rules I live by.”

“What’s the other?”

“Nothing good ever comes of dating guys named Travis.”

He smirked, looked away.

She took a step closer, set a hand on his cheek. “Oh, sweetie,” she said. “You’re still in denial about what you’re up against.” She turned his face until he was looking into her eyes. “You’ll never be able to pull this off by yourself.”

She lowered her hand and stepped back, the rain parting behind her and then resuming between their faces.

“You have the number I called you from,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for you to come to your senses.” She hesitated. “Even with both of us, it’s as long a long shot as ever there was.”

She eased away again, the rain thickening between them. One more step and the darkness enveloped her.

He stood listening to the pounding rain and his own beating heart.