Out of the Dark

62 Final Look Back

Rotated out away from the second-floor wall, a leg swinging in the open air, Evan fought to keep one heel dug into the flashing. His fingers cramped around the top of the shutter. The hinge plate strained against the screw, forcing it out another quarter twist. If Evan fell, he’d either break a leg or wind up an open target on the ground below.

He rammed the gun through his belt, yanked his knife from a cargo pocket, and snapped it open. With his full weight fighting against him, he seated the tip of the knife in the flathead slot of the screw, cranking it a half turn to the right. He adjusted his grip on the knife handle and cranked it again, the screw tightening back into the wall.

Just enough for the hinge to hold.

A darkness fell across the sill.

Evan dropped the folding knife.

Yanked the pistol from his belt.

As the shutter swung him wide once more, he fired through the window.

He heard the smack of lead hitting meat.

The submachine gun knocking against the floor.

The hinge ripped the screw loose, the shutter tearing away from the wall. Evan grabbed for the window, his hands landing on the lower frame, the teeth of the remaining shards slicing through his flesh.

But he didn’t let go.

He hauled himself up over the sill, jagged glass scraping his stomach, and tumbled into his old bedroom.

No sign of Orphan A.

A pool of blood glimmered on the floor by Evan’s face. The FN P90 rested over by the desk, still rocking. Near the doorway Orphan A’s pistol lay discarded.

Evan stood.

He walked out into the hall.

The drops of blood made Orphan A easy to track. A streak pointed into Jack’s room, the second on the left past the stairs.

Evan followed. Before he could reach the doorway, he heard the thump of Orphan A’s shoulders hitting the wall right beside him.

He heard the man slide to a sitting position.

Evan put his own shoulders to the wall and lowered himself to sit back-to-back with him.

Two Orphans, separated by a single wall.

Evan said, “How you doing?”

“Not so hot,” Orphan A said. “Thanks for asking.”

A dull ache throbbed in Evan’s eardrums, the volume turned down on the world, his head stuffed with gauze. He checked his palms. Broken glass glinted in the bloody slits. “Critical?” he asked.

“Gut shot, so yeah. Looks that way.”

Four and a half inches away, Orphan A’s head tilted back to thump his side of the wall.

Evan said, “I was told you had a score to settle with me. Beyond Bennett, I mean.”

“You could say that.” Orphan A’s breaths took on a wheeze. “It was that woman you killed.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in.

“The heroin addict?” he asked. “The one I left in the abandoned textile factory?”

“What? No. No.”

Evan waited for Orphan A to catch his breath.

Finally A spoke again. “I was developing her as an asset, but it developed into more than that. Like it does, I guess. I don’t know. Never happened to me before. Never since.” A few more ragged breaths. “A Chechen girl. Man, she was a princess-warrior all right. Jet-black hair down to the middle of her back. Hazel eyes that glowed. I was supposed to gather DNA from her. You know, strands of hair. Cells from her toothbrush.” Orphan A paused. “A copper-washed steel shell of a sniper round with her fingerprint on it.”

Evan would have thought that the last strain of punishing revelations had hardened him against further injury, but there it was, a new blade twisting between his ribs.

Orphan A continued. “She was pregnant, turns out. I didn’t know till later. The Russians caught up to her soon enough, put her in a forced-labor camp in Krasnoyarsk.” He coughed a few times. “Chechen women don’t do so well there. Pregnant Chechen women do even worse. They kept locking her in the ice insulator — a cold-punishment cell the size of a roomy coffin. She was tough. She made it through the first fifteen-day sentence. And the second.” His labored breaths filled the pause. “It was the fifth that got her.”

Evan cradled the revolver in his hands.

Down to one round.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I never knew I was supplying the shell that would get her killed,” Orphan A said. “Guess I never wanted to know. It’s my fault, really. For thinking I could have more in this life.” Another wet cough. “At the end of the day, isn’t it always our fault?”

Evan placed the snub nose of the revolver against the dry wall to his side.

“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”

He fired.

He heard Orphan A’s body absorb the shot and then slump over onto the floor.

He sat for a while breathing the scent of his old house.

It was all so goddamned sad if he thought about it.

He imagined Jack emerging from his bedroom door, brow twisted in disdain. You done bellyaching yet? That’s good, because you got work to do. On your feet, son. On your feet.

Evan shoved himself up.

Limping out, he dialed the RoamZone, his fingers leaving bloody smears on the screen.

When Trevon picked up, he sounded exhausted, wrung out. “Hello?”

“It’s me. How you hanging in?”

“I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”

Ask a personal question when someone asks you one.

Evan smiled. “I’m hanging in, too, Trevon.”

“Kiara gets home in one day, eleven hours, four minutes, and nineteen seconds,” Trevon said. “Now it’s one day, eleven hours, four minutes, and fourteen seconds.”

Evan stepped out onto the porch and cast a final look back at the house where his second life had begun.

For better or worse, this was who he was now.

This was what he did.

“Well then,” he said. “I’d better hurry.”