The boy’s phone number, a 301 area code, was branded on Evan’s brain. It had guttered across the cracked screen of the RoamZone only a few times, but he’d committed it to memory. He turned the ten digits over now in his head. As familiar as a remnant from a dream.
Bouncing along the bitter interstate in the passenger seat of the semi he’d hitched a ride with, he snatched a pen from the cup holder and jotted down the number on the back of his hand. He stared at the scrawled digits. That same feeling gnawed at him again, that he’d seen the number before.
“You all right, bud?” the trucker asked, exhaling the smell of Red Man tobacco.
“Fine, thanks.”
“Where do you want I should drop you?”
A sign flashed overhead as they crossed Baltimore city limits.
“Anywhere’s fine.”
“You from around here?”
“I guess I am.”
“Well,” the trucker said, “welcome home.”
Evan hopped out at the next gas station. He found a pay phone at the side, right between the bathrooms.
He called the only person left on the planet he could trust to deliver what he needed.
It rang three times before the gruff voice answered. “Crazy Daisy’s Flowers. Something for every occasion.”
Evan said, “I need a backpack cutting torch, an H&K MP5SD, a compressed-air grappling hook strong enough to take the weight of a jungle penetrator, and a skiff with two hundred-and-fifty-horsepower engines to meet me in Daytona Beach by tomorrow at noon. I’ll tell you a location. I don’t want to see any faces. Just the stuff waiting at a pier.”
There was a long pause.
“This,” Tommy Stojack said, “can be arranged.”
“Good.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah.” Evan smirked. “Advil.”
“You going full Somali pirate on me?”
“I assure you,” Evan said, “it’s for a good cause.”
“Good cause or not, you’re gonna have sticker shock. I have to work it cross-country. Plus, you know, discretion. I got a hook at Camp Blanding, he’s our people. Something like this, I can’t just use some clown-for-hire. After all, you never know who’s who in the zoo.”
“Just tell me the price. And I’ll pay it.”
Evan hung up.
Now, on to the boy.
He hauled up the tattered Yellow Pages dangling from a security cord and searched out the nearest cybercafé. There was one a few miles away—$4/hr! Terminals clean-wiped after every logout! We accept Bitcoin! Cabs were scarce, so he hoofed it, walking fast enough to stave off the cold. The chill crept into his shoulder, and he had to remind himself not to hunch to favor it. The tendon, muscles, and skin had to stretch in order to heal properly.
At last he stepped into the java-scented shop, peeled a hundred off the roll Jack had set aside for him, and requested a workstation and a universal phone charger. He plugged the RoamZone into a desktop outlet, fired up the computer, and ran a quick search.
Reverse-phone-number directories proliferated. He found a free one and keyed in the kid’s number. Sandwiched between various pop-up ads was the result:
No record of this number exists.
Evan stared at the screen, his discomfort growing.
One workstation over, two teenage girls laughed at a YouTube video, all gleaming white teeth and vanilla-scented hair spray.
Evan called up a second directory, keyed in the number again, and waited as the loading bar filled.
Number last used in 1996.
He stared at the screen, his stomach roiling. How the hell had the boy called him from a line that had been retired twenty years ago?
The previously associated address was available provided he endure a fifteen-second car commercial. His fingers drummed the desktop as he waited through a jingle promising 0-percent APR for seventy-two months.
That gnawing feeling made some more headway, chewing through his assumptions.
He glanced nervously over at the RoamZone plugged into the outlet by the mouse pad. No lights, no bars, no indication that it was charging. Slowly, he reached across, picked up the shattered case. He unplugged the charger, plugged it in again.
Nothing happened.
The phone wasn’t just out of juice. It was completely smashed, an untenable mess of broken glass, fragmented circuit board, and obliterated SIM card.
It had never worked.
Not since René had crushed it underfoot that first morning Evan had woken up in the chalet.
In the harsh light of the Baltimore day, it seemed painfully obvious. A phone that withstood a Godzilla stomping, that never ran out of juice, that magically got reception in a far-flung valley under a snow-thickened sky. Evan thought about how the gas had poured through the heating vent, tipping him into a drugged stupor. The blood-loss hallucinations he’d experienced at the end as he staggered for the summit.
The unconscious pulling strings, opening trapdoors, spinning its webs.
Of course.
A sheen of sweat covered Evan’s body.
On the computer the car commercial ended, the link to the address springing up. Dazed, he dropped the ruined RoamZone into the blue recycle bucket under the desk and swung his attention back to the monitor. He felt drunk with disbelief. His hand reached for the mouse, clicked the link.
An instant before the fresh screen came up, the truth dawned on him, setting his skin tingling. He knew what it would show even before it loaded.
An East Baltimore address.
He knew it well.