Orphan X: A Novel (33 page)

With his back to the hillside, Evan crept along the rear of the building. Five or so rooms down the corridor from Candy’s utility closet, one window had been blacked out. Risking a closer peek, he saw that it had been fortified from the inside.

Katrin’s cell.

He’d counted eight men and Candy. To get in and out cleanly, he needed them spread throughout the bird-in-flight V of the building. He located the breaker box near the terminus of the eastern corridor. Through an atrium of some sort at the juncture of the two hallways, he watched the guns-for-hire comparing weapons in the lobby. He wanted to get some of them moving down the eastern corridor—away from Katrin’s room.

He’d brought only stun grenades, not wanting to risk the collateral damage caused by frags. He lifted the metal lid of the breaker box and let it clamp back down over the body of the flashbang, an upside-down alligator clamp that held the grenade in place. Slotting a finger through the pin, he pulled it. Then he sprinted across to the rear of the western corridor.

He raised the shotgun, aiming it at the top hinge, and waited. The night breeze blew slow and steady. In the side of his neck, he felt the pulse of his heartbeat like the tick of a clock’s second hand.

Across the way the flashbang detonated, the building going black.

Evan fired the three hinge-removers—
boom, boom, boom
—the door sagging open, and then he was inside, barreling along the corridor. Down by the junction of the lobby, four of the men appeared, heading toward Katrin rather than toward the explosion, a savvy tactical move.

Though Evan was out of range, he shot a warning blast up the hall to push them around the corner. He sprinted for the utility closet, each jarring step rocking the doorway back and forth.

He was ten meters away when Candy burst out, her raised fist firing muzzle flares. With no time to lift the shotgun, he slid onto his back, rocketing forward on the slick floor, on a collision course with her legs. He scissor-kicked for her Achilles, but she leapt over him, her hand swinging to aim as he popped to his feet. He lunged inside her reach, grabbing the gun as it grazed his cheek. Her hand blocked the rising shotgun. For an instant they were nose-to-nose, locked up, and then her lips pursed in a smirk and she yanked the trigger, the pistol report sounding inches from Evan’s head. The noise filled his skull, his field of vision tilting violently out of frame, a painting knocked askew. He jerked back, and she drove her face forward, hammering his temple with a head butt, her teeth-clenched screech laced with the scent of strawberry bubblegum.

He spun away from her, barely holding on to the shotgun. Her stainless-steel pistol shimmered as she raised it for the kill shot. Rather than fight his momentum, he threw himself into the rotation, whipping his leg up and around, his shin striking her square in the sternum. Her gum ejected from her open mouth as she flew back through the doorway into the utility closet.

The utility closet, filled with plastic jugs.

They broke her fall.

Liquid flew up around her, sloshing freely from the cracked jugs, and she gave a piercing scream. Evan heeled the door shut, firing again down the hall to drive the men back into the lobby. The spent case ejected from the Benelli, spinning to the floor. With the side of his boot, he swept it across the tile, wedging the plastic end beneath the utility closet’s door, trapping Candy inside.

Her screams continued, rising to inhuman decibel levels. She banged on the door, the sounds getting wetter. Vapor crept from beneath the door, not wood smoke but the smell of sulfur and flesh.

At the corridor’s end, an AK held in a gloved hand made a puppet appearance, firing rounds off the walls and ceiling. Blind cover fire as the field teams readied to make their charge.

Evan would not give them that chance.

Combat shotgun cinched between his shoulder and cheek, he sprinted toward the lobby.

This was not going to go well for them.

*   *   *

The corridor sounded like a hall of pyrotechnic horrors—blasts and shrieks, splintering wood and bellows of pain. Katrin fought to press herself up against the wall, though the zip-tie around her ankle held her leg straight out in front of her. It was impossible to separate her own shuddering from that of the building.

The bloodbath continued in sound and vibration only.

Boom.

A warbling cry torn off midstream.

Boom.

A heavy thump and then a death rattle of leaking air.

She covered her ears, closed her eyes. Even through the walls, she could smell smoke, the scent burning the back of her tongue.

A sob-warped pleading penetrated the walls.
“Hang on—just hang on, let me—!”

Boom.

One kneecap pressed into her chin. Still she tried to draw her other leg to her chest, but the plastic tie sliced the flesh of her ankle. She was crying, but she couldn’t hear herself.

A thunderclap of the door being kicked in. Her mouth opened, and this time she heard herself screaming. When she opened her eyes, the upper hinge was already knocked clear of the screws, the lower one snapping free as the door cartwheeled inward.

A black boot materialized from the dust-filled haze of the corridor, and then Evan melted into sight.

“We gotta move,” he said.

*   *   *

She looked a mess, her choppy bangs sweat-matted to her forehead, her face blanched, her lips dry and cracked. Wearing a thin tank top, she curled forward as if striving for the fetal position, her collarbones pronounced. Evan moved to her, letting the shotgun drop to the carpet, his hand in his pocket, digging for the Strider knife. The black-oxide blade flicked up with a snap, and he sliced through the plastic zip-tie, her freed leg retracting into her body as if spring-loaded.

He’d killed five of the eight operators and taken Candy out of commission. Which still left him outgunned.

Deep in the building, he heard running, shouts, bursts from radios. For now the remaining men were diverted to the eastern wing near the breaker-box explosion, bracing for a second-front attack. He let out his breath. The first moment of respite since his entry.

“Katrin, listen to me.” He cradled her face in his hands, one fist still gripping the Strider, the blade sticking up next to her cheek. “We have to move quickly.”

“Did you kill the big guy?” she asked.

“No. He’s not here. But other men are.” He sensed he was talking too loudly over the ringing in his ears. “Stay behind me, touching distance. We’re gonna head to the hillside, then loop back around.”

She nodded, tried to stand, her legs failing her.

In his pocket the black phone vibrated. After an instant of frozen shock, he yanked it free, tearing the lip of his cargo pocket. He glanced at the screen, expecting Slatcher’s untraceable number. Instead the screen announced a pay phone with a 702 area code. Las Vegas.

Morena Aguilar.

Had Slatcher gotten to her, claiming another hostage even as Evan freed Katrin?

Still in a crouch, he snapped the phone to his face. “Morena? Are you safe?”

“Yeah, no thanks to you.” Her voice came rushed and angry. “Why can’t you all just leave me and my sis alone? You said we’d be
done.
”

From the eastern corridor, he heard doors banging open, the men searching room by room. It wouldn’t be long until they realized that their western contingent had been demolished.

With his free hand, he dropped the locked-open Strider and grabbed the shotgun, training it on the doorway. “I have to go. Call back. Leave a number. Your life depends on it.”

As he pulled the phone away from his ear, he heard her fading voice: “—did what you said, okay? I found a guy. That was the deal.”

The ringing in his head amplified. Everything decelerated—the throbbing at his temple, the dragon swirl of smoke in the doorway, the guttering blue of the emergency light from the hall. The phone drifted back up to his ear, also in slow motion.

“Guy?”
he said.

The realization was still rattling through him, making its way to his brain. Awareness hit, and he whipped around in time to see Katrin slip his own knife into his abdomen just beneath the ribs.

47

One Breath

Blood spurted through his shirt, matting the fabric to his flesh. The pain, merged with the ringing in his ears, shut out the world, a few seconds of mind-numbing overload. Her bird-thin shoulders hunched inward, Katrin backed away from him in seeming horror, one fist pressed over her sobbing mouth. Her pixie-round face, flushed red in near-perfect circles at the cheeks, looked even more doll-like. He stared at her uncomprehendingly. The phone trembled in his hand, lowering, lowering, until he dropped it into his gaping front cargo pocket. His fingers drew to the warmth spilling from his body.

“I’m sorry.” She was shaking her head, as if to negate what she’d just done. “I didn’t want to do any of it. But they … they made me. They made me do all of it.”

He staggered back a step, the weight of the shotgun tugging his arm downward until the barrel tip struck carpet. He leaned on it like a cane. His other hand came off the wall of his gut, a red palm spread before him.

Katrin’s voice, wobbly with emotion, was still coming at him. “Slatcher said he won’t stop, that Sam won’t be safe until you’re dead. And the call, Morena—you were gonna find out.”

Morena’s final words over the phone had saved him. If he hadn’t jerked away at the last minute he’d be down on the floor, bleeding out. When it came to a stomach puncture, every millimeter brought a fresh hell.

Nonetheless, he was hurt badly. Just
how
badly remained to be seen.

The ringing in his head fuzzed out all sound. Katrin half turned away, the strokes of that kanji tattoo spreading like spider legs from beneath the rear strap of her tank top. Her lips moved, shaping words:
I didn’t want to, Evan.

Still she held the blood-streaked Strider knife, but there seemed no risk she’d use it again. Turning his back on her, he staggered for the doorway. Fumbled along the wall and out into the corridor, still aswirl with Sheetrock dust, the shotgun low at his side, the tip trickling along the floor. He picked his way through the trail of bodies, this one propped against the base of the wall, that one lying in a glossy puddle, its three remaining limbs spread in a snow-angel sprawl. A fire sprinkler doused Evan’s left side. He no longer sensed Candy’s pounding on the jammed utility door behind him, but shadows flickered across the lobby at the end of the corridor ahead.

He veered into the first office to his left. To raise the shotgun at the window, he had to kick the barrel, the effort releasing a cry of pain. The recoil almost knocked the Benelli from his grip, but his aim was close enough. The shards flew away, sucked outside as if by a vacuum.

Somehow he rolled over the jagged sill and onto the marshy weeds. Rather than move toward the hill, he headed for the lobby, charting the straightest line to his truck. The back door of the atrium stood open, the grass around it trampled from some earlier search. Evan stumbled inside, assailed by the odor of dead plants.

He moved through a neat industrial kitchen and peered into the lobby. Empty. The glass doors waited ahead and beyond, the promise of the parking lot and his pickup.

As he stepped from cover, running sounds echoed down the corridor, more than one set of boots. Gasping for air, he shouldered hard into the wall by the doorframe. It took everything he had to hoist the Benelli. He couldn’t hold it properly, but he seated the stock against his shoulder and rested the barrel on the crossbar of his forearm. Firing it would hurt. The boots grew nearer, nearer, and then Evan swung around the jamb and pulled the trigger.

The recoil knocked him backward, spinning him down onto one knee. Heat crept over the waist of his pants. He drooled a little. From the corridor he heard wet gasping. When he managed to look back up, two bodies lay still.

He forced himself to his feet and banged out through the glass doors. A neat line of SUVs faced outward from the near curb, an offensive line in formation. He tottered between two of them, his shoulders knocking the sideview mirrors.

The parking lot played visual tricks on him, stretching out like an asphalt football field. Through the full-body ache, he sent out a hope that the remaining operator would stay with Katrin rather than pursue him. Trudging across the open blacktop left him wildly exposed; he’d be gunned down here without a fight. Each breath seared his lungs; every step radiated a sense-memory echo of the stabbing through his torso. He told himself to keep walking, and his legs somehow stayed under him.

At last he fell through the jasmine hedge, his shoulder striking the wheel well of his trusty Ford. He tossed the shotgun into one of the truck vaults between a tray of ammunition and the cracked scabbard of the katana, then smeared himself around to the driver’s seat.

Squeezing the wheel, he tore out of the spot and lurched into the parking lot, circling for a pass at the row of SUVs. He aimed his rugged bumper assembly at the line of shiny hoods, clipping the grilles one after another, jarring him painfully in his seat. The mini-collisions would activate inertia-sensing switches in the SUVs’ bumpers, shutting down the power to the fuel pump and ensuring that no one could pursue him.

Rather than U-turn to use the lot exit, he hammered over the outer curb directly onto the overpass, bouncing high enough for his hair to skim the roof. Swiping sweat from his eyes, he rode the wide sweep of the lane up and around, veering onto the freeway. As he merged, he looked across the divider to the opposite lanes and spotted a purple Scion peeling up the exit toward the building. Odd that Slatcher hadn’t yet ditched the car. As it flashed by, Evan caught a glimpse of the big man overflowing the driver’s seat, one meaty arm pressed to the window.

He did not look happy.

The red taillights ahead blurred together into a stream, traffic slowing, and Evan braked abruptly, barely avoiding a rear-end. His face contorted, braced against the throbbing. Staying this tight was no good; it compounded the agony. He cast his mind back through the years to his first instructor, the bearded man in the barn. Those lessons taught with the tip of a knife.