The entire intrusion took eleven seconds.
Evan watched it through again. And again.
Oh, my God! Where are you, Evan? Where are you?
He rewound. Hit play.
Where are you, Evan?
Rewound.
Where are you, Evan?
He listened to Katrin’s plea until it became a mantra of rage, firing his insides.
His thumb punched in the remembered number. It rang and rang, but Slatcher did not pick up.
He was likely trying to backtrace the number and would return the call only once he’d made some headway. As a former Orphan, Slatcher would have considerable skills and resources to run down Voice over IP protocols and digitized switchboards. It would be interesting to see how far along the trail he could get.
Keeping the lights off, Evan walked the perimeter of his dark penthouse, RoamZone in hand. His shoulder scraped along the walls as if marking the boundaries of his fortress, delineating safe ground. The sunshine charcoaled by degrees, and then a postcard orange bled through the sky, and soon enough only man-made lights prevailed, pinpricks in the black sea of the city.
As expected, the phone rang. Evan clicked TALK, put it to his ear. “Orphan O,” he said.
“Orphan X.”
“Let me talk to her.”
“Of course,” Slatcher said.
A moment later Katrin came on the line, her voice husky from crying. “I’m sorry, Evan. I’m so sorry I dragged you into this.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I couldn’t get the dead bolt locked. I couldn’t get to the bathroom.”
“There are two things I need you to remember. None of this is your fault. And I will find you. Repeat them to me.”
She jerked in a few breaths. Then she said, “None of this is my fault. And you will find me.” She stifled a cry. “Promise me?”
“I promise. Now, hand the phone back to the man.”
Slatcher came on the line again.
Evan said, “You’re happy to let us talk, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
Evan paced along the hall, letting his fingers trickle across the space where the mounted katana once hung. “Because you’re tracing this call. Right now.”
“Trying to.”
“Good luck,” Evan said, not insincerely.
“Nice diversion with the dry-cleaning van,” Slatcher said.
“Thank you,” Evan said. “Beautiful move planting the digital transmitter in the wand. You put it there in Chinatown?”
“I did,” Slatcher said. “While you were in the apartment getting onto my trail, I was in the trunk of your car getting onto yours.”
“But you didn’t want to take me out there. Too many cops.”
“That’s right. The place was inundated. As you saw. Impressive gymnastics on the balconies and the roof. I didn’t think you were gonna pull it off.”
Once again Evan’s mind scrolled through various potential enemies. A successor to a Hezbollah arms chief he’d zeroed out during the security-zone conflict in Lebanon. The bitter widow of an oligarch who’d trafficked in fissile material. An uncle of a serial rapist he’d put down in Portland.
He said, “I don’t suppose you care to tell me why you’re after me?”
“I’m afraid that’s not my call.”
“Right. Gun for hire.” Evan walked the edge of the kitchen, letting the living wall tickle his arm. “Does your employer wish to reveal himself?”
“No.”
“How’d you get on to me? To begin with, I mean?”
“Oh,” Slatcher said, “I’m good at what I do.”
Evan crossed the poured-concrete stretch of the great room, leaned against the treadmill, looking out at the glowing yellow squares of the apartment windows opposite him. “You started with Morena?”
“We could’ve started with someone before that,” Slatcher said. “You never know who we know. Maybe we’ve got someone in place in your building right now.” His tone was conversational, but Evan felt the barbed words twisting in his gut.
A disinformation tactic? Evan decided it was. If Slatcher knew where Evan was, his door would have been kicked in by now.
“What makes you think I’m in a building?” Evan asked.
Slatcher laughed in reply. That part of the conversation was closed.
“I watched surveillance from the loft,” Evan said. “Two former Orphans working together. Now I’ve seen everything.”
“Well,” Slatcher said. “Almost everything. Just wait.”
Evan had only been guessing at Candy’s provenance, but he took Slatcher’s words as confirmation. “I wasn’t aware they made a female model,” he said.
“Oh, a few.”
Evan drifted past the treadmill and stopped before the periwinkle sunscreen, gazing over the south balcony at apartment 19H in the facing building. The fine interlocking chain mail of the screen fuzzed his view only slightly. He could see Joey Delarosa reclining on his faux-leather couch, remote control resting on his thigh, a scoured Weight Watcher’s tray sitting on the footrest. From the angle of Joey’s head and the regular rise and fall of his shoulders, Evan gleaned he’d fallen asleep. The light of the TV mapped patterns on the walls around him, turning the room into something living.
“You don’t want Katrin,” Evan said. “She’s just bait.”
Slatcher’s voice, loud in his ear: “This is true. We want you.”
“I’ll be happy to oblige.”
“Confident, aren’t you?”
“We both want the same thing,” Evan said.
“What’s that?”
“To kill each other.”
“Right,” Slatcher said. “So how do we approach this?”
Down below in the neighboring building, Joey Delarosa’s front door burst open. A balaclava-masked man flew in, the momentum of the battering ram carrying him several steps into the apartment. Two more men in matching black-job gear and Candy McClure poured in on his heels. Joey’s hands exploded up into view, a heretofore hidden bag of popcorn showering its contents across the couch. Candy was on him instantly, pouncing like a great cat, frisking and securing him.
“Well,” Evan said. “Now that you have Katrin, you’ll want to hold a beat. Get any information that she’ll give up. She doesn’t have any. It’s a waste of time, but you’ll have to do it. Perhaps you could spare her some harshness by having faith that my operational judgment is sound. I’d never expose myself by trusting her with anything useful.”
He could hear Slatcher breathing. Down below, the men began clearing the apartment, room by room. Evan watched them vanish, then appear again in the different windows of 19H. He lifted his hand, set it gently on the fine mesh of the titanium screen.
“Leaving Katrin aside, you’ll want to see what angles you can run down,” Evan said. “You’ll want to exhaust every resource trying to pick up my trail. In fact, you’re probably doing that right now.”
Candy remained in Joey’s living room, peering at a handheld device. She followed it to a spot in the wall next to the TV. She punched a fist through the drywall and came out with the mobile phone that Evan had entombed there, sucking its charge from a spliced wire. The phone had mobile Wi-Fi hot-spot enabled and it served as a bridge for the very call he was on, picking up the digital packets sent through Joey’s router and bridging the signal into the LTE network, the trail literally vanishing into thin air.
Candy stared at the phone in disgust, dangling on its cords and chargers, and then she let it sag against the wall.