Never
let
an
innocent—
The front door rocketed open, a suppressed report sounded, and her head snapped to the side. She collapsed to a hip, her hands catching the floor, her stiff arms sliding her down gracefully, and then she lay on her side, expired.
A broad form eased into the room, shutting the door quietly behind him, shoulders turned to the main surveillance feeds. A few splinters cactused out where the dead bolt had torn through the inner frame. Though both locks were shot, the door could still close. From the hall nobody would notice anything amiss. Keeping his head lowered, the man walked over and put another suppressed round into Danika’s chest, her torso bucking. The pistol spun, clipping up into a tension-hold underarm holster, and then the man crouched to pick up Danika’s still-live prepaid phone.
As he stood, Charles Van Sciver lifted the phone to his face, looked into the main surveillance camera, and smiled.
“Hello, Evan,” he said.
57
Another Lit Window
A few more pounds on the frame, his cheeks even fuller, the ruddy complexion more pronounced.
Evan’s words came out hoarse. “Hello, Charles.”
Van Sciver strolled leisurely around the loft. “There are 367,159 people in the United States alone who share your given name,” he said. “That’s one in every 854 Americans.” The words came across the line on a slight delay, unhitched from the movements of Charles’s mouth, lending the conversation an otherworldly effect. “Of course, you lost that clunky last name of yours years ago. Well before Oslo. So it’s been a challenge.”
“I’m glad I’m not named Ignatius.”
Charles smirked. He stopped before Danika and looked down at her corpse. The dark puddle beneath her head slowly expanded. “They’re so helpless, and you’re so strong,” he said. “That’s your weak spot, Evan, always has been. Your soft, soft heart.”
Evan thought about that authentic fake passport properly issued through the State Department. About being tracked through those fifteen telephone-switch destinations around the world. About why Slatcher never bothered to swap out the Scion — because no authorities were tracking him.
“You’re not freelance,” Evan said. “You’re government-sanctioned.”
“At least as much as we ever were,” Charles said. “But yes, I’m still inside, if that’s what you mean.”
“Who’s running you?”
“Who’s running me?” Again Charles gave that cocky grin, the one that brought Evan back to cracked asphalt basketball courts, mac-and-cheese dinners, the overpopulated bedrooms of the Pride House Group Home. “No one runs me. It’s mine.”
“What’s yours?”
“Everything.”
The realization struck Evan, roiling his insides. Lies stacked on top of lies until the tatters of his past avalanched down on him. “The Orphan Program. It was never discontinued.”
“Its purpose has shifted. But I’m the top dog.”
“How many of us are left?”
“Enough,” Charles said.
“How’d you get on my trail?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t imagine how hard it was to track down the Nowhere Man. We designed a data-mining program to parse crime-scene reports. It hit on William Chambers’s murder. We got onto Morena Aguilar from there.”
“What tipped you?”
“The target raised a red flag. Dirty cop, lotta allegations — right in your wheelhouse. Then the forensics. The rifling showed he’d been shot with a 1911, your preferred pistol for years, though the ammo threw us off at first. You generally use hollow points, but you were throwing 230-grain hardball that night. Then I realized — the crowded neighborhood, you wanted to go subsonic so the bullet wouldn’t have a sound signature. But what really gave it away was the money left behind to pay the girl’s rent. What’s a broke Salvadoran girl doing with hundred-dollar bills?”
Careless, Evan thought.
“We wanted to keep her in the dark in case we needed to use her later,” Charles said. “We just never expected her to toss a real client into the mix so fast.”
“Because that interfered with the fake client you set up.”
Charles toed Danika’s body. “That’s right.”
“You wanted to position somebody close to get an inside line on my location.”
“You know how it is with someone like you. We needed to control your position so we could execute a coordinated attack in a well-scouted location.”
“Like at the motel.”
“That’s right. And even so, look how that went. That’s why we switched it up, grabbed a pawn so we could move you around the board.” His eyes flicked again to the body at his feet. “We needed plenty of notice for mission planning. We were hoping you’d spend the night at the loft, but you’re like a shark. Always moving.”
“Where’d you find Danika?”
“Oh, we had an eye on a number of candidates, but we were waiting until we got a bead on you. We’d been watching Danika for some time. She seemed the best fit.”
It took a moment for Evan to process that one. “So that’s why you’re after me?” he finally asked. “My pro bono work?”
“Of course not.” Charles pinched his eyes, a show of frustration. “We are after you because of the information in your head. You’re not a safe asset to have out there in circulation.”
“Neither are you.”
“I’m not out there in circulation.”
“I was told you turned.”
Charles looked genuinely taken aback. “I never turned.”
“The summer after Oslo, I was assigned to kill you. I refused.”
“Two of us were assigned to kill you that summer. It was the first time they ever let Orphans work together. Your handler lied to you. You were always the target. We just couldn’t find you. Until now.”
“Then why…?”
It struck Evan there in the dim glow of the monitors. Jack had sent Evan the picture of Charles knowing that he’d recognize him, knowing that he would go underground before he’d kill a fellow Orphan. The Smoke Contingency.
Jack had given him the fake assignment to warn him and get him off the grid. If Evan had known the truth, he would have gone up against the Orphans and the whole goddamned government. He would’ve gotten himself killed.
Realization flickered across Charles’s face, and then that smile sprang back into place. Phone to his ear, he paced around Danika’s corpse. “Oh, that’s rich. You didn’t know. Why did you think Jack Johns went down? For trying to protect you.”
Evan reached behind him for the chair, lowered himself into it. He thought of Jack at the dinner table, twirling linguine around his fork. The hard part isn’t turning you into a killer. The hard part is keeping you human. His tense voice before their fateful meet beneath the Jefferson Memorial. There may have been a leak on this end. I don’t want to be drawn out. I’m watching my movements.
Jack had broken countless protocols to protect Evan. He’d known the risk he was taking. And he’d taken it.
Evan’s grief over Jack’s death had never left; it remained, woven through his core. It shifted now, fissuring the foundations, stealing the breath from his chest. His mouth opened, but no words came out.
The only glimmer of gratitude he could find was that Charles could not see his reaction. But Charles sensed it. He turned neatly on his heel, eyeing the hidden camera in the hanging cabinets.
Evan forced out the words. “Why did they want to kill me?”