“Not for long.”
Jaggers squatted, dropped the pen down a sewer drain, and rose wiping his hand on the thigh of his slacks. The rattling grew fainter and then stopped.
Candy punched him, a quick jab that snapped his head back on his stick neck. The pain seemed to have no effect. He dodged her cross, countering with a gut shot that doubled her over. Then he laid her low with a leg sweep. As she curled on the ground, sucking for air, he pressed himself on top of her, his slender fingers cinched not too tightly around her neck.
“She saw us.” Though he kept his voice low, he wore a grimace, and through his clenched teeth wafted the stink of his breath, stomach acid and rot.
She brought a knee up between his legs hard enough to jolt him a foot forward. But he didn’t so much as grunt. He only rolled off her, climbed into the driver’s seat, and waited. Candy rose and stood for a time in the dark alley, giving her breath time to even out. Then she walked around and got in.
They drove several blocks in silence. Jaggers pulled over by the body shop they had scouted the night before. Leaving the car running, he picked the padlock and slid the gate open. He drove through and into the garage.
Another benefit of Škoda Fabias: Crimea was lousy with them, like cockroaches, and every shop worth its salt was stocked with spare parts. As Jaggers pulled off the crumpled bumper, Candy took from Setyeyiva’s briefcase his laptop as well as a hardware token cryptocard that generated a new randomized log-in code every sixty seconds. Sitting on a workbench with the laptop resting across her knees, she waited for the token numbers to flip, then punched in the code.
She and Jaggers slogged away quietly and in concert, Candy clicking on the keyboard while he mounted a new bumper and grille and hammered out creases in the hood. He worked with the quick, efficient movements of a rodent. They were making good headway, and the night was young, but they still had to deal with the bodies in the trunk.
She accessed the databases, finally locating what looked like the right one. Then she ran a search for 1-855-2-NOWHERE and waited for the data to load. The information came up.
“Goddamn it,” she said. “Goddamn it.”
Jaggers looked up from his crouch at the bumper, where he was wielding a spray-paint gun. In the dim light, his dark eyes were holes in his face. A surgeon-like paint mask covered his nose and mouth, so his voice seemed to issue from the air itself.
“What?” it asked.
“Orphan X never parked the phone number here. It was a misdirect. He paid them a fee to open a dummy account.”
“Orphan Y can follow the money.”
Candy sneered. She’d been at this longer than Jaggers. “Orphan X set up that account for us to find, you idiot. Which means there will be no following the money. Not by Van Sciver, his übersoftware, or anyone or anything else.”
Jaggers returned to his work, misting a fine layer of silver across the crease in the hood. The news seemed to carry no weight for him. She wondered if he cared about anything.
“You killed that girl for nothing,” she said.
He didn’t shift focus from his work. “We killed Refat Setyeyiva for nothing.”
“Yeah, but that was the job.”
A line of silver paint settled across the hood, effacing the final flaw. “How interesting that you see a distinction.”
He set down the spray gun and appraised the car, which looked as good as new. Then he retrieved his carry-on bag from the backseat and began to strip. He kicked off his shoes and tugged down his pants. He wore no underwear.
What she saw startled her.
Rather what she didn’t see.
She’d heard of it before, of course. But it seemed like one of those bizarre conditions consigned to medical case studies and dusty journals. Not something that belonged out here in the real world.
He piled his bloody clothes on the concrete floor, spilled some oil on them, and lit them on fire. Then he looked up, naked, unashamed, and expressionless. “I suggest you do the same.”
Her leather pants were clean, but her bustier sported a few smears from moving Setyeyiva. As Jaggers dressed in fresh clothes, she stripped off her shirt and threw it onto the small pyre.
She grabbed her encrypted satphone and walked outside, already dialing.
Standing beneath the firmament, she waited as it rang and rang. A click announced Van Sciver’s presence on the line.
“HOW was your MEAL?”
“No nutritional content,” she said.
There was a slight delay as their conversation ping-ponged between various virtual telephone-switch destinations. “Are there any inGREDients we might use to prepare a future meal?”
“No.”
She waited until it became clear that this was not a delay but a silence.
She’d visited Orphan Y at his undisclosed location only once, choppering in with a hood over her head. She pictured him there in his great room, lost in the flickering lights of the monitors, his very flesh seeming to crawl with the numbers pouring across the screens. It was as if he’d achieved singularity, given up his human form to become one with the data.
“Y?” she said. “You there?”
“I WILL identify HIS NEXT RESERVATION. And I WILL SEND you two to DINE with HIM.”
The air soothed her bare, burn-ravaged back. She drew in a cool breath, tilted her face to the smog-smeared stars. Somewhere pots clanged and a car backfired and drunken young men yelled in the night.
She thought of a girl with raven hair bent over the open hatch of the car. Her almond-shaped face, sweet and simple. The blood spurting from her carotid.
“The man you stuck me with,” Candy said. “My fellow diner. The guy’s a psychopath.”
“YES,” came back the multitude of voices. “But he’s MY PSYCHOPATH.”
30
Someone’s Idea of a Library
Two dogs, thirteen guards, two snipers, one doctor, and Dex.
In his room late that night, Evan considered his next move. He’d been building a mental blueprint of the facility, biding his time for the right moment to escape. Now that René had brought in more men, Evan wanted to know more. Not just about the men but about René. This inexhaustible supply of guards raised further questions. What was René really up to here? Had some of the potential escape routes been compromised?
Evan looked at the fireplace. Made up his mind. Crossing the room, he eased the sliding door open. Knocking out two of the security cameras meant he could move unseen by the balcony, fireplace, and desk.
From the balcony he gazed across at the barn. The big door was rolled back. Inside, two of the narcos practiced hand-to-hand on a wrestling mat laid down in front of the vehicles. They were skilled fighters, acquainted with martial arts. Throws and kicks and deflections. Several others rimmed the periphery, pounding the mat and shouting encouragement. This time around René had wisely hired not just gunmen but fighters familiar with the down-and-dirty.
Shivering against the cold, Evan stepped back into the bedroom but left the sliding glass door wide open. Climbing into bed, he pretended to toss and turn, landing himself just offscreen. Then he shoved a pillow under the covers at the periphery of the hidden camera’s view where his shoulder might be. A chilly current kicked up, the open slider pulling a stream of air into the room.
He waited at the edge of the bed, staring over at the ceiling vent, straining his ears.
When the halogenated ether hissed through, he rolled over and buried his face in a pillow. He felt the draft across his back, the gas moving past him, filling the balcony, dissipating in the night air. He waited until the hissing stopped and then waited twenty minutes more. Breathing grew hard, the feather pillows trapping his breath. But he managed. Finally he lifted his face.