He drew in a deep breath, wondering if his day was over at last.
A clopping of footsteps announced René’s entrance. His suit, which looked to be a thick wool blend, bulged at the hip. It seemed even the master of the chalet was bearing a handgun beneath all that fine fabric. David hung on his arm, an ornament on display, with an e-cigarette wedged between his index and middle fingers. Evan wondered if they’d been in the parlor entertaining.
“We done?” Evan hadn’t spoken in hours, and his voice came out husky.
“Not yet,” René said. “We have one final party, and they’re very eager to see you.”
Clasping his hands, he swiveled to the doorway.
Escorted by Xalbador and his AK-47, Candy McClure entered the room wearing a dark green halter dress, the dagger of the deep-cleavage neckline plunging down between her breasts to her belly button.
Orphan V, back from the dead.
Last he’d seen her, he’d locked her in a closet in the spillage of hydrofluoric acid, a little treat she’d intended for him. He’d heard her pounding on the door and screaming but had been massively outnumbered, busy ducking bullets and trying to get to a not-so-fair maiden in distress.
At Candy’s side now was a dead leaf of a man, short and slight, with jaundiced skin and darting flat eyes. No doubt another Orphan.
David vaped off his e-cig, eyeing Candy. “She is spectacular,” he said. “Isn’t she?”
Candy strode across the room on stiletto boots. She confronted Evan through the glass, legs spread, muscular thighs tensed.
She reached for the halter at the base of her neck, untied it, and let the top of the dress fall forward, exposing her torso.
Behind her, David gasped, one hand rising to cover his mouth. At first Evan didn’t understand.
Then she turned.
Whorling scars covered her back and shoulders. Evan stared at the ridges and fissures with disbelief. The seam of disfigurement ran nearly perfectly down her sides; she looked like a doll pressed together from two different molds.
She swung back around, giving him her glorious front.
“Hello, X,” she said. “We’ve been looking for you a long time.”
49
Flicker of Coldness
Candy moved toward Evan, lifting her arms to retie the halter at the base of her neck.
“I didn’t know that happened to you,” Evan said. “Not like that.”
She must have read something in his face, because he saw a flicker in her eyes, a softness shimmering through the gem-hard surface. But only for an instant.
“I’m not gonna waste time telling you what I’m gonna do to you,” she said. “When the time comes, I’m just gonna show you.”
René said, “You’re that confident you’ll win the auction?”
“It’s not a matter of confidence,” Candy said. “It’s a matter of fact. Ain’t that right, M?”
The sullen little man gave no indication that he’d heard her, but Xalbador read the shift in the air and hoisted his Kalashnikov to a low ready position. Dex moved around the perimeter of the ballroom, sidling into Orphan M’s blind spot.
“You see,” Candy said, “we’re the only ones here with unlimited money.”
René laughed. He didn’t realize that she was being literal, that as the head of the Orphan Program, Van Sciver could access money directly off the U.S. Treasury’s printing presses.
“In that case,” René said, “I wish you the best of luck.”
“Oh, we’re not the buyer,” Candy said. “We’re the delivery service. One of your conditions before we boarded your helicopter was that we leave all electronics behind. But one of our conditions is that you provide me a means to contact my buyer.”
“You’re not in a position to set conditions.”
“I am not authorized to bid without providing confirmation for my buyer,” Candy said. “Believe me. You don’t want to leave this much money on the table.”
René pursed his lips. He seemed to be wrestling with himself. “Dex,” he said at last, “please bring Ms. V the encrypted satphone.”
“Because your encryption procedures worked out so well last time,” Evan said.
“They did,” René said. “For me.”
Dex crossed the ballroom and placed a bulky phone in Candy’s hand. She winked at him, then dialed. As it rang, she tapped her boot, a smart-ass show of impatience.
Abruptly, her expression hardened. “Confirmed,” she said.
She listened for a time. Then she moved toward the Lexan door, wiggling the phone at Evan. “Someone wants to say hi.”
One finger adorned with a metallic nail pressed the speaker button, and then a bizarre combination of voices poured forth. “Hello, Evan. it SEEMS you have FINALLY dug YOURself a HOLE TOO deep to CLIMB out OF.”
Evan raised his eyebrows, an unspoken question for Candy. She read his face, gave a nod.
When Evan thought of him, he always pictured the burly kid he’d known back at the Pride House Group Home. Now he felt the flicker of coldness that used to move through his chest when, as the smallest boy in the pack, he caught the ruthless focus of Charles Van Sciver.
Evan cleared his throat. “I’m not buried yet.”
“No. WE will be PAYing for that PRIVILEGE. I believe V WANTS TO take some TIME with you FIRST. That WILL BE my GIFT to her. For HER devoted SERVICE.”
“It didn’t have to go this way,” Evan said.
“IT IS WHAT it IS, and THAT’S ALL that it IS.” Van Sciver’s old standby. And also, judging from the dial tone emanating from the phone, his sign-off.
Candy kept her gaze on Evan but held the phone behind her, raised over one shoulder. Orphan M came forward to claim it. He carried it back across to René.
“You’ll have tonight to consider your finances,” René said. “Bidding will begin in the morning.”
“Yeah,” Candy said, turning on one stiletto prong. “We’re not willing to take that risk.”
René’s laugh was more like a stutter. “You don’t have a choice.”
Dex stiffened. Xalbador readjusted his grip on the AK.
Orphan M neared René and held out the phone. When René reached for it, M snatched David and spun him around, shoving the uncapped tip of a pen into his neck.
Immediately Xalbador’s AK-47 was pressed into Candy’s temple. Dex had his handgun drawn — a .45 auto — and aimed at Orphan M, but the little man was barely visible behind David. From the safety of the Lexan vault, Evan watched the standoff.
Calmly, Candy held up her hands, fluttered her fingers. “Hear me out,” she said. “I will offer you one hundred million dollars right now. We take him and we’re gone.”
René’s smile stretched across his tight face. “Leaving me with a houseful of furious psychopaths.”
David’s head was torqued back, his face flushed high at the cheekbones. “René,” he said, his voice throaty and cramped. “I want to go home now.”
All of his hipster cool had evaporated, and he looked like what he was: a college-age kid in over his head. The e-cigarette spun on the hardwood at his feet, and Evan couldn’t help thinking the kid would never get the chance to graduate to Marlboros.
M’s fist flexed, the pen indenting the skin above David’s carotid. “Consider the boy,” he said.
René’s face shifted into something like disappointment. “I have,” he said. He drew the handgun from his hip holster and shot David through the chest.
David’s hands pressed over the wound as he slid from M’s grasp onto the floor. He stared up at René, mouth wavering while his life poured out between his fingers.
“Dex, please show our high rollers to their room.” René holstered his gun. “Bidding will begin in the morning,” he said again on his way out.