Hellbent

“We need to gather more intel before I make contact,” he said. “There’s an ATM at the gas station two blocks that way, facing the street. Maybe we can get the security footage, see what we see.”

Joey made a sound in her throat. Unimpressed.

“What?”

“If they drove that route,” she said. “If we know who we’re looking for.” She was leaning forward, straining the seat belt, seemingly peering up at the telephone wires overhead.

“You have a better suggestion?” Evan asked.

“As a matter of fact, I do.” She pointed through the windshield. “See those streetlights?”

“Yes.”

“They’re not just streetlights.” She reached into the backseat, retrieving her laptop. “Those are Sensity Systems lights. We’re talking thermal, sound, shock, video — they continuously gather information and suck everything into the cloud.” She ran her fingers through her hair, flipped it over so the shaved strip showed above her right ear. “’Member how Van Sciver got onto Orphan L?”

“A surveillance photo of him smoking.”

“Taken from a streetlight,” she said. “We’re gonna use Van Sciver’s game against him.”

Evan stared at the streetlights, but they looked ordinary to him. “You sure those are the kind you’re talking about?”

She gave him a look, then booted up her computer.

He said, “How can they afford something like that in a broke neighborhood like this?”

Her fingers were already working the keys in a fury. “Federal funding. It’s part of the Safe Cities initiative. Detroit got a hundred mil off the government, and if Detroit can get it…” She glanced over. “You don’t keep up on this stuff, do you?”

“No.”

“The streetlights are all LED. The whole system gets paid for by the money cities save from the reduction in electricity costs. How ’bout that? A government plan that isn’t a total cluster. Not that it started with the government. The software was developed to track foot traffic at shopping malls, see what stores people go into, what they look at, how they respond to sales announcements, coupons, all that.”

“Can you hack it?”

She kept her head lowered, her fingers moving. “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t ask me that.”

He cast an eye toward the facility’s front door. “The cops are gonna be here soon.”

“Well,” she said, “then it’s a good thing I’m fast.”

* * *

“Turn left up there. No, the next intersection. Good. Now run it straight for a half mile.”

Evan was driving the minivan, Joey in the passenger seat, directing him through traffic and simultaneously hammering away at the laptop. He felt increasingly like her chauffeur, an observation that, he was chagrinned to note, Mia had once made in regard to Peter.

Evan was becoming just another suburban dad.

Joey had what looked like a dozen windows open on the screen. He risked a glance over. On one of them she seemed to be reviewing footage angled on the eastern flank of the McClair Children’s Mental Health Center.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Patience, young Padawan.” The laptop was humming. “Wait. You were supposed to turn left back there. Hang on.” She popped another window to the fore, this one featuring a GPS map. “Go left, left, right.”

He obeyed. Focusing on the road and the rearview mirrors rather than on Joey’s active laptop screen took some discipline.

“Okay. Just — pull over here. We’re in range.”

He looked around. A fenced park. A courthouse. A McDonald’s.

“In range of what?” he said.

She ignored the question. “Let’s get you up to speed.” She punched a button, swiveled the laptop on the minivan’s roomy center console. Evan watched the exterior of C Hall, the image so steady that save for a few leaves blowing past and the sound of out-of-frame traffic it might have been a photograph.

At last a pair of shadows darkened the bottom of the screen. Two men approached the window of Room 14. One held a crowbar, the other a pistol lengthened by a suppressor. The guy holding the pistol moved aggressively, sweat glistening on his bald head. The men flattened to either side of the window.

Evan told his heartbeat to stay slow and steady, and it obeyed.

He didn’t recognize either man; Van Sciver had sent more freelance muscle. The gunman raised a black-gloved hand, his ridged, shiny skull gleaming as he did a three-finger countdown. The other guy jammed the crowbar beneath the sash window and slid it up. The bald man spun into the open frame, pistol raised, his mouth moving.

Issuing orders.

The streetlight sensor was too far away to capture the words, but a moment later David Smith appeared at the sill, holding his hands before him, showing his palms. He looked more shocked than scared. The bald man grabbed the boy’s shirt and ripped him through the window. As he manhandled the kid away from the building, another figure emerged at the edge of the screen, her back to the camera.

Her face wasn’t visible, but Evan recognized her form.

Orphan V.