Hellbent

If they weren’t Orphans, Evan might consider hurdling the fence and rushing the house to get within range. But he knew he wouldn’t get three steps past the rusting barbecue before they alerted to him.

Van Sciver’s thumb pulsed over the screen, and he lifted the phone to his face. Evan watched his lips move, the familiar voice coming across the line on a half-second delay; there was a lot of encryption to squeeze the single syllable through. “X.”

“Now you’re catching on.”

“I suppose you’re calling about the boy.”

From the remove of one backyard and a disintegrating fence, Evan watched Van Sciver turn. Through the phone he heard the rustle of the big man’s boots on the tarp. Candy had one hip cocked, directing the two freelancers to keep eyes up. Thornhill’s muscles coiled, thrumming with energy, ready to go kinetic. He walked to the front of the house to alert the others.

Van Sciver said, “You took one of mine…”

Joey must’ve heard the words from the receiver, because she stiffened at the mention of herself.

“… so I took one of Jack’s,” Van Sciver continued. “But he doesn’t have Joey’s weaknesses. He’s like you and me. Tabula rasa. Jack found him and tucked him away somewhere safe. Now we have him. Like a gun without a serial number.”

“Disposable,” Evan said. “You’ll train him up, spend him when you need to.”

“That’s what we’re for, Evan, remember?”

“Orphan J. Orphan C. Orphan L. Jack. Joey. And now this boy. All to get to me.”

“That’s right.”

Candy was close at hand, hanging on Van Sciver’s words, her lips pursed into a shape evocative of a kiss. But the eyes told a different story, of dark appetites unsatiated.

Van Sciver’s stare picked across the backyard and snagged on the rear fence. His eyes looked lopsided even from this distance, and it took Evan a moment to realize that it was because the right pupil was larger. Evan could have sworn Van Sciver was looking through the knothole right at him. It was impossible, of course, and yet Evan still pulled back a few inches from the wood.

He knew that look, the same one Van Sciver used to issue when they gathered on the cracked asphalt of the basketball courts across from Pride House, a group of punk-ass kids with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

A look like he was trying to see inside you.

Evan took a breath, eased it out. “How ’bout you get around to telling me what makes me so special?”

Again he watched Van Sciver’s lips move, the dubbing off from the voice coming through the line. “You really haven’t put it together?”

Evan didn’t reply.

Van Sciver laughed. “You don’t really think this is just personal?”

Evan didn’t indulge him. Their earlier conversation played back in his head. You have no idea, do you? How high it goes?

“It’s amazing,” Van Sciver said. “You don’t even know how valuable you are.”

He pivoted slightly, meeting Candy’s loaded gaze. She was clearly read in on whatever reason had escalated the hunt for Evan.

Van Sciver’s shoulders rose, his neck corded with muscle, his blocky hand firming around the phone. “They sent me to the Sandpit a few times, needed to pick another name off that deck of playing cards. I caught up to him in Tikrit. Shitty little compound in Qadisiyah, jungle-gym bars and rusty Russian munitions. We’d already rained down with aerial munitions, but Habeeb’s still strolling around his little fenced-in yard, lord of his domain. I was set up with my .300 Win Mag on a rooftop at twelve hundred meters, ready to shoot the dick off a mosquito. And Habeeb comes around the yard into sight. I have the head shot, clear as day. But at the last minute, I move the crosshairs from his face to his arm, take it off at the shoulder.” His breath came as a rush of static across the receiver. “He’ll bleed out, right? But I wanted it to be slow. Guess why.”

Evan said, “To draw out the other targets.”

“No,” Van Sciver said, his voice simmering with latent rage. “Because I wanted him to know.”

Evan let the silence lengthen.

Van Sciver said, “When I catch up to you, Evan, you’re gonna have time also. To know. All your questions? I’ll fill you in at the very end. When you’re bleeding out on the ground at my feet.”

His whole body had tensed, but Evan watched him try to relax his muscles now, a snake uncoiling.

“I am hot on your trail,” Van Sciver said.

“And I’m hot on yours,” Evan said, the Samsung pressed to his cheek. “Can you feel my breath on your neck?”

Van Sciver’s expression turned uneasy. He walked into the kitchen, peered out the window into the backyard once more. “Is that so?”

“Yeah,” Evan said. “We’ve got a lock on the kid.”

Next to him Joey bristled. Her hands flared wide—What are you doing? — but he held focus on the house.

Van Sciver muffled the phone against his shoulder and snapped his fingers. The freelancers readied M4s and spread around the interior, taking up guard positions. Thornhill drew an FNX-45 from his hip holster and ambled out of sight.