Hellbent

“I’m done here,” Van Sciver said. “He’s got nothing for us.” He regarded the man again, felt something akin to sadness. “There’s nothing left to get.”

The man’s face seized again, and he tweaked forward, facial muscles straining. “People taking and taking like bites little piranha bites until there’s nothing left until they’ve nibbled you down to the bone and you’re dead a skeleton held together by tendons just tendons.”

“I got this,” Thornhill said, putting his arm around the man and walking him to the drain. “Come on, buddy. You’re okay. You’re good.”

The man shuddered but went with him.

Van Sciver folded his arms across his broad chest and watched.

“I’m sorry you’ve had a rough time,” Thornhill told the man. “It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. You can’t help what you are. Hell — none of us can.”

The man nodded solemnly, picked at the scruff sprouting from his jaundiced neck.

Thornhill removed a can of spray paint from his jacket pocket, gave it a few clanking shakes, and started to spray something on the concrete by the drain. The man watched him nervously.

“I knew a guy,” Thornhill said, the sprayed lines coming together to form a giant swastika. “Loved dogs. Had a whole raft of them taking over his house, sleeping on his couches, everywhere. Well, one day he’s out driving and sees a sign on the road. Someone’s giving away baby wolves.”

He pocketed the can of spray paint, set his hands on the man’s shoulders, and turned him around. Then he knocked the back of the man’s leg gently with his own kneecap and steered him down so he was kneeling before the drain.

“So he figures what the hell. He takes this baby wolf home, raises him just like a dog. Feeds it, shelters it, even lets it sleep on his bed. The wolf gets bigger, as wolves do, grows up. And one morning just like any morning, this guy, he’s building a shed, fires a nail gun right through his shoe.”

Thornhill tilted the man forward toward the raised strip of concrete running above the drain. “There you go. Just lie forward on your chest.” He positioned the man. “So this guy comes limping through his backyard, scent of blood in the air. His dogs are all frantic, worried. Can sense his pain, right? They’re worried for him. But that wolf? The wolf doesn’t see a problem. He sees an opportunity.”

Thornhill reached down, opened the man’s jaw, set his open mouth on the concrete ridge. “So he tears out his owner’s throat.” The man was trembling, his stubble glistening with trapped tears, but he did not resist. He made muffled noises against the concrete lip. Thornhill leaned over him, mouth to his ear. “Because that wolf was just biding his time. Waiting, you see, for his owner to show the tiniest vulnerability.” Almost tenderly, he repositioned the man’s head. “No matter how docile it seems, a wolf will always be a wolf.”

Thornhill reared back to his full height, his shadow blanketing Orphan C. Thornhill firmed his body, raised one of his steel-plated boots over the back of C’s head.

Van Sciver climbed into the passenger side of the Chevy Tahoe. Even with the armored door closed, he heard the wet smack.

That was okay. Yesterday had given them a pair of solid leads. C had been the least promising of the two.

On to the next.

Van Sciver opened his notebook and peered at the address he’d written inside. This one held his greatest hope.

Outside, Thornhill tugged off his boots and threw them into the trash-can fire.

Van Sciver removed his phone from the glove box and called Orphan V.

28

Her Version of Normal

In a McMansion in the impressively named and decidedly unhilly gated community of Palm Hills, Candy McClure strode through the kitchen wearing two oven mitts patterned with cartoon drawings of the Eiffel Tower.

Classy.

Her fuck-me lips, which would be her best feature if there weren’t so many to choose from, were clamped around a candy cane. Sucking. She’d plumped them out further with lip liner and tinted gloss, which made things entirely unfair for anyone with hot blood in his — or her — veins. This was by design.

She had more assets than the other Orphans, and she was unafraid to deploy them.

Contour-fitting Lululemon yoga pants and a muscle tank gripped her firm body, showing off everything she had to show off while hiding everything she needed to hide.

Such as the scar tissue that turned her back and shoulders into an angry, swirling design better suited to pahoehoe lava than to human skin.

She leaned forward and removed a fresh apple pie from the oven. It smelled wonderful. On the counter rested a bag of powdered sugar, a tub of shortening, and a flask of concentrated hydrofluoric acid, effective at dissolving flesh and bone.

She was a domestic goddess.

On the easy-care quartz-topped island, her phone chimed. She flung off the mitts, leaned beneath the hanging copper pots, and picked up.

Her boss’s voice came through. “Code.”

She glanced at the screen. “‘Iridescent motor,’” she said. “My nickname in high school.”

“Are you still undercover?”