Candy was going for young Georgetown junior associate at a white-shoe firm, successful but not yet arrived, dressing and living beyond her means in hopes that she was on the verge of that next promotion. Few things were less threatening to men than a woman trying slightly too hard to make up professional ground.
She kept pretending to wrestle the tire, making sure that her face was getting a nice damsel-in-distress flush. It was 6:58 A.M., New Chapter unlocked its doors at seven o’clock sharp, and her target—from the intel Van Sciver had given her—would be jonesing for his early-morning hit of nicotine.
Orphan L’s smoking habit was the one thing he wasn’t currently faking. And the one thing he couldn’t suppress even if his life depended on it.
Which, of course, it did.
Find what they love. And make them pay for it.
She heard the clunk of the dead bolt unlocking, footsteps, the snick of a lighter.
She stayed buried in the trunk, let the view do the talking. The skirt, sexy-conservative as was befitting the town, strained a bit at the seams.
She made exasperated sounds.
Oh, dear me. If only there were a strapping man who could— “Excuse me?”
She extricated herself from the trunk, blew out an overwhelmed breath, pressed a hand to her sweaty décolletage.
He was walking toward her already, salt-and-pepper stubble, tousled hair. He looked convincingly like shit—she’d give him that—but he would’ve been handsome were he not playing addict. “Need a hand?”
In the Orphan Program’s prime, Tim Draker had been one of the best. But he’d recently broken with Van Sciver, taken early retirement, and blipped off the radar. Then he’d found out there was no retiring from the Orphan Program.
Not with Van Sciver.
“God, yes. The tire went out, and I don’t really know how to change it. I’m late for work—my boss is gonna kill me.”
He drew nearer, flicking his cigarette aside with a practiced flourish. A broad smile, full of confidence. Too much confidence for a recovering heroin addict. It was too tantalizing—she was too tantalizing—for a trained Orphan to keep his tongue in his mouth, hold his distance, act his legend.
Her ass alone could do the work of a full team of Agency spooks.
Draker wore a T-shirt, a wise choice since it showed off the scabs and dark, wilted bruises at the crooks of his elbows. Terrific visuals, likely produced from a mixture of vitamin-C powder, Comet, and Visine shot just beneath the epidermis. Then you wolf down enough poppy seeds and Vicks cough syrup to ding the intake opiate-drug tests. After that it’s just about theatrics. Rub your eyes with soap, slam Red Bull, Vicks, and Sudafed, and you have your basic amped, twitchy, rheumy-eyed, nauseated, sweating addict. Claims of suicidality buy you more time off the streets, out of the system, protected under that umbrella of total patient confidentiality offered by a drug-treatment facility.
A plan worthy of Jack Johns, Patron Saint of Dispossessed Orphans.
Van Sciver would never have known.
But for a single eyelash.
That had put him on the scent of anonymous treatment facilities. But what a bitch to search them. Had it been anyone but Van Sciver with his MegaBot data-mining lair, it never would’ve happened. Draker would’ve lain low, undergone another three-month fake treatment in another facility, and then skipped off into the wide world once the heat died down.
Draker sidled up, pretended not to eye her cleavage. “Let’s take a look, shall we?”
“Oh, my God,” Candy said, all breathy like. “Thank you so much.”
Draker leaned into the trunk, reaching for the tire, his T-shirt straining across his muscular back. Candy withdrew a syringe from the top of her riding boot, popped the sterile plastic cap, and sank the needle into his neck.
He went limp immediately.
She flipped his legs into the trunk after him.
That was a nice feature of the Audi A6.
Good trunk space.
She slammed the trunk shut, got in, and drove away. The snatch-and-grab had taken three seconds, maybe four.
Men were so easy.
They had a single lever. You just had to give it a tug.
*
Van Sciver and Thornhill pulled the armored Chevy Tahoe through the tall chain-link gate and parked alongside the humble single-story house. Weeds had overtaken the backyard, and a BBQ grill had tipped over, rusting into the earth.
Van Sciver got out, the sun shining through his fine copper hair, and rattled the gate shut on stubborn wheels, sealing them in. Thornhill opened the back door.
They started to unload the Tahoe.
Padlocks and plywood.
Nylon ropes and boards of various lengths.
A decline bench press and jugs of water.
Mattresses and drop cloths.
Rags and a turkey baster.
Duct tape and a folding metal chair.
Thornhill whistled a tune the entire time. Van Sciver wondered what it would take to wipe that permanent smile off the guy’s face.
When they finished, Van Sciver’s cheeks and throat had gone blotchy pink from exertion. His shirt clung to the yoke of his shoulders. He had an Eastern European peasant’s build—arms that barely tapered at the wrists, thighs stretching his cargo pants, a neck too thick to encircle with both hands. In another life he would’ve been a 60 gunner, hauling the massive, belt-fed pig for a platoon, a one-man artillery unit.
But this life was better.
He grabbed the last of the supplies, closed up the Chevy, and came inside.
Thornhill was doing handstand push-ups in what passed for the kitchen, his palms pressed to the peeling linoleum. The forks of his triceps could have cracked walnuts.
Van Sciver’s phone alerted. He juggled the items he was holding and picked up. “Code.”
“‘Potluck chiaroscuro,’” Candy said. “They’re getting arty on us.”
“Is the package in hand?”
“What do you think?”
“V.” He packed the syllable with impatience.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
He walked to the chipped counter. Set down a dog collar next to a galvanized bucket.
“Good,” he said. “We’re just getting ready.”
36
Fresh Air
Joey answered the front door of the Burbank safe house. She looked like hell—swollen eyes, gray skin, her hair mussed.
Evan moved past her off the porch, swung the door shut. “Did you check the security screen before opening?”
“Nah. I figured I’d play door Russian roulette. You know, maybe it’s you, maybe it’s Van Sciver.”
“It’s increasingly hard to get a direct answer out of you,” Evan said.
“Yeah, well, sprinting the marathon means not a lot of sleep.”
He glanced immediately at the laptops, code streaming across both screens, progress bars filling in. “So nothing yet.” He failed to keep the impatience from his voice.
“I would’ve called.”
He took in the bare-bones house, wondering if it felt similar to the hangar in which Van Sciver had kept her. Or the apartment Jack had hidden her in. That familiar feeling compressed his chest again. He thought about her reading that Thanksgiving card last night, her legs tucked beneath her on the couch.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“How do you think I’m doing? I’ve been either running for my life or staring at a screen for longer than I can remember. What kind of bullshit existence is that?”
She went to the kitchen counter, cracked another Red Bull.
He had a few hours before his meeting with Benito Orellana in Pico-Union. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.
“Great. A walk. Like I’m a dog. You’re gonna take me around the block?” She stopped herself, rubbed her face, heaved an exhale through her fingers. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I’m being a bitch.”
“You’re not,” Evan said. “Come on. Fresh air.”
She gave a half smile, swept her hair to one side. “I remember fresh air.”
She followed him out. The invigorating smell of Blue Point juniper reminded him of the parking lot in Portland. They’d had a lot of close calls already, a lot of hours together in the trenches.
They turned left and headed up the street, Evan keeping alert, scanning cars, windows, rooftops. Wild parrots chattered overhead, moving from tree to tree. Their calls were loud and strident and somehow lovely, too. As Evan and Joey walked, they watched the birds clustering and bickering and flying free. Evan thought he detected some longing in Joey’s face.