“You should pay attention. This is some wicked shit. Crumbling-kingdoms kinda shit.”
Her hands moved in a blur, and more stuff happened on-screen. He watched with wonderment, feeling something akin to pride. For a time the only sound was the hammering of the keyboard.
Then Joey said, “These rich kids suck. When can I come back to L.A.?”
She kept her eyes on the monitor, her fingers never slowing.
He hesitated.
“Not to live with you,” she added, still typing. “I mean, that’d be a nightmare . But when?”
“If this mission goes well, it’ll be safer for you. We can talk about it then.”
The scrolling code reflected in her striking emerald eyes. “Is it gonna go well?”
He thought about it. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried anything like this.”
“Just don’t die,” she said. “I mean, that’d suck. Promise?”
He considered the odds, knew better than to answer. Instead he removed a burner satphone from his pocket and set it down on the mouse pad. “If we need to be in touch about the code.”
Her eyes flicked over for a split second to take in the device. “Wow. This is great. Did you get it from 1985? Lemme guess—the Beverly Hills Cop lent it to you?”
Evan sighed. “You’d prefer we communicate through a draft file of an unsent e-mail?”
“Uh, yeah .”
“I’ll get you my account and password.”
“Thanks, Kojak. And if we need to talk, I’ll figure out an actual secure line.” She logged out and stood abruptly, the chair flying out from under her like something scared. “Let’s go.”
Again he hustled to keep up with her. In the corridor she used her lock-picking tools to reseat the dead bolt. Then she hurried up the hall, tugging down her sleeves and slinging her sweater back on an instant before a young teacher backed out of a classroom in front of them, cradling an armload of files against her chest.
“Vera!”
“Hi, Ms. Bosch. We’re just—This is my uncle-cousin. We’re hurrying to make the end of the reception.”
The teacher brightened. “Nice to meet you. Your cousin is a wonderfully—”
“Well-behaved student,” Evan said, pumping her hand. “Yes, thank you.”
Minutes later Joey and Evan slipped back into their seats in the rear of the auditorium. The headmistress remained onstage facing the massive projection screen, arms crossed, wearing a beatific expression as she regarded a video showcasing the students’ academic and athletic accomplishments.
Students jumped show horses, flung lacrosse balls, slide-tackled on lush pitches. A saccharine lily scent of perfume wafted off the woman with the mink stole. Evan was considering dozing off when the presentation suddenly fizzled out, the screen turned to static.
A blip of pure black.
A gritty sketch of the see-no-, hear-no-, speak-no-evil monkeys appeared briefly, a hacker’s signature.
And then footage came up, low light, angled across a desk. A hijacked recording from a student’s laptop webcam? A student—Matteo—sat facing the lens, staring at the invisible screen of his laptop intently.
A parent gasped.
It took a moment for Evan to assemble the imagery in his head: Matteo’s contorted face, the grunts and groans emanating from his laptop, his hand pumping hard just below the sight line of the camera.
Suddenly there was pandemonium. People shouting, administrators rushing the stage, a swarm-of-bees hum of student voices. Someone tripped over a power cord, and the projection slid off kilter, mercifully before Matteo concluded. A mother—presumably Matteo’s—was sobbing, and then the lights went out altogether. The sounds of a mini-stampede to the aisles filled the dark auditorium.
The headmistress’s voice, sharper than before, cut through the darkness. “Please stay calm. We’re going to … um, perhaps … Can I get … can I get campus security up here? Going to cancel the scheduled … the father-daughter dance until we can get a handle on just exactly … So inappropriate.… We’re very sorry. Security, please?… Maybe just—”
Evan and Joey remained in their chairs, watching the swirling chaos before them, shadows in the darkness.
He looked across at her. “Next semester?”
Joey smirked. “Sure thing, Pops.”
She held out her fist, and he bumped it.
He was gone before the lights came back up.
27
The Good Guys
When Orphan A at last gave in and shaved his beard, the skin beneath was speckled with red nicks. He’d worked the comb too hard. He moisturized his face with coconut-hibiscus lotion from a sample tube by the sink.
What a weird fucking world.
He wandered out into the hotel room proper. On the bed lay a high-resolution photograph he’d taken of the federal prosecutor after he’d neutralized her. Proof of death.
He flipped over the photograph and stared up at the watercolor windsurfer framed above the headboard. Braced with Hemingwayesque determination, the painted figure was breaking through the frothy cap of a wave, long hair slicked back across one cheek.
Holt wondered what emotion that was intended to evoke in guests staying in a midrange hotel near Dupont Circle. That there was a big, adventurous world out there ripe for the taking? That by traveling to D.C. you were embarking on one such adventure? Or maybe it wasn’t anything like that at all. Maybe the colors and pattern had been focus-grouped and found to be soothing.
He stared a bit longer at the painting and wondered what emotion it evoked in him. All he felt was a sense of disconnection, of being unplugged from the world of sentiments that everyone else seemingly drew power from.
At his feet were two Pelican cases, and inside those were various handguns, frag grenades, body armor, and a half dozen FN P90s, courtesy of the Secret Service’s own White House armory. Designed in the eighties to penetrate Soviet titanium body armor, P90s took a 5.7 proprietary pistol cartridge, fifty rounds per mag. But that wasn’t what made them special. What made them special was that each FN P90 stored its rounds horizontally alongside the barrel, which meant no mag sticking down out of the body. That made it half the size of most personal-defense weapons, a nice short Star Wars –looking motherfucker that gave so little kick that a reasonably strong woman could fire it one-handed.
It was totally ambidextrous, geared for unusual shooting positions, great for close quarters—in a car, a hallway, the cab of an elevator. The brass ejected straight down, which meant no hot casings flying around, pinging off your neck, landing in your shirt collar.
Considerations like this governed him. It seemed that living with them for so long had made hibiscus-coconut lotion and painted windsurfers less alluring.
Maybe that’s what being an Orphan did, pressed the life force out of you until you were cold-blooded and slick-scaled, a creature bent to a single design.
A double rap came at the door. A pause. Another double rap.
Not room service.
He said, “Unlocked.”
The door opened, and the Brothers Sound and Fury entered, stooping to duck beneath the frame. Pasty and hulking, they wore leather biker vests with the sleeves cut off, white-supremacist ink cluttering up their visible skin.
The Collins boys stood shoulder to shoulder, Wade tugging at his bushy Abe Lincoln chinstrap beard, Ricky’s mouth bunched up so his face looked like a fist.
“Close the door,” Holt said.
“There’s more of us,” Wade said. “Cousins.”
He lifted his upper lip, part wolf, part rabbit, and sliced a whistle through his front teeth.
Five more men, slightly diminished versions of Sound and Fury, entered. Slightly diminished still put them at six-four, 230 each.
The last man in heeled the door shut, and then they crossed their arms in unison.
Orphan A took in the display. “You can cut the choreography,” he said. “This isn’t synchronized swimming.”
Wade said, “How ’bout you tell us exactly who the fuck you are and what you think we’re gonna do for you?”
Holt appraised their outfits. “We can’t exactly make you inconspicuous, but I’ll need you to dress like human fucking beings. Shave your beard, long sleeves to cover the arm tats, see about some cover-up for the Iron Crosses on the sides of your necks.”
Ricky sidled forward, Sound to Wade’s Fury. “I don’t think you heard the man.”
Holt looked him dead in the eye. “Lemme be clear. If you take one step closer, I’ll crush your windpipe and turn your head a hundred and twenty degrees on your neck before you hit the ground. You and your brother are outta your cages because of me. The instant I’m unhappy, the secret-handshake men’ll swarm your lives and put you back in your boxes to serve out the rest of your consecutive life sentences. So what do you say we cut the shit and get to work?”
The men locked eyes. Holt could smell the tang coming off Ricky, soured body chemistry and mental illness. He knew that he could make good on his promise, but the other Collins kin would extinguish him afterward. He wasn’t sure which way the situation would go. He wasn’t sure he particularly cared.