Page 115 of Hellbent

On the radiator by the empty lower left bunk rested a Lego version of a Star Wars rebel commanding a Snowspeeder. Evan recognized it from one of Peter’s comic books. He picked it up. “This was Jesse’s?”

“Yeah. Ain’t that some white-boy shit?”

All three kids laughed, even the Caucasian one.

The charge nurse said, “You just dying for me to level you down tonight, ain’t that so, Jorell?”

He silenced.

Holding the Snowspeeder, Evan stepped back to her, said quietly, “I’m guessing this was one of the gifts that came out of your salary.”

She nodded.

Evan said, “It’s probably the only thing in the world he has that’s actually his.”

Her mocha eyes held the weight of all forty lives she’d been charged with. “That’s probably right.”

“I doubt he’d run away and leave it behind.”

“What are you saying, Mr. Wayne? The boy broke out. Happens all the time.”

Evan set the Lego rebel back on the radiator and stepped toward the sash window. It rattled up arthritically. He leaned out, noted the fresh gouge marks in the paint on the sill.

“They usually break out from the outside?” he said.

The charge nurse came over and looked at the window, and her hand pressed against her neck. Seeing her expression, he regretted his phrasing.

“I’ll call the police again,” she said quietly.

The boys had silenced; even Jorell had sobered up.

Evan started for the door. “Like you said, it’s in their hands now.”

As he hustled out, he passed that girl in the hall, forgotten, picking at the hem of her shirt with bloody fingernails. In his mind’s eye, he pictured Joey sitting in her place.

He blinked away the image, banishing it from his thoughts, and kept on.

50

The Best Hat Trick

Evan sat in the passenger seat of the minivan, the Virginia sun pounding the windshield. Joey had taken the news of David Smith’s kidnapping stoically, though he’d noticed her fists whiten on the steering wheel as he’d filled her in.

“One hour,” she finally said. “One hour earlier and we could’ve saved him.”

“We don’t know that he’s dead,” Evan said.

“Orphan J. Orphan C. Orphan L. All the other names on that file are dead. Except me. If Van Sciver kidnapped David Smith, he already killed him.”

They stared up the block at the crumbling façade of the McClair Children’s Mental Health Center. It radiated a kind of despair that resonated in Evan’s cells. He thought of the boys he’d grown up with in Pride House. Andre and Danny and Tyrell and Ramón. Every so often Evan checked in on them from the safe remove of the Vault, searching them out in the databases. Danny was serving a dime for armed robbery at the Chesapeake Detention Facility, his third stint. Ramón had overdosed in a by-the-hour motel in Cherry Hill. Tyrell had finally managed to join the army, KIA outside Mosul on his first deployment.

Any one of their fates should have been shared by Evan. He was them and they were him.

Until Jack.

Searching for hope here on this block was hard, but Evan tried. David Smith was owed that much.

“If Van Sciver wanted him dead, why didn’t they just shoot him in the room?” Evan said.