Page 125 of Hellbent

He pushed away from the fence, looked down at the tips of his boots. He pictured the crowded bunks of Room 14 at McClair Children’s Mental Health Center. A Lego rebel riding a Snowspeeder across a rusting radiator. Jorell, too smart for his own good. In another life Jorell would be a lawyer, a philosophy professor, a stand-up comedian. In another life David Smith would be sitting down to dinner with a real family. In another life Jack was still alive and he and Evan had plans on the books to share a meal in a two-story farmhouse in Arlington.

“Wait,” Joey said. “Evan—he’s breathing.”

Evan’s head snapped back up. He watched as the boy stirred and rolled onto his side.

Evan’s jaw had tightened. That red-hot coal singed the inside of his throat, fanned with each breath. “We have to get him.”

“There are three Orphans and four muscleheads in that house,” Joey said. “Armed to the teeth. And we’re out here in the weeds with your girly gun.”

“Yes.”

“So how do you plan on getting to him?”

Evan fished the Samsung Galaxy from his pocket. “By telling Van Sciver where we are.”

He thumbed the Signal application.

A moment later a xylophone chime of a ringtone carried to them on the breeze. Evan put his eye to a knothole and peered into the house.

Van Sciver lifted the phone from his pocket and looked down at the screen. Candy and Thornhill alerted to his expression and went to him, the three of them standing in a loose huddle by the kid’s body.

They were in close enough proximity that a tight grouping of nine-millimeter rounds could take them down.

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?”