Page 26 of Hellbent

The artist rose from the sidewalk, his flat cap askew. “What kind of damn-fool nonsense is this?”

The girl thrashed free of Evan, landing on all fours. She scampered across the blanket to get away, but it bunched beneath her knees, impeding her progress.

Evan grabbed her arm, spun her up and around, and dumped her into the Cadillac’s open trunk, shattering her straight through a painting of a dissected bassoon. He slammed the trunk an instant before she started battering at it.

He snatched up the rucksack, slung it through the open rear window. “If they hear you, they’ll kill you.”

Her muffled shout came through the trunk. “How do I know you’re not gonna kill me?”

“Because I would’ve done it already.”

He hopped into the car. The keys waited in the ignition, enabling the radio and a pleasing whiff of air-conditioning.

As the concerto tinkled to a close, Evan looked out the open passenger window at the old artist. Through the window over the man’s shoulder, he saw the first shadow tumble from the ceiling.

“Sorry about your art,” Evan said, and peeled out.

He wheeled around the edge of the complex, blending into traffic, coasting past the open mouth of the horseshoe. He looked back at the building.

In the center of the parking lot, a man stood facing away, his head tilted up to take in the second floor. Waiting. He would have looked like an ordinary guy were it not for his posture; he stood with the perfect stillness of the perfectly trained.

Orphan.

One of the operators stepped out through the splintered door of 202 and gestured to the man with two fingers—He’s on the run, went down and out.

The traffic light turned red, and Evan hit the brakes, peering back transfixed as the man in the parking lot sprang into motion. He hit the front gate with his foot, vaulted up, ran four pounding steps along the high fence top, then leapt onto the outside of the stairwell cage. With a series of massive lunging leaps, he scaled the cage and then swung around onto the third-floor corridor. He jumped up, grabbed the hanging roof ledge, and spun himself onto the roof, where he stood with the command of a mountaineer claiming an apex.

He’d parkoured his way up the entire route in under six seconds. Evan allowed himself to be impressed.

The man peered down, evidently picking up the commotion on the sidewalk outside apartment #102. He began a slow rotation, pivoting like a weather vane, his eyes scanning the streets below.

Evan turned back around in the driver’s seat, cranked the sideview mirror to a severe tilt, and watched the man’s reflection. The man finished his rotation, staring down at the mass of cars at the traffic light. It seemed like he was looking directly at Evan in the Cadillac, but of course there was no way it was possible from that distance.

The light turned green, and Evan drove off.

12

Increasingly Rural Tangle

Keeping the needle pegged at the speed limit, Evan drove a circuitous route to the nearest freeway and ran past four exits before hopping off and shooting west through an increasingly rural tangle of desolate back roads. Gray clouds pervaded the sky, heavy with the promise of rain. Sure enough, a few drops tapped the roof, quickening to a rat-a-tat, ushering dusk into full night. Decreased visibility was good; it went both ways. Local law enforcement had undoubtedly already issued a Be On the Lookout for the Cadillac.

He had to change vehicles, but first he needed to get a good distance between himself and the men who’d raided the apartment compound. Then he would regroup, determine what the package was, and deal with the problem in the trunk and the myriad questions that came with it.

He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, settled his shoulders. He blew out a breath, opened his eyes, and reset himself, assessing everything as if he were confronting it for the first time.

Jack’s dying message.

A package.

An address.

A girl who was an Orphan—or at the very least Orphan-trained.

Who was hostile.

But not allied with the crew of men, led by another seeming Orphan, who had raided the apartment complex in pursuit of her, the package, or Evan himself.

A crew that had Van Sciver’s fingerprints all over it.