Hellbent (Orphan X #3)(22)

When the cop blew out his next breath, he made a noise like a moan. He leaned over, hands on his knees.

“Couple deep breaths,” Evan said.

“Okay.”

“You’re gonna radio in that you got me and you’re taking me in.”

“Okay.”

“Right now.”

The cops Evan had left in the wreckage several miles behind them on the road would have called in a rough location for backup already, which meant that Van Sciver would hear, because Van Sciver heard everything.

As the cop leaned in for his radio, Evan stayed tight on him in case he went for the mounted shotgun. But the cop’s nerve had deserted him.

“Unit Seventeen to Dispatch. I have apprehended the suspect and am heading home to HQ, over.”

“Copy that, Seventeen. We will call off the cavalry.”

Evan reached around the cop, yanked the transmission into neutral, and snatched the keys from the ignition. Both men jerked clear as the cruiser forged through the mud, bounced across the ditch, and plowed off the road. Bushes rustled around it, and then it was gone.

Evan said, “March.”

At the point of Evan’s ARES, the cop walked off the road, through a stand of ash trees, and onto the marshy land beyond.

“Kneel,” Evan said.

The cop stopped on a patch of bluegrass. His knees made a sucking sound in the wet earth.

Evan stood behind him. “Close your eyes.”

“Wait.” The word cracked, came out in two syllables. “My daughter? The five-year-old? Her name is Ashley. She waits up, watches for my headlights every night. Plays with her American Girl doll in the bay window by the kitchen. Won’t go to sleep until I’m there.” He choked in a few gulps of air. “I promised her I’d always come home. Don’t make a liar out of me. Please. Don’t make a liar out of me.”

Silence.

“Do you have kids? A wife? Parents, then. Think about them, how they’d feel if you … you … Or if something happened to them. Think about how you’d feel if it was something someone did. Something that wasn’t even necessary. If they were taken from you.”

He fell forward onto his hands. His eyes were still closed, but he felt his fingers push into the yielding earth. He thought about his body landing here, taken in by the spongy ground.

He waited for the bullet. Any second now. Any second.

Would he feel it, a pinpoint pressure at the base of his skull before the lights went out?

He thought about the chewed corner of his daughter’s blankie, the smell of her head, how when she was a newborn her feet used to curl when she cried.

He thought about his wife’s face beneath her white veil, how he couldn’t quite see her, just a sliver of cheek, of eye, until the minister had said the magic five words and he’d lifted the soft tulle fabric and uncovered her beaming back at him.

He thought about how dying only meant one thing, and that was not seeing them again. How lucky he was to have been given that purpose. And how wretched it must be for all the lost souls out there who floated through their years, adrift and alone.

Twenty minutes passed, maybe more, before it dawned on him that he wasn’t dead.

He opened his eyes, peered down at his hands, lost to the bluegrass.

He pulled back onto his haunches, moving as slowly as he’d ever moved, and turned around.

There was nothing there but wind shivering the leaves of the trees.





14

A Pang of Something Unfamiliar

Evan stood at the trunk of the Cadillac. Golden light filtered through the high windows of the ancient barn, lending a fairy-tale tint to the hay-streaked ground and empty stables. He braced himself and opened the trunk.

The girl erupted from inside.

This time Evan was ready. He ducked, and the tire iron strobed by, fractions from his skull. She landed, spun, and came at him again, but it was halfhearted. She knew she’d lost her one good shot.

He stripped the tire iron from her hands and deflected her onto the ground. She lay there panting, a strand of glossy brown-black hair caught in the corner of her mouth.

“Well,” she said, and spit out the strand. “Can’t blame me for trying.”

“No,” Evan said.

She sat, laced her hands across her knees, rolled back slightly onto her behind, and looked up at him. Broad cheekbones, long lashes, vibrant emerald eyes. The pose was youthful, disarming. She might have been watching a movie at a slumber party. But there was something haunted beneath her strong features. As if in her brief life she’d seen more than she’d wanted to.

“You killed him, didn’t you?” she said.

“The cop?”

“No,” she said. “Not the cop.”

“Who?”

“I only had him for a few months,” she said. “I finally had someone who…” Then she went blank, a screen powering down.

“Who?” he said.

Silence.

He tried a different tack. “What’s your name?”

“Joey.” Same empty expression.

“What’s it short for?”

Her eyes whirred back to life, clicked over to him. “None of your business.” She looked up at the high rafters. “Where the hell are we?”

“Off the beaten path.”