Hellbent (Orphan X #3)(29)

“This is totally not fair,” she said. “Some big guy ran past us, all freaking out, and whammed into me. I dropped my phone and it’s, like, ruined.”

Her posture had transformed, shoulders slumped, twisty legs, head lolling lazily to one side, a finger twirling a tendril of hair—even her face had gone slack with teenage apathy.

And she was chewing gum. With teenage vigor.

Evan shot a look at the spot on the wall where the fluorescent green plug had been a moment before.

Joey yanked on Evan’s arm. “Dad, you are buying me a new phone. Like, now. There’s no way I’m going to school with the screen all cracked.”

Evan cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Officers.”

The cops looked behind them. “A big guy ran past you? This way?”

“Yeah. You, like, just missed him.”

The cops exchanged a look and bolted back down the corridor to the service door.

Joey called after them, “If you find him, tell him he’s paying for my new phone!”

The door banged shut after them. Joey swept her hair back into place, blanketing the shaved side. “‘Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.’”

“Odysseus?”

She took the gum out of her mouth, stuck it back on the wall. “Bruce Lee.”

He nodded. “Right.”

They moved swiftly out through the service door, skating the edge of the parking lot just before more cops swept in, setting a perimeter around the building.

Evan peered across to the outer fringe of the lot. Even through the windshield glare, he could discern the outline of the man in the rent-a-car. He was trapped for now; the cops had blockaded the exits.

Joey took note of the man. “The lookout?”

“Yes.”

Evan hustled her away from the commotion and into an employee parking lot shielded from view by a flank of the building.

“Is the car this way?” she asked.

“No. I parked it a block to the south.”

“Then why are we here?”

He stopped by a canary-yellow Chevy Malibu.

“Evan, this isn’t the time to swap cars again. We can’t drive out of here anyways. You saw the exits.”

Dropping to his back, he slid under the Malibu. He unscrewed the cartridge oil filter and jerked it away from the leaking stream.

He wiggled back out from under the car.

She saw the filter and said, “Oh.” And then, “Oh.”

He shook the filter upside down, oil lacing the asphalt at his feet. Then he examined the coarse threading inside. “Give me your flannel.”

She took it off. He used it to wipe oil from the filter and then his hands. It wasn’t great, but it was the best he was going to do. Holding the filter low at his side, he stepped over a concrete divider onto the sidewalk and started arcing along the street bordering the station, threading through rubberneckers.

“Why are we risking this?” Joey asked. “Right now?”

“Given their response time, these guys have some kind of headquarters in the area. We saw at least seven more men at your apartment building, including the Orphan. We find the HQ, we get answers.”

“You think the guy’s just gonna tell you? This place is swimming with cops. It’s not like you can beat it out of him.”

“Won’t have to.”

They came around the fringe of the parking lot. The lookout’s car was up ahead, backed into its spot, the trunk pressed to a row of bushes. The majority of cops were at the main exits or across the lot at the station proper, scurrying around, gesticulating and talking into radios.

Evan removed his slender 1911. He knew that the threading of the oil filter would be incompatible with the threading of the barrel, so he tore a square of fabric from the flannel, held it across the mouth of the filter, and snugged the gun muzzle into place.

A makeshift suppressor.

They skated behind a group of looky-loos who had gathered by the main entrance and vectored toward the rise of juniper hemming in the parking lot.

Evan said, “Wait here.”

He sliced through the bushes. Three powerful strides carried him along the driver’s side of the sedan. The lookout picked up the movement in the side mirror and lunged for a pistol on the passenger seat. Evan raised his 1911 to the window, held the oil filter in place at the muzzle, and shot him through the head.

The pop was louder than he would have hoped.

Between the flannel patch, the oil, and the muzzle flash, the filter broke out in flames. Evan dumped it onto the asphalt and stomped it out.

He squatted by the shattered window and watched, but no one seemed to have taken notice.

He opened the door, releasing a trickle of glass. The lookout was slumped over the console. Evan wiggled the guy’s wallet and Samsung Galaxy cell phone from his pocket. Then he lifted his gaze to the object of his desire.

The Hertz NeverLost GPS unit nodded from a flexible metal stalk that was bolted to the dashboard.

Evan tried to snap it off, but the antitheft arm required a crowbar.

He sank back down outside the car, reshaped the flattened cartridge oil filter as best he could, and firmed it back into place over the muzzle. The sound attenuation of the first shot had been far from spectacular, and he knew that a makeshift suppressor degraded with every shot. But he was short on time and short on crowbars.