Hellbent (Orphan X #3)(31)

A hesitation spoke to Thornhill’s dread. “X showed up. Took out four of my men.”

Van Sciver found himself actually using his kerchief to mop sweat off his neck. “How many men did you have at the train station?”

“Four.”

Van Sciver had no response to that.

“We thought it was just the girl. The surveillance cameras picked up only her. Alone. We thought it’d be a quick snatch-and-dash, and then we could use her to lure him in.”

“Instead he lured you in.”

“Seems that way.”

Van Sciver leaned forward in the rocking chair, set his glass down on the uneven planks of the porch. “We have unfinished business here. I want you back.”

“Shouldn’t we stick around in case X rears his head?”

“Leave your team in place there. But you won’t find him. He and the girl are gone. You missed your shot.”

There was an even longer pause. “I’m on a plane.”

Van Sciver hung up.

He picked up his glass and tossed the remaining tea into the hydrangeas.

The time for celebrating was over.





20

Wayward Pieces

It took some doing, but Evan found a motel on par with the beauty in Cornelius. Stale cigarette smoke oozed from the bedding, the towels, even the popcorn ceiling. The toilet was missing the tank lid. A pull-chain table lamp with a yellowed shade threw off a jaundiced glow. The comforter sported a stain the color of dried blood, which Evan hoped it was, given the less appealing alternatives. He’d rented the room for three hours, which explained everything worth explaining.

Now he sat cross-legged on the floor, the Hertz NeverLost GPS unit before him. Still attached to the metal stalk, it resembled a dismembered antenna. The lookout’s wallet and Samsung were laid on the floor beside the stalk, parallel to each other, edges aligned.

Order helped him think.

Joey leaned her shoulders against the bed, her hand working what seemed to be a steroidal Rubik’s Cube that she’d produced from her rucksack. She spun it with the speed and focus of a squirrel stripping a walnut.

Evan opened the lookout’s wallet. It contained four crisp hundred-dollar bills and nothing else. All the slots and crevices were empty. He set it back in its place.

Then he turned on the Samsung and checked the contacts. There were none. E-mail was empty, as was the trash folder. No recent calls. No voice mail.

The clacking of Joey’s Rubik’s Cube continued, grating on his nerves. Without looking up, she said, “No luck, huh?”

He ignored her, powering on the NeverLost GPS. When he searched the settings, he saw that everything had been deleted from this device as well. No saved locations, no last destinations, no evidence that the unit had ever been used.

Clack-clack-clack-clack— “Can you please stop that?”

She halted, cube in her hands. The thing had exploded outward into different planks and beams, an architectural scribble.

He frowned at it. “What is that thing?”

“This?” She turned the monstrosity in her hands, showing off its various dimensions. “It’s a three-by-three-by-five. Cubers call it a shape-shifter.”

“What does it do?”

“Gives you a headache.”

“Like you.”

She flashed a fake grin. Let it fall from her face.

She returned her focus to the cube. Her hands moved in a flurry, whipping the various planes around. “You have to solve the shape first. Wait, wait—see?” She held it up. She’d wrangled it back into form. It looked like a miniature tower. “Then you solve the colors. This part’s easier. There are algorithms, sequences of steps.…”

To him it was just a blur of primary colors.

“You have to look for the wayward pieces, find the patterns that make them fall into place. Like so.”

She held it up, finished, gave it a Vanna White wave with her free hand.

“Impressive.”

“They say girls suck at geometry, but they forgot to tell me that.”

“You would’ve ignored them anyway.”

She tossed the cube into her rucksack, flicked her chin at the GPS unit. “How’s it going with that?”

“They wiped everything. Can I use your laptop? I need to get into this thing.”

She shrugged. “Sure.” She retrieved her laptop and a USB cable, watched him plug in the NeverLost. “Whatcha doing?”

“Even if they deleted everything, the GPS still has coordinates, destinations, and deleted routes stored internally somewhere.” He set to work. “First step of a forensic recovery is to image the data. It’s called mounting the file-storage system. Then you make a copy of the device’s internal memory in your computer but contain it so it can’t infect your own data. Then I’m gonna wade through it, determine the data structures, see where and how the data’s stored, what kind of encryption I’m dealing with. Like jailbreaking a phone. Understand?”

She tilted her head at the screen, taking in his progress, then looked at him with an expression he couldn’t read. “What grampa taught you to hack? You learn that when COBOL and IBM S/370 were state-of-the-art?”

This joke seemingly amused her.

He said, “What?”