Hellbent (Orphan X #3)(39)

Joey had gone bolt upright, her elbows ledging the table, darkly fascinated.

“What’s your name?” Evan asked.

“Benito Orellana. They have my son, Xavier—”

“Where did you get this number?”

“A girl find me—her cousin is friend with my cousin’s boy. She is called Anna Rezian. She is from good Armenian family.”

Evan had never—not once—conducted a Nowhere Man call in the presence of someone else. Though he trusted Joey sufficiently to answer the phone in front of her, her presence felt intrusive. He wondered if this was what intimacy felt like. And if so, why anyone would want it.

Evan said, “Describe her.”

“She have the thin face. Her hair, it have missing patches. She is sweet girl, but she is troubled.”

“Who has your son?”

“I cannot speak the name.” The deep voice fluttered with fear.

“They kidnapped him?” Evan asked.

“No,” the man said. “He has joined them. And he cannot get out.”

“A gang?”

A silence, broken only by labored breathing.

“If you don’t talk to me, I can’t help you.”

“Sí. A gang. But you don’t know this gang. Please, sir. My boy. They will turn him into a killer. And then he will be lost. I’m going to lose my boy. Please help me. You’re all I have left.”

“Sir, if your son joined a gang of his own volition, I can’t help him. Or you.”

Beneath the words Evan sensed the pulse of his own relief. He couldn’t take this on as well. His focus was already maxed, the plate stacked too high. The Seventh Commandment—One mission at a time—blinked a red alert in his mind’s eye.

Evan pulled the phone away from his face to hang up. His finger reached the button when he heard it.

The man, sobbing quietly.

Evan held the phone before him against the backdrop of his wiped-clean plate, the sounds of hoarse weeping barely audible.

He blinked a few times. Joey was like a statue, every muscle tightened, her body like an arrow pointed over the table at him. Breathless.

Evan drew in a deep inhalation. He brought the phone back to his cheek. Listened a moment longer, his eyes squeezed shut.

“Mr. Orellana?”

“?Sí?”

“I see the location you’re calling from. I’ll be there tomorrow at noon.”

“Thank God for you—”

Evan had already hung up. He slid out of the booth, Joey walking with him to the back door. She shot glances across at him, her face unreadable.

He pushed through the chiming door into the parking lot, the predawn cold hitting him at the hands and neck. He raised the set of keys he’d lifted from the waitress’s apron and aimed at the scattered cars, clicking the auto-unlock button on the fob. Across the lot a Honda Civic with a rusting hood gave a woeful chirp.

The waitress’s shift had just started, which gave them six hours of run time. Even so, he’d steal a license plate at the first truck stop they saw, from a vehicle boondocking in an overnight lot.

He and Joey got into the Civic, their doors shutting in unison.

She was still staring at him. He hesitated, his hand on the key.

He said, “This is what I do.”

“Right, I get it,” she said. “You help people you don’t know.”





26

How Can You Know You’re Real?

Dawn finally crested, a crack in a night that seemed by now to have lasted for days. Evan pushed the headlights toward the golden seam at the horizon, closing in on Helena. In the passenger seat, Joey had retreated into a sullenness as thick and impenetrable as the blackness still crowding the cones of the headlights.

By the time he reached the Greyhound bus station, a flat, red-roofed building aproned with patches of xeriscaping, the morning air had taken on the grainy quality of a newspaper photo. Frilly clouds fringed a London-gray sky.

He drove twice around the block, scouting for anything unusual. It looked clear. The three-state drive had served them well.

He pulled into the parking lot and killed the engine.

They stared at the bus station ahead. It looked as though it had been a fast-food restaurant in the not-too-distant past. A few buses slumbered in parallel, slotted into spots before a long, low bench. There was no one around.

Evan said, “They start leaving in twenty minutes. I’ll pick one headed far away. When you get there, contact me as we discussed. I can send you money and IDs—”

“I don’t want your money. I don’t want your IDs.”

“Think this through, Joey. We’ve got three Orphans and fifteen freelancers circling. How are you gonna make it?”

“Like I always have. On my own.” She chewed her lower lip. “These last few months with Jack? They were a daydream, okay? Now it’s back to life.”

A band of his face gazed back from the rearview. The bruises beneath his eyes had faded but still gave him the slightly wild, insomniac look of someone who’d been down on his luck for too long.

“Listen,” he said. “I have to honor Jack’s last wish—”

“I don’t give a shit. Honestly. I don’t need you.” She reached into the backseat and yanked her rucksack into her lap. “What? You think I thought you were my friend?” She gave a humorless laugh. “Let’s just get this over with.”