The headquarters were on Northeast Thirteenth at the very tip of Portland proper in a long-abandoned pest-control shop sandwiched between a trailer lot and a precast-concrete manufacturing plant. The drive over had been a descent into rough streets and heavy industry—truck parts, machining, welding. Gentlemen’s clubs were in evidence every few blocks despite the absence of any actual gentlemen.
The small pest-control shop, no bigger than a shack, had been retrofitted as a command center. Evan recognized the make of steel door securing the front entrance—the kind filled with water, designed to spread out the heat from a battering ram’s impact. A ram would buckle before it would blow through a door like that. That was incredibly effective.
When there wasn’t a back door.
Which Evan watched now. At the edge of the neighboring lot, he’d parked the Subaru between two used trailers adorned with cheery yellow-and-red sales flags. He had the driver’s window rolled down, letting through a chilly stream of air that smelled of tar and skunked beer. Joey sat in the passenger seat, perfectly silent, perfectly still.
Two cartons of different shotgun shells were nestled in his crotch, the shotgun across his lap. He had not loaded it yet.
A few blocks over, a bad cover band wailed an Eagles tune through partially blown speakers: Some-body’s gunna hurt someone, a’fore the night is through.
Evan thought, You got that right.
A Lincoln pulled up to the rear curb of the building. Evan sensed Joey tense beside him. A broad-shouldered man climbed out of the sedan. He knocked on the back door—shave and a haircut, two bits. Even at this distance, the seven-note riff reached the Subaru through the crisp air.
A speakeasy hatch squeaked open, a face filling the tiny metal square.
A murmured greeting followed, and then various dead bolts retracted, the door swung inward, and the broad-shouldered man disappeared inside.
Now Evan knew how he wanted to load the shotgun.
One nine-pellet buckshot load for the chamber, two more on its heels in the mag tube. He followed those with three shock-lock cartridges and had a pair of buckshot shells run anchor.
He popped in the triangular safety so it was smooth to the metal, the red band appearing on the other side. When he pumped the shotgun, he felt the shuck-shuck in the base of his spine.
“Stay here,” he said. He reached for the door handle, then paused. “You may not like what you’re about to see.”
He got out, swung the door closed behind him.
He walked across the desolate street, bits of glass grinding beneath his tread. The midnight-black Benelli hung at his side.
He could feel Jack fall into step beside him, hear Jack’s voice, a whisper in his ear. It’s too late for me.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Evan said quietly.
I want to know that I’m forgiven.
“You are.” Evan quickened his stride, bearing down on the door. He knocked out the brief melody and raised the shotgun, seating the butt on his good shoulder.
I love you, son.
The speakeasy hatch squeaked open, and Evan pushed the muzzle into the surprised square of face and fired.
There was no longer a face.
He shoved the shotgun farther inside, the muzzle clearing the door, and unleashed two buckshot rounds, one to the left, one to the right.
The three shock-locks were up next, copper-powdered, heavy-compressed centered shots that provided a total energy dump on one spot with no scatterback or frag.
Hinge removers.
He shifted the action to manual so he could cycle the low-powered breaching rounds and give them more steam. Then he stepped back and fired top to bottom—boom-boom-boom. The last slug knocked the door clear off the frame, sending it skidding across the floor.
Cycling buckshot into the chamber and toggling the switch back to autoload, he stepped through the dust into the metallic tang of cordite, shotgun raised.
The blow-radius effect of the initial blasts in the contained shop was biblical. With no air movement, the powdered smoke had stratified, hovering like gray mist.
Five men, either dead or in various stages of critical injury, shuddered on knocked-over folding chairs, tilted against bloodstained walls, sprawled over a central table. No sign of the Orphan. The broad-shouldered man was the only one able to do more than bleed out.
He bellied across the floor, dragging himself away with his forearms, a combat crawl. His right leg was a mottled fusion of denim and flesh.
He kept on, making for a rack of rifles and shotguns beside the steel front door.
Evan walked toward him, stuck a toe in his ribs, flipped him over.
The man tried to look away. “Oh, God,” he said. “You’re—are you—Orphan X? Oh, God.”
Evan seated a boot square on his barrel chest, hovered the hot muzzle over his throat. “You killed Jack Johns.”
The man’s fine hair, so blond it was almost gray, was shaved in a buzz cut. His scalp showed through, glistening with sweat. “No—not me. I didn’t go up in the chopper, man. There was a special crew.”
“But you were there. On the ground in Alabama. You were all there.”
“Yes.”
Evan swung the shotgun to the side and blew off his hand.
The howl was inhuman.
But so was making a man in his seventies jump out of a Black Hawk with his wrists cuffed together.
Evan rotated the Benelli back to the man’s head. “Van Sciver?” he said. “Where?”
Somewhere behind them, a final sputtering wheeze extinguished.
“I don’t know. I swear. Never even met him.”
Evan moved the Benelli over the guy’s other hand.
“Wait! Wait! I’ll tell you—tell you everything. Just don’t … don’t take me apart like this.”
“How many freelancers did he bring in? Not including the helo crew.”
“Twenty-five. He hired twenty-five of us.”
Evan surveyed the wreckage, added it to the train-station tally. “Fifteen now,” he said.
“Sixteen.” The man risked a look at his hand, failed to fight off a full-body shudder. “I make sixteen.” And then, more desperately, “I … I still make sixteen.”
“Who’s running point here?”
The man looked over at the red-smeared linoleum where his hand once was and dry-heaved. His face was pale, awash in sweat. Evan put more pressure on his chest, cracking a rib, snapping him back to attention.
“Jordan Thornhill,” the man said. “Orphan R. Nicest guy in the world. Until he kills you.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Black dude, all muscle. Could scale a cliff with his bare hands, he wanted to.” The man started hyperventilating. “God, oh, God, I think I’m bleeding out.”
“You’ve got enough for the next five minutes. Where is he?”
“Van Sciver called him home. I don’t know where.”
Evan twitched the barrel slightly.
“I DON’T KNOW WHERE! I don’t know anything. I swear. They keep us in the dark about everything.”
Evan let the weight of the hot barrel press into the hollow of the man’s throat. The flesh sizzled. “Not improving your situation, hired man.”
“Hang on! I overheard Thornhill saying something about a female Orphan. Candy something. Orphan V.”
At this, Evan’s face tightened.
“Please.” Saliva sheeted between the man’s lips. “That’s all I know. I told you everything. Can I … will you let me live?”
“You were dead the minute Van Sciver told you my name.” Evan pulled the trigger.
He heard a creak behind him and pivoted, dropping the empty shotgun and drawing his ARES.
He found himself aiming at Joey.
She stood in the doorway, surveying the wreckage. A flush had come up beneath her smooth brown cheeks. The shack smelled of blood iron and the insides of men. Through the lingering smoke, her emerald eyes glowed, unguarded, overwhelmed.
“I told you to stay in the car.”
“I’m fine.”
“Pull the car around. Hurry.”
She stepped back and was gone.
He flung a corpse off the central table and rifled through the items beneath. Coffee cups, battery packs, a half-eaten sub. Useless. Beneath a pack of black gel pens, he found a red-covered notebook. Seizing it, he thumbed through the stiff pages. Nothing inside.
He tossed it, moved to the chipped counter em-dashing half of the east wall. Coffeepot, microwave, utility sink. The cabinet beneath held rusted pipes, water spots, a crusted bottle of Drano.
He turned in his crouch, giving the room a last, hurried scan.
Blood dripped from the edge of the table. A strip of duct tape shimmered beneath the lip.
A laptop, adhered to the table’s underside.
He tore it free and turned for the door. As he stepped over what was left of the broad-shouldered man, something chimed. Evan paused to fish a familiar-looking Samsung Galaxy from the dead man’s pocket.
He used the man’s shirt to wipe a crimson smear off the screen. Location services were toggled off, GPS disabled.
Out front he heard the Subaru squeal to the curb.
Keeping the phone, he exited through the fortified steel door. As it swung open, he heard the faint slosh of water within.
It was a nice security measure, if you thought about it.