Naked in the bathroom, Judd Holt stared at his reflection. Rivulets from the shower streamed down his powerful body. From his calves to his biceps, his muscles were compact and pronounced, coiled springs. The wrinkles at the edges of his eyes had deepened into grooves that touched his temples, where the brown-copper hair turned the color of dust.
It had been a long time since Orphan A had truly looked at himself.
In prison mirrors were hard to come by—and for good reason. An instinct rose up in him—wrap a hand towel around his knuckles, smash the glass, search out a dagger-size shard.
Just to have it.
But there was no need for that. Not here.
He’d selected a hotel near Dupont Circle, closer to the action, and paid more for the room than he thought a middling hotel should cost. Beneath the faucet an indentation in the porcelain held a petite lump of French vanilla soap, encased in fine paper and shaped like a scallop shell.
He unwrapped the lump, flung the wad of paper into the trash, then soaped his hands, forearms, and face, despite the fact that he’d just washed. It had been so long since he’d experienced a luxury scent of any kind, the sugary sweetness filling his nostrils like something from a remembered dream.
He toweled off and dressed quickly and then swiped a wider circle of steam from the mirror. His beard was coming in aggressively as it did, and he thought he’d let it keep coming, a Paul Bunyan show of strength.
The 1,779 days in prison had left his skin dry and chafed. Flakes of dandruff spotted the copper-wire tangle of his beard. With an old-fashioned black comb, he started grooming them out. They came, but the churning of the plastic teeth spawned more white flecks.
Orphan X invaded his thoughts once again. Not the man himself, whoever he was, since Holt had never laid eyes on him. But a shadowed face. A blurred darkness on a surveillance screen grab. The heel of a boot a split second before it vanished into an alley.
Holt scoured his beard harder and harder, the flakes multiplying like the goddamned broomsticks in that Mickey Mouse cartoon. He was thinking about what Orphan X had taken from him, how the fucker had dropped a fork in the road and forced Holt to veer left, wiping out an entire other life that might have been.
Instead Holt had remained what he was probably always meant to be. Orphan A, cleaning up messes for America.
His cheek was bleeding. He didn’t notice until a blood drop struck the porcelain sink, ruby red and serrated at the edges like a sunburst.
He set down the comb and took a few deep breaths.
It was four in the morning, and he needed to sleep.
He exited the hotel bathroom. The bed had a bunch of those oddly shaped pillows, cylinders with tassels, ovals with velvet trim. A watercolor of a windsurfer hung above the headboard. On the nightstand a remote control as wide as a Ping-Pong paddle was studded with more buttons than he could count.
Holt stood in the hum of the regulated air from the vent and knew himself to be safe.
And yet everything in his body screamed otherwise.
He dressed quickly and then pulled on his socks, laced up his shoes.
Then he lay atop the duvet, arms crossing his chest, a vampire in repose. He closed his eyes.
He imagined he was back in his cell, where his hours and thoughts were contained. This comforted him.
When he dozed off, he dreamed of a woman a lifetime ago. The scent of her on the bedsheets, her lyrical accent, that wavy dark hair. She was tough and beautiful and the only thing he’d ever known that had made life worth living.
He awakened two hours later, having moved not an inch.
On the desk, resting beside pamphlets touting Colonial Williamsburg and the Newseum, Wetzel’s file contained the information on the federal prosecutor who had put Holt away.
He stared at the picture with enmity.
He certainly was not a fan. But still—a federal prosecutor.
His mistake last time was going with heavy weaponry. He couldn’t risk being spotted with restricted guns, not during the warm-up round before the game went live.
He’d reserve heavy weaponry for when he really needed it, and he’d really need it soon enough. He knew that Wetzel and Bennett had processors sorting countless bits of data, scouring through the virtual universe. When X popped his head up, Holt would be waiting with a carbine, locked and loaded.
He memorized the specifics in the prosecutor’s file and then lit it on fire, dropped it into the bathtub, and washed the clumped ashes down the drain.
When he drove away from the hotel, a moon floated brazenly in the slate-blue morning sky.
He parked at a Home Depot and walked inside, breezing past early-morning contractors smelling of beer breath and strong coffee.
He found what he was looking for in Aisle 10.
He laid it on the checkout counter.
The clerk glanced from him to it and back to him again. He’d been told more than once that his presence made sensible people feel uneasy.
She tittered, a burst of nervousness escaping. “You sure that’s all you need?”
He looked at her. Set down a twenty.
She rang him up, tapping the keys with her fingers splayed so as not to snap off her fake nails.
Her eyes jittered over him. She cleared her throat. “Need a bag, sir?”
He picked up the clawhammer and walked out.
* * *
The two-story house rose from behind a wood-alternative picket fence. Michigan Park was located in Northeast D.C., but this block, with its freestanding homes and grassy setbacks, could have been anywhere.
Holt stood at the end of the walk, hands stuffed in the pockets of a Carhartt coat. He was hesitating because this wasn’t some high-value raghead or dickhead cartel hombre or off-the-rails Orphan, all of whom had it coming in one way or another. This was an attack on law and order itself, the kind of damage you sometimes had to do when you cut through critical structures to reach a deeper cancer.
The house itself looked warm and lived in, the kind of ordinary place where ordinary folks lived out ordinary lives. Verdant green front lawn, three steps rising to a porch, Crayola-red bricks.
Languid suburban motion pervaded the street. A mom out for a morning jog, yoga pants adhered to her lower half, pushing before her a baby stroller that resembled a space pod. A few garage doors creaking up in unison. A low-end Mercedes easing out into the workday.
Holt unfastened the latch on the thigh-high fence, stepped through, and progressed to the porch. Behind the door he heard morning commotion.
A woman’s voice. “Did you feed Dylan before car pool?”
“Waffles. Frozen but multigrain!”
Holt rang the bell.
“Hang on.” A man threw open the door. Middle-aged, worn T-shirt from an old Stones tour, sandy blond beard, neatly trimmed. “Hi, can I help—”
The feminine voice shouted from somewhere behind him. “Honey! Have you seen my briefcase?”
“Sorry.” The man turned away from the door. “On the chest in the playroom!”
“You’re the best.” The woman blew into view, briefcase in hand, holding up earrings. “These dangly ones okay? I have closing arguments today.”
The man said, “I’d go with studs. More assured.”
“You’re picking up car pool, right?” She turned, noticed Holt standing there mutely. “Hi, sorry. Hi.”
Holt stared directly at her. “You don’t recognize me?”
She squinted, tilting her head as she slid a diamond stud into an earlobe. “No. I’m sorry.”
Holt studied her a moment longer. Made a game-day decision
“Must have the wrong house.” He seated his hands back into his pockets and turned to walk away.
He’d reached the edge of the porch when he heard her voice behind him. “Wait! Four years ago—no, five. Possession of an illegal firearm, transporting across state lines.”
Holt paused, felt a weight bow his shoulders.
The sigh that left him made him feel every one of his fifty-two years.
Still facing away, he lifted the clawhammer from the deep inside pocket of his jacket.
Then he turned and moved swiftly for the open door.