Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,101
They’re the one reward we get. So we outsource the selection process. That girl—Cammy?—she gave her ID to the bouncers yesterday, man. She knew why she was here. You don’t agree to come to a party like this looking like that and think it’s for your personality.”
“That’s true,” Evan said.
“I did nothing illegal.”
Evan said, “No.”
“She had a choice.”
“Yes.”
“She could have left at any time.”
“Maybe.”
“She’s legal.”
“By seventy-two hours.”
“Hey, man.” Rishi gave a big shrug. “If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
Zack and Scotty laughed.
“No,” Evan said.
“How would you know?” Rishi said.
“Because,” Evan said, “I’m a hammer.”
Rishi stared at him. Then he stood up, his shirt unbuttoned down the front. He was a thick guy, all muscle and bloat. His friends stood up, too.
“Okay,” Rishi said. “So we’re gonna do this?”
Evan’s gaze stayed level. “Do you know what a tension pneumothorax is?”
Rishi rocked back on his heels. “A what?”
“A torn lung leaks air inside your chest cavity, increasing pressure. That prevents the lungs from filling. Then it prevents blood from getting to the heart.”
Rishi looked at his friends. Back at Evan. Laughed. “You’re a weird fucking dude. But that’s okay. I like weird dudes.”
He stepped forward and swung at Evan’s head. Evan ducked and sidestepped.
Rishi regained his balance, turned, and tried another cross. Evan leaned back, the wind from the punch fanning his face.
Flustered, Rishi threw a haymaker. Evan weaved right and crouched, tightening his hand, the weighted knuckles of the glove stretched tight across his flesh.
He drove a compact punch into Rishi’s right side just beneath the armpit.
There was a pleasing pop, and then Rishi drew in a screeching breath.
Evan pulled himself upright and looked at Rishi.
For a moment they were eye to eye.
And then Rishi toppled to a knee. He clutched his ribs, his mouth guppying.
“Your lung is collapsing right now,” Evan told him. “I punctured it with your sixth rib. That drowning sensation? It’s from negative pressure building in your chest cavity. It’ll get worse.”
Rishi fell back onto his rear end, his legs squirming on the carpet. His friends looked on in horror.
“You will suffocate from this,” Evan said. “Unless.”
He fished the stainless-steel pen tube from his pocket and held it up. Zack and Scotty watched him, their pale faces bathed in sweat. Evan flipped the tube at them. Zack bobbled it but managed to hang on.
Zack and Scotty parted, and Evan knelt over Rishi, whose mouth was stretched in an oval, his face purpling. Evan peeled Rishi’s shirt aside and used his thumb to find the second rib space in the midclavicular line. He looked up.
“Come here.”
Scotty fell to his knees.
“Put your finger right here. No. Here.”
Scotty complied, his hand trembling.
“You need to punch the tube through into the chest cavity to relieve pressure,” Evan said.
Tears dotted Rishi’s cheeks. He waved his head back and forth, clawing the carpet, his lips struggling for words. He mouthed, Do it. Do it.
“One of you probably should,” Evan said. “Decide among yourselves. Because I’m not going to.”
As Rishi thrashed from side to side, Zack and Scotty started shouting at each other, fumbling the pen tube between them. Rishi’s Pixel phone had dribbled out of his pocket. Evan scooped it up and pressed Rishi’s thumb to the screen to open it.
No one seemed to notice.
Evan stood up. Looked down at Rishi. His eyes bulged, the sclera pronounced.
“You could have left at any time,” Evan said. “You had a choice. Until you didn’t.”
He walked out, Zack and Scotty still locked in a panicked argument behind him. He’d just reached the stairs when a bellow of pain rolled up the hall, Rishi’s breath coming back online. Moving down the stairs, Evan entered the security setting of Rishi’s phone and updated the thumbprint setting to match his own.
Crossing the front yard, he fished the gum out from beneath his upper lip with his tongue and blew a bubble.
* * *
Evan drove Cammy back to an apartment building worn down by too many generations of tenants with no stake in ownership. Stucco with missing chunks, weedy front lawn littered with cigarette butts and dog droppings, a bicycle wheel locked to a parking meter, the frame long liberated.
She hesitated in the driver’s seat. “Can you walk me in?”
He climbed out and followed her up a set of splintering stairs to her apartment. She clicked on the lights, peering into the dark bedroom nervously.