Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,107

locked up. He found the pressure point with his thumb. Applied pressure, the angry knot yielding nothing.

He gripped the ball of her shoulder, hunched and tight. The problem was there. He held it gently, set his knee in the space between her shoulder blades, and applied gentle pressure, peeling the shoulder back.

“Breathe,” he said. “And release.”

Her inhalations came in jerks, the exhalations shuddering. Her shoulder trembled, moved back a quarter inch. Fought forward again, muscles and tendons rippling beneath his fingers, in spasm.

“Steady,” he said. “Let go. Just let go.”

“I am,” she said, her voice wavering.

Joey let her head grow heavy, made a sound between a groan and a growl. Dog the dog’s collar jangled as he lifted his head.

Her breath evened out. He kept the pressure on, gentle and insistent. Her skin grew suddenly hot. And then her shoulder peeled back and away, opening up, a sudden smooth movement that set it in line with the other.

She tipped her head forward more, let it go lax.

She shook a little. He wasn’t sure what was happening until tears spotted her jeans.

“Damn it,” she said softly. “Damn it damn it damn it.”

* * *

Evan drove back to Castle Heights to gear up for the trip to Creech North. Any plan to get him in and out of the top-security compound in one piece would require maximum flexibility and a wildly inventive cover.

So far he had a vape pen and a parking sticker.

It was going to be a challenge.

He parked in the underground lot and made his way through the lobby, sufficiently preoccupied that he barely noticed the person sitting in the sofa area.

Lorilee Smithson.

For once she didn’t leap up at the sight of company; she didn’t even look over at him as he moved quietly to the elevator. She was staring out the windows onto Wilshire Boulevard, half her face painted with the late-morning sun. Her jaw was set in contemplation, a grave bearing he had not thought her capable of.

He could have continued on to the elevator unseen. But something about her expression made him pause.

He looked back at the elevator. Behind the security counter, Joaquin was watching him, eyebrows raised at this break in Evan’s routine. Joaquin didn’t speak or move, like a nature photographer gone motionless to avoid spooking the wildlife.

Cutout construction-paper snowflakes danced across the walnut facing of the security desk, Evan close enough to see the sloppy crayon penmanship signing the lowest one: PETER HALL, AGE 9.

That kid was constantly decorating the lobby, Easter Bunny piñatas and Thanksgiving tissue turkeys and customized drawings for every resident’s birthday. Evan flashed on Peter sitting on the couch in his dead father’s dress shirt—I don’t have anyone to be proud of me—and the image about wrecked him. How could a kid that fundamentally good ever have to wonder if he was good enough for someone to be proud of?

With quiet awe Evan considered the upbringing Mia had given Peter that let him interact with the world so purely, so freely, so unabashedly. That was what kids were supposed to do: say how they felt and have fun and create joy before life wore them down and dulled their clarity. Joey had never had that chance, and neither had Evan.

Was his decision to leave the Nowhere Man behind some misguided attempt to fight his way backward to some kind of freedom? To the childhood he never had?

He thought about that moment at Lorilee’s going-away party when she’d paused amid the dancing to stare balefully at her HAPPY TRAILS! banner, contemplating a future that was unsure and maybe even impossible.

Was that it, then? The thinnest thread connecting him to her? He’d always viewed her as a member of a different species. If they were alike in some distant, tiny way, what did that mean? Did he owe something different to her? To himself?

He was still standing there motionless in the lobby, Joaquin’s eyes on him.

And then he reversed course.

He walked back to Lorilee and sat opposite her. He was unskilled at small talk, uncertain how to initiate it. But he was here, breathing the same air, tinged with her perfume.

She slowly registered him, more dazed than languid. “Oh. Hi, Ev.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just … you know.” She removed a tissue from a bright pink purse and dabbed at her eyes. “Just a lot going on.”

“With the move?”

She looked back out the window again and considered the sidewalk, her Botox-smooth and filler-plump features helpless to hide the anguish beneath. “I’m not going