Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,124

shocked into high gear by the trauma.

His arm still extended before him, the blade improbably rising straight through his flesh. Blood hadn’t flowed from the wound yet—the white connective tissue of the hypodermis peeled up like a burst seam.

He wouldn’t reach his gun before she reached hers.

So he rotated his arm from the shoulder and swung the bar of his forearm at her neck, leading with the carbon steel point.

He couldn’t manage much force, just a swipe of the impaled blade across the front of her throat.

It was enough.

Blood sheeted from the slit, dousing her neck, the top of her chest.

Her hands rose, fingers splayed against her breastbone as if showing off a necklace. She tried to look down, eyes straining to see the wound.

Her head rotated slowly back up, her mouth parting to release a funnel of bright arterial blood across her lips and down her chin.

She smiled languidly, mysteriously, and then her knees buckled and she slumped to the asphalt.

Evan grabbed Andre and ran.

60

The Other Half

Evan drove several exits along the freeway dripping into his lap before light-headedness caught up to him. He pulled the Ford pickup over onto the shoulder and looked at Andre, who was recoiled in his seat, still coming out of shock.

Evan spoke calmly. “I need you to get the first-aid trauma pack in the backseat.”

It took a moment for the words to register, and then Andre snapped into motion, leaning into the rear of the cab. He unzipped the olive-drab backpack, laying bare the medic supplies. “Should we take the knife out?”

“No.”

“What do you need?”

“Gauze, cohesive bandages.”

“Cohesive…?”

Evan chinned at the rolls of Coban. “There.”

Andre handed them over.

The pain hadn’t announced itself in full, not yet. A thin, high intensity was all Evan felt, paper-cut pain enhanced by several magnitudes, but the adrenaline was holding the deeper aching at bay. The knife had plunged in two-thirds to the hilt; the exposed edge showed the blade to be mercifully unserrated.

He laid gauze around the blade’s entry and exit points and then wrapped his forearm tightly, biting off the bandage and smoothing it down so it clung to itself. The compression felt good. The bandage covered the point of union, turning blade and bone into one thing, a bound cross.

When he bent his elbow, pressure on the nerve sent a white-hot needle up through his shoulder into the side of his neck. Wincing, he reached across himself with his left hand and tried to tug the gearshift back into drive.

Before he could, his RoamZone gave its distinctive ring.

He answered to the sound of sobbing. There was a chilling quality to it, a person cracked open to the marrow, giving vent to more rage than grief. All at once it ended.

And then a voice, masculine but high-pitched, husky from crying. “I will take you apart bone by bone.”

Evan said, “Okay.”

“But I’ll do it to Andre Duran first,” Declan said. “You’ll watch me every inch of the way so you’ll know what’s coming.”

Evan said, “Okay.”

“You have any idea what it’s like? That kind of connection? When you have the same blood rushing through your veins?”

Evan glanced over at Andre, his thoughts flurrying. Eased out a breath through clenched teeth. “No.”

“She was a part of me,” Declan said. “My twin. You understand that? You killed half of me.”

“Don’t worry,” Evan said. “I’ll get to the other half soon enough.”

He hung up. Sucked in a breath. Tried to relax his jaw.

His vision speckled, and he leaned his skull against the headrest and sipped a few breaths.

Andre said, “Need me to drive?”

Evan didn’t want to nod, but he did.

He opened the door and half fell out onto his feet. The foreign object lodged in his arm felt like an insensate part of himself, a limb lost to anesthesia. He had to get it out as soon as possible.

He stumbled to the passenger side, passing Andre, vehicles flashing dangerously by. He heard someone make a quiet grunt, realized it was him.

Andre took the wheel, looked over, said, “Where we going?”

Evan stared at the freeway sign ahead, realizing only now the direction he’d unknowingly steered them, his unconscious pointing the way.

He nodded through the windshield, and Andre stomped the gas, throwing gravel as they merged into traffic.

* * *

Veronica opened the door and gasped. She wore a gauzy white bathrobe over a pair of cream pajamas. The wind caught the fabric, setting her aflutter, more apparition than human.

She ushered them into the Bel Air mansion, the door’s closing taking the life out of