Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,16
awake. The north wall was plugged into a variety of state and federal databases, Evan’s personal hijacked portal into the computing power of the agencies. And the south wall displayed the call log of his RoamZone.
He’d already captured the caller’s IMEI and pegged the location using advanced forward-link trilateration, which forced the network to automatically and continually report the woman’s phone’s position between cell towers. Based on the phone’s movements and resting times, it seemed she was staying in the affluent Recoleta neighborhood on the northeast slant of the city. He’d been to Buenos Aires only twice, once to garrote a visiting Venezuelan dignitary on the D line of the underground, the other to sit surveillance on a cartel leader whom he’d eventually dispatched in the parking lot of El Gigante de Alberdi, a fútbol stadium in Córdoba seven hundred kilometers to the interior.
When he’d tried to backtrack the user identity on the SIM card earlier, he’d run into a dead end. It was a prepaid Movistar, available at pretty much any kiosk, supermarket, or pharmacy. This was suspicious, but not as suspicious as it might be in the U.S., especially if the woman was traveling.
He stared at the blinking GPS dot just off the Plaza Francia, watching her in real time.
He drummed his fingers, an uncharacteristic fidget. Then he looked down at the pinecone-shaped aloe vera plant resting on the desk in a glass bowl beside his mouse pad. His sole companion was named Vera II. He’d killed her predecessor with neglect, a sad statement as she required nothing more than an ice cube dropped in her dish once a week. The edges of her serrated spikes were browning now, and she was glaring up at him from her bed of cobalt glass pebbles, clearly displeased.
“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to move on. It’s not you. It’s me.”
She was unmoved.
He fished the diminished ice sphere from the old-fashioned glass and rested it atop her spikes just to shut her up. The trace of vodka wouldn’t hurt either.
He sensed movement on the front wall of monitors. Mia Hall entering the building from the parking level, struggling under the weight of her nine-year-old son, Peter, who was slumped in her arms, comatose. Small for his age, he wore a Mickey Mouse–ear hat cocked to the side, his cheek smudged pink and blue from some sugary indulgence. They’d just come through a traumatic stretch, and Mia had vowed to spend more time with him, which evidently included hooky days at Disneyland.
Evan wondered what Disneyland was like. And pink-and-blue candy. He’d never indulged in either. But he’d carried Peter asleep a time or two as Mia carried him now, and Evan recalled the warmth of the boy’s cheek against his shoulder, his sweat-sticky blond hair against his chin. Those few episodes when his life had stitched together with Mia’s and Peter’s lives represented his closest brush with what normal might feel like. If she weren’t a district attorney sworn to uphold the law and he hadn’t been raised an assassin sworn to break it, perhaps the road ahead might have felt like a solid possibility rather than a tiptoe across land mines. Mia didn’t fully know what Evan did, but she knew enough to know that he—and their affiliation—was less than safe.
Evan switched his focus back to the south wall, concentrating on the blinking GPS dot of a phone in Argentina. His supposed mother.
Vera II stared at him.
“There’s no way,” he told her. “It’s impossible. She can’t be.”
Vera II stared at him.
“What are the odds? And how the hell would she have found me? Found me?”
Vera II stared at him.
He leaned back and crossed his arms. It was the longest of long shots. But still. He needed to know.
On the front wall, Mia bundled Peter across the lobby and waited for the elevator. The overheads caught her spill of wavy brown hair, highlighting gold and chestnut. Her bare arms flexed under the weight of her son. Her lips were moving. She was murmuring a lullaby.
He tore his eyes from the lobby feed, refocusing on the beacon of the prepaid cell phone.
He couldn’t operate as the Nowhere Man anymore. Not without jeopardizing his informal presidential pardon. One move deemed insufficiently discreet and he’d have the full force of the United States government back on his tail. Which would mean no more leisurely evenings at the Polo Lounge. No more sipping Japanese vodka for the sheer joy of it rather than to