Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,22

joined by a third. All around the cemetery, he heard tires squealing, sirens blooping, brakes whining.

He glanced back at Veronica. Any trace of seriousness had evaporated from her face. She looked around with cynical amusement, her mouth tugged to one side in what would have been a smirk had she bothered to put more effort behind it.

“Oh, dear,” she said, her voice like a sigh. “I forgot Raúl already called for backup.”

11

Just Fucking Perfect

They stood for a moment in the wash from the helos overhead. Veronica had to raise her voice to be heard over the thump-thump-thump. “What happened to my men?”

“They threatened me.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she said, lacing her arm in his and heading calmly for the exit. “Matías is a bit excitable.”

“Matías?”

“The minister of foreign relations.” She seated the hat back on her head. “I’d wager that you’ll meet him in a moment.”

“How do you know the minister of foreign relations?”

“I’m dating him, dear. At least when I’m in this hemisphere.”

Well, Evan thought, that’s just fucking perfect.

Her arm stayed woven around his, their flesh touching. Evan pulled free, rested his hand on her back, and steered her to the neighboring lane to dodge the spotlight and the wreckage of the bodyguards.

Control.

“What’s your last name?” he asked.

“LeGrande.”

“French?”

“Oh, honey, I’m a mutt.” She cast a sideways glance at him. “Though not as much as you.” She pressed her lips together, smoothing the lipstick veneer. “It was an Ellis Island botch job that my grandfather renovated into something swankier than the original. I’m sure it was actually Legonski or something appalling.”

A loudspeaker out front was blasting directives in Spanish, but the crackle of static blurred it to unintelligibility. The gate drew into view up ahead, sets of headlights blaring through the black iron bars, fuzzed by the creeping mist.

He halted. She turned to face him.

“How did you get my number?” he asked.

“Years ago I tried to find you.”

“How did you know where to start?”

“I’d always kept track from afar. Every few years or so. I’d found out belatedly that the arrangements I’d made for you with that couple in Silver Spring had fallen apart. The Krausses. And that you’d been moved from placement to placement, and I used some of my relationships to … intervene. And get you to a more stable environment.”

“The Pride House Group Home,” Evan said, “was certainly a stable environment.”

“One had to consider the alternatives.”

He just looked at her. She looked away.

“So you knew where I was,” he told her. “All those years.”

“No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t muster the nerve to see you. But two years ago I realized that I wanted to … I suppose I needed to meet you.”

He could smell the perfume of chardonnay on her breath. She laid her hands on his shoulders, feeling his muscles, the mass of him. It was so odd to be touched that way, a sensual experience that wasn’t the least bit sexual. Her face radiated a kind of maternal pride as alien to him as the red dust of Mars.

He shook himself free. She seemed neither wounded nor deterred.

“Then what?” he said.

“I started prying around the foster-care system for records. And someone caught wind of it and called me back. A man. John?”

Heat crawled beneath Evan’s scalp. “Jack.”

She nodded. “That’s it.”

His throat clutched. “When?” he said. “When was this?”

“It was Thanksgiving Day,” she said. “Easy to remember.”

Despite the nighttime chill, a wash of heat moved through Evan. That day was impossible for him to forget as well. The day Jack was killed. Which meant Jack had called her when he knew he was heading to his death.

Minutes left to live and he’d reached out to Veronica. Why? Was Jack—ever the father figure—trying to set things right? Was this setting things right or a colossal mistake?

Overhead the helos darted like hummingbirds, trying to pick them up again.

Veronica was talking. “He told me that you were chosen out of the boys’ home. To do good. Some sort of pilot program. He said you were very successful. I was so proud. He told me you help people. I need you to help someone now.”

Evan almost fed her the rote answer, that he was retired, but he stopped himself, taking a moment to find his bearings. “What else did he tell you?”

“That based on the demands of your job, you prefer to stay off the radar. I wasn’t sure what that meant. Some sort of State Department analyst? A war-crimes attorney who has to keep a