Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,23
low profile? Hostage negotiator?”
She was beaming, and he realized that this was a story she’d carried with her like a precious stone, that she’d polished in her mind’s eye until it gleamed with potential. The promise of her lost boy having turned out to be something so much better than what he was.
It was a kind of discomfort he’d never experienced, a cramping at the base of his skull that reached down through him, pulling strings in his spine, his chest—and perhaps even deeper than that.
She was watching him still, that prideful shimmer in her eyes, and he felt a sudden horrible weight descend on him. He’d never had the experience of having someone else’s hopes wrapped up in him. Of knowing that he’d come up short of the imagined mark. That he’d be found lacking.
Everything was moving so fast—the rattle of SWAT gear beyond the gate, the choppers veering above, the spotlights scanning the tombs, the cascade of unfamiliar sensations setting his nerves on fire.
And the awful responsibility of deflating this woman’s expectations.
The loudspeaker blared again, staticky Spanish demanding that they come out, but they both ignored it.
He wanted so badly to tell her that yes, he was a cyberterrorist analyst, a prosecutor at the Hague, a hostage negotiator capable of defusing situations with a talking cure.
His mouth was dry from the wind hammering down from the rotor blades, or maybe from something else.
“No.” It took a moment for him to work up the words. “I was trained to kill people.”
She recoiled.
Took a halting step back.
Painful as it was, he held eye contact so she could see who he was. He watched revulsion and fear ripple beneath her features, barely visible through the cracks in her tough façade. And then she closed ranks within herself and it was like looking at any other face in the world.
The smell of dust and stone intensified. Lights strobed through the gate, muted by the thickening fog. The loudspeaker commands sharpened, telling them to exit immediately. The choppers swooped above, their beams searching the tombs all around, throwing wild shadows.
They were standing in full view, and yet no spotlight had found them. The gate clanked open, and four men entered, pistols drawn. They spread out, darting up separate lanes, one heading directly for them.
“We’d better show ourselves,” Veronica said, “before someone gets shot.”
She reached down and took Evan’s hand. Stepping forward, she ushered them into the faint light of an antique lamppost.
Releasing his hand, she waved an arm. “Over here!”
The man zeroed in on them, melting from the mist, leading with his gun muzzle. Military bearing, pressed police uniform, requisite mustache.
Broken English. “Ms. Veronica, are you all right?”
“Of course. Matías is overreacting as usual.”
The barrel swung over, aimed at Evan’s center mass. It jerked upward twice. “Manos. Manos.”
Evan showed his palms, a nice excuse to raise them into an approximation of an open-hand guard.
“This really isn’t necessary,” Veronica said.
The policeman’s gaze shifted to her and then back to the space where Evan had just been. Evan was behind the man now. Controlling the cop’s gun hand from behind, Evan palmed his left ear and knocked his head gently against the lamppost.
He crumpled.
Evan turned to Veronica. If she was shocked, she covered it well.
He’d give her this: She was quick to acclimate. It struck him that he owed some of his own disposition to her. How novel to consider that parts of him had been inherited in the twisted ladders of his DNA. The thought undressed him, peeling away a lifetime’s worth of armor he hadn’t known he’d been wearing.
He walked out. She scurried to keep at his side.
They exited the gates into the embrace of a semicircle of police vehicles, headlights aimed at them like cannons. The mist thickened, swirling like white dust in the beams, flowing over the shoulders of the men. The air tasted of rain.
Evan looked down the bores of countless guns.
The stakes were real once again. If he were caught, his informal presidential pardon would be voided, which meant he would spend the rest of his life consigned to a dank cell in some rendition-friendly country. Or put down in a quiet field somewhere, his flesh burned, his bones powdered and spread to the wind.
He settled himself and started forward.
One man stood apart and slightly ahead of the phalanx, his uniform advertising him as the deputy commissioner. Leaving Veronica behind, Evan strode up to him, keeping his hands in sight. The fog swelled, cutting visibility even more. By the