Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,27
golden boy or a calf ripe for slaughter?
For the first time, his nerve deserts him.
“I, um … I can’t. I can’t do this.”
“Okay. Let’s get you back home.” The Mystery Man slots the gearshift into drive, and the tires creep into motion.
Evan pictures his mattress on the floor of the crowded bedroom. Mac and cheese from the pot five or six nights a week. Ramón’s brother, who left Pride House two years ago and now works at the mall, mopping floors and hauling trash. The size of Van Sciver’s clenched fist.
They pull out onto the main road when Evan says, “Hang on.”
The brakes chirp. Evan feels Mystery Man’s eyes on him, and a moment later he gives a little nod.
The man drives him back. Idles again in the same spot. Evan takes two deep breaths, then two more.
“Well?” the man says.
Evan finds his voice. “Can you take the bullets outta the gun?”
Another smirk. The man drops the magazine, pops the round from the chamber, hands back the weapon. Reaching across Evan’s waist, he flings the passenger door open.
Evan gets out. His blood thunders in his head. He holds the gun low at his side. The glass door approaches in a haze. A grating chime announces his entrance. The man behind the counter looks up. Middle Eastern maybe, or Indian, with kind eyes. He looks like someone’s father.
Evan approaches the counter. “Sorry,” he says, and lifts the gun.
The man rears back, knocking packs of Dentyne from the display. His hands go up in front of him, fingers wavering. “Please, please, just take. Just take.”
Before Evan can react, the front door smashes open and two cops barrel at him, guns drawn. “Hands! Hands! On the floor!”
He sees them approach as if in a dream. His gorge presses up through his throat. And then his cheek is smacking the floor, his arms wrenched back so hard he thinks the shoulder sockets might pop. Metal cinches his thin wrists. He’s hauled out, his head lolling weakly, and hurled into the rear of the squad car.
The beige Crown Vic is nowhere in sight.
14
Wildly Out of Context
The house matching the address Veronica had palmed off to Evan was a shade of green that was better suited to peppermint frosting. The xeriscaped front yard featured little more than a few dead cacti and some square concrete blocks embedded in a sea of wood-chip mulch. The place was tiny, nestled between other Mid-Century houses, most of them Spanish style, heavy on stucco and adobe-tile roofs. A ladder, a few buckets of paint, and a bundle of detached rain gutters rusted by the side of the house, evidence of a remodel that had run out of steam. A collection of take-out menus had gathered on the doormat, a few weeks’ residue.
After retrieving a backup vehicle from one of his safe houses, Evan had circled the El Sereno block a few times, checking for strategically parted curtains, lookouts in parked cars, or binoculars flashing from neighboring roofs. Once he was convinced that the approach to Duran’s home was clear, Evan had left his silver Nissan Versa four blocks away in a parking garage beneath a strip mall and strolled back. He dressed generically as always—gray long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, and an Angels hat pulled low enough to shadow his face.
A spin through the databases in the Vault had given him some insight into the man Veronica wanted him to find. Andrew Duran was of average build, not unlike Evan, and he’d checked “Some Other Race” on the last census form. From his record he seemed like another hard-luck guy who couldn’t get his act together. Information on his childhood was sparse, but his sealed juvenile records showed the usual small-time busts in his late teens—possession of pot, vandalism, truancy. He’d seemingly cleaned up around the time most young men go to college or to prison, knocking around a number of jobs, the kind that put grease under the nails. Since then he’d collected an ex-wife, Brianna Cruz, and an eleven-year-old daughter named Sofia. A credit report showed a canceled Mastercard and a bank account that had hovered between seventeen and thirty-two dollars for a few months before it was closed. He’d struggled with debt and traffic fines, but the DCSS database showed no issues with his paying child support. He was currently an attendant at a parking lot for impounded vehicles.
“Currently” meaning up until a month ago, when a murder was committed at his workplace and he went missing.