Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,73
into the car-share vehicle and drove off.
Evan transitioned into a rolling surveillance position, leaving two vehicles and a half block between them. He tightened up at the choke points and fed her more leash once she banked onto Wilshire Boulevard.
A few blocks up, Joey threw a right-hand signal but drove straight through the light.
She’d spotted him.
Damn Orphan training.
With nothing to lose, he swept into position behind her, giving her a few car lengths. At the next light, she stopped even though it was green. Evan stopped behind her. He could see her angry eyes skewering him in the rearview. Vehicles clogged up behind him, horns blaring.
He waited. The light turned yellow.
“Don’t do it, Josephine,” he said.
Now red.
Cross traffic flooded the intersection from either direction. At the last moment, Joey punched the gas and shot through the gap, motoring away and leaving Evan stranded at the light.
He seethed.
As the Ford Focus drifted off, the brake lights flared. It took a moment for him to realize that she was tapping them in a pattern.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Then tap-hold.
Morse code.
For “ha.”
Joey zipped through the next intersection and was gone.
Rather than wait for the light, Evan cut right, inserting himself into the traffic flow, then jogged left, ran a parallel street hard for five blocks, and popped back over onto Wilshire.
There she was ahead, her signal broadcasting a right turn.
Overconfident.
After she went, he crept to the turning lane, counted off thirty seconds, and then eased up the same street. She’d just parked ahead in front of a newsstand. He watched her get out and hesitate at the meter.
She patted her pockets. No change. She looked at Bridger, who was predictably useless. She walked to the newspaper stand, liberated a brown paper bag while the worker was distracted helping a customer, and put it over the parking meter upside down.
A quick and easy out-of-service scam.
Evan felt his temperature tick up another degree.
Bridger led her into the Italian restaurant next door.
Evan moved to the opposite curb and parked, watching across two lanes of traffic as they were shown to a window table.
A poor countersurveillance move. Joey still had much to learn.
Which was precisely why she shouldn’t be out on a date with an eighteen-year-old named “Bicks.”
Bridger hit his vape pen once more and handed it across the table. Joey stared a moment. Then took it. She gave a few puffs. Even at this distance, Evan could see the effort it took for her to pretend to enjoy it.
Last straw.
He climbed out, unlocked one of his truck vaults, and removed a long-range laser listening device, headphones, and Steiner tactical binoculars. Back in the driver’s seat, he rested the apparatus in the V between the slightly open door and the frame of the truck, training the microphone on the restaurant window.
Inside, Bridger took back the vape pen, then removed something from his pocket and set it on the table in front of Joey.
The invisible infrared beam detected vibrations in glass, translating them into sound, amplifying them, and filtering out ambient noise. “—oh, nice,” Joey was saying in a hyperfeminine tone Evan barely recognized. “A candle. Thank you so much.”
Evan lifted the binocs, put the stadia crosshairs on the gift: Misty Cashmere, fancy glass vessel, forty hours’ burn time.
Cloying.
As Joey and Bridger made cute-talk, Evan held the mic steady with one hand and scrolled through his RoamZone with the other, running a background check.
“’Scuse me one sec,” Bridger said. “Gotta drain the main vein.”
As he headed to the bathroom, Joey picked up the candle and sniffed it, closing her eyes.
Evan dialed. Watched her expression harden as she glanced down at her phone. She screwed a Bluetooth earbud into her ear angrily and tapped the screen to answer.
He watched her lips move, the sound reaching him on a slight delay. “What do you want? I lost you for a reason.”
“Misty Cashmere,” Evan said, “sounds like a stripper name.”
Her head jerked over. She scanned the street. It took a moment for her glare to zero in on him, but when it did, he felt it like a retaliatory laser.
“You take one more hit off that vape pen,” Evan said, “and Bridger’s gonna wake up tonight knowing what a choke hold feels like.”
“That’s so perfect. I make my own choices as a woman—”
“You’re not a woman—”
“—and you blame the man. Like, I have no agency.”
“You have more agency than I can keep track of,” Evan said. “But you don’t even know this guy.”
“That’s the point of dating,” she said. “To, like, get to know someone.”