Prodigal Son (Orphan X #6) - Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Page 0,83
time to make it back down.”
The MP looked away, swallowed. “Not my problem, sir.”
“Such a bummer,” Joey said, leaning forward, suddenly speaking with a full-blown Latina accent. “We haven’t been able to see Uncle Raffy since Mom’s diagnosis. And I made him this.”
She twisted around to her overnight bag in the backseat, producing a folded poster board covered with LaserJet-printed color pictures. Evan did a double take at the images of himself and Joey with Rafael and a Hispanic woman Evan figured for Rafael’s older sister, Consuelo, Harold’s wife. There they were—in a Jacuzzi together, enjoying a meal on a backyard patio, standing on what looked to be a Caribbean beach with various other family members scattered around. The tableaus of Evan and Joey inserted into a regular American family were surreal and seamless, like a vision of some prior life. It took a moment for Evan to register fully that they had been Photoshopped.
Across the bottom glitter-glue lettering read WE MISS YOU, UNCLE RAFFY!
When a sniffle sounded from the passenger seat, Evan and the MP looked over with equal startlement to see Joey’s bottom lip wavering, tears spilling from her eyes.
“I promised Mom we’d check on him before her last chemo,” she said. “I can at least do that. I know I’ve sucked as a daughter—”
“We never said that,” Evan assured her, warming to the role of Harold Blasley, prospective traveling brush salesman. “Your mother never thought—”
“—but if I could just do this one thing for her. And now with the rectal cancer spreading to her lymph nodes…” Joey sucked in a wobbly breath and broke down sobbing.
It was so convincing that Evan barely had to act at all to comfort her, patting her knee. The MP looked past him at Joey. “Hey,” he said. “Hey.”
Joey looked up, eyes brimming.
“I’m sorry about your mamá,” he said. “Lost mine to breast cancer when I was in high school.”
She nodded stoically.
He withdrew a small tablet from a belt holster and scrolled through. Evan watched him pull up their scanned passports. He caught Evan looking and tilted the screen away.
“Pop your trunk.”
As Evan obliged, the MP made a circle with his upraised finger, and two more officers came out and searched beneath the car with under-vehicle inspection mirrors.
The MP checked the trunk, slammed it, and came back around. “Magnolia South Residential Building, room fifteen,” he said. “Edge of the compound that way. Next time bring ID.”
The gate ahead of them rattled open. Evan thanked him and drove through, keeping his gaze ahead. As the guard station receded, he said, “Rectal cancer?”
Joey’s tears evanesced, and she smacked the radio to turn it off. “Of course. Who would ever make that up?”
He slotted the car into a space outside the residential building. “You.”
“And—wa-la—look where it got us,” she said. “What would you do without me?”
“I would arrange for proper ID instead of badly singing karaoke with Bicks.”
He was out of the car before she could retort.
Another MP guarded the entrance to the building, wanding them down even after they’d stepped through a metal detector. They padded their way along a carpeted hall. A few doors opened into spaces with a dorm-room vibe, veterans slouched in beanbags, reading books or playing first-person shooter video games.
The door to Room 15 was closed.
Evan knocked.
A voice issued from within. “Harry! You made it!”
The thump-thump of footsteps, and then the door swung inward to reveal Rafael Gomez. Lean, muscular build, clean-shaven, backward baseball cap. His boyishly handsome face registered them, the smile flattening into shock, and his features contracted.
“So you motherfuckers finally got to me.” He showed his palms, backing away. “Go on, then, and kill me quick.”
41
A Dark-as-Fuck Rabbit Hole
Evan and Joey stepped inside, Evan pulling the door closed behind them. Rafael backed to the far wall, head lifted with dignity, still glaring.
The small space was neatly kept, photos thumbtacked to the walls in perfect parallel, shirts precision-folded on shelves, stack of Air Force Times newspapers on a nightstand, edges aligned. The room’s conformity—so opposite the wreckage of Andre’s place—felt soothing to Evan, the environment of a like soul.
“We’re not the ones who killed Jake Hargreave,” Evan said. “We’re trying to figure out who did. We need your help.”
Rafael held his position flattened to the wall. Then his ramrod posture softened, a breath easing out of him. He sat on the bed, joined his hands between his knees, and lowered his head. His arms started shaking uncontrollably.