Page 126 of Hellbent

Evan didn’t reply.

Van Sciver laughed. “You don’t really think this is just personal?”

Evan didn’t indulge him. Their earlier conversation played back in his head. You have no idea, do you? How high it goes?

“It’s amazing,” Van Sciver said. “You don’t even know how valuable you are.”

He pivoted slightly, meeting Candy’s loaded gaze. She was clearly read in on whatever reason had escalated the hunt for Evan.

Van Sciver’s shoulders rose, his neck corded with muscle, his blocky hand firming around the phone. “They sent me to the Sandpit a few times, needed to pick another name off that deck of playing cards. I caught up to him in Tikrit. Shitty little compound in Qadisiyah, jungle-gym bars and rusty Russian munitions. We’d already rained down with aerial munitions, but Habeeb’s still strolling around his little fenced-in yard, lord of his domain. I was set up with my .300 Win Mag on a rooftop at twelve hundred meters, ready to shoot the dick off a mosquito. And Habeeb comes around the yard into sight. I have the head shot, clear as day. But at the last minute, I move the crosshairs from his face to his arm, take it off at the shoulder.” His breath came as a rush of static across the receiver. “He’ll bleed out, right? But I wanted it to be slow. Guess why.”

Evan said, “To draw out the other targets.”

“No,” Van Sciver said, his voice simmering with latent rage. “Because I wanted him to know.”

Evan let the silence lengthen.

Van Sciver said, “When I catch up to you, Evan, you’re gonna have time also. To know. All your questions? I’ll fill you in at the very end. When you’re bleeding out on the ground at my feet.”

His whole body had tensed, but Evan watched him try to relax his muscles now, a snake uncoiling.

“I am hot on your trail,” Van Sciver said.

“And I’m hot on yours,” Evan said, the Samsung pressed to his cheek. “Can you feel my breath on your neck?”

Van Sciver’s expression turned uneasy. He walked into the kitchen, peered out the window into the backyard once more. “Is that so?”

“Yeah,” Evan said. “We’ve got a lock on the kid.”

Next to him Joey bristled. Her hands flared wide—What are you doing?—but he held focus on the house.

Van Sciver muffled the phone against his shoulder and snapped his fingers. The freelancers readied M4s and spread around the interior, taking up guard positions. Thornhill drew an FNX-45 from his hip holster and ambled out of sight.

Van Sciver kept his pistol in his underarm tension holster. He moved the phone back to his mouth. “If you want him,” he said, “come and get him.”

Evan said, “Okay,” and hung up.

“What the hell?” Joey hissed. “Now they’re on high alert. If they come back here—”

Evan pulled out his RoamZone, pressed three buttons, held up a finger to Joey while it rang.

A feminine voice came over the line. “911.”

“Yeah, hi,” Evan said. “I work at the McClair Children’s Mental Health Center in Church Hill. A man and a teenage girl have been lingering around the building all morning. One of our nurses said she saw that the man had a gun. Can you please get someone here right away? Hang on—Shit. I think they’re approaching.”

He hung up.

Joey gestured for him furiously, pointing through the gap. Crouching, he peered again through the knothole.

Candy swung through the kitchen, heading for the rear of the house. He couldn’t see her body until it filled the doorway to the backyard.

She held an M4.

She moved swiftly across the porch and strode out to recon the yard.

Joey backpedaled, her sneaker tamping down the foxtails loudly. She cringed at the noise, wobbled to avoid landing her other foot. Evan shot out a hand and grabbed her arm. She was frozen with one leg above the dead weeds. The brittle foxtails stretched all around them, an early-warning system that would broadcast to Candy any move they made.

Firming his grip on Joey’s biceps, Evan swung his head back to the fence. He peered through the knothole, now a foot away. The perspective had the effect of lensing in on the yard.