Page 173 of Hellbent

“I got you covered,” Van Sciver called to his freelancer. “Make the move.”

A crunch of footsteps signaled the man’s emergence from behind the gravel pile.

Evan realized what Van Sciver’s countermove was, the genius of it turning his insides ice-water cold.

He heard the clang of footsteps on metal rungs. Then the door to the elevated operator’s cabin of the crane hinged open and slammed shut.

Evan was finished.

He still owed Tommy an answer. He set a finger on the bone phone, said, “I’ll be fine.”

“You’re clear?” Tommy asked.

Evan swallowed. “I’m clear.”

“Falling back,” Tommy said. “Call me for extraction?”

The Tahoe creaked as Van Sciver posted up and slotted a fresh twenty-round mag into the big rifle.

“Sure thing,” Evan said. His mouth was dry. “And, Tommy?”

“What, pal?”

“Thanks for everything.”

73

The Black Hereafter

Joey stood at the edge of the fifth floor, the poured-concrete slab solid underfoot, the base-jumping pack snug to her back, fist gripping the rip cord. The sound of gunfire carried up, pops muffled by the concrete wall and the roar of traffic beyond. She picked her spot across the fourteen lanes of traffic, a parking lot glistening with shattered glass. The city had started to granulate with dusk. Night wasn’t far off, and blackness would aid in her escape.

From her perch she’d watched most of the action unfold. Tommy had rolled off the roof of the Orellana house and disappeared well before Candy McClure had forged upslope in the Jeep. Her pursuit would be in vain; Tommy had too much of a jump on her.

That left Evan pinned down without a weapon, facing off against Van Sciver and a freelancer. Last Joey had peeked, they’d taken up strategic positions at a ninety-degree spread, vectoring in at him from two angles he couldn’t cover even if he had a gun.

But he was Orphan X, and Orphan X always found a way.

And so she’d donned the backpack and retreated to the far edge as promised.

Now she was here, freedom a single leap away.

A mural decorated the far wall of the freeway, visible to the eastbound passing cars. Cesar Chavez and Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. A cacophony of quotations and languages painted the drab concrete, but one sentence in particular stood out.

“If you’ve got nothing worth dying for, you’ve got nothing worth living for.”

She read it twice, felt it pull at something deep inside her.

Pushing away the sensation, she took a few backward steps to allow herself a running start.

Then she heard another sound.

A large piece of machinery rumbling to life.

At the dead center of the uppermost slab, she hesitated.

Run.

Or turn.