Page 89 of Hellbent

A moment later Thornhill entered from the next room. He was holding the turkey baster. He walked a casual arc in front of Van Sciver.

“Enhanced interrogation,” Thornhill said, with that broad, easygoing grin. “It’s such a well-considered term. Gotta hand it to the Agency. They do know their marketing.” He gazed into the middle distance, tapping the baster in his palm. “You know another one I like? Rectal rehydration. It sounds so … therapeutic.” His stare lowered. “When your intestines are all swollen up with fluid and you get a steel-toed boot in the gut, do you have any idea how much it hurts?”

Draker said, “I do.”

“That’s just the start,” Van Sciver said. “Have a look around.”

Keeping her gun raised, Candy watched Draker take in the items arrayed on the floor.

There were padlocks and plywood.

Nylon ropes and boards of various lengths.

A decline bench and jugs of water.

Mattresses and drop cloths.

Duct tape and a folding metal chair.

A sheen of perspiration covered his face now, and it was no longer a fake-addict sweat. He lifted his head again. Set his jaw.

He said, “Let’s get to it, then.”

41

Borrowed Time

Joey chewed her thumbnail, leaning over Evan’s shoulder as he sat before the Dell laptop, staring at a list.

Five names.

One of them was Joey Morales.

Morales. All this time he didn’t know her last name. He’d been unable even to get her full first name out of her.

The hillside crowded the back windows of the safe house, shadows making the interior dismal. That ever-present moisture had taken hold in the trapped air, turning the place dank. It smelled of microwaved food and girl’s deodorant. Evan ran his eyes across the screen once again.

“So much encryption,” Evan said, “for five names.”

She paused from chewing her thumbnail. “Not just five names. It’s a list of people in the Program who were associated with Jack in some way. Look.” She shouldered him aside, taking over the keyboard. When she hovered the cursor above the top name, a hidden file appeared. She clicked it, and a host of images proliferated. “This guy? Jim Harville? He was Orphan J. One of the original guys. Jack was his handler way back when. It says it was Jack’s first Program assignment.”

Evan scanned the files. “How the hell did Van Sciver get his hands on this? This is intel that isn’t supposed to exist.” He scrolled down the page. “And it’s from channels outside the Orphan Program. Look here. See, this is NSA/CSS coding.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means someone else in the government is watching Van Sciver and the Program—keeping tabs. Van Sciver didn’t oversee this intel collection, and he doesn’t control it.”

“Well,” Joey said, “till he got control of it.”

Dread crept into Evan’s stomach, digging in its nails. Van Sciver’s cryptic comments looped through his head once again: You have no idea, do you? How high it goes? You still think it’s about me and you.

Evan said, “What happened to Orphan J?”

“They caught up to him in Venice.” She brought up a crime-scene photo of a man lying in a flooded piazza, the back of his head blown off. Another red spot bloomed below one of his shoulder blades. Blood ribboned the water around him. The picture had been taken moments after he was shot, a cell-phone snap.

Evan noted the time stamp on the photo. “Van Sciver’s updating the initial files, building on the intel pieces he got his hands on. He’s taken these five names and turned them into active hit missions.”

“That’s right. Like Orphan C.” She brought up a picture of an older man, half in shadow, moving through the concourse of a shopping mall in Homewood, Alabama. He was dressed shabbily, toes showing through one of his sneakers. “Now look at this.” She’d dug up an article about an unidentified homeless man murdered beneath a freeway ramp in Birmingham. A picture from a local shelter accompanied the article, showing the man at a soup kitchen.