Free Orphan X: A Novel by Gregg Hurwitz Page A

lightly to preserve the steadiness of his voice. “Did the girl give you a name?”
    “I can’t remember. Wait, Miranda something. No— Morena. She wouldn’t say what her last name was.”
    “What did she look like?”
    “Pulled-back hair. Skinny. Tweezed eyebrows.”
    “Any marks on her arms?”
    “She had a scar—inoculation mark, maybe.”
    Evan felt microscopically reassured. He recalled Morena’s words: I’ll do it quick. I wanna get all this behind us as fast as I can. But still.
    “What’s your name?” he asked.
    “I don’t want to give you my name. These guys after me, they’re serious. How do I know you’re not with them? Or that girl you sent? This could all be a ploy.” Her speech was pressured, the sentences tumbling out one after the other.
    “So what would you like to do?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know. God, how the hell did I get here?”
    He moved up several more flights, holding the phone to his ear, leaving her the silence to draw her out. Given his suspicion, he wanted more data—a change in tone, background noise, a trip in her cadence that suggested that her words were rehearsed. Were it not for her sharp breaths, he would have thought she’d hung up.
    He reached the penthouse floor and moved swiftly down the hall toward his place.
    “Meet me somewhere public, then, I guess,” she said. “Where you can’t hurt me.”
    “Public.”
    “Yes. Like a crowded restaurant. Hello? Are you still there?”
    He slid into his condo, put his back to the closed door. “I’m listening.”
    “Bottega Louie. Downtown. Tomorrow at noon. I’ll wear amber-tinted sunglasses, even inside.”
    She hung up before he could respond.
    *   *   *
    Evan liked nothing about it.
    He didn’t like not knowing the client’s name. He didn’t like her setting the meeting place. He didn’t like the cloak-and-dagger setup, contrived enough to make it feel like a trap. But would any party dangerous enough to try to take him down actually attempt such a hackneyed approach? The maneuver, torn from countless Hollywood movies, pointed to inexperience. Or, to play the figurative double negative, was it intended to appear bumbling and therefore catch him with his guard down?
    He had elevated even his usual level of caution, switching out his pickup for a white Chrysler he kept stashed at the safe house near LAX. He sat behind the wheel of the forgettable sedan now, facing off the fourth floor of the open-air parking structure. Through tactical binoculars, he looked across West Seventh at the designated meeting spot of Bottega Louie below.
    The caller had wanted a crowded public place, and the upscale patisserie definitely qualified. Work-casual patrons crammed the ten thousand square feet of marble that stretched from Baroque bar to brick oven. More diners waited at the take-out counters near the front, clamoring over sumptuous tiers of macarons.
    A woman wearing the promised amber-tinted sunglasses sipped water at a table flush with one of the showcase windows. Evan had tried three parking levels to find the right angle, and here it was, sniper-perfect.
    She was either tactically unsophisticated or dangling herself out as bait.
    She looked to be in her late thirties and was strikingly attractive, though it was hard to get a good look at her face given the oversize sunglasses. Her shiny black hair, dyed, was collected in the back just below her crown like a gathered drape, ending in a blunt line at the nape. Bloodred lipstick struck a contrast with her porcelain skin. A three-inch band of bracelets ringed her right wrist—thin leather straps, beads, and colorful herringbone weaves. Her fingernails, a rich shade of eggplant, tapped nervously on the table. High, choppy bangs capped off the hipster vibe.
    Evan upped the magnification, zeroing in on a tattoo behind her ear. The inkwork proved to be a mini-constellation, three stars in an oddly pleasing asymmetrical pattern. He searched his mental database