The Last Orphan -
Chapter 12
Palm Springs suited Candy McClure to a tee. All that retro-campy Americana, retirement communities clustered around fake lakes with water features, vintage boutiques run by retired gay couples who had the best worst taste. Last week she’d bought a porcelain pelican with its head tilted back, beak agape to accommodate umbrellas.
She didn’t own any umbrellas, but she liked looking at it in the corner of her Airbnb’d room, as if she were a normal person who collected normal-person things.
She loved Palm Canyon Drive with its shaggy palms, dead fronds ruffled beneath the crowns like the throats of bearded dragons. And the people here, straight out of the 1950s. White couples and elderly folks driving Oldsmobiles and a broad spectrum of Polo-shirt colors and fake-tan skin tones.
Near what constituted downtown, she was attending a culinary class to learn how to bake soufflés, because she was bored f*****g senseless and she figured she should at least try something at which she could fail spectacularly.
The industrial kitchen was filled with earnest housewives, well-mannered retirees who called her “hon,” and a few ambitious students from the community college. She’d lucked into a station next to a duo of asshats from the casino, blackjack dealers with spiky hair and Philly accents who joked self-consciously about wearing aprons and sprinkled flour onto their shirts to make boob outlines. They were in their late twenties, and yet this still constituted humor for them.
She’d once disposed of a diplomat in a Saint-Germain-des-Prés café using a stainless-steel meat fork with tines spaced precisely for eye sockets and was tempted to do the same here. Especially since said asshats kept glancing at her after each lewd joke, checking if their dude-bro roughhousing had drawn b***d in a way that might pique her interest.
She was dressed down, but the problem was that even dressed down she was still sexy as f**k. In order to not draw the attention of males, she’d have to get up an hour earlier than an hour early just to knock some of the shine off her pure animal appeal. It was all so aggravating, the Pavlovian slobbering, the jockeying for position, the pickup approaches she’d heard enough times to X-ray any would-be Lothario in the first instant even were she not trained as a virtuoso of psychological observation.
Candy was the type of woman other women complained about to men, claiming that women like her didn’t exist. At least the outside of her. And that was the thing. Maybe if they saw the inside of her—all the broken and dirty bits—they’d realize she wasn’t any different from them. And maybe that would help her realize that she wasn’t either.
But no one saw her that way.
So she’d resigned herself to roaming this earth as a goddess incarnate, capable of opening any door she wanted with a twist of her h*p, a dip of her shoulder, or a demure lowering of her eyes. It was so easy it made her sick with ennui. Ever since the Program had blown apart—along with her role in it as Orphan V—she’d been unable to replace challenges sufficiently treacherous to warm her engine, let alone turn it over. So here she was in Palm Springs baking a f*****g soufflé next to the Brothers Dimm. A surreal detour for a girl who’d once been snatched out of foster care at the behest of a black government program and schooled in the arts of liquidation, maiming, and the creative disposal of human remains.
She’d spilled her finger bowl of pepper and had yolk spatter on her chef bib from overly exuberant egg cracking.
Another titter from her side. “This one likes it messy.”
She did not glance over but felt the heat of the dealers’ eyes crawling over her body.
The teacher, a mousy woman with a tremulous voice, proclaimed, “And now we dice the Vidalia onions!”
Candy reached to grab her onion and lobbed it back to herself in the direction of the cutting board. Before it could reperch in her other palm, it was intercepted by one of the neighboring men, his gym-swollen arm trespassing into her space. “Can’t help but notice you need a hand. I always cook when I have girls over. Happy to show you some of my tricks.” A broad smile displayed perfect orthodontic work. “Kitchen or bedroom.”
Finally she met his eyes. Clear blue, dull, and empty like a swimming pool that no one used.
Without turning her head, she reached for the chef’s knife, flipped it into a triple somersault, caught it by the handle, and jabbed the tip sideways in a single brusque motion at his hand.
His fingers flared wide, matching his eyes. His gaze lowered to check that his palm was still intact.
It was.
But the onion was skewered straight through at the midline.
She flipped the impaled onion free of the blade, pinned it beneath the heel of her hand on the cutting board. Her hands moved in a blur, the knife rat-a-tat-tatting against the butcher block like a tommy gun until there was no onion left, just a small mound of cubed perfection.
It had taken her three seconds, maybe four.
Now she gave him her stare again, the one that could melt diamonds. “Listen”—her gaze dropped to his name tag—“Tanner. You’re arrogant. And you think that’s charming. But all it really means is that you’ve never had the balls to attempt something dangerous enough to humble you. Your bro-hole routine might work on meek little club girls with baby purses and selfie duck lips. But I’m not a girl. I’m a woman. And if you were ever blessed enough to reach the altar of my mattress to try to engage me with your ‘bedroom tricks,’ the ride would tear you to f*****g pieces.”
Tanner’s lips had popped apart, forming a near-perfect O, and he was leaning away from her as if to avoid a good scorching.
Before Candy could continue, her burner phone emitted its notification alert from the wide front pocket of her apron: wild girl Cherie Currie rock-screaming to the world, I’m your ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb!
“’Scuse me a moment,” she said, reaching for her phone.
Still dazed, Tanner took the opportunity to step back.
When Candy saw who the texts were from, an arrow of adrenaline struck her right in the chest.
The only person alive who could still spike her heart rate. Another human weapon on the lam from the government that created them. They’d been enemies first. An early run-in with him had left her back mottled and ruinous, swirled with scar tissue that still seethed and burned when the weather changed. But that had been her fault as much as his.
They weren’t friends, really. They were occasional allies. And something like lovers who hadn’t yet bothered with s*x.
She read the series of short texts, spelling out the ground truth.
Holy shit.
But also? Fun fun fun.
At last.
Already she was spinning a plan in her head. She was a hundred-twenty-minute drive to Los Angeles, but given the groundwork she’d need to lay once she got there, she might do better to grab a plane and save a precious sixty. On the way in, she’d passed the Bermuda Dunes Airport, spotting a few Cessnas. She wasn’t current on her private-pilot cert, but she could figure her way around a single engine and the odds of an FAA ramp check were low. Besides, it gave her an opportunity to liberate an aircraft, set it down in Santa Monica Airport, and hightail it with a purloined car before anyone figured out she’d faked her call sign.
She peeled the apron off and dropped it on her work counter.
The class had come to a standstill, all eyes on her. But she no longer cared about the class, or soufflés, or continuing Tanner’s chiropractic attitude adjustment.
She had a damoiseau in distress to rescue.
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