The Last Orphan -
Chapter 37
Evan peered through the row of tiny square windows inset at the top of the front door.
No one on the lawn.
It was as if Evan had dreamed it.
He moved silently through the kitchen to check the side yard, keeping clear of the bow window. The empty strip of lawn stared back, glistening with dew. The clouds blinked open, straw-colored moonlight falling on the mound of puzzle pieces on the table, the knife block on the counter, the obsidian pane of the mounted television.
Looping through the ground floor, he checked the other windows.
A crunching of rocks announced itself somewhere in the darkness outside, but it was hard to source.
He ducked low. Scooted into a powder room with a view of the east-facing yard. A disused shed sat unevenly on a bank of river stones.
The rasp of wood scraping in a frame, more a vibration than a sound.
Deborah’s smoking window?
The house was pitch dark. Evan had lost surveillance visibility but still had the upper hand. Norris believed he was coming to kill a nineteen-year-old girl and two parents.
Flipping off his boots, Evan eased from the powder room, setting down toes first, then the ball of each foot, then the heel. Silent exploratory steps, lifting the feet straight up, sliding the toes down as if digging them beneath a rug—the rare ninjutsu technique he was capable of employing. Long steady breaths through his nostrils, knees slightly bent, h**s level.
The rooms of the ground floor formed a loop around the core of the stairs. Moving silently back toward the kitchen with his ARES at the ready, Evan discerned the faintest scuff of tread from one of the adjacent rooms.
Norris likely wasn’t aware he was being stalked.
Moving through the room where he’d first sat with Deborah and Mason, Evan cut toward the back of the house, staying attuned to the sound of Norris’s shoes quietly touching the floor. They were circling each other in the ring of rooms around the stairs. It seemed Norris was safing the first floor before moving up.
The closed floor plan rendered the house almost pitch black at night, the profusion of walls blocking ambient light. In keeping with the Third Commandment, Evan had mastered the layout.
Avoiding the Chinese porcelain vase with its tentacles of p***y-willow branches, he reached the mudroom by the rear door. Its sash pane was lifted two feet in the frame, the gap just enough for a slender man to slip into.
Speeding his steps, Evan moved through the formal dining room and sliced the pie into the kitchen.
It looked to be empty, but he couldn’t see behind the counter or the table beyond. Scanning the room over the sights of his 1911, he pressed forward.
Inch by inch, shifting his weight, ears straining.
Norris’s footfall had gone silent.
Evan’s concern redlined. Norris wasn’t just some thug. He was a United States Marine with extensive operational experience.
Leading with his pistol, Evan leaned around the counter—no one there.
Crouched to check beneath the kitchen table.
He rose silently, willing his right knee not to crack as it was wont to do.
As his head drew level with the counter, he saw the missing slot in the knife block.
The boning knife.
He stilled. The thud of his heart reached his consciousness, barely audible over the rush of b***d in his ears.
In a neighborhood like this, Norris would prefer a knife to a gun to keep everything quiet. Using a weapon from the house left a forensic dead end and would paint the picture of a home invasion gone wrong.
Still in his half crouch, Evan cocked his head and stared across the foyer.
There were two brick-size bumps at the base of the stairs. He blinked rapidly, stimulating his night vision. As the bumps resolved, a chill tightened his skin.
A pair of shoes.
In his peripheral vision, he caught a flash of movement reflected in the black screen of the TV. He spun to aim behind him, but a blow struck him at the wrist, knocking the ARES from his grip, a shot firing wildly. He leapt back, his shirt billowing forward as the blade came low and mean, swiping at his gut.
Evan’s h*p struck the kitchen table, sending up a spray of puzzle pieces. His shirt gaped wide across his solar plexus, split horizontally by the boning knife.
Norris’s head drew back slightly—a spark of recognition at Evan’s face?—and he lunged again, leading with the tip of the blade. An underhand prison-shiv stab, leaving Evan nothing to grab but the cutting edge.
Evan threw the bar of his forearm down, catching Norris’s arm just above the wrist. With his left hand, Norris hooked Evan’s neck, pulling him in toward the blade even as he kept jabbing against the pressure of Evan’s arm. Muscles screaming, Evan strained to hold the knife at bay, but each stab brought the tip closer until he felt it tapping his stomach, popping through the surface tension of his skin.
When Norris drew his arm back again, Evan swept his hand up Norris’s forearm to the wrist, locking it in place. The majority of knife fighters froze up here.
But not a United State Marine.
Norris dropped his grasp of Evan’s neck, whipping his hand down to meet his trapped knife hand and plucking the knife from his own clenched fingers.
Now he had it free and clear.
He jabbed it toward Evan’s side, but Evan crashed forward inside Norris’s guard, chest to chest, the blade whisking just behind his kidney. A double slam into the wall ovens, Norris’s shoulder blades striking metal, Evan dipping his chin for a headbutt, his forehead clipping Norris’s chin.
Norris grunted out a clod of air, his hat flying free, the boning knife clattering to the tile. As Evan drew back, he dug for the Strider in his cargo pants, snagging the shark fin atop the blade on the edge of his pocket so the knife snapped open.
Evan spun the Strider across the back of his hand, changing to an edge-out reverse grip, and slammed the blade through Norris’s thigh at the femoral artery.
Like many of Evan’s favorites, this fatal injury had a nickname: butcher’s thigh.
Norris wrenched away, the embedded knife coming with him.
Evan staggered back a few steps, and Norris g*****d and wobbled against the stacked ovens. They took a beat, panting from the burst of adrenalized exertion. Evan’s stomach, peppered with incisions, burned. His sliced shirt flapped idiotically across his gut like sputtering lips.
They stared at each other, Norris’s dark skin even darker in the night, his eyes bright and his latex-gloved hands even brighter.
Norris looked down. The Strider stuck straight out from the upper thigh of his jeans, the tip sunk a solid two inches.
But something was wrong. He was still holding his feet.
Norris looked back up at Evan.
In the darkness his grin appeared, a Cheshire Cat float.
Reaching down, Norris gripped the handle of the Strider and tugged it upward.
The black-oxide blade sliced through the denim like butter.
The knife cut a vertical zipper through the pocket and emerged. It had impaled a fat wad of hundred-dollar bills folded once and rubber-banded.
Laughing, Norris held the knife up and wagged the cash on its end like a giant lollipop. “Now, ain’t that a—”
Evan stuttered-stepped into a yeop chagi side kick, lower body pivoting sideways around his left h*p, leg chambered, ankle high, toes pulled back out of the way and angled slightly down. Since he wore only a sock, he led not with the edge of his foot but with the heel.
His foot struck the butt of the Strider on the rise, the knife plowing into Norris’s chest. There was a crackle of yielding bone, the wadded cash now rammed all the way down to the guard where blade met handle.
Four inches of S35VN steel buried in Norris’s solar plexus.
The awful stench of raw innards meeting air.
Covered in dampness, Norris’s face shimmered in the faint light.
He gripped the knife handle, his fingers not able to close.
The bottom of Evan’s foot ached from the impact. At least he’d been on the right side of the knife. They were down to minutes now.
“Why were Johnny Seabrook and Angela Buford killed?” Evan asked.
Norris stared at his wet hands, white latex doused in crimson. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he made a gurgling sound of disbelief.
“Were you all in on it?”
Norris’s eyes rolled up to white, then rolled down once more as if coming back online, the effect supernatural, ghastly.
“Did Luke Devine order their deaths?”
Norris tilted forward, arms spread as if in a hug. Evan caught him under the armpits, felt the cold butt of the sunken knife against his own bare stomach. Norris’s legs went out, but he grabbed behind Evan’s neck, tugging him down, his face lifted to look into Evan’s eyes.
Their noses were inches apart. Evan could taste Norris’s breath, bitter and dry, puffing up from parted lips.
Evan eased him sloppily to the floor. One of Norris’s stockinged feet pawed loose circles on the kitchen tile. His cheek came to rest against Evan’s leg, his arm slung over the knee, clinging with what little strength his fingers had left. It was a meager sort of embrace. Sweat and b***d turned his skin tacky.
Death came on like a galloping horse. His whole body shook. His breaths shuddered. His lips wavered, the hollow of his throat sucked in, a pitch-black hollow. He blinked long, blinked longer, his eyes screwed up toward Evan. He didn’t want absolution or forgiveness.
He just wanted someone there.
Sprawled in the darkness of the kitchen, Evan held him until he slipped away.
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