The Last Orphan
Chapter 47

Tenpenny halted in the doorway, his head nearly brushing the top of the frame. “You let him in here? No one’s allowed in here. Ever.”

He’d been summoned to the scarlet room, brought up short by the sight of Evan inside the Faraday cage with Luke.

Luke pointed at the computer. “Labor Day last year,” he said.

Tenpenny shuffled over reluctantly and began working the database with practiced dexterity. He looked like an organist, long fingers flurrying over the controls, calling up various programs on the massive screen.

Evan and Luke stood shoulder to shoulder, watching Tenpenny zero in on the proper date. Though the tall man didn’t have a cigarette, his clothes respired stale smoke, tingeing the windowless room with a bleary gray smell.

At last he found the file for Labor Day and clicked on it.

A proliferation of camera angles filled the screens, showing Tartarus in the quiet of early morning. They watched the estate stir to life, gardeners and house staff readying for the day. Tenpenny zipped along on fast-forward, the time stamp spinning through the morning. The sped-up afternoon saw more jerky progress—tables rolled into place, bar stations set up, outdoor lights strung.

“You’ll see with your own two eyes that your concerns are unjustified,” Luke said to Evan. “That young man and woman were never here. Then we can get back to what really—”

The footage turned to fuzz.

Tenpenny stiffened. His movements grew frustrated. He clicked more vigorously on the mouse and tapped the wireless keyboard hard enough that the keys gave off little snapping noises.

“What,” Devine said, “is wrong?”

Evan had never heard so much cold rage compressed into three words.

“Looks like some kind of file corruption.” Tenpenny’s voice sounded muffled, though there was no reason it should be. “I don’t get it.”

The slightest coloring had crept in at the wings of Luke’s nostrils, his eyes enlarged by what looked like true surprise.

Evan reached for his pocket.

Luke and Tenpenny froze.

Evan’s hand emerged with the RoamZone. He thumbed up the recording he’d made. Pressed PLAY.

The altered voice came low and growling: “Stop talking about your brother. Stop asking questions about your brother. Or I will come for you like I came for him. You’ll get your counseling, your medication to try to convince yourself that maybe I forgot, that it’s safe to talk to the cops, that the threat is no longer real. But I am. I always will be. You will never be safe from me.”

Tenpenny kept his back turned, his focus on the noncompliant computer. Luke’s face had tightened, his lips a bloodless stroke. He looked livid.

Evan said, “Sounds like you.”

“No. That sounds like a coward. I’ve never been afraid to speak in my own voice.” Devine pivoted to Tenpenny, who looked diminished by fear, stooped, his shoulders melting forward off his spine. “I’ll deal with you later.”

Tenpenny rubbed his palms together. They made a dry, scratching sound. He eased awkwardly around Devine, who did not budge, and exited meekly.

Devine walked over to the chaise longue and sat with his hands on his knees, nostrils flaring as he breathed.

Evan moved to the one opposite.

They stared at each other through the scarlet glow of the room.

“My house will be set in order,” Devine said. “This is a mistake. And it will be rectified. You’ll see. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“Me, too,” Evan said.

“It’s an unforeseen hurdle. Nothing more.”

“That’s the thing when you move too fast. You miss stuff.”

“No,” Luke said.

“Then you’re not looking hard enough.”

“At what?”

“Everything. Anything. Pick one thing you’ve done. Stare at it. And follow it down. All the way down.”

“I’ve done that,” Luke said. “I’ve examined every last self-deception, every blind spot, every confirmation bias—”

“Not for you,” Evan said. “For those people you shove around like pawn pieces. If you really looked at what you’ve done and who you had to be to do it, you’d feel like you were free-falling through darkness. With no bottom.”

“Why do you think that?”

Evan just looked at him.

“You don’t know a goddamned thing about where I’ve been or where I need to go.” Devine’s expression stayed calm, but there was menace lurking behind his words. He jabbed a finger at the Faraday cage. “You think I can’t read you as surely as that software does when people pop up on the screen? It’s written all over your face. That you lost your internal life before you had one. That you were too sensitive to handle the pain of existing in reality, so you receded into something else, an archetype. That you can’t tolerate ordinary life, so you go to greater and greater extremes just to feel something. That you’ve spent a lifetime building that tolerance, trying to convince yourself that you’re not really subject to human emotions and frailties like everyone else. When the truth is you’re too weak to contain them. Without your missions, the hapless victims you compulsively rescue, who are you? Nothing. The Nowhere Man. A scared little boy wearing a lifetime of armor, living in a state of arrested development with your guns and your kung fu. You haven’t even learned to age yet. How to let yourself grow older. How can anyone respect a man-child like that?”

The words came sharp and hard like pellets. The room seemed filled with them.

Evan breathed and then breathed some more. “Did you say ‘kung fu’?”

But Devine didn’t bite.

“The thing is,” Evan said, “I’m immune to this kind of mind-fuckery. Know why?” He rose. “Because I don’t fear being misunderstood.”

“But it’s obvious what you do fear,” Devine said. “Losing control.”

Evan pondered a moment. “No,” he said. “If I lose control? I’m not the one who should be scared.”

Devine found his feet. He was unintimidating physically, but that ramrod posture—as if he were hammered from steel—and the words packed inside him waiting to be ignited imbued him with an energy of restrained viciousness. “Do your worst.”

Evan tipped his head in a respectful nod and left him in the room.

Tenpenny was nowhere to be seen, but Rathsberger was waiting for Evan at the base of the sweeping stairs. In the grim, stark light of the foyer, his face was hard to look at. A few workers tidied up at the periphery of the enormous room, sweeping and mopping and gathering glassware. The cavernous space smelled of cleaning solutions and spilled champagne.

Rath stepped back as Evan neared and walked him out, holding five feet off Evan’s shoulder like a fighter-jet escort.

There were no guards in evidence anymore. Tugging the enormous door open, Evan was hit with a waft of cool, wet air smelling of salt and the stench of low tide.

Rath halted, keeping well away from Evan. “Guess we’ll be seeing you again.”

Evan looked back. “That’s a promise.”

“We’ll be ready. You’ll never get through this door. You’ll never make it inside Tartarus again. Not on our watch.”

“We’ll see.”

Two-thirds of Rath’s face grinned. “You know how this ends, don’t you?”

Evan said, “You don’t want a catchphrase.”

The grin intensified, the sworl of hard red scar tissue at Rath’s chin tugging his right l*p down until the line of his lower gums showed, gleaming wetly. “Why not?”

“Because of what happens to guys with catchphrases.”

Evan stepped out into the night. The minivan waited on the quartz rocks with the key fob placed on the front right tire. At his back the door shut with bank-vault heft. Standing in the soft rain, he heard nothing through the thick wood but silence. No scuff of feet, no clang of trays or plates, no sounds of life at all.

He listened for a time longer, but there was only the pitter-patter of rain working its way through his clothes. It was as though he’d passed out of one world into another and the portal had sealed behind him. But he knew now what he had to do out here before he returned.

He would honor the First Commandment.

Find the answers he required.

And see the mission through no matter the cost.

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