Seven thousand empty square feet.
Well, not entirely empty.
The open floor plan of Evan’s penthouse in the Castle Heights Residential Tower made the sparseness seem even more sparse.
The workout stations, training mats, and furniture of the great room had been incinerated in the blast, but the freshly restored fireplace rose like a tree from the middle of the poured-concrete plain. A few pillars had made their way back into existence, along with a steel staircase that spiraled up to a partially rehabbed loft with empty bookshelves that still smelled of sawdust and wood glue.
The kitchen had come along the furthest: gunmetal-gray countertops, brushed-nickel fixtures, and a broad center island at which Evan ate his meals alone. Bluish plastic wrap colored the face of the unused oven and limned the edge of the dishwasher. About half of the mirrored subway tiles composing the backsplash had been laid in place, trailing off like an abandoned Lego project.
Last week’s work had seen the return of his glass vodka freezer room, though its shelves had yet to be fully replenished. And the week before had brought the restoration of the living wall, a vertical garden that thrust up from the floor. At the moment it was little more than a rise of caked soil and buried seeds fed by drip irrigation, but one day it would sprout mint and basil, peppers and chamomile.
Enormous floor-to-ceiling windows opened the corner penthouse to the world, downtown looming twelve miles to the east, Century City high-rises taking a bite out of the sky to the south. Twenty-one stories below, constipated traffic worked its way through the infamous Angeleno congestion, automotive peristalsis encouraged by horns and expletives.
Evan finished enhancing the bullet-resistant Lexan windows with sensors that detected shattering glass, approaching foreign objects, and any significant compression sound signatures from the quartz rocks layering the balconies. He stepped away from the transparent wall, wiped his forehead, and stared at the vast interior space.
It was cold. Lifeless.
Safe.
Not nearly as tidy as usual, with stray tools, tarps, and the occasional plastic water bottle left over by the legitimate construction crew or one of the clandestine night-shift workers. The discreet armor sunscreens, a fetching shade of periwinkle, still had to be hung. They lay on the floor, rippled like chain mail. Composed of a rare titanium variant woven together in rings, the shades provided an additional layer of protection from sniper rounds or explosive devices, a feature that had been put to the test right before his grudging defenestration.
The elaborate alarm system had been installed and its firmware updated. As well as the front door that hid interlocking steel security bars and a water-filled core that dispersed the effect of a battering ram. The wood façade matched every other residential door in the building and ostensibly complied with code, a veneer sufficient to keep Hugh Walters, the officious president of the homeowners’ association, at bay.
Evan had managed to swap out the standard half-inch residential Sheetrock with five and eight-tenths commercial grade for soundproofing and protective rigidity in the event someone gave up on the front door and tried to come through the walls themselves with a fire ax, a chain saw, or Wile E. Coyote shot out of a cannon. A coat of paint layered the unsanctioned upgrade out of sight.
Why was he going through all this rather than finding a new burrow or drifting from city to city as he had before, anonymous and solitary? This stretch of floor, the taste of this air, the views from these windows, they’d become a part of him. He’d never understood what it meant to have a place in the universe, and now that he had one, he was loath to give it up.
Then there was Mia Hall, nine floors down. Single mother, district attorney, beauty mark at her temple. And her son, Peter, on the cusp of turning ten years old. With a raspy voice and charcoal eyes, he was innocent and mischievous, the kind of boy Evan might have been in another life. For years Evan and Mia had skirted the issue of what Evan actually did, a dance made necessary by the fact that what Mia actually did was prosecute people who—like him—broke the law.
He shook off the thought. He wasn’t intent on staying here for Mia and Peter. It was the view. His fortress. The Vault.
The Fourth Commandment: Never make it personal.
Evan crossed to the kitchen, his boots leaving dust impressions on the polished concrete. He soothed the OCD compulsion gripping his brain stem. The footprints could be swept up and cleaned, any trace of his movement eliminated. The rebuild had his mind on permanent alert, his visual scanning for imperfections at a high level. Everywhere he looked, there were splinters to sand and scratches to buff and trash to haul, a mess that constantly replenished itself. All these signs of life and human imperfection were hard to bear for a man who preferred to leave no trace, who’d always kept his refuge here above the city more spotless and stainless than a mausoleum.
On the broad island, his RoamZone rested on its stand, charging and ready.
Of everything in the penthouse, the encrypted phone was the most important.
The process was simple. After he completed a mission, the only payment he asked was that his client find someone else in an impossible situation, someone who had nowhere else to turn. That they pass along Evan’s number. The new client dialed 1-855-2-NOWHERE as had the preceding client and every client before.
The call would be converted into digital packets, encrypted, shot through the Internet, and routed through more than a dozen virtual-private-network tunnels in nations ranging from Andorra to Zambia. The RoamZone would ring. He would answer.
The first question was the same every time.
Do you need my help?
As a government assassin pulled from a foster home at the age of twelve and trained in the deep-black Orphan Program, Evan had an arsenal of skills at his disposal that few people on the planet could match. He’d been raised by a handler and father figure who’d bucked procedure and tradition to keep Evan’s sense of morality intact. Jack Johns had forged him into a weapon while never letting him forget that the hard part wasn’t being a killer. The hard part was staying human.
For about a decade, Evan had neutralized targets unofficially designated by the Department of Defense. He did not technically exist, drifting in the shadows, nourished by heavily stocked bank accounts earning interest in nonreporting countries around the world and known only by his code name: Orphan X.
When he’d fled the Program, the powers-that-be had designated him an unsafe asset, a man who knew too much. Now he had to live his life below the radar, a challenge complicated by his pro bono work and his desire to live here among ordinary people, both of which were attempts to keep the pilot light of his humanity alive.
Most days he was Evan Smoak, boring Castle Heights resident and importer of industrial cleaning supplies.
But when the RoamZone rang, he became something else.
The Nowhere Man.
It was his way of paying penance for the blood he’d spilled in European alleys and Middle Eastern sweat lodges, in South American plazas and African fields.
His own moral compass, pegged to his own true north.
Staying human the only way he knew how.
Now he picked up the encrypted phone and checked it for missed calls, though he’d been within earshot of it every waking minute. In keeping with the spirit of his remodel, he’d given the RoamZone some additional upgrades. The organic polyether thioureas screen with a capability to stitch itself together when cracked was ensconced in an “antigravity” case, able to cling to most flat surfaces. He tested it now, flipping the phone at the Sub-Zero, the nanosuction backing enabling the RoamZone to stick in place.
He drained a glass of water, washed and dried the cup, and put it away. Then he popped the RoamZone off the refrigerator and padded across the empty great room, stripping off his clothes.
He dumped them and his boots into the fireplace, struck up a fire, and burned them. It was habit, destroying DNA and trace evidence of anything on his person at the end of a mission or a day when he interacted with strangers or unusual materials.
He continued down a brief hall at the north-facing side of the penthouse and into the partially rehabilitated master bedroom suite. In the corner a king-size mattress lay on the floor, neatly made up with white sheets. Normally it rested on a metal slab that floated three feet off the ground, suspended by neodymium rare-earth magnets and tethered by steel cables, but the explosion had loosed it, sending it flying up to smash into the ceiling.
In the bathroom the plumbing had been replaced—toilet, tiled stall, shower arm sticking out of the wall—but there was still no cabinetry and the new barn-hanger shower door had not been installed.
He threw the RoamZone at the wall, where it stuck upside down, and stepped into the stream of water from the metal pipe, rinsing off. When he was done, he gripped the hot-water lever, waited for the upgraded embedded electronic sensors to scan the vein pattern in his palm, and turned the lever the wrong way.
A hidden door, disguised seamlessly by the tile pattern, swung inward to reveal the Vault, an irregular four-hundred-square-foot space that served as his mission-planning room. Given its concealed position, buffered behind the rest of the space, it was the only part of the penthouse that hadn’t been destroyed by the explosion. An L-shaped sheet-metal desk piled with electronics. Server racks and gun lockers, ammo crates and surveillance devices, all positioned neatly beneath exposed beams and the underbelly of the public stairs to the roof, which crept downward in Escheresque fashion.
The equipment had slid around from the force of the blast—a few cables snapped, a server rack on tilt, a toppled Yagi directional antenna. A few of the 2.57-millimeter-thin OLED screens that covered three of the rough concrete walls had cracked, fissure marks etched through their invisible surfaces like forks of lightning.
Evan’s sole companion, a pinecone-size aloe vera plant nestled among blue cobalt pebbles in a glass bowl, had died in his absence in the weeks following the explosion. Vera II, second of her name, faithful companion.
Dripping wet, he walked over and picked her up. Brown leaves, brittle core.
He said, “Rest in peace,” and dropped her into the trash can.
Emerging back into the bathroom, he toweled off, then plucked his phone from the wall to text Joey Morales, an Orphan Program washout who had inexplicably wound up in his charge. At sixteen years old, she was the finest hacker he’d ever encountered, with a processing speed matched only by her smart-assery. For reasons they neither understood nor fully acknowledged, they had become family to each other.
He thumbed in:
Need your help to make repairs on the nails.
Less than one second later:
nails?
I meant vault. Autocorrect.
bummer, x! was hoping we could do some french manicure action
just get over here.
or maybe like gels you could get em in black so youd still feel all orphan-y
Joey.
i’m just glad yr finally getting in touch w your feminine side
Josephine.
fine. c u in 10.
Trudging out, he moved to the stacks of clothing resting in the corner of the bedroom. Gray V-neck T-shirts, tactical-discreet cargo pants, dark blue 501s, boxer briefs—eight each, folded in perfect squares. Though the bedroom was spotless, their proximity to the floor made his brain itch, so he dusted off each item before donning it and made a mental note to check when the replacement bureau was coming in.
The walk-in closet was empty save for eight hanging Woolrich shirts, eight watch fobs made by Vertex, and eight Original S.W.A.T. shoe boxes.
No, wait.
Seven.
Seven Original S.W.A.T. shoe boxes.
He stared at them, willing it not to be. He’d gone through an extra pair of boots today when a circular saw had bitten a chunk out of the sole, and now there it was, a stack containing one fewer item than the others. That made his face twist with discomfort.
He scratched at the back of his head.
Stared at the boxes. Counted them. Counted them once more.
Still seven.
He’d ordered to replenish his supply but hadn’t accounted for the stagger in numbers.
He buttoned up a Woolrich over his T-shirt and tugged on a fresh pair of boots.
Now there were seven of each. But six of the boots.
By the time the new articles of clothing arrived, the numbers would still be off by one.
It was okay. He could handle this.
He started to walk out.
Halted at the threshold of the bedroom.
His place was a mess, covered with sawdust and tools and fucking half-drunk water bottles with germs of other people on them. He could manage this—barely—along with the unfinished state of the penthouse, but having his clothing count misaligned was too much. Distress roiled in his stomach, pressed at the backs of his eyes.
He reversed course, plucking one item from each stack on the floor. Then one hanging shirt and watch fob from the closet.
Holding the mound of brand-new items against his chest, he walked back to the fireplace, tossed the RoamZone to stick against the rise of the flue, and threw the clothes into the fire.
Now there were six of everything and order had been restored to the universe.
With an exhale he uncramped the muscles around his neck. Stared into the flame. Took measure of his breath. Felt the coolness at his nostrils, his throat, the expansion of his ribs, the belly.
A sound pierced his awareness.
The RoamZone.
Ringing.
He stared at the phone stuck magnetlike to the chimney before him. The tech enhancements he’d made to his RoamZone included a holographic display incubated by Chinese and Australian researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne. Visible without 3-D glasses, the images thrown beyond the device were twenty-five nanometers thin—a thousand nanometers skinnier than a single strand of hair.
Right now the pop-up visual displayed a phone number with a South Texas area code.
Evan tapped the holograph to answer, the RoamZone reverting to speaker mode.
Adrenaline and anticipation converged into something dangerous and delicious. The start of a mission that could lead to his death or another piece of his salvation.
He took a breath. Exhaled to calm.
Then said, “Do you need my help?”