Gregg Hurwitz - Buy a Bullet - An Orphan X Story

The watcher eases the collapsing form to the concrete and pivots to the door, his momentum barely slowed.

He is inside.

The house smells of teak and lavender — it smells of money. He strides through the foyer but Padilla is already stepping into view from the living room on the far side, surprising him. It is clear now just how large Padilla is.

The men halt and consider each other across the six-foot span.

“What the hell?” Radack calls out from behind. “Where’d Kane go? ”

The watcher lunges before Padilla can go for his hip holster. Padilla leads with a jab and the watcher sidesteps and flicks the Emerson. But the big man is well trained, parrying the swipe and countering with a cross that whistles overhead. The watcher lunges with the blade and Padilla catches his arm midflight, one giant hand crushing his wrist. His arm and the knife are going nowhere; the men are locked up. Padilla draws back his fist, but before he can swing, the watcher does the unexpected; he opens the hand clenched around the knife handle. The blade tumbles past their eyes, their chins, their chests, Padilla seeming to realize what is coming an instant before it does.

The watcher’s free hand darts forward, grabbing the tumbling knife as it falls between them and driving it into Padilla’s gut. He punches it two more times up Padilla’s left ribs— smack smack —and the man falls away in slow motion.

The watcher is already gliding down the steps into the sunken living room, angling for the kitchen. As the watcher hoped, Radack has the H&K 94 in hand. He swings the submachine gun blindly as the watcher hip-slides across the sleek granite slab and drops behind the island.

Radack dumps all thirty-two rounds in a single wild burst. Wine bottles shatter. Bullets ping off the Sub-Zero. The Viking stove crumples inward and emits a puff of gray smoke. Lighting fixtures spark overhead. Chunks of the ceiling dump down. Somewhere on the floor beside the couch, Leanne screams.

The island remains, predictably, untouched. The watcher could have stood in plain view and every last bullet would have sailed overhead.

He rises now and crosses to Radack, who struggles to drop the magazine from the useless gun, his panic tangible. Drops of sweat cling to the tips of his disheveled hair. As the watcher nears, Radack gives up on the mag and clubs at him with the barrel. The watcher knocks the weapon wide and, with the butt of his palm, delivers a single stun blow to the heart.

Radack makes a noise like a bark and veins pop in his throat. He takes a step back, his clawed hand hovering an inch off his chest. The skin has gone to scarlet, the sutures scars standing out in defiant white. He lean-sits against the couch back and his eyes widen and widen some more and then his head lolls forward and he is dead.

The room is thick with smoke and dust billowing from the torn-open ceiling.

Leanne resolves through the debris-filled air. She lies on her stomach, half twisted over one hip like the crippled girl from that Wyeth painting.

The watcher says, “You’re safe now.”

He takes the knife and balls it into Radack’s hand for the prints, then lets it fall to the carpet by his bare feet.

“Radack went crazy,” he tells her. “Hopped-up on coke. They beat and raped you. Then he went paranoid. Killed his own guards and shot up the place. The security cameras will be wiped.”

She pulls herself up to sit against the base of the couch, holding one hand to the side of her head. Bruises are coming up around her left eye and there are small cuts where Radack shattered the eyeglasses against her temple earlier. Tears stream, though she makes no noise.

He crouches, keeping a distance, not wanting to crowd her. In the air is the familiar hot-metal taste of a gunfight’s aftermath. “You’re free.”

Her face is tilted to the ceiling and her lips move in a quiet murmur. It seems she is speaking more to herself than to him. He thinks he makes out her hoarse whisper.

— thank God thank God thank —

“I have to go now. I have one thing to ask of you. Only one thing. So please listen carefully.”

She tries to speak but coughs dryly instead. Then she squints at him through the swirling dust. “Who are you?”

He hesitates. He hasn’t used the name, not in several years and never in this context.

“The Nowhere Man,” he says.

Gregg Hurwitz is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous thrillers, including You’re Next and Orphan X. Critically acclaimed, Hurwitz is a two-time finalist for ITW’s Best Novel prize and a finalist for CWA’s Steel Dagger. In addition to his novels, Hurwitz is a screenwriter, TV producer, and comic book author. The first book in the Evan Smoak series, Orphan X, has been sold in twenty-one countries. Hurwitz, who lives in Los Angeles, is writing the screenplay adaption of Orphan X for Warner Bros. and Bradley Cooper. You can sign up for email updates here.