Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

The man jogged back to the Corvette and jumped in.

It zipped out as if on fast-forward.

Quiet street. Quiet compound lot. A black, icelike sheet spreading beneath Hargreave.

Joey cocked back violently in her chair, laced her hands at the nape of her neck. “What in the wide world of fuck.”

Evan couldn’t muster the focus to give her a reprimand. Plus, she’d expressed his thoughts exactly.

“What do you think’s up with Merlin?” she said. “Some super-secret CIA program to harness energy and, like, kill people with invisible rays?”

Tingling spread beneath Evan’s face, a sunburn prickling from the Hellfire’s afterglow.

“No,” he said.

“What, then?”

It seemed too far-fetched and yet made perfect sense at the same time. He shook his head. “I’m not sure yet. We need to dig into this more.”

“Where do we start?” she asked.

“Can you run facial ID on the two from the Corvette?”

“At this distance with grainy footage?” She shrugged. “They kept to the shadows pretty well. I don’t know if we’ll have enough sensor points.”

“Is that a no?”

She furrowed her brow at the challenge. “Have you heard of model-based feature extraction for GRS?”

“No, but if you hum a few bars, I can fake it.”

“You know the only thing missing from this social train wreck of an evening? Even more Lame Dad Humor. I mean, really , X?”

“GRS,” he said, steering her back on track.

“Gait-recognition software.” She was typing. “China’s been kicking ass in this arena—shocking what you can accomplish with, like, zero regard for privacy—and I might have left myself a backdoor … in case I ever…”

She trailed off, typing in quick bursts, pulling imagery of the man and woman from one monitor to another, a virtual wire-frame encasing them as they walked. Evan admired her trancelike calm, all that brainpower churning beneath the surface.

The screens to Evan’s right flashed up rap sheets and booking photos.

Declan Gentner.

Queenie Gentner.

A brother-and-sister team out of Philly, laureled with requisite hard-bitten monikers. They’d been investigated for unlawful detention, homicide, continuing criminal enterprise. A scattering of plea deals for lesser charges like tax evasion and assault. No last-knowns, no current utility bills, no phone numbers on record.

“They seem pleasant,” Joey said. “This thing keeps getting weirder and weirder. What the hell did your mom hook you into?”

Mom .

The unfamiliarity of the word hung in the air like something tangible. He didn’t have a mom. He had a woman who had given birth to him. And who’d led him into a set of circumstances seemingly designed to end the life she’d created.

He rubbed his eyes hard, spots of light blotching the darkness. So many fronts to tackle.

He had to locate Andre Duran as soon as possible.

He had a prison meeting with Danny Gallo in a few hours.

He had to sit down with Veronica and pry more details out of her.

He had to figure out why Hargreave had been killed.

He had to determine who the Gentner siblings were working for.

He had to uncover who had authorized the use of a Hellfire missile on U.S. soil.

“I’m going to head to Kern Valley Prison,” Evan said. “Can you look into Hargreave for me? I checked him out a bit, know he’s air force. I want know more about his newer postings and deployments, but they’re behind a second DoD firewall.”

He rubbed his eyes some more.

“X?” Joey sounded concerned. “You look tired.”

“I’m fine.”

“I mean, just … watch out for yourself. This kind of stuff—I mean, your mother, childhood shit—it hits deeper than a normal mission. It breaks the Fourth.”

The Fourth Commandment: Never make it personal .

He said, “Just get me the stuff on Hargreave.”

She nodded and for once didn’t offer a retort.

He headed out. Paused outside, keeping the door cracked. Joey didn’t notice. She looked over at Dog the dog, who lifted his head, tags jangling on his fancy new collar.

Joey said, “Who’s such a good boy? Who’s such a good, good, good boy ?”

A big warm baby voice, devoid of its usual sardonic underlay. That long ridgeback tail thwapped the luxurious bed, a steady beat of affection.

Joey ran over and sprawled on top of him, the dog large enough to take her weight. She buried her face in his neck. “Who loves you? Who loves you the most in the world?”

Syrupy and embarrassing. And yet Evan found himself grinning.

He eased the door gently shut, strolled to his truck, and started the long drive to prison.

26Pick Your Poison

Terror came black and dense, an oil slick. Declan Gentner woke up into it. It filled his rib cage, compressing his heart, paralyzing his limbs. Couldn’t call out, couldn’t lift an arm to knock on the hotel wall to beckon his sister in the connecting room.

No oxygen in his lungs.

Muscles strained to the breaking point.

A graininess in the dead-of-night air, pixelated with hyperclarity.

Eyes bulging to pop.

Sheets already kicked down, briefs clinging to him, air hot-cold on his bare chest.

He felt the vein squiggling across the front of his neck surge with his heartbeat— still alive, still alive —and the heat of his face purpling.

He strained and strained but couldn’t produce a twitch of a single muscle.

Like being buried alive inside his own body.

And then it began.

Someone scraping on the locked door.

It bulged inward like rubber, fingernails splintering through, lifting the paint.

The door opened, hinges moaning.

She was there as always, framed in the doorway. Those long nails silhouetted at her sides, manicured to bitter-housewife perfection.

Still couldn’t move.

But blood was shoving through his veins— still alive, still alive .

Not real. Not. Real.

Now she was over the bed, looking down at him. She didn’t move, just teleported here when he blinked.

A pure-black cutout. A-line dress and hair done up in a bob, even her curves somehow anachronistic. She reached out, fingers splayed. Didn’t even have to touch him. She just mimed the clawing.

Gouges rose on his arms, his neck.

No air. Lungs nothing more than deflated bags. Muscles knotted, the arches of his feet crocheted into stitches.

Her head cocked, that neat bob bobbing, the Virginia Slims–sanded voice, deep and sexy and rageful: Not going to raise you to be like him.

Cigarette burns sizzled to life on the insides of his thighs.

Running around to prove he’s still a man, and all I get left over is that little-boy temper .

She leaned closer yet, those womanly cheekbones, eyes glowing white as bone.

No matter how spotless a house I keep .

Fingernail scrapes flared to life on his chest—

No money, two kids underfoot, and still looking like I do .

—drifting down the hollow of his sucked-tight belly, lower, lower, lower—

Teach you what he won’t learn.

At last breath came in a screech.

“Queenie!”

Declan choked out the word and then curled up, fetal and shuddering.

He heard his big sister’s feet hitting the carpet one room over, the connecting door flying open, the heel of her hand striking the light switch.

And then he was back in the world, unclouded, the apparition gone. Panic sweat cooled across his ribs.

Queenie was on the bed, cradling him, his head limp in her lap. She wore a red silk chemise, and his cheek was against her bare thigh, her breasts pressed to the top of his head, but it wasn’t fucked up and weird, it was just comforting, and she was rocking him, rocking him, her lips pursed as she shushed him like shushing a child.