Hellbent

He leaned forward so that his mouth would be that much closer to the cooling windshield. And he breathed.

A full minute passed. And then another.

Fog started creeping in from the edges of the windows. He shifted in the seat, watched the driver’s window.

As fog crept to the center of the pane, a few streaks remained stubbornly clear. They forged together as the condensation filled in around them, finally starting to resolve in the negative space as letters.

In his final minutes, Jack had written a low-tech hidden message for Evan with the tip of his finger.

Evan stared at the window, not daring to blink.

At last the effect was complete, Evan’s orders standing out in stark relief on the clouded glass.

GET PACKAGE

3728 OAK TERRACE #202

HILLSBORO, OR

Jack had given him a final mission.

10

A Goodly Amount of Damage

The apartment complex was so sturdy that it bordered on municipal. Ten-foot security gate, metal shutters, callbox with buzzer. Evan had approached the target slowly, winding in on the address block by block like a boa constricting its prey. Then he’d parked behind the building in the shade of a tree — Hillsboro was lousy with trees — and surveilled.

The rented Toyota Corolla reeked eye-wateringly of faux new-car smell, courtesy of an overly exuberant car washer. Evan had been watching for three hours now, which was a lot of new-car smell for a man to take.

Traffic ran past steadily. A Tesla Model S flashed by, and more Priuses than he could count. Buses creaked to a stop across the road at intervals approximating ten minutes and disgorged various domestic workers and floridly bearded young men. Evan used the reflection off the bus’s windows to observe the wide parking lot enfolded in the horseshoe of the three-story complex. People came and went, and they looked ordinary enough.

Then again, so did Evan.

The same HILLSBORO HOME THEATER INSTALLATION! van drove by two times, a half hour apart. A half hour was an eyebrow-raising interval, though it was plausible that the driver had bid a job or had completed a small repair and was returning to the shop.

Evan didn’t like vans.

He gave it another hour, but the van didn’t reappear. Besides, what idiot would put an exclamation mark on an undercover vehicle?

He reapplied a thin layer of superglue to his fingertips. Superglue was less conspicuous than gloves and left him with full tactility. He pressed the fingers of his left hand to the window. They left five printless dots.

A rickety old Cadillac coasted to the curb across the street from Evan at the rear of the complex. An elderly man emerged, the strains of a Beethoven piano concerto still drifting through the open windows. He began to unload from the trunk various canvases, which he propped against the wall of the building. They featured cubist takes on musical instruments — a deconstructed trumpet, a piano turned inside out. There was a flair to his artwork, an inner life. The canvases kept coming. They lined the base of the building, filled a blanket he spread on the sidewalk, peered from the jaw of the open trunk. The man sat creakily, adjusted his herringbone flat cap, and nodded to the music.

Evan listened along with him. It was Concerto No. 3, one of Jack’s favorites. He remembered Jack’s saying that it owed something to Mozart, how all things should honor what preceded them and inspire what is to come.

He wondered how he could best honor Jack.

The question of inspiration was even thornier.

He remembered Jack’s message scrawled on the foggy window. He wondered what the hell the package was and why Jack had hidden it all the way across the continent. Something essential. A long-buried secret from Jack’s past that would lead to Van Sciver? Maybe even a torpedo that would sink him.

Evan checked his gun. Along with the skinny 1911, he’d smuggled one extra go-to-war magazine in the laptop. He’d validated the mag at a range, making sure it dropped clear. That gave him seventeen rounds, which was less than he was comfortable with. Then again, he could do a goodly amount of damage with seventeen rounds.

He heard an echo of Jack’s voice: Just don’t put all the holes in the same place.

He got out of the car. Scanning the traffic, he walked around the east wing of the building, tucking quickly into the horseshoe. At the edge of the parking lot, the callbox sprouted from the metal mesh of the security gate. It was a serious gate with a serious double-keyed lock. Another metal gate guarded the stairwell, which was itself caged.

Fire hazards to be sure, but this was a bad section of Hillsboro — whatever that meant — and the folks who lived here cared more about day-to-day safety than about the sliver percentage of a fire-induced stampede.

Jack had chosen a good place to hide the package.