Orphan X: A Novel by Gregg Hurwitz

She scanned the room, as if noticing for the first time the print bedspread, the shitty pastel art. “This was all a mistake,” she said. “I have to go. I have to get my car and … and—”
    “You’re not getting your car. It’s not safe to leave. The sniper is still out there. He was working with at least one other person. There might be others.”
    “The guy. The one you killed. Did you see him? One eye was still open.…” Her bloodred lips pressed together to keep from trembling. “And you think there might be others?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Because a sniper isn’t enough?”
    “I won’t let them lay a finger on you.”
    “I’m not worried about a finger. ” Then she did something completely unexpected. She laughed. A real laugh, too, that beautiful mouth even wider, half hidden behind a raised hand. A few strands of jet-black hair had fallen across her eyes, and she left them there. As quickly as her dark amusement had bubbled to the surface, it departed.
    She sat again on the bed, and he settled back into the wooden chair.
    “It broke my dad’s heart when I married that asshole,” she said. “He warned me that nothing good would come of it. Though I can’t say he expected this. ”
    “Your husband’s involved in this somehow?”
    “My ex. And no.” She took a breath, held it a moment. “We were married five months. If it wasn’t so typical, I’d have the sense to be embarrassed. Adam Hamuel, a real-estate tycoon. Planned communities in Boca Raton, that kind of stuff. It kept him busy. The land deals, the building permits, the other women.” She ran her hand along the chintz bedspread. “So when he’d travel, I’d gamble. My dad taught me to play poker.” She wet her lips. “My mom died young, so dad taught me pretty much everything. How to throw a baseball. Drive stick. But cards, Dad was great at cards.”
    “What’s his name?” Evan asked. “Your father.”
    “Sam. Sam White.” She blinked back emotion. “Right before I got married, Dad moved to Vegas, so I’d visit him and I’d play and play. And for a brief time—five months—I had money. A different level of money, I mean. Adam always told me not to worry, that I couldn’t spend enough to make a dent in what he earned. And so I didn’t worry. I played in those backroom games, and I drank the free booze and pushed the markers. Stupid, right?”
    “Not given what you knew at the time.”
    She breathed for a bit. “One day at home, I found a leopard-print thong between the couch cushions, and then I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know anymore. I called him on it, and he left and filed the next day. I’d signed a big prenup, and he just turned off the tap. Everything’s tied up in family trusts, offshore accounts, all that kind of stuff. People can hide money where you’d never find it.”
    Evan gave a little nod.
    “So I have a big house in Brentwood that I can’t pay the heating bill on, let alone the mortgage, a shiny leased Jag that they’re gonna repossess any day, and a marker for two-point-one million I owe to some guy on the other end of a phone number or he’ll kill my dad.”
    “What’s the phone number?” Evan asked.
    She recited a direct-inward-dial number, like his, which he committed to memory.
    “I don’t have anything,” she said. “I told them, but they don’t believe me. Look at my zip code. I wouldn’t believe me either.” She sank to the bed, blew the hair from her eyes. “It’s my fault. I made a stupid fucking mistake, and my dad’s paying for it. Maybe right now. Do you have any idea how that feels?”
    The red glow of an elevator sign. Jack’s callused hand against Evan’s cheek. The sweet smell of sawdust cut with something else.
    “Yes,” he said.
    “I wish you hadn’t yanked me out of the way at the restaurant. I wish they’d just shot me and let my dad go.”
    “Who’s to say they wouldn’t have shot you and then your dad?”
    “Oh, just let me be a martyr for a