Page 114 of Lone Wolf

“I felt that way about my collarbone,” Evan said.

A ratchet wrench had broken it in Bulgaria, a fight in an automobile shop that had rendered a Russian spy dead and Evan’s clavicles forever asymmetrical.

Lopatina took a leisurely sip, set her drink back down. “So,” she said. “Are we going to do this then?”

Evan kept an eye on her hands, the purse resting three inches from her right pinky. “What’s that?”

“Talk. If you wanted to shoot, we’d be shooting.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who hired you to kill Dr. Benjamin Hill.”

“No.”

He tasted his drink. The vodka was as smooth as he recalled, zero burn on the swallow. He caught that hint of white pepper, though it was more subtle than he recalled.

“How about you?” she asked. “Why are you here? Who’s paying you to give a shit?”

“No one.”

“Goodness of your heart,” she said.

He thought about grinning. “What’s left of it.”

“Friend of Hill’s?”

“Nothing like that,” Evan said. “Nothing personal.” What did that even mean anymore? The Fourth Commandment, blurred into irrelevance. “The girl. You tried to kill her after you killed her father.”

“Right. And jaguars hunt newborn impala lambs. Mother bears eat their cubs if they can’t find food for them. Then there’s bean beetles.” She sipped her whisky, set it back down. “The males have these nightmare penises. Covered with hard sharp spikes that anchor the males during sex. They also scrape out any sperm of a rival male who might’ve gotten there first. But there’s more benefits, too. The spiked mace club, for lack of a better word, is good for vaginal tearing. Not sure how much time you’ve spent considering bean-beetle ejaculate—”

“I’d put my knowledge at dilettantish.”

“—but there’s a chemical in there that boosts female fertility so all those lacerations help get it into the female’s bloodstream. Then if all goes right and she’s not savaged by another male in short order, the scar tissue clogs her up so she can’t mate with anyone else. That’s not some of them once in a while. That’s every fucking girl bean beetle ever.” Karissa skewered a floating lemon wedge in her water, took it off the pick with her incisors, then sucked the bitter. “God made all that. Or nature did. Made me, too.”

At last she looked over, hazel eyes flecked with green regarding him over those defined cheeks. A forbidding gaze, her face an inscrutable cliff face against which you could throw yourself for eternity and never find a handhold. She was precisely what she was and nothing else, nothing more.

“It’s the way of the world. And me, Hill, Jayla? We’re the least of anything.” Her eyes stabbed over at him in the reflection and she seemed to notice he looked unimpressed. “I know, I know. It’s hard to take a woman who thinks this way. We have to dress it up, dress it down. Waxed and shaved, delivered with a smile, close the door when we pee. You have no idea how much more we see and know. How much we have to civilize ourselves for you to tolerate our power. But then? I realized what men are holding themselves back from being also. It’s equally fearsome. And awful. We are so alike when we are willing to be what we are.”

Evan sipped, let the cold sting evaporate on his tongue. He made his gaze soften and leaned closer. A fraction of a fraction. An invitation to keep talking.

She did. “Once in a blue moon, I used to wonder: How much did the world damage me that I think this way? No, not think. Perceive. And then I realized. It’s not about damage or-or trauma. No. I was designed this way.”

The bartender brought over a steak fresh from the kitchen. Center-cut filet, charred edges, side of creamed horseradish sizzling on an oven-heated plate. He receded, leaving them wrapped in an aroma of deliciousness.

“You want to talk about justice and morality and seventeen-year-old girls,” Karissa said. “But I don’t care. I don’t. It’s all too fucking complicated to figure out what’s right. So I go back to nature’s rules. You know—the real ones. I kill. And I feed myself well.”

She sliced off a cut of beef, swiped it through horseradish, popped in her mouth. Her jaw worked methodically. She looked gratified by the food— not the pleasure of an epicure but the relish of a predator refueling itself for the next hunt.

“There’s no point in talking,” she said, through a slightly full mouth. “There’s nothing to talk with me about.”

Evan felt the heft of the lowball glass. Gauged the best angle to her thin temporal bone. Her hand was curled around her glass. He noted her eyes; she was gauging the same. Behind him he heard the tinkle of flatware and the hum of excited conversation. Not the time. Nor the place.

“Okay,” Evan said, pushing back his barstool to rise. “Next time we’ll just get to the shooting.”

51

A Window to Another Universe

Loco’s last-known was an alley a quarter mile east of Dr. Hill’s town house. En route, Evan tried calling Andre twice, but it just rang and rang and dumped into voice mail, which was full. He knew if he stopped by Andre’s he’d find an empty house, and he wasn’t eager to undertake a bar hop just to bounce his half brother off another dumpster.