Page 120 of Lone Wolf

“Specialty stuff from Manurhin MR73 Gendarmeries to Phoenix-S thermal scopes to Dragunov SVDs. I’ll text a list of her tools so you can ask around.”

“Right.” Tommy leaned forward to reach for the sugar, wobbly in his crouch. A squint gathered up the folds of his left cheek as he braced against the ache of his joints. “I’ll do some sniffing. Never know who’s who in the zoo.”

He swiped for the pot of sugar and missed, tilting back decrepitly. And fell out of his chair. Not a heart-attack tilt but a wood-splintering, screws-breaking, eyes-flaring, what-the-fuck tumble.

For a moment he was gone from sight. There was just the surface of the table and the upended bowl of oatmeal dribbling sludge onto the wood. Then a four-and-a-half-fingered hand gripped the edge and Tommy pulled himself back up, standing at a tilt. He kicked the unseen wreckage of the broken chair away, scooted over a new one, and sat once more.

For the first time in a long time, Evan looked at him as if he were someone he’d only just met, noting how heavily age hung on his features— the sun-beaten skin, the liver spots on a cheek, the puckers at the edges of his mouth. Tommy wasn’t just an old warhorse, he was an old guy, and yet he’d never seemed that way before.

“Not a word,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“Tommy, you might want to get—”

“What?” His baggy eyes held embarrassment as well as an uncharacteristic sharpness. “Doctors poking and prodding at me so they can tell me what I already know? That my joints are shot to shit and pretty soon I won’t be able to wipe my own ass?”

“You can still—”

Tommy cut him off: “Tell me more about this assassin broad. If you want me to play errand boy, I need some situational awareness.”

Evan took a moment to reset. “I surveilled her yesterday on a job.”

“Who’d she take down?”

“Human trafficker.”

“What’s her name?”

“Karissa Lopatina, aka the Wolf.”

“Copy that,” Tommy said. “I’ll see what I can root out.”

His wide callused thumb stabbed at the phone, and the screen went black.

Evan sat for a moment parsing this recalibration of Tommy Stojack. His friend. Slowed by the ravages of time, countless wartime injuries nipping at him like a pack of wolves. Evan, too, had only so much time, and there was so much work to be done before he could rest.

He stared at everything rendered on the walls of the Vault. So much interstitching data, overlapping trails, and loose ends straggled out across the screens. Despite Friedhoff’s death, the mission wasn’t over. Jayla, a front-row witness to the Wolf’s face, would be out of federal custody in three days and back in the crosshairs. Melinda was running down anything else from the dark web. Tommy was backtracing the Wolf’s weapons. And Evan had to figure out who the two outstanding targets were and intercept them before Lopatina could put a bullet through their critical mass.

He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath. Not one second passed before the First Commandment sailed in and smacked him in the face: Assume nothing.

Of course.

Lopatina’s not generally so showy, Melinda had told him. An accident specialist. Who knows how many hits have gone unnoticed?

A moment later, Joey entered, treat in hand, Dog the dog hopping alongside her like a skipping schoolgirl. “Sit,” she said, and Dog sat.

Evan said, “Come,” and Joey came.

She dropped the cube of dried liver for Dog, then stood behind Evan and stared at what he was staring at—the same confusion of nothingness. “What?”

“Can you get into HR? For Solventry?”

“Human Resources? Uh, yeah. Already in. It’s just a stupid SaaS I hacked ages ago.”

“Can you check if any Solventry employees have died since November 9?”

Joey’s breath came over his shoulder—Red Vines and Dr Pepper. He waited for the dime to drop. It did.

Her voice, slowed with the epiphany: “You think she might’ve already committed the other two executions.”