Page 126 of Lone Wolf

“What about Joaquin?”

“The kid’s a single dad, works two and a half jobs, has a special-needs boy at home and a dad in an Alzheimer’s facility. Leave him the hell alone about what kind of music he wants to listen to sitting in a starched uniform ten hours a day at twelve bucks an hour.” There was no anger in Evan’s voice. It didn’t tick up a decibel. “Got it?”

Hugh swallowed. “He doesn’t make twelve dollars an hour. Minimum wage is fifteen fifty.”

“Less taxes,” Evan said.

“Well, I didn’t consider that. Okay. Maybe if I … regain the presidency we can give him a raise.”

Taking out his RoamZone, Evan texted Lorilee to come up as they’d arranged. Not two seconds later there was a knock on Hugh’s door; clearly she’d been lingering outside in anxious anticipation.

Hugh rose. As Evan followed him to the door, his RoamZone rang: DONCHA WISH— He grabbed it. Joey.

“X. Where are you?”

“There in five.”

He hung up. Hugh was staring at him with an eyebrow cocked.

“Sorry,” Evan said. “Ringtone. Long story.”

Hugh answered the door. Lorilee stood with her arms crossed over her chest, puffing herself up for the encounter. “I’m so happy you agreed to stay, Evan,” she said. “It’s important that you’re here. It makes me feel so much safer.”

“I actually have to—”

“Ms. Smithson,” Hugh said, his voice low and gentle. He removed his thick glasses and polished them on the hem of his shirt. From a photo on the side table, his wife observed mutely. “I’m very sorry for how I spoke to you in the hall. I didn’t mean it how you took it, but it wasn’t very…” A slight wobble in his voice. “It wasn’t very gentlemanly of me. And I am … I am ashamed of how I spoke to you.”

Lorilee blinked a few times rapidly. “Well,” she said. And then: “Well.”

Undone, Hugh stared at his tasseled loafers.

The rims of Lorilee’s nostrils reddened. She uncrossed her arms and then crossed them again. Her cheeks were flushed, and she looked vulnerable and open. She looked like a little kid.

She tipped her head with an affected formality. “Apology accepted,” she said. “Mr. Walters.”

Hugh lifted his gaze, and there was relief on his face, not for the HOA or the election, but as if he’d been let off the hook for something within himself, something he was dreading to have to live with. That great hungry need, the need to be forgiven. He’d wanted it so badly, it seemed, that he’d been unable even to acknowledge it.

“Really?” His voice was dry.

She nodded. She was holding her breath. A tear leaked from one eye, cutting a swath through her makeup foundation.

Hugh was a fit man for his age, but even so he stood a touch hunched at the shoulders. He gathered himself up now. “Perhaps you’d like to come in for a cup of tea?”

“I’d like that,” Lorilee said. “I’d like that very much.”

She breezed past Evan in a waft of Chanel No. 5, and then they were moving to the kitchen. Utterly forgotten, Evan stood there a full two seconds before finally snapping back to his senses and splitting for the stairs.

When he made it through the penthouse and stepped into the Vault, he was still shaking off his confusion, but Joey bounced up from the chair, startling Dog and Evan both, and said, “I cracked it, X! I cracked everything!”

56

Skinlift

Solventry’s inner workings were exploded across the OLED screens of the Vault, and Joey was talking fast, even for her.

“So Doc Hill’s work at Carnegie Mellon—’member?”

“Bioinformatics,” Evan said. “AI modeling for synthetic vocal restoration.”