Page 62 of Lone Wolf

He smiled. “I have something else I need you for.”

“Here’s hoping it’s risqué.”

“Building me out a full legend as a Harvard professor.”

Melinda was a hair over five feet, and petite, but her laugh, which came rarely, was substantial. “I assume you’ll need credentialing, published research papers, a spot on the faculty website.”

“I need full backstopping—office line with an assistant, alumni records, the whole nine.”

“Bring cash. The whole nine is expensive.”

“Not as costly as if it’s done wrong. Which is why I need you on it.”

“I am incomparable,” she mused.

She named her price. It was the cost of a luxury SUV. Fair, he thought.

“Joey’s read in,” he told her. “I’ll have her text over the details. I’ll bring cash now. I can be to you in a half hour.”

“No,” she said sharply. “Not the office. I’ve asked to cook you dinner several times. Now it’s no longer a request.”

They had never met beyond the empire of her workplace, and it struck Evan that he almost couldn’t imagine her outside her warehouse. It would be like spotting a queen bee out of the hive.

“I’ll text you my address,” she said, and hung up.

Melinda Truong lived in a pseudo Spanish McMansion in a gated community in Porter Ranch about five miles north of her business. From the curb, the house looked as bland as all the others, which alternated between a half dozen basic architectural plans, each stucco-walled, wooden-shuttered, roofed in terra-cotta.

Evan crossed the xeriscaped front yard to the round-top dark walnut door. Iron strap hinges, speakeasy grille, castle door handle. It was a door not for knocking but for rapping, so rap he did.

An anachronistic electronic hum issued forth, the massive door cracked open, and he stepped through. A discordant fall of natural light struck his shoulders; the sky was open. He was standing not in a courtyard but on a strip of polished black stones that ran like a moat around the actual home before him. As he took his bearings, surprise thawed into wonder.

The entire front of the house was a façade.

The house inside the shell of the exterior had a peaceful Thiền-like quality, with modern concrete walls, frameless panes of glass aligned with the tinted outer windows, gilded wood Buddhist statues, and a variety of water features softened with moss.

A few steps carried him across the moat to the real front door. He rang an electronic bell.

The second door hummed and opened in like fashion.

He entered.

“In the kitchen!” Melinda called out.

Black and brown slippers of various sizes were lined up on a bamboo mat. He slid off his boots and found a pair that fit. Cheap plastic, no arch support.

Then he followed the voice down a long cool hallway with slate floors and past a sitting room with a polished baby grand piano, recessed lighting, and several striking silk paintings. An open door looked into a powder room animated by a flickering candle. The house was speckless, not a single item out of place, and he felt something inside his rib cage unclench.

Melinda was busy behind the kitchen counter, moving from stove to refrigerator to cutting board to sink in a rotation that held enough of her focus that she didn’t bother to look up at him.

“Sit,” she said, shoveling a cup of rice out of a thirty-pound aluminum bin.

There were two settings at a kitchen table surfaced with a disk of concrete.

He sat. A second hall intersected the kitchen, running back to what he guessed was the master bedroom. The lights were dim and pleasing, that portion of the house muted in privacy.

“Can I help?” he asked.

“No.”