Page 66 of Lone Wolf

Still the kid held out the wool blanket, which despite his fear, he couldn’t let himself let go of.

Evan’s voice came from some distant place within him: “Keep it.”

The kid stared at him, trembling.

“Go on, now,” Evan said. “Go on.”

The kid hugged the blanket to his chest and stepped back some more, dragging his foot, until he vanished into the darkness and there was only the sound of his rent sneaker rasping against the ground, and then there wasn’t even that.

Evan stood alone in the narrow street for a moment, collecting himself. Then he climbed into his truck and sat behind the wheel, staring at the graffitied walls, the shattered bottles in the gutter, the sneakers slung up onto telephone lines overhead.

He lowered his head. “Fuck,” he said.

Then he got back out and wiped down the back of his truck with paper towels and bleach.

The whole family was lined up on Brianna’s couch, waiting for the missing-dog report, Sofia taking the spot between her semi-estranged parents. Evan had been summoned by a series of texts from Sofia, the pings coming in one after another with a quickening rapidity reminiscent of the William Tell Overture. The younger the person, he’d learned, the more texts they required to communicate a simple thought. Single-word entries had conveyed Sofia’s impatience and concern over Loco’s ongoing sabbatical, an abundance of feeling adjectives chased by a few solo exclamation points and the odd emoji.

But now Evan was here and they were settled face-to-face. Just him and his client.

“I don’t get it.” Sofia wore a long T-shirt hanging down over footed dancer’s tights.

She drummed her heels against her backpack, which rested before her at the base of the couch. “You saw Loco. And then what?”

And then there was a dead body and an assassin and cops and a SWAT team and an all-units response and a sniper rifle and a bridge embankment requiring vehicular scaling and helicopters and a car chase.

“The situation presented more variables than I could control,” Evan said.

Sofia crossed her arms and glared at her father. “I thought you said he was good at this.”

That seemed to be her refrain.

Andre shrugged uselessly.

“Hey,” Bri said. “Show some gratitude, child. The man’s been working on his own time to find that pinche perro. And it sounds like it ran him into some trouble.”

“What next?” Sofia asked.

“We know he’s still in the neighborhood where I spotted him,” Evan said. “We’re running canine-detection software on the surveillance cameras around there and he popped up this morning. Healthy and alive.”

Sofia eased out a breath.

“See, baby?” Andre said. “I told you Evan would figure it out.” He reached across the top of the couch past Sofia and rested a hand on Bri’s shoulder. Gently, Bri moved away and folded her hands in her lap.

Andre held his expression but deflated a touch. His hand went to his pocket and came out with one of his AA sobriety medallions, which he rubbed with his thumb like a talisman.

Sofia said, “How do you know he’ll be okay?”

“Baby,” Andre said. “He’ll be okay. He’s a survivor, like me and Ev. Hell, even if we wasn’t related, we still—”

He froze.

Sofia’s eyes had gotten big, and she stared at her father from the left side. Similarly wide-eyed, Bri stared at him from the right.

“Related?” Bri said. “As in related related?”

Evan felt an overwhelming urge to walk out of the apartment and never return.

Andre shot a sheepish glance at Evan, bobbed his lowered head. “Yeah,” he said. “Same mom.”