Page 70 of Lone Wolf

The woman drifted away, gray bun wagging mirthlessly. Allman neither acknowledged her presence nor offered Evan anything.

He poked twice at a cube of chicken and then forked a bite of brownie into his mouth, washed it down with orange juice. “What am I going to do? Teach them things? Show them the world?” He spoke through a half-chewed bite. “Stuff is just stuff. Travel is just places you’re not used to yet. I used to own a yacht—bigger than Geffen’s. How many times can you sail to Capri and stare at the sunset? I sold it. The yacht, not Capri. And affection? Affection is just hormones acting on receptors. If I decide I want an oxytocin release, I’ll rent a dog for a day.”

Evan wanted to say, I think I read that in a Valentine’s card once, but decided the joke was unbecoming of a Harvard professor.

Though he was repulsed by Allman, he had to admire the man’s ability to bore straight through artifice and convey directly what passed for his internal state. It was refreshing. And—he hated to admit—not unfamiliar. He’d been brought up with a code similar in its soullessness. Only Jack’s refusal to perfectly enact the Program’s regiment had spared him. Jack had pounded into his head: The hard part’s not making you a killer. The hard part’s keeping you human. That sliver of humanity had caused Evan more suffering than anything else. It had also saved him.

Recent experience had taught him the two were intertwined: suffering and salvation.

Evan cleared his throat with Ivy League aplomb. “Has your lack of conventional family values benefited you in your work?”

For the first time, Allman looked mildly interested. He shoved the plate away. “Of course. Other people, they’re not real to me. It goes both ways. In your simulation, I could be a tool for you. This view, it’s not only convenient. It gives me an advantage.”

“Advantage in what?”

“Focusing on my mission.”

“And what is that mission?”

Allman’s smile was a creepy baring of the teeth, that of a little boy who’d been caught doing something naughty. He rose, crumbs falling from his lap. “Now that’s a conversation worth having.”

35

Stone-Cold Savant

Karissa had turned the round table of her motel room into a workbench, draping a bath towel across it to mute the clinking. Blinds drawn, bed made, water bottles lined up by the TV.

The ritual was soothing, habit pounded into her nervous system from the age of four by her father, a clean-shaven man who loved his freedom and distrusted the government. They’d lived on a forty-seven-acre plot in Idaho with a tribe of fellow-minded citizens. They had no more tolerance for the gun-fetishizing crowd than they did for heavy-handed bureaucrats in D.C. handing down lifestyle edicts. They kept to themselves, worked the land, paid their taxes, patrolled the perimeter, and never once had a cross word with law enforcement or government officials.

Everyone on the ranch and beyond the barbed wire knew precisely what to expect, and everyone minded their boundaries, and that was precisely how it was meant to be.

When she’d gone into the savage, lawless world beyond at the age of nineteen, she’d gone as a hunter into the wild. Doing all things necessary to secure food, water, shelter, and resources for herself. Life wasn’t merely life. It was survival. Life or death all the time.

And her father had made damn sure to raise her so she kept on the right side of that equation.

Her hands moved of their own volition. Unseating slide from frame, barrel and springs set equidistant, the shushing of the utility brush, soft cloth to clear fouling, patch and cleaning rod slid up the bore, lubricate rails and springs, wipe down components, reassemble, check and check and check.

The girl who had seen her face could not hide forever. Jayla Hill was a seventeen-year-old modern girl with all the lack of discipline inherent therein. She’d want to go back to her home, her friends, her phone.

Karissa had been running consistent surveillance on locations familiar to the girl. And she had set measures in place to alert her if the girl went on social media, called her friends or family members, contacted her school, or used a debit card.

It was a matter of time, as inevitable as winter following fall, as inevitable as that groundhog peeking up into daylight.

The instant Jayla Hill’s head poked above ground, Karissa would be waiting to take it off.

And Karissa knew that somewhere out in the Angelino night, the man protecting Jayla was preparing just as she was. Maintaining his gear and operational focus, running down leads to get to her. He’d taken Karissa’s ear. He’d eluded her scope and a squadron of police officers.

He was a stone-cold savant.

Sure as she was.

He would never stop. He’d have to be put down.

Just like her.

It was a race.

It was survival.