Page 83 of Lone Wolf

“I need to get in with him, too. Same ruse.”

“I don’t like taking orders.”

“Want me to fly out, ask in person?”

“No,” Devine said quickly. “That won’t be necessary. Why do you need to see him?”

“He had motive to wipe out Allman’s principal deep-learning scientist. Competing technology.”

“Tech is a wolf-eat-wolf world,” Devine observed. “What’d you think of Allman?”

“Nothing,” Evan said.

“That little?”

“No. I think he is nothing. He’s a void. He’s like … evolution. An unthinking force.”

Devine made a thoughtful sound. “Yes. He thinks that’s all any of us are.”

Evan said, “Friedhoff, ASAP,” and hung up.

The row of town houses materialized ahead, a rise of affluence. Evan drove the Neon right past the front of Hill’s place without slowing. No interior lights, dark as a tomb. Vehicles lined the metered street, many with post-market tinted windows. They stretched a full block up to the Burger King.

Looping around, he cut back through the alley where he’d nearly been steamrolled by the black Suburban just three days ago. A grizzly-bear swipe of crumbled stucco marred the east entrance where the SUV had buried itself after it had clipped Evan and transformed him briefly into a human Frisbee. He coasted through the narrow aisle now, headlights picking across the wind-strewn trash, searching out the mangy dog.

The back of Hill’s town house floated by on his left, a towering edifice of blackness.

He thought about the row of parked vehicles across from the entrance to Hill’s place. Pictured Jayla’s curled form in the hospital bed, that bandage across her throat, forcing her to push words out through her hands. Why does she want to hurt me? Because I saw her face?

An operational concern tingled to life in his brain stem. He paid attention, excavated it, forced it to the surface.

Parking on a neighboring street, he retrieved from the loadout bag in the trunk a pair of Steiner tactical binoculars equipped with state-of-the-art night vision.

On the building adjacent to Hill’s town house, he climbed the same fire escape he’d plummeted down days earlier. Belly scraping across the roof, he combat-crawled toward the edge, inching his way to the brink.

Barely breathing, he lay on his stomach, scanning the parked vehicles, making sure he offered only the faintest slice of profile above the rooftop. There was a beat-to-shit Prius, two Toyota pickups, a half dozen nondescript sedans, a dilapidated Hyundai Tucson, and a Yukon with mud splashed up the wheel wells. Streetlights bounced off the vehicles’ windows, turning the panes reflective, hiding the interiors. He paid closest attention to the SUVs.

Ten minutes passed. Twenty. His breath misted faintly in the cold. The night air cooled the inside of his throat. His stomach itched but he didn’t move to scratch it. The only way he could get closer to the roof’s surface would be if he turned liquid.

He was about to draw back when the window of the Yukon quivered and then slowly eased down.

He caught a round glint—a sniper scope?—and almost jerked back before noting that it was doubled.

A set of night-vision binoculars just like his. Gloved hands curled around the lenses, towhead bangs framing a shadowed face.

He stared through his binoculars down at her.

The Wolf stared through her binoculars up at him.

Lying in wait for Jayla Hill to return home.

Lowering the Steiners, he gave the Wolf a little salute, two fingers tapping his forehead, a match of the gesture she’d given him outside Jayla’s hospital: See ya around.

The Wolf lowered her binoculars and flashed a smile.

The rising window, a reverse guillotine, claimed her head in a smooth chop. The Yukon rattled to life, screeched out from its spot, and was gone.

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