Page 96 of Lone Wolf

Evan smiled at him.

The capo’s eyes were sunken into shadow, but his wiry eyebrows spread in terror and his mouth puckered as well. He started screaming and kicking the barrier between the back and front seats.

Evan pressed the CALL button.

He’d positioned the first flashbang beneath a rusting HVAC unit in the east alley. Metal and mass and a nice tight space to increase overpressure. The explosion sounded biblical, tearing a hole through the side of the structure. The cops crouched or hit the deck, weapons at the ready.

Evan tapped the second button. The other alley erupted before the first explosion had finished reverberating, the threat enhanced by surround sound.

The capo’s caved-in mouth stretched wide, his roar lost beneath the detonation. He was jerking his head toward Evan, smacking the side window with his temple, trying to warn the cops. But they were already moving across the street, calling in for backup, jogging up the block to encircle the building.

It was gratifying to see the capo trapped and helpless.

Evan poked his RoamZone once more, and a truck in the rear lot went boom. Cops streamed past Evan, barking commands.

Once they passed, he plucked the ARES, suppressor, and frag grenade from the Fritos bag, and walked calmly across the street.

The capo ceased his frenzy, staring with horror. Given the man’s illness, Evan would have thought he’d have been better prepared for what was coming.

Approaching the unguarded paddy wagon first, Evan slid his middle finger into the grenade ring and pulled it free. The rear door swung open nicely on well-oiled hinges. The men sat lined against either wall, hands cuffed, waist chains binding them to their benches.

Startled faces, mouths shaped in Os beneath those matching mustaches.

Evan tossed the grenade inside. It rattled across the metal floor, knocked the partition wall, and wobbled back. The men stared down in horror.

Evan slammed the door to muffle their screams.

Across the street, the cops were picking through the alleys, assessing the wreckage, clearing the structure once more, spinning around, adrift in confusion and fear.

Evan walked to the parked cop car, calmly twisting the suppressor onto the muzzle of his ARES. His partial reflection in the window showed a mask of blood.

The capo stared out at him, wrinkled cheeks quivering. His cuffed hands rose together and scrabbled against the pane. Then he stopped, cringing, staring downward, terrified to lift his gaze to Evan.

But he had to.

Their eyes met. A pure kind of terror moved behind the capo’s eyes, unpolluted by shock. His thick mass of hair shifted on his skull a millimeter or two, his ears sliding infinitesimally back, dread rearranging his features.

Evan lifted his ARES 1911, and the capo twisted his head this way and that, as if he could dodge the inevitable. Evan shot him twice through the face—pfft, pfft.

The capo slumped away, face gone, hands clawed and downbent at the wrists.

Evan was around the cop car, across the curb, and into the burned house when the paddy wagon erupted from within. Shrapnel studded the thick metal walls from inside, the giant vehicle rocking on its tires.

Before it had settled back on its shocks, Evan was through the scorched house and out the back, jogging the predetermined route back to his pickup.

44

Objectively More Serious Shit

The nearest address numbered 86774 was 2.3 miles to the north. Sure enough, there was the holding pen, faded blue stucco, three stories high. Evan looped past it twice, gauging the surveillance-camera angles. Then he parked in a blind spot in the rear, tight enough to the building that the guard on the roof would’ve had to lean way over the edge to see the truck below. Evan had spotted him from a half block over, walking the perimeter with a dancing shuffle, head bouncing to whatever was flowing through his earphones.

He’d be the last to die.

Though Evan figured that the capo and his menagerie of molesters would have disconnected the monitors at the former location before surrendering to the cops, he couldn’t be certain. He didn’t want to give the law time to put the pieces together and catch up to this location. Which meant moving fast.

He’d just finished wiping Jacko’s blood from his face and was reaching for his ARES 1911 on the passenger seat when the RoamZone rang: DONCHA WISH—

He stabbed at the polyether thioureas screen to answer, screwed in an earpiece. A glance at the screen showed Luke Devine’s caller ID.