Page 98 of Lone Wolf

Mostly women, two or three to a room, but some young men as well.

“It’s okay.” He spoke to the nearest room. “It’s over.”

He started for the door to the stairs.

“Wait,” a voice hissed from behind him. “Don’t leave. Don’t leave us here.”

“I won’t,” he said, keeping on.

Another voice picked up the conversation, a disembodied rasp from the other side of the hall: “Wait—where are you going?”

“To kill the others.”

From the shadows of a room ahead: “No, no, no.”

It was like having a conversation with a hive. They were all whispering, out of fear or habit but likely both. He understood with a sudden fierce logic that keeping quiet had been beaten into them so deeply that even now they couldn’t find their voices in full. The effect was incandescently horrifying.

“I’m sorry,” he said, because there was no other good thing to say in the face of that.

“Fuck you.” A croak.

“—can’t leave us, you can’t—”

“—my insides, they hurt from—”

He couldn’t let their suffering be real to him right now. There was no way to allow that and do what still had to be done.

He shut out the multitude of terrified murmurs, shouldered into the door, collected himself in the stairwell. Leaning into the open well, peering up, scanning the rise over the suppressor-lengthened barrel of his 1911.

Staying on tilt to open his sight line above, he started up.

Loud in his head through the earpiece: DONCHA—

He tapped it quickly to answer, spoke as softly as he could: “Do you need my help?”

“Yes! X! You picked up!”

Joey.

He twisted up the stairs, the ceiling rotating overhead. “Are you okay?”

“No! I’m at this rush event at the Cheesecake Factory and it’s a disaster.”

Evan heard a fluttering noise from above and froze, arms tensed. His Straight Eight sights were high-profile so the suppressor wouldn’t block them. He aimed at the top rail and waited for another sound.

He whispered hard: “What do you need?”

“Bad time?”

A pigeon burst into motion way above and he almost put a round through it. It flapped against the ceiling before settling on the rail, its head ducking repetitively, pecking at phantom bugs.

He exhaled. “Yes.”

“We got here in a big group, and I was flustered because, like, what if I don’t know what fork to eat with.”

“Start with the outer silverware and work your way in.” He observed a stab of irritation punch through him. She knew better than to call him with something like this when he was operational. The Fourth Commandment: Never make it personal. He gauged the most efficient and strategic path through whatever this conversation was and decided not to blow her up yet. He gave her firmness without showing teeth: “The point, Joey.”

“Okay so I nervous-went to the bathroom and I’m not used to pantyhose so I didn’t know my dress got tucked into them in the back and I walked back out through the entire restaurant with my giant ass hanging out. On display like a fruitcake—”