Page 137 of Lone Wolf

He said, “Ready?”

She nodded. Only now did he notice that she had her key out. She was gripping it in her fist so it protruded between her index and middle finger, a makeshift weapon.

Unlocking the door, she stepped into the vestibule.

Same side table, same hanging Tunisian tapestry, same inoperative alarm panel stuck back into the wall, its clipped wires dangling.

A few hesitant steps brought them to the brink of the vestibule, the town house yawning wide and upward. Those imperial staircases mirrored each other, fallopian tubes scaling the yawning hollow.

It had been cleaned up.

Some pieces of art had been reglassed and rehung; others were missing, their ghostly outlines preserved in negative space outlined by sun-faded paint. The cushions of the sectional had been replaced, but the Berber carpet beneath was missing, likely stained beyond repair.

Its absence seemed to draw even more attention to the bare spot where Jayla’s father had lain dead. Evan pictured him vividly. Zip-tied hands purpled from lack of circulation, stubbed up at the small of his back. Head twisted to one side, blood seeping from his parted lips and the hole atop his head. That fluttering eyelid.

One step ahead of Evan, Jayla had frozen, staring at the same spot, seeing the same thing.

He stood silently behind her.

Several minutes passed, and then several more. She did not move.

At last she let a breath shudder out of her and moved forward. Evan flanked her, giving her room. They developed a system without words, Jayla leading the way into rooms only after checking that he was at her back.

She pointed at places she wanted him to clear—beneath beds, behind couches, in the umbra thrown by a front-load dryer. He raked aside shower curtains and checked cabinets big enough to hide a human. They moved meticulously, silently through the entire town house. Space by space, Jayla reclaimed it as her own.

They’d just finished the top balcony from which Karissa Lopatina had launched herself when the doorbell rang.

Jayla halted, seized up by fear once more. She signed too quickly and Evan had to ask her to go again.

I don’t know who that is. My aunt said she would wait in the car until I texted her to come.

“I’ll check.”

Jayla kept at his shoulder all the way down the stairs. He moved her out of the sight line before stepping into the vestibule. A cautious peek through the peephole showed Joey waiting on the porch, holding a flat box the size of a hardcover book.

He’d told her he was coming over.

As he opened the door, she peered past him. “Where’s Jayla?”

Evan stepped aside.

The two young women met in the vestibule, Jayla’s brow wrinkling with confusion.

“Hi,” Joey said. “I’m a … colleague of his. I guess you’d say a technology expert. I’m, um, real sorry for … everything you…”

Joey lost her footing. Was it her nerve? Did she question her right to offer condolences? To connect? She stood there with her thoughts tangled in her throat.

Jayla was watching her, still confused. In the strained interlude, Evan caught a glimpse of the awkwardness Joey must have had on inadvertent display during the sorority outings. He thought about how uncomfortable she must have felt at that restaurant, that bowling alley, and how much she’d held back within herself until she’d finally punched a deserving dickhead to self-sabotage her way out of there.

Joey was never this ungainly around him; she was different with him, freestyle Joey in all her awful glory. It struck him like an epiphany, allowing him to see in new colors what intimacy might mean.

Leaning slightly, he nudged Joey back to life.

She reanimated: “Anyways, I, um, I brought you something.”

Awkwardly, she proffered the box.

As Jayla took it, her features smoothed, eyes enlarging. A softening.