Page 27 of Lone Wolf

Evan had a split second of denial, of disbelief that the woman was willing to sacrifice the girl to enable her escape.

With a whoosh like a flung cape, the curtain whipped out and around Jayla’s midsection in kimono-belt position. The effort brought the woman’s head barely visible to the side of Jayla’s head—two inches of the edge of that balaclava hood.

Evan fired.

A burst of red exploded from the side of the hood, black fabric flapping, glittering flesh showing beneath. The woman grunted once low, animalistic. The force of the round knocked the balaclava askew, the torn section widening the eye gap and exposing most of the woman’s face. Plain, clean features pinched with pain. Twisting in her grip, Jayla looked up at her with bulging eyes.

For a single suspended instant they were face-to-face in an intimate tableau vivant, the assassin’s identity laid bare.

Staggered from the shot, the woman tumbled back onto the balcony holding both ends of the curtain, pulling the band of fabric tight against Jayla’s midsection.

And then she slid backward gymnastically, tipping onto one hip, slipping straight through the wide-set rails, and whisking out into the open air above the alley.

Evan sprang up onto the third-floor landing. A frozen instant as Jayla stared at him with parted lips, face lurching with dry heaves, suffocating. Behind her a sense of whistling, of falling, of slack being taken out of the line.

And then the curtain pulled tight around Jayla’s waist and ripped her backward off her feet across the threshold and onto the balcony, slamming her against the railing.

Evan flew forward. The air was vibrating, metal rungs singing like a Tibetan bowl from the impact of Jayla’s shoulder blades. The girl was wedged against the railing in a sitting position, flex-cuff crushing her throat, band of fabric biting into her stomach. The woman swung somewhere below on the ends of the curtain, her weight pinning Jayla in place.

There was no choice but to cut the woman free. Evan grabbed for his Strider, hooking the shark fin atop the blade on the edge of his left pocket and snapping the knife open as he drew it. Skidding forward on his knees, he dug the knife into the slender stretch of curtain between Jayla’s side and the railing. The curtain gave way, the fabric popping loose, ripped away through the rails. Below he heard a crash of the woman landing on something—car hood? trash can?

Jayla toppled into him, arms contorting, head thrashing, oxygen gone. Redness came up beneath her dark skin, rouging her face. Fingernail gouges marred her neck where she’d tried to get at the flex-cuff.

But the woman had yanked it tight, burying it in the soft skin too deep for Evan to get the tip of the Strider beneath without slashing the girl’s throat in the process. She pawed at his shoulder, eyes staring up pleadingly.

She was going to die in his arms and there was nothing he could do about it.

Over the wail of wind through the alley below, he heard the sound of sirens closing in.

15

Human Matter

Jayla Alexis Hill.

A junior at Grand Arts High School.

Same age as Joey.

Shuddering in Evan’s arms, lips guppying, trachea cinched shut. Oxygen all around with no way to get it into her body.

Two stories below, her father lay sprawled, his gray matter annihilated by lead, his killer relentless enough to destroy his daughter calmly and tactically in order to escape.

Jayla’s lashes, curled and long, parted wide. Evan could see his reflection in her deep brown eyes. He hadn’t reacted for one full second, perhaps two, and there was no more time to not react.

His body was moving before his brain caught up to the plan, gathering her up in his arms, racing back in off the balcony, banging his shoulder on the edge of the sliding glass door. Sprinting down the stairs, their body heat mingling, Jayla jouncing against his chest and staring up at him with a stunned calm that felt like surrender. The sirens sounded closer now, right up the block. Too fast a response for his gunshot—a neighbor must have alerted to the crashing sounds earlier.

He nearly tripped on the second-floor landing, kept his boots beneath him, stumbling into the kitchen. Raking an elbow across the island, dumping her onto the butcher block. Flinging open drawers—silverware, steak knives, spices, and then there like a miracle, an aluminum drinking straw.

Snatching it up, back over to Jayla, her head rolling from side to side in an ecstasy of pain. He ignored her suffering. It would get in the way of what had to be done.

He pressed his fingertips to find her larynx, just below the band of embedded plastic. Easing his touch down, finding the gentle give of the cricothyroid membrane. As the Strider blade came up, Jayla’s eyes flared with terror at the sight of it and she began thrashing anew. With an elbow, he pinned her forehead down—“Got you, I got you”—and pressed the tip of the blade to her soft skin. It dimpled for a moment and then broke, Jayla stiffening on the butcher block.

Red and blue lights strobed the foyer now, compounding off the endless panes of glass and reflecting through the wide doorway of the kitchen. They mapped phantasmagoric shapes across the surfaces, making the room crawl.

Blood washed across the knife tip, glossy rivulets. With a measured jerk of his wrist, he sliced a vertical slit in Jayla’s throat. A burst of air erupted, speckling his face with blood.

Swiping at his eyes with his forearm, he made out the scuffle of foot traffic on the foyer below. He’d left the front door ajar, and the cops would have seen Dr. Hill’s body and begun their slow and low search of the house.