Page 32 of Lone Wolf

Wearily, Evan toggled his fight setting back to lethal and set his feet.

Tanner sidled toward him, tightening his grip on the spike. “You look tired.”

“I am tired,” Evan conceded. He circled, gauging Tanner’s fight IQ.

Tanner loosened his stance, crouching, swapping the spike from hand to hand as he stalked forward. Evan ignored the hands, watched the eyes. A target glance at Evan’s gut. That’s where he was going. The stake rolled from left hand to right once more. Evan raised his arms in a low-guard position.

And then Tanner lunged.

Rapid prison-shiv stabs straight at Evan’s stomach, giving him little to grab at but the sharpened point. Shuffling backward, Evan pounded at the thrusting arm with the blades of his ulnas, deflecting the steel tip barely to one side of his body and then the other. They danced toward the rear wall like fencers—thrust, parry, thrust, parry. When Evan’s shoulders struck Sheetrock, he got in a side kick that hit Tanner’s right thigh squarely, knocking him back and nearly buckling the knee.

As Evan came off the wall, Tanner reset, wiping his nose and test-bending his right ankle. Then he came again, favoring his good leg, jabbing and jabbing. Evan hammered blows at his forearm just above the wrist, pounding pain into Tanner’s limb, deadening the nerves. The forcefulness of Tanner’s thrusts diminished, and then he soft-stepped on his injured leg, blading his body just enough to open up a lane.

Evan snatched at him—an arm drag to yank him sideways, clearing a path to take the back. Tanner yelped and slashed at him, but Evan ducked and tied him up from behind. A scrabble of hands led to a belly-to-back body lock, Evan clenching Tanner’s stomach, bending his knees, popping his hips forward, and ripping him off his feet. Arching his back, Evan threw him in a Greco-Roman suplex, twisting him up and over his own body and piledriving him into the floor.

A thud and a bark of pain. Rats squealed and scuttled. As the men tumbled apart, Evan saw that the spike had impaled Tanner’s side. Tanner looked down at the metal post sunk maybe three inches into his flesh, the end wagging.

“Wow,” Tanner said. “That’s … um…”

He pulled it free, let it fall with a clang. Drops of blood tapped the sticky floor. His head dipped down and then back up, and his eyes held the wounded fury of edge-of-death adrenaline. He lunged.

Crashing into Evan, the two going down, clawing and punching, legs wrapping and kicking.

Tanner was skilled but he was losing blood and strength and Evan’s sweat-slicked torso made grappling harder. Evan got in an elbow to the temple, slipping behind Tanner and snapping him up in a rear naked choke hold, his arm encircling Tanner’s neck and grabbing his own opposite biceps.

Tanner was frantic, ferocious, flailing and bucking. Evan rolled with him across the squalid floor, holding the lock. Tanner’s bladder had released, his jeans wet, the hot stench burning Evan’s eyes. They smashed into the soggy couch, waterlogged flakes of fabric clinging to Evan’s bare back. His cheek rolled through a patch of viscous stickiness. Trash? Blood? Shit? Something bitter had gotten into his mouth and he felt the smell of the place as a paste across his skin.

His OCD flared up hard, but there was no time for it, so he swatted it aside. He was busy crushing Tanner’s carotid arteries, cutting off oxygen to his brain. There was no space for disgust or aversion, just each ticking instant and the strain in his arms and the ancient bloody knowledge that after this one of them would be breathing and one would not.

They were spooned together on their sides, grunting, trembling. Evan clenched harder, straining, lactic acid burning in his arms, his legs. He crawled both hands higher up his own shoulders, relieving the strain in his biceps, letting the position do the work. A low clicking noise issued from Tanner’s throat.

Outside Evan heard the crack of the sniper rifle—once, twice—and then a screech of tires and a crash.

A shadow flickered across the ruptured doorway, and then a pudgy cop leaned back into sight, staring at them with wide eyes, head tilted to his shoulder mic: “Moonden requesting backup. Abandoned building across the alley.”

Sweat stinging his eyes, Evan compressed Tanner’s throat harder, trying to get it done. The cop ducked inside, running at them, aiming at Evan’s exposed back with the S&W M&P 9 mm. “Stop—stop!”

Tanner gurgled, heels scrabbling, wiry hair grinding against Evan’s chin. Evan had only a whirligig upside-down view of the cop closing in, finger on the partially compressed trigger. Evan had time for a single stab of cognition—Moonden was at the halfway point of the trigger pull, the center plastic safety feature tab compressed so the entire trigger could move rearward. For a slow-motion instant there was nothing in the world except that finger compressing the trigger, pink flesh turning to white.

Firming his grip on Tanner, Evan spun hard in a crocodile roll, sweeping Tanner over his body.

The gunshot reverberated in the rotting walls, Tanner jerking in Evan’s arms, a silver-dollar hole blown through the union of his ribs. Moonden choked out a gasp as Evan shoved the dead body aside.

Back to nonlethal.

Before Moonden could reacquire target, Evan spun on his side and swept the cop’s legs. Moonden’s shoulders struck the floor and Evan was on him, stripping the service pistol. Knee in Moonden’s substantial gut, freeing handcuffs from the leather pouch on the cop’s belt, snapping them around the wide wrists. No vest, no body cam—a much-needed break.

Evan leaned close, clicked the push-to-talk on Moonden’s shoulder mic: “Sniper with a rifle on the roof of Burger King. I repeat: Sniper on the roof of Burger King.”

Dispatch came back: “Bravo Six advises shooter with rifle at Burger King. All units, proceed with caution.”

Moonden’s eyes were stunned, water-filled, chalky residue at the corners of his lips. Another of Jack’s aphorisms reared up in Evan’s mind: Humans aren’t meant to kill other humans.

Evan spun the officer’s pistol home into his own empty appendix holster, rose with a grimace, and nodded at Tanner. “It’s okay,” he said. “It was a good shoot. He was a cop-killer.”

Rather than risk stepping through the front door, he bolted to the rear of the building. Down a long corridor with ankle-deep trash, past a doorless utility closet turned abandoned meth lab, over a homeless guy sleeping or dead near a mesh security door. Evan twisted the knob, stepped over the body, and shoved out into another alley, congested with trash cans, fire-escape ladders, rusting handrails, cellar doors, and hopper windows peeking up from underground.

The grime of the squat house and Tanner’s blood, laid atop his own sweat, clung to him like a second skin. He tugged his shirt from the back pocket of his cargo pants and was about to pull it on when a movement in his peripheral vision froze him in place. At the end of the alley no more than fifteen meters away, a full SWAT crew rolled by, a seemingly endless parade of dark blue utility uniforms toting carbines. All any of them had to do was turn their head and they’d see him there in full sight.