Page 45 of Lone Wolf

And then Evan realized: Her gaze was stuck on the chunk of flesh resting on ice in the salad bowl at the far end of the island. “Is that a … ear?”

“It is.”

She shrugged. “Okay.” Another bite of brownie, some of which seemed to make it into her mouth. Her attention returned to the ear. She couldn’t help it. “You gonna read me in already? You were all like, ‘Get here at ass-crack hundred’”—she made texty fingers—“and I’ve been here for like eleventy hours and you haven’t bothered to say anything.” She gestured with her gnawed brownie at the Wolf’s ear. “So. Tell me what happened already.”

He told her.

She listened intently, bobbing her head from time to time. The rate of her chewing even slowed, if slightly. When he was done, she scowled. “Dayum, X,” she said. “So you took the ear for the DNA?”

“Yes.”

“How you gonna sequence it? Did you ask your fremesis?”

“Who?”

“Candy. I assume that’s who you’d start with. How’d it go?”

“Not well.”

He gave Joey a few seconds of silence to relish that. The only sound was Dog across the great room still dumbly licking the spot on the floor that Joey had watered with potato chips.

“Can you figure it out for me?” he said.

“DNA sequencing an ear chunk from a mysterious lady assassin?” Joey shrugged once more. For her, shrugging was a language unto itself. “I’ll figure out who to ask.”

“I need you to take point on the canine investigation, too, now, because obviously I have to—”

“‘Canine investigation’? Canine investigation! Did you just call it a canine investigation? Like phrasing it all formal’s gonna sell me on it. ‘Congrats, Police Sergeant Morales, you got promoted to the canine investigation.’”

“Joey.”

“‘Crack the canine investigation, young missy, and you’ll get a star on the wall at Langley.’” She was laughing at him, that hair-thin gap in her front teeth on charming display. “Yes, out of the goodness of my heart I’ll help look for a mangy mutt named Loco near his last-knowns but—”

“And,” he cut in before she could gain further momentum, “I need you to find out what you can about Solventry and Dr. Hill. Whatever this hit on him was about, it was top-level. The assassin they sent was prepared, well-stocked. Untraceable throw-down gun for the crime scene, long gun from the roof of the Burger King, then she came up with a Manurhin MR73 Gendarmerie in the tent city.”

Joey whistled. “She got her hands on a Manurhin MR73?”

“Those don’t just float around. See what databases you can get into— sales, trades, where they’re registered. I know it’s a long shot but kick over some rocks.”

“’Kay.”

“Also—the body I left behind in the abandoned store near Dr. Hill’s town house? I believe Tanner was his name and he claimed to be an army veteran. Dig for any connection between him and the Wolf.”

“The Wolf,” Joey said, trying out the name.

“She’s a stone-cold professional.”

“Orphan V level?”

“Orphan V level.”

For the first moment perhaps ever, Joey was silent.

“Taking out Dr. Hill was a big move,” Evan continued. “I want to know everything. His personal finances, extracurriculars, what he was working on —”

“Whoa whoa whoa.” Joey flew up, brownie in hand, and flopped down on the modern armless couch near the heavy bag station. “You want me to peel back security at Solventry to jump into his workflow? That’s like asking me to hack into Amazon’s AWS data center in NoVA to find their algorithm for distributing EC2 images across machines.” She snorted indelicately. “Which I’ve done. But! It’s gonna be full-time. We’re talking Red Bull marathon sessions in the Vault.”

Evan pictured Jayla Hill writhing on that butcher block. Now in a hospital room under police guard with an assassin circling the waters.