Page 47 of Lone Wolf

Evan started to climb into his truck.

“It’s not just a figurehead position, you know,” Hugh said, his voice growing strident. “There are real-world responsibilities to being an HOA president. Fire codes to be upheld…”

Evan closed the door. Hugh approached, still talking. Due to the Kevlar shields hanging inside the door panels, Evan’s windows did not roll down, an inconvenience for which he now felt unbridled gratitude.

A blast of music caused him to start in his seat: DONCHA WISH YER GIRLFRIEND WUZ HAAAWT LIKE ME?!

He made a mental note to change the RoamZone’s damn ringtone.

With relief he gestured at Hugh with the phone—Gotta take this—and clicked to answer. Before he could speak, an impatient eleven-year-old voice asked, “Well?”

“Huh?”

Sofia asked, “Did you find Loco?”

Just beyond the driver’s window, Hugh’s mouth was still moving— contend with rot and erosion in the roofing underlayment—and Evan found himself wishing he’d never learned to read lips.

He gestured at the phone once more helplessly and slammed the truck into reverse. “I tracked him down to a new location and spotted him there but then I lost him again.”

As he squealed into a three-point turn, Hugh remained in front of the truck, pinned by the dueling headlights, lips flapping—maintenance of the pool filtration system …

“You lost Loco?” Sofia sounded heartbroken. “How could you lose him?”

“There were some … complications.” Evan drove past Hugh, offering an inane wave and blasting up toward daylight. “And he scampered away. But now I know what part of town he’s in.”

“So are you there now?”

“No. But I’ve dispatched an associate to stay on it.”

“An associate! I want you. I called you.”

“Which is why I’m overseeing everything.”

“What if he gets hit by a car? Or gets dognapped by a homeless guy who can’t afford to feed him? You know the ones who have these starving little pups and their cardboard signs asking for dog food?”

“This associate of mine, she knows how to get into security cameras everywhere. All over the city. She’s going to be searching for Loco in the area where I spotted him. She’s the best I know. I’ll get back to you as soon as I hear anything.”

“Dad said you could find him. Dad said you could do anything.”

Evan cut right onto Wilshire, beelining for downtown. “Andre said that?”

“Yeah. He gets all braggy about you.”

Evan didn’t know what to say. The Fifth Commandment, his least favorite: If you don’t know what to do, do nothing. He did nothing.

Sofia said, “I think it’s ’cuz…”

“What?”

“I think it’s ’cuz Dad doesn’t have a whole lot else,” Sofia said.

An odd sensation stirred to life in Evan’s rib cage. It had scarcely occurred to him what he might mean to his half brother. Or that one could derive pride in a familial association. He pictured the man who was his father—that loose-limbed saunter, the mirror-gazing, the near-pathological detachment masked in nonchalance—and felt only the opposite. A revulsion at the primordial sludge of DNA he’d somehow emerged from. He caught himself, forced his focus outward.

“You,” Evan said. “He’s proud of you.”

“Duh,” Sofia said, and hung up.

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