Page 56 of Lone Wolf

He tilted his glass in her direction. “Here’s to flattering stereotypes.”

She blushed ever so slightly. Hands pressing the desktop, locked elbows shoving her shoulders north, she leaned her head toward him and confessed in a mock whisper, “I’m not actually all that good at computers, X. I’m just really bad at giving up.”

30

Bad Things for Good Reasons

Aragón Urrea was an unconventional businessman. A man who, like Evan, did bad things for good reasons. At one time from his compound in Eden, Texas, Aragón had run a multibillion-dollar global drug-commerce operation that skirted the edges of international law and occasionally flouted legalities entirely. He’d been called an anarcho-capitalist, a beloved patrón to his community, and a drug dealer.

Evan called him his friend.

They came at the world from contrasting angles. They disagreed on more things than they could recount. They lived according to different codes.

And that was the point.

What use was a friend you agreed with on everything?

Some time back, Aragón had tracked down Evan’s Nowhere Man phone number in his desperation to rescue his daughter, who’d been kidnapped by a vicious cartel leader. At first Evan had been unsure whether to come to Aragón’s aid or wipe him off the map.

It could be good, not killing people. Sometimes you even wound up liking them.

After Evan had helped Aragón restore his family, Aragón had offered him his eternal gratitude and use of his private jets. The latter was a useful perk for someone who preferred to avoid security checkpoints, flight plans, and travel lines.

Sitting halfway up the spiral staircase to the reading loft, Evan dialed Aragón’s number now. He’d retreated from the Vault to get some space from Joey, who was conducting the monitors like Toscanini or Sorcerer Mickey gone mad with power.

The loft pulled double duty as a guest room for Joey. Evan had even purchased skull-and-crossbones sheets for the couch up there, and a dog bed. He didn’t have to look to know that Joey had already blown through the space like a tornado, leaving wreckage in her aftermath. Overhead a stray sock was straggled across the staircase’s highest step like a dead rat. He wondered at the series of events that could have led to its landing on the top step of a spiral staircase, but that level of housekeeping barbarousness was beyond the ken of his imagination.

Aragón picked up after a few rings, his deep voice calling to mind that broad chest, as sonorous as the man himself: “Mi amigo de borrachera! How are you?”

“Alive,” Evan said. “How is Belicia?”

“She is wonderful. If you get through the part of your marriage where you want to kill each other, it can actually be quite enjoyable.”

“A ringing endorsement for matrimony.”

“It has been beautiful all the way through, our marriage. But now it’s easier every day as well.”

“That sounds more enjoyable than I know how to grasp.”

“So much brooding, with you, X. You’re such an escandalosa.”

“And Anjelina?”

A gravelly sigh. “Mija is the great joy and terror of my life. She lavishes love upon my granddaughter but she doesn’t hold her during the night whenever she cries. They are all about this Dr. Spock controlled-crying bullshit.”

“They’ll work it out. Besides, no one ever rocked me to sleep when I was a baby and look how I turned out.”

Aragón gave his great laugh, the rolling one that built momentum more slowly than you could almost believe.

Evan allowed a rare pulse of pride that he’d learned to be funny in a different way, using humor more than just as a parry or thrust. That’s what friendship is supposed to be, he thought suddenly, with the dumbness of a child. It’s supposed to crack you open into new spaces. Like stretching does. And pain.

“Look,” Aragón said, acquiescing, “we don’t raise polite girls. We raise girls who can be polite when the occasion calls for it.”

“You’re raising women.”

“That’s right.”

“Women who are worth listening to.”