Page 77 of Lone Wolf

Evan saw his eyes twitch with a thought.

The competitor most likely to benefit.

He wondered if he could press with one more question, decided he couldn’t. He let the silence work for him.

Allman’s wide lips pursed. But he said nothing.

Dr. Leigh shuddered off the fearsome thought. “I’m glad I don’t work in that sphere. I hope I’m not interviewing the person who might have had anything to do with it.”

Allman’s eyes were suddenly visible. Smooth black stones held in nests of crinkled skin. “Are you meeting at Youtopia?”

“I am not.”

“Then you should be fine.”

“Thank you.” Evan breathed out a sigh of relief. “Happy to dodge that bullet.”

He offered his hand.

Allman shook it with an odd clasp, as if he’d never shaken a hand before.

Then he turned and stared out at his land below.

Evan hesitated, then walked back through the sliding door into the house.

Focused intently on the security monitors, Biltmore pinned down the barstool. Though Evan passed right by him, he didn’t look up, a pointed slight.

Evan let himself out. Standing on the porch, he cleared the foul warmth of the house from his lungs. The inhalation brought in the waft of sewage from the trench, hardly an improvement. His brain felt scorched from the conversation, his insides scoured.

Climbing in his car, he tore off the stupid goddamned tie and coasted down the long driveway, darkness enfolding the car. The mighty cypresses loomed on either side, their tops invisible against the night. They might have continued up forever.

Evan tried to contrast Allman’s barren worldview with the living realities Jack had tried to instill in him—wisdom, self-determination, and hardest of all, the striving to stay human.

Now it all seemed quaint and outdated, as Allman had said.

Evan’s speck of a car drifted down the majestic drive, insignificant beneath the boundless darkness overhead. The sheer gate rumbled aside, and he rolled forward beyond Allman’s battlement walls, and then he was drifting through the dreamy wonderland of ranch homes and white rail fences, his gut churning and flipping until he pulled over onto the decomposed granite shoulder, slung open the driver’s door, and retched twice, bringing nothing up but a strand of thick saliva that he spit off his lower lip.

For a time he stared down at the dirt and breathed.

When he raised his head, the pale-faced horse was there, giving him a devil stare over the rail fence. But there was no evil in the horse’s gaze. In place of where its eyes would be were twinning circles of shadowed nothingness.

38

Whateverthefuck

Driving home, Evan felt the aftermath of the visit with Allman coursing through his veins, toxic and unshakable. The road was dark and the night was dark and the world seemed unsafe, fragile, caught in the clutches of something powerful and unknowable. For the first time since Jack’s death, he asked the universe for a lifeline.

Not one second later the RoamZone blared from the glove box: DONCHA WISH YER GIRLFRIEND WUZ HAAAWT LIKE ME?!

He pulled the catch, reached for the phone.

Before he could speak, Sofia’s eleven-year-old voice spilled out: “It’s Dad,” she choked out through a sob. “He’s missing.”

“Not missing,” Brianna clarified, her voice coming through Evan’s car speakers. “Drinking.” She’d taken the phone from her daughter and put it on speaker. “Not that I see why you give a”—she caught herself—“care.”

Evan had already popped onto the 101, vectoring east toward downtown.

“I can’t lose Loco and Dad,” Sofia said. “Something’s wrong. He promised he wouldn’t drink no more. He promised.”