Six months taught the pack to lower their voices when Evans walked by.
“Any word?" he asked Norrie every morning.
“Nothing," she said, handing him a new stack of reports. “We're still buying rumors."
“Buy louder ones," he said.
He called the counties. He called the river patrols. He called men who owed him favors and men who didn't, and each call ended the same way—with a pause heavy enough to be a verdict.
He went in when he had something shaped like hope, and when he didn't, he stood in the hall and rewrote the definition.
Eve called at night. “Come," she whispered, and he almost did. “I'm scared," she said, and he said, “I'm busy," and hung up with a promise that didn't remember how to be true.
Norrie found him once at three in the morning staring at the map wall, pins punched i
