“How’d it go? The Somali-pirate routine?” Tommy Stojack ambled across the cave of his armorer shop, passing warped speedloaders, cutting torches, a stray crate of antitank grenades with Cyrillic lettering on the shipping label. He reached into a jumble of ARES pistol frames stacked like chicken bones atop a Pelican case. Each frame was a forging of aluminum—basically a solid piece of metal shaped like a gun.

Evan said, “It went just fine.”

“You rescue the princess, slay the dragon?”

“Something like that. I came to settle the bill.”

Evan handed Tommy a thick roll of hundred-dollar bills. Tommy hefted it, as if gauging its weight, then smiled his gap-toothed smile and tapped the roll into his shirt pocket.

Evan looked at the aluminum forging. “You said you had the upgrades for me?”

Tommy crossed his arms, mock annoyed. “‘Hey, Tommy, by the way, thanks for producing a cutting torch, a suppressed subgun, and a skiff for me out of thin air from ten states away on twenty-four hours’ notice.’”

“Right,” Evan said. “Thank you.”

Tommy jabbed at Evan with a forefinger that had been blown off at the second knuckle. “‘And a grappling fucking hook.’”

“And a grappling fucking hook.”

“‘And how have you been, Tommy?’” he said, circling his hand in a prompt.

Evan said, “How have you been?”

Tommy shrugged, dropped the shit-slinging routine. “Nothing but high-speed, low-drag antics here. This new broad I’m seeing, she wanted me to try yoga. I told her I wasn’t in touch with my inner vagina enough, ya know?” He raised that stub of a forefinger. “Then I tried that shit. And I realized. I’m not in touch with my inner fuckin’ SEAL enough.”

“It’s that hard?” Evan asked.

Tommy dug through the mound of ARES frames, grabbed one in particular. He’d machined out the interior, drilling the pivot points for the fire-control group. Pistol frame in hand, he limped back toward his workbench. “Those skinny bitches, they can balance on a pinkie finger for longer than I can stand up anymore.”

“So you’re doing yoga now?”

“Hay-ell no. But I will tell you. Yoga pants? Best invention of the past hundred years. Let’s just say downward dog gives me upward dog. But even that ain’t worth it.”

Tommy half tilted, half fell into his rolling chair. Though he never talked about where or how he’d served, he had enough hearing loss, blown-out joints, and surgical scars for Evan to know he’d been a tip-of-the-spear operator. He was banged up in all the right ways. Now he worked as a contract armorer for various government-sanctioned black groups, specializing in procurement and R&D. Or at least that’s what Evan had gleaned. Their conversations had always been light on proper nouns.