Speculation of the female variety.

He had chosen wisely.

“Hi,” she said as she searched his face…and then what she could see of his cane and his black windbreaker.

Matthias smiled at her, as if he were momentarily taken with her, too. “Ah, yeah, listen, I was supposed to meet a friend here, and he hasn’t shown. I went to call him on my cell phone and realized I’ve left the damn thing at home. Can I use your landline?”

She glanced over at her comrade-in-lattes. The guy was lounging against the back where the coffee machines were, arms crossed over his thin chest, chin down, as if he were taking a breather standing up.

“Yeah. Okay. Come over here.”

Matthias tracked her on the customer side of the counter, exaggerating his limp. “I’ll have to call information first, because he was in my contacts. But don’t worry, it’s just local. I can’t believe I forgot my phone.”

“Happens to everyone.” She was all flustered, those eyes of hers flipping up to him and shifting away like he was too bright to look at for long. “I’ve got to dial for you, though. You can’t come back here.”

“No problem.” When she passed the receiver over the partition, he gripped it and smiled slowly. “Thanks.”

Even more fluster. To the point where she had to take two tries to get through to information.

Matthias casually turned away and made like he was checking the entrance for his “friend” as a recorded voice hit him with, “City and state, please.”

“In Caldwell, New York.” Pause. Wait for the human to come on. “Yeah, the number of James Heron.”

As he held on for the number, the girl picked up a dishcloth and ran it over the counter, all casual. She was listening, though, those brows with the hoops down low.

“H-E-R-O-N,” Matthias spelled out. “Like the bird. First name James.”

For fuck’s sake, how many ways could you spell the damn—

411 came back on the line: “I’m sorry, but I don’t have anyone by that last name in Caldwell. Is there another name you’d like to search?”

Well, shit. But somehow it didn’t surprise him. Too easy. Not safe enough.

“No, thanks.” Matthias pivoted back to the waitress, returning the receiver. “Out of luck. Unlisted.”

“Did you say ‘Heron’?” the girl asked as she went to hang up. “You mean that guy who died?”

Matthias narrowed his eyes—not that she could tell, thanks to the Ray-Bans. “Kinda. My friend’s his brother, actually. They lived together. Phone was under Jim’s name. Like I said, my buddy and I were going to meet up here and, you know, talk about it all. It’s so hard losing someone like that, and I’ve been worried about what it’s doing to his head.”

“Oh, my God, it was too sad.” The girl shifted the dishrag back and forth in her hands. “My uncle worked with him—happened to be there when he was electrocuted at the site. And then to think he got shot, like, days later. I mean, how does that happen? I’m so sorry.”

“Your uncle knew Jim?”

“He’s the head of human resources for the construction company he worked for.”

Matthias took a deep breath, like he was choking up. “Jim was an awesome guy—we were in the war together.” He knocked the head of his cane into the partition. “You know how it is.”

Four…three…two…one…

“Look, why don’t I call my uncle for you. Maybe he has the number. Hold on.”

The girl slipped out of the partition, paused, and then nodded, like she was on a mission for good, and determined to Do the Right Thing.

As Matthias waited for her to come back, he listened for his conscience to speak up at the manipulation.

When nothing came, he was disturbed by how easy it was. Like the act of lying was so familiar and insignificant, it didn’t register any more than the blink of the eyes did.

The barista returned about five minutes later with a number written in a girlie script that belied all the I’m-a-hard-ass piercing stuff. “I’ll dial it for you.”

Back behind the counter, she handed him the receiver again, and he listened to the beeping as she pushed the buttons.

Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring—

No voicemail. No answer.

He gave her back the receiver. “No one’s home.”

Then again, what other response was there: Wake up on the guy’s grave, and he expected Heron to be answering a call? Long reach from six feet under to AT&T.

“Maybe he’s on his way?”

“Maybe.” Matthias stared at the girl for a moment. “Thank you so much. I really mean that.”

“You want some coffee as you wait?”

“I’d better go do a drive-by on the house. People react to tragedy in…funny ways.”

She nodded gravely. “I’m really sorry.”

And she was. A perfect stranger was honestly sorry for whatever he was going through.

He immediately thought of Mels, who’d also been so willing to help him.

Nice people. Good people. And his faulty memory said he didn’t belong in their company.

“Thank you,” he said gruffly before limping out.

The forty-caliber handgun in Jim’s right palm weighed thirty-two ounces, with ten bullets in the mag and one in the pipe.

He kept the weapon down at his side, by his thigh, as he walked out of the garage. After the mess in the shower, Adrian had left to go get some air and some food, taking his Harley and not his helmet. Dog was safely upstairs, resting on the bed in a patch of sunlight. Jim was on guard duty.

Can’t you see? She’s in me—and she’s taking over.

Fuck.

At least he had an outlet: The good thing about the garage was that it was all the way at the back of a farmhouse property—and the white main house with its porch and its redbrick chimney had been empty since he’d started renting here.

No one was going to see. But that wasn’t good enough.

Shoving his free hand into his combats, he took out a suppressor. The silencer added ten ounces in weight to the autoloader and changed the balance, but he was used to the weapon like that.

Now, no one would hear, either.

Standing on the loose pea gravel of the drive, he took a drag of his cigarette and then held the thing in his left hand. Focusing on a branch that was thirty feet from the ground, he lifted his weapon and locked in on the one-inch-thick stretch of oak.

Breathing calmly, he closed his eyes and pictured Devina’s face.

Crack!

Thanks to the suppressor, there was no noise from the gun, no pop, just the kick against his palm, and the impact on the wood.

Crack!

The trigger, like the grip and the barrel, was not only an extension of his arm, but his body, and he didn’t need his eyes to readjust the trajectory. He knew exactly where the lead was going.

Crack!

Calm. Centered. Breathing in the belly, not the chest. Unmoving, except for his forefinger and then his forearm muscles as they absorbed the subtle recoil of the gun.

The impact of the final bullet was softer, but then again, there wasn’t much wood left.

He opened his eyes just as the branch went into free fall, bouncing down through the arms of its brethren, delayed, but not stopped from the hard ground.

Putting his Marlboro back between his teeth, he crushed the fallen pine needles and the scratchy grass under his combat boots as he went over and picked the thing up. Clean cut, relatively speaking. Nothing like what a saw would have done, but considering the distance and the means, it was good enough—

“You are an excellent shot.”

The haughty English accent coming from behind him made Jim want to keep squeezing off bullets. “Nigel.”

“Have I caught you at an inopportune moment?”

“I still have seven bullets left. You decide.”

“Devina has been reprimanded.” As Jim spun around and narrowed his eyes on the aristocratic archangel, Nigel nodded. “I wanted you to know that. I thought it was rather important for you to know that.”

“Worried that I’m going off the rails?”

“But of course.”

Jim had to smile. “You can be a straight shooter when it suits you. So what’s your Maker done to my enemy?”

“She’s your opponent—”

“Enemy.”

Nigel clasped his hands behind his back and went on a quaint little walkabout, his lean figure dressed in the kind of hand-tailored suit Jim was totally unfamiliar with, and fully prepared to stay that way.

“What’s the matter, boss,” Jim muttered. “Cat got your tongue?”

The archangel shot over a look that might have dropped him dead if he’d been alive in the conventional sense. “You are not the only one with a temper, and I should remind you to watch your tone and words with me.”

Jim tucked the weapon into the small of his back. “Fine. Let’s drop the small talk. What can I do for you?”

“Nothing. I simply thought it would ease you to know that the Maker has taken action. I told you to let the demon overstep the boundaries. I told you to wait for the response, and it has come.”

“What did He do to her?”

“The wins and losses that you both have sustained are permanent. There is naught that He nor any of us can do about where the flags have gone—they are immutable. But He hath decreed that her actions cannot lay unaddressed—”

“Wait, I don’t get it. If what Devina did affected the outcome of a round, then her win should be yanked.”

“That is not how this contest is set up. The wins are…” The archangel looked to the heavens. “The parallel would be personal property, I suppose.”

“Mine?”

“In a manner of speaking, I would say yes.”

“So if she fu**ed off the rules, and it changed the result, the Maker should give me back what’s rightfully mine. And while we’re at it, I’d like to point out that if I’d known who the damn soul had been when it came to Matthias, I wouldn’t have been focused on the wrong man.”

“And that has been redressed.”

“How?”

In the far distance, on the other side of the meadow, a car turned in from the main road and started on the lane that went past the farmhouse.

Shit. Visitors were so not welcome—and the yellow color suggested it was a cab.

The thing didn’t stop at the main residence.

Nigel cocked a brow. “I believe it shall be self-evident.”

On that oh-so-clear note, his boss disappeared.

“Thanks, buddy,” Jim muttered. “Big help. As f**king usual.”

Ducking around the corner, Jim nailed his shoulder blades to the aluminum siding. The gun didn’t stay in his waistband. Once again in his hand, he was prepared to shoot.

The taxi rolled to a halt in front of the garage.

A moment later, a man he never expected to see again got out of the backseat…a nightmare who lived and breathed…a blast from the past that he’d just frickin’ dealt with.

This was the solution for Devina’s cheating on the rules?

“Mother…fucker…” Jim hissed.

13

As Matthias got out of the cab, he told the driver to wait. The garage ahead of him was two stories of utility, with a set of stairs that ran up to its second story on the left. The double doors on the ground level were closed; same with the one at the top landing. Curtains were drawn—

Upstairs in the picture window, thin drapes parted and a scruffy dog appeared, as if it were standing up with its paws on the sill.

Someone clearly lived here.

“Tell the cab to go.”

Matthias’s head ripped around to the right—and the man who stepped out from behind the lee of the building made him reach out for balance, his memory popping up an instant, vivid recognition.

Jim Heron. Back from the dead.

And from what Matthias’s gut told him, the guy looked as he always had, that big, muscled body, the dark blond hair, the hard, cold face. There was no context, however, no running internal commentary on how he knew the man, or what they had done or seen together. One thing was clear, however…gun aside, it was obvious this was not the kind of guy you wanted to be around if you were unarmed and without an escape vehicle.

Matthias knocked on the window, gave a twenty to the cabbie, and sent the taxi packing.

As the thing K-turned and went off down the driveway, the sound of its tires crackling across the gravel seemed as loud as rounds of ammunition.

“Is that a gun by your leg or are you just glad to see me?” Matthias said dryly.

“It’s a gun. And you want to tell me what you’re doing here?”