“You make it sound like I was evil—”

“You were.” Jim locked eyes with his old boss. “You were infected to the core, to the point where I’d come to the conclusion that you were born that way. But seeing you like this…” He motioned with his hand. “It’s a surprise to find out that you weren’t.”

“What the hell happened to me?” Matthias whispered.

“I don’t know anything about your past before you came to XOps.”

“Is that what the organization was called?”

“‘Is’ called. Not ‘was.’ And yeah, you and I did train together. Prior to that, I don’t know shit. There were rumors about you, but they were probably the result of hyperbole based on your reputation.”

“Which was…”

“You were a sociopath.” The man cursed softly and Jim shrugged. “Listen, I wasn’t a saint, either. Not before I joined, certainly not when I was in. But you—you set a new standard. You were…something else.”

There was a period of silence. Then, “You’re still not telling me anything specific.”

Jim rubbed his hair and thought, Well, hell, there were so many anythings to choose from. “Okay, how about this one. There was a man, Colonel Alistair Childe—name ring any bells?” When Matthias shook his head, Jim really wished they were outside so he could light up. “He was a good guy, had a daughter who was a lawyer. A son who had some problems. Wife died of cancer. He lived up in Boston, but had a lot of dealings in D.C. He got too close.”

“To what.”

“The firm, so to speak. You had him kidnapped and taken to his son’s crack house, where your operatives pumped the kid full of an overdose of he**in and filmed Alistair screaming as the son foamed at the mouth and died. And you thought you’d done the guy a solid, because, in your own words, you took the kid who was broken. The threat, of course, was that if Childe didn’t clam it, you’d off the daughter, too.”

Matthias didn’t move, barely breathed, just blinked. But his voice was the tell. Rough and full of gravel, it barely got the words out: “I don’t remember that.”

“You will. At some point. You’re going to remember a whole lot of shit like that—and some stuff that I probably can’t even guess at.”

“And how do you know so much?”

“About the Childe thing? I was there when you went after the daughter.”

Matthias’s eyes closed, and his chest went up and down slowly, as if there were a horrible weight on it.

Kind of gave Jim some hope. Maybe the reveal would yank him further out of the sin.

“If that’s true, I can see why you’re concerned about my moral compass.”

“It’s the God’s honest. And like I said, there’s so much more.”

Matthias cleared his throat. “So how exactly did this happen?”

As he gestured around his eye, Jim found himself sucked back into their shared past. “I wanted out, but XOps don’t have no retirement option, and you were the only one who could grant me a discharge. We argued about it, and then you showed up where I was on assignment in the desert. You told me to meet you alone at night far the hell away from camp, and I figured this was it, game over. Instead, you were by yourself. You looked me in the eye as you lifted your foot and put it down in the sand. The explosion…it went upward, not out. You never meant it for me, and it wasn’t a mistake.” Memories of that hut, of the gritty sand in his eyes and the blast smoke in his nose, came back hard and fast. “Afterward, I carried you out of there, took you where you could get help.”

“Why didn’t you leave me to die?”

“I was done playing by your rules. It was time that the all-powerful Oz didn’t get what he was after.”

“But if you wanted out, and you’d killed me—who would have fu**ed with you? Assuming you’re telling the truth about all this, you would have been free.”

Jim shrugged, “I had you over a barrel. You didn’t want that little suicide secret getting out, so I had the best of both worlds. I was free and you were going to spend the rest of your life looking like shit and being in pain.”

Matthias laughed in a harsh burst. “Strangely, I can respect that. But I don’t get why in the hell you’re helping me now.”

“Job change.” Jim reached for the remote. “Look, we made the news.”

As he unmuted the TV, a different newscaster filed a report on the body that had been found, gee whiz, right where they’d left it in that service corridor. No suspects. No identity on the victim—and good luck with that. Even if they found something, the aliases set up by XOps were impenetrable. Further, time was ticking for the coroner: The body was going to disappear from the morgue any minute—if it hadn’t been removed already.

Just another cold case that was going to get stuck in a file cabinet down at the CPD.

“What kind of work do you do now?” Matthias asked.

“Independent contractor.”

“Still doesn’t explain why you’re helping a man you hate.”

Jim stared at the guy and thought of everything Matthias represented in the war with Devina. “Now…I need you.”

As Mels got ready for work, she broke a nail getting dressed, and then spilled coffee on her blouse in the kitchen. Under the bad-luck-comes-in-threes rule, she had a feeling she was on someone’s hit list, but at least her mother was at an early morning yoga class—and that meant she could get out the door without a lot of chatter.

Sometimes, talking to her mother about her job was tough. Like the woman needed to hear the details of that poor girl at the motel?

Hardly good breakfast conversation.

Besides, Mels wasn’t feeling talkative. It had been a long night, what with writing up her piece on the murder and sending it into editorial so it could be copyedited and put up online first thing. And today, she was going to focus on further reporting so she could submit a more thorough article for tomorrow’s paper edition.

With any luck, Monty was going to let his fingers do the walking to her cell phone, so that mouth of his could do what it did best.

On the way to pick up Tony, she got stuck in a line at the McDonald’s drive-thru, but there was no way she was turning up at her buddy’s apartment without breakfast. Finally, with two sausage biscuits in a bag and a pair of coffees in the console, she was back in business in the borrowed Toyota.

As she pulled over at the curb in front of his building, the guy hefted himself off the front steps and waddled his way over, his bulk making him seem much taller than he really was.

“Have I told you lately how much I love you?” she asked as he got in.

Tony grinned. “If that’s breakfast, then yes, you have.”

“I got you a matched set.” She handed the bag over. “One of the coffees is mine.”

“Better than a pair of earrings.” He unwrapped one white package. “Mmm, edible.”

“I really appreciate your letting me borrow your baby.”

“Come on, where do I have to go? Long as I can get to work and back, I’m good.” As he chewed, he frowned and picked a receipt out of the ashtray. “You were at the Marriott yesterday?”

Mels put the directional signal on, and pulled out into traffic, wishing that her friend wasn’t so damned observant. “Ah, yeah, I was.”

“What time?”

Mels kept her eyes on the road ahead, recognizing the Reporter Voice she was getting hit with. “It was last night. I was just visiting a friend.”

“So did you see all the commotion?”

“Commotion?”

“You don’t know what happened?”

“I was called out to that murder scene in the west end. What are you talking about?”

“Wait, you got put on that prostitute with the hair color?”

“I did. So what went down at the Marriott?”

As Tony took his own damn time finishing the first Mc-whatever-it-was-called, Mels’s stomach churned. Man, if he tried to start the second one, she was going to jump out of her skin—

“There was a shooting in the basement of the hotel. Eric’s assigned to it. There were bullets exchanged in the alley, and someone broke in through one of the rear delivery entrances to the restaurants. Nine-one-one was called and they found a man with no identification and no weapons on him dead from a knife wound.”

“I thought you said there were bullets involved?”

“Oh, he’d been shot at all right. But that wasn’t what killed him.” Tony made a slicing motion across the front of his neck. “Slit wide.”

A shiver went through her.

Because you’re going to die if you don’t get away from me.

Mels told herself to calm down. That was a big hotel in a not-good-after-dark part of town. Murders happened, particularly among drug dealers and their clientele—

Tony rifled around in the bag to get out biscuit number two. “Apparently, the guy would have died from the gunshots, except he had one hell of a bulletproof vest on. Eric said the guys at the CPD were drooling over the thing. They’d never seen one so sweet.” The gentle sound of another white wrapper being turned back was followed by a fresh whiff of unhealthy-and-awesome.

“So what did you find out last night?” he asked around his mouthful.

Mels pulled a rolling stop and hung a left onto Trade, her head tangling up: Matthias had been going to bed when she’d left him—although that didn’t mean he couldn’t have gone out after she’d—

“Hello? Mels?”

“Sorry, what?”

“When you were at the motel. What’d you find out?”

“Ah…right, sorry, not much. The woman was killed after she colored her hair—her throat was slashed.”

“Two in one night. It’s an epidemic.”

Well, there was that, she thought. No one could be in two places at once, right?

Okay, now she was being crazy. “Yeah. Weird.”

Five blocks later, they came up to the CCJ building, and she parked around back, giving the keys to Tony as they walked over to the rear entrance.

“Thanks again,” she said.

“Like I told you, whenever you want. Especially if you buy me breakfast. And will you stop putting dollar bills in my drawer when you take a Twinkie? You know you’re welcome to my stash.”

It was true. Tony had a boatload of food grade petroleum in his desk and she had been known to partake from time to time. But she wasn’t a mooch.

Mels opened the door and held it for him. “I’m not going to rob you.”

“If I give you permission, it’s not robbing. And besides, you don’t take, like, what, more than a Ho-Ho or two a month.”

“Pilfering is pilfering.”

They hit the shallow stairs that led up to the glass doors of the newsroom, and he got the door this time. “I wish everyone felt like that.”

“See? It’s not your job to feed us all.”

The instant they stepped through, the ringing phones and fast voices and scurrying feet was a familiar theme song, sweeping into her body, carrying her to her desk. As she sat down, the dull roar smoothed over the anxiety about Matthias, and she signed into her computer without conscious thought—

The manila envelope landed on her desk with a slap, startling her.

“Got something pretty for you to look at,” Dick said with a sly smile.

She reached for the packet and slid out…

Well, wasn’t she glad she’d given both those sausage biscuits to Tony: They were photographs of the prostitute’s body, eight-and-a-half-by-elevens in color, all up close and personal.

As Dick hovered over her like he was waiting for her to chick out, she refused to give him any satisfaction, even though the center of her chest ached at the images…particularly the one that showed the neck wound in detail, the deep slash cutting through the skin and into the pink-and-red muscle and pale gristle of the throat.

When Mels put the photos down, she made sure that was the one on top, and noticed that Dick, for all his Big Man attitude, refused to look at the image.

“Thanks.” She kept her eyes steady on his. “This is going to help a lot.”

Dick cleared his throat like maybe he’d pushed the as**ole act a little far, even by his own low standards. “Let me see your follow-up ASAP.”

“You got it.”

As he sauntered off, she shook her head. He should know better than to give her father’s daughter a challenge like that.

And P.S., the fact that he would at all was just gross.

Kind of made her think about the way Monty used tragedy for his own purposes.