Back in Caldwell, inside the funeral home, Jim was an old pro at the McCready floor plan and he worked his way down to the basement on quick feet. When he got to the embalming room, he walked through the closed doors . . . and all but skidded to a halt when he came out on the other side.

He hadn't realized until now that he never expected to see his old boss again face-to-face.

And yet there Matthias was, across the way at the refrigerator units, looking at the nameplates on the latched doors just as Jim had done night before last. Shit, the guy was frail, that once tall, robust body now angled over his cane, the previously black hair showing gray at the temples. The eye patch was still where it had been after the initial round of surgeries--there had been hope that the damage wasn't permanent, but clearly that had not been the case.

Matthias stopped, leaned in as if to double-check, and then unlatched a door, braced himself against his cane, and pulled a slab out of the wall.

Jim knew it was the right body: From under the thin sheet, the summoning spell was at work, the pale phosphorescent glow bleeding through and glowing like his corpse was radioactive.

As Jim walked over to stand on the other side of his remains, he wasn't fooled by the fact that Matthias seemed to have wilted around his skeleton and was relying on the cane even as he stood without moving: The man was still a formidable, unpredictable opponent. After all, his mind and his soul had been the drivers of all those bad deeds, and until you were in your grave, they were with you wherever you went.

Lifting a hand, Matthias pulled the sheet back from Jim's face and laid the hem with curious care on his chest. Then, with a wince, the guy gripped his left arm and massaged as if something hurt.

"Look at you, Jim." As Jim stared at the guy,he reveled in the instability he was about to create. Who knew being dead would be so useful?

On a shimmer, he revealed himself. "Surprise."

Matthias's head jerked up--and to give him credit, he didn't even flinch. There was no jump back, no flap of hands, not even a change in breathing. But then again, he probably would have been more surprised if Jim hadn't made an appearance: The currency of trade in XOps was the impossible and unexplained.

"How did you manage this." Matthias smiled a little as he nodded down at the body. "The match is uncanny."

"It's a miracle," Jim drawled.

"So you were just waiting for me to show up? Wanted a reunion?"

"I want to talk about Isaac."

"Rothe?" Matthias's one eyebrow lifted. "You're past your deadline. You were supposed to kill him yesterday--which means tonight we don't have anything to say to each other about that. We do have business, however."

So not a surprise that Matthias outed an autoloader and pointed it squarely at Jim's chest.

Jim smiled coldly. And it so wasn't hard to imagine that Devina had taken this man over and was using him as a walking, talking weapon in her bid to get Isaac. The question was how to disarm her nasty little puppet, and the answer was easy.

The mind . . . as Matthias had always said, the mind was the most powerful force for and against someone.

Jim leaned forward over his corpse until the muzzle was all but kissing his sternum. "So pull the trigger."

"You're wearing a vest, are you?" Matthias twisted his wrist so that the weapon pivoted and made a little knot out of Jim's black T-shirt. "Helluva lot of faith you're putting in it."

"Why are you still talking." Jim braced his palms on the cold steel table. "Pull the trigger. Do it. Pull it."

He was well aware he was creating a problem for himself: If Matthias popped him, and he didn't pull the standard-issue drop-and-flop that humans did, there was going to be hell to pay on the holy-shit front. But it was worth it just to see--

The gun went off, the bullet shot out . . . and the wall behind Jim ate the lead. As the ringing sound echoed around the tiled room, rank confusion flickered over the cruel mask of Matthias's face . . . and Jim felt a fuckload of pure triumph.

"I want you to leave Isaac alone," Jim said. "He's mine."

The sense that he was bartering with Devina over the guy's soul was so strong it was like he'd been destined to have this moment with his former boss . . . as if the sole reason he'd dragged the bastard out of that sandy hellhole and risked his own life to get him to a clinic had been for this conversation, this negotiation, this exchange.

And the feeling got even sharper as Matthias balanced on his cane and eased forward to put the business end of that gun right back against Jim's chest.

"The definition of insanity," Jim murmured, "is doing the same thing over again and expecting a--"

The second shot went off exactly as the first had: loud sound, slug in the wall, Jim still standing.

"--different result," he finished.

Matthias's hand shot out and grabbed onto Jim's leather jacket. As the cane dropped on the floor and bounced, Jim smiled, thinking this shit was better than Christmas.

"You want to shoot me again?" he asked. "Or are we going to talk about Isaac?"

"What are you."

Jim grinned like a crazy motherfucker. "I'm your worst nightmare. Someone you can't touch and you can't control and you can't kill."

Matthias slowly shook his head back and forth. "This isn't right."

"Isaac Rothe. You're going to let him go."

"This doesn't . . ." Matthias used Jim's jacket as a counterbalance while he shifted to the side and looked at the wall that had been cosmetically wounded. "It isn't right."

Jim gripped that fist and squeezed hard, feeling the bones compress. "Do you remember what you always tell people?"

Matthias's eye flipped back to Jim's face. "What. Are. You."

Jim jerked the two of them together so their noses were an inch apart. "You always tell people there's no one you can't take, nowhere you can't find them, nothing you won't do to them. Well, that would be a right-back-at-you. Let Isaac go and I won't make your life a living hell."

Matthias stared hard into his eyes, probing, seeking information. God, this was a head trip in a good way. For once, the man who had all the answers was off his game and floundering.

Christ, if Jim was still alive, he'd take a picture of that puss and make a calendar of the damn thing.

Matthias rubbed the eye that was visible, like he was hoping what vision he had left would clear and he'd find himself alone--or at least the only person standing in the embalming room.

"What are you?" he whispered.

"I'm an angel sent from Heaven, buddy." Jim laughed low and hard. "Or maybe I'm the conscience you were born without. Or maybe I'm a hallucination from all the prescription meds you need to control your pain. Or maybe this is just a dream. But whatever the case, there is only one truth you need to know --I'm not letting you take Isaac. That's not going to happen."

The two held eyes and stayed that way as Matthias's brain clearly churned.

After a long moment, the man apparently decided to go with what was in front of him. After all, what was it that Sherlock Holmes had said? When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Therefore, he clearly concluded that Jim was some flavor of alive: "Why is Isaac Rothe so important to you?"

Jim released the grip on his old boss. "Because he is me."

"Just how many more of `you' are out there? We've got this thing on the slab--"

"Isaac wants out. And you're going to let him go."

There was a long silence. And then Matthias's voice changed, growing softer and grimmer. "That soldier is full of state secrets, Jim. The knowledge he's accumulated is worth a shitload to our enemies. So, news flash, it's really not a case of what you or he wants. It's what is best for us--and before you go all bleeding-heart indignant on my ass, the `us' is not you and me, or XOps. It's the fucking country."

Jim rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right. And I'll bet all that patriotic bullshit gives Uncle Sam a hard-on. But it doesn't do shit for me. The bottom line is . . . if you were in the civilian population, you'd be a serial killer. Working for the government means you get to wave the American flag around when it suits you, but the truth is, you do what you do because you enjoy picking the wings off of flies. And everybody's an insect in your eyes."

"My proclivities don't change a thing."

"And because of them, you serve no one but yourself." Jim brushed at the pair of burn marks on the front of his shirt. "You've taken XOps over as your own personal death factory, and if you're smart, you'll duck out yourself before some of these `special assignments' come back to bite you on the ass."

"I thought you were here to talk about Isaac."

Little too close to a nerve, huh? "Fine. He's smart, so he can keep himself out of enemy hands, and he's got no incentive to turn."

"He's alone. He has no money. And people get desperate quick."

"Fuck that--he's got a sterling record and he's going to disappear."

The corner of Matthias's mouth inched up. "And how would you know that. Oh, wait, you've already found him, haven't you."

"You can let him go. You have the power to do this--"

"No, I don't!"

The explosion was a surprise, and as the words faded in the same way the gunshots had, Jim found himself looking around the room for verification that he'd heard that right. Matthias was all-powerful. Always had been. And not just in his own eyes.

Hell, the bastard had enough clout to turn the Oval Office into a mausoleum.

Now Matthias was the one leaning in over the corpse. "I don't give a fuck what you think about me or how your inner Oprah has spun this whole situation. It is not about what I want. . . . It's what I'm compelled to do."

"Innocent people have died."

"So that the corrupt could! Christ, Jim, this whaaawhaaa bullshit coming from you is ridiculous. Good people die every day and you can't stop it. I'm just a different kind of bus mowing them down--and at least I have a larger purpose."

Jim felt a wave of anger crest--but then as he thought about it all, the emotion ebbed into something else. Sadness, maybe.

"I should have let you die in that desert."

"Which is what I asked you to do." Matthias grabbed onto his own left arm again and dug in, like he'd just been sucker punched in the pit. "You should have followed the orders I gave to leave me there."

So hollow, Jim thought. The words were so hollow and dead. As if they were about someone else entirely.

"Compelled," indeed. The guy had wanted to get out so much he'd been willing to kill himself to do it. But Devina had pulled him back in; Jim was sure of it. That demon and her thousand faces and her countless lies were at work here. Had to be. And hadn't her manipulations set the scene perfectly for the battle over Isaac: that solider had done evil, but was trying to start over, and this was his crossroads, this tug-of-war between Jim and Matthias over his what-next.

Jim shook his head. "I'm not going to let you take Isaac Rothe's life. I can't. You say you work with a purpose--so do I. You kill that man and humanity's lost more than an innocent."

"Oh, come on. He is not innocent. His hands drip with blood just like yours and mine. I don't know what's happened to you, but don't romanticize the past. You know exactly what he's guilty of."

Pictures of dead men flashed in front of Jim's eyes: stab wounds, gunshots, leaky faces and crumpled bodies. And those were just the messy jobs. The stiffs who'd been asphyxiated or gassed or poisoned had just been gray and gone.

"Isaac wants out. He wants to stop. His soul is desperate for a different way and I'm going to get him there."

Matthias winced and went back to rubbing his left arm. "Want in one hand, shit in the other--see what you get the most of."

"I'll kill you," Jim said simply. "If it comes down to it--I'll kill you."

"Well, what do you know . . . there's a news flash. To quote yourself, do it now."

Jim slowly shook his head again. "Unlike you, I don't pull the trigger unless I have to."

"Sometimes getting a jump on the showdown is the smartest move, Jimmy."

The old name momentarily flipped him back into the past, back to basic training, back to sharing a bunk with Matthias. The guy had been cold and calculating then . . . but not through and through. He'd been as loyal as someone could be to Jim, given their situation. Over the years, however, any trace of that limited slice of humanity had been lost--until the man's body was now as mauled and decrepit as his soul.

"Let me ask you something," Jim drawled. "You ever met a woman named Devina?"

That one eyebrow arched. "Now why would you ask that?"

"Just curious." He straightened his leather jacket. "FYI, I've had a devil of a time with her."

"Thanks for the dating advice. That's really my priority right now." Matthias returned the sheet back over Jim's cold gray face. "And feel free to kill me anytime. You'd be doing me a favor."

Those last words were spoken softly--and proved that physical pain could bow even the fiercest of wills if it was strong enough and lasted long enough. Then again, Matthias had had a shift of priorities even before that explosion, hadn't he.

"You know," Jim said, "you could take off as well. I did. Isaac's trying. There's no reason if you don't have the stomach for this anymore that you can't get out, too."

Matthias laughed in a burst. "You left XOps only because I let you go temporarily. I always intended to get you back. And Isaac is not getting away from me--the only way I would consider not offing him is if he would continue to work for the team. In fact, why don't you tell him that for me? Given that you two are so buddy-buddy and all."

Jim narrowed his eyes. "You've never done that before. Once someone's broken the trust, you've never let them back in."

Matthias exhaled on a raw shudder. "Times change."

Not always. And not about that shit. "Sure enough," Jim said on a lie. "Let's put me back in there, shall we?"

The two of them slid the slab into the refrigerator unit and Jim relatched the door. Then Matthias slowly bent down to pick up his cane, his spine cracking a number of times, his breath hitching as if his lungs couldn't handle their job as well as the pain he was feeling. When he righted himself, his face was an unnatural red--proof of how much the simple movement had taken out of him.

A broken vessel, Jim thought. Devina was working with or through a broken vessel here.

"Did any of this really happen?" Matthias said. "This conversation."

"The whole damn thing is real, but you're going to take a little nap now." Before the guy could ask, Jim brought up his hand and summoned power to his forefinger. As the tip began to glow, Matthias's mouth dropped open. "You'll remember what was said, however." With that, he touched Matthias on the forehead and a shimmer of light went through the man like a struck match, flaring fast and bright, consuming both the broken body and the evil mind.

Matthias went down like a stone.

Angel Ambien, baby, Jim thought. Knocks out the best of 'em.

And as he stood over his boss, the back-flat was just too fucking metaphorical: The man had fallen in more ways than just in the here and now.

Jim didn't believe for one second that the guy was sincere about taking Isaac back into the fold. That was just a draw to get the soldier within shooting range.

God knew Matthias was an excellent liar.

Jim bent down and put the man's gun back into its holster; then he slipped his arms behind the guy's knees and under his shoulders--shit, the cane. He reached across, picked it up, and laid the thing right down the center of the man's chest.

Standing up was a breeze, and not just because Jim had strong shoulders. Damn . . . Matthias was so light; too light for the size of his frame. He couldn't have weighed more than a buck fifty, whereas in his prime he'd been well into the two hundreds.

Jim walked through the closed doors of the embalming room and went up the stairwell to ground level.

Back in the desert, when he'd done this the first time with the fucker, he'd been prickling with adrenaline, on a race to get his boss back to camp before the fucker bled out--so that he wouldn't be accused of murder. Now, he was calm. Matthias was not about to die, for one thing. For another, they were both in a bubble of no-can-see and safely in the States.

Passing through the locked front door, he figured he'd take Matthias over to the guy's car--

"Hello, Jim."

Jim froze. Then twisted his head to the left.

Strike that about the "safely," he thought.

On the far side of the funeral home's lawn, Devina stood on the grass in her black stilettos, her long, gorgeous brunette hair curling down to her breasts, her little black dress hugging all those curves. Her perfect facial features, from those black eyes to those red lips to that alabaster skin, positively glowed with health.

Evil had never looked so good.

But then again, that was part of her surface appeal, wasn't it.

"What you got there, Jimmy," she said. "And wherever are you going with him."

Like the bitch didn't already know, he thought, wondering how in the hell he was going to get out of this one.

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