“You know we’re totally fucked, right?” Cam asked as we headed west toward O’Connor’s. He grinned at me from across the cab.

  “Probably.” I laughed. We both were a little giddy from having made it this far. “But at least we get to have a beer tonight.”

  “Don’t you mean tomorrow?”

  “What?”

  “It’s technically tomorrow already.”

  He wasn’t wrong, I realized. It was already 1:00 a.m. on Friday morning. We’d be up again in just over three hours, and we only had about an hour before O’Connor’s closed. Most bars in Mass. shut down at 2:00 a.m.

  “Max…What if he isn’t there?” Cam asked. His adrenaline from our escape was clearly passing..

  “Then this was all for nothing.”

  “You’re a real shit bag, you know that?”

  “What?” I asked. “Hey, man, I didn’t make you come along.”

  He shook his head. “What are you even hoping he tells you? Did he find the Fountain of Youth? Some cure for cancer?”

  “I guess I don’t know.” He was right to ask. Everything had happened so quickly, I hadn’t really gotten past the jailbreak part of the plan. “I guess I just want to know his story. If there’s even a chance…”

  “I wonder if he went to Turkey. I’ve heard they put you up in a hotel before you start the treatment there.”

  “Cam,” I said, his ridiculous comment breaking me out of my reverie, “You’re thinking about hair transplants, not cancer treatment.”

  He paused, thinking, and then a huge grin spread across his face. “Oh yeah. Still… maybe it’s some herbal therapy thing?”

  “Everything with you is about herbal therapy,” I joked, punching him lightly in the arm. Cam had only given up his fairly gluttonous marijuana habit a month before the academy’s mandatory drug testing. Come to think of it, his slimmed-down physique might be related to a decrease in the midnight munchies.

  The cab pulled into the sprawling parking lot of O’Connor’s at 1:15 a.m. There were only a few other cars in the lot. The cab would be back to pick us up at 2:00, when the bar closed.

  I had only been to O’Connor’s once before. Still, as we stepped through the cramped front hallway, I instantly recognized the cluttered wall decorations of Irish bands, local celebrities, and historic paraphernalia that overwhelmed the senses upon entry. The front hallway led patrons through a series of twists and turns. If you wormed your way to the right, you eventually came to a front desk where you could check in for dinner.

  The dinner here was incredible, or so I assumed, based on the appetizers I had tried on the left side of the building. The bar, though, was where we were headed—and, hopefully, where the man we were looking for would be.

  The place was mostly empty, and the bartender looked like he was already cleaning up for the night. He shook his head and rolled his eyes when he saw us, clearly disgruntled to see a couple of guys rolling in forty-five minutes before close. He opened his mouth, then snapped it shut when he saw our clothes. Hell, I’d forgotten we were wearing standard-issue academy tees and sweatpants emblazoned with the State Police logo. We looked more like escaped prisoners than state trooper recruits.

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  One of the two lingering patrons—a hard-worn, bottle-blond woman in her early 30s—looked up from her beer and snorted when she saw us, then immediately went back to staring into her half-empty glass.

  “Think she likes guys in uniform?” Cam whispered.

  I shook my head at him, even as I eyed the second patron, a very tidy, preppy, dark-haired man in his late thirties or early forties. He wore a white dress shirt and a tartan-colored vest, not one of those puffy ski vests, but the kind you’d see on a groomsman at a wedding. I could see dark blue jeans and light brown dress shoes beneath the table.

  He raised an eyebrow at my perusal before asking, “Can I buy you boys a drink?”

  “Sorry,” Cam interrupted before I could speak. “She’s more my type.” He nodded his head toward the woman, who was now oozing to one side, yet somehow managing to stay upright on her stool at the bar.

  I elbowed Cam, knowing already the man wasn’t hitting on us in some desperate attempt for a just-before-closing two-fer. He was far too put-together to be sitting alone at a bar this late on the off chance a willing taker would wander in.

  I walked to the man’s table, Cam following close behind, and slid into the chair across from him.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” the man announced. His dark eyes were unnerving. Was it a play of the dim light of the bar, or did he actually have black eyes? I couldn’t see where his irises stopped, and his pupils started.

  “Who are you?” I asked. I had the strangest feeling I’d seen him before, though I couldn’t place where. It was the same feeling I had walking into a Walmart, literally anywhere in the country. I was still working on the theory, but I was pretty sure some matrix-level shit was going on with the chain store. They were literally all the same. Everywhere.

  “You can call me Haden Teth,” the man intoned.

  “Haden Teth?” Cam repeated, clearly not as captivated by the man as I was. He snickered. “You sound like a Sith Lord.”

  I glared at Cam. Turning back to Haden, I asked, “Do I know you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What does that mean?” Cam asked for me.

  “The living know they will die…but you, Max, will see me and understand.” Haden’s eyes never left mine. I felt like I was drowning in their blackness.

  A single pair of hands clapped from behind Haden, jolting me back to awareness. Over Haden’s shoulder, a man pulled himself upright from the booth where he appeared to have been lying down.

  Haden sighed and rolled his eyes. As the clapping man stood, stretched, and then dropped himself into the seat next to Haden, I realized who I was staring at.

  Dan Driver. Diaz was right–he looked exactly the same as his photo, like a fit 20-something with his whole life ahead of him rather than a guy in his 40s who spent every night at the bar. His hair was buzzed in a typical Statie high-and-tight, just like it had been in his photo.

  “Quoting Ecclesiastes, Clarence?” Dan asked Haden, shaking his head. “I prefer a little more subtlety.” Dan’s hand lifted, as if he were about to begin a sermon. “Do you not know Death when you see it, old man?”

  The phrase sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Dan,” Haden muttered. He looked pissed, and… embarrassed?

  “Clarence,” Dan returned the greeting.

  “Call me Haden!”

  Dan laughed. “Sure, whatever you say, Clarence.” He turned to face us. “You boys don’t have any idea how rare it is to see the big cat in his natural environment.”

  “What is happening right now?” Cam asked, looking between them. Then he turned to me. “Is this our guy?”

  I nodded. Dan took another, more discerning look at me—and at our blue tees. He groaned and ran a hand through his hair.

  “Fucking Diaz.” He had obviously put together how we had tracked him down.

  Haden shoved past Dan. He stood, straightening his vest and looking down his nose at the three of us still in the booth. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m clearly too early.” He bowed his head slightly to Dan and slipped away toward the exit.

  Dan patiently watched the exodus of his acquaintance before leaning forward in the booth. “Okay,” he said, giving us a hard look, “which one of you two idiots is dying?”

  - - -

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