Skinned.

It’s not a coincidence.

Skinned.

I don’t want it to be him.

Skinned.

Not now.

Skinned.

Not after all this time.

7

Jake stood in the kitchen sipping his eighth cup of fine convenience-store no-name blend topped off with a shoplifted packet of sugar from the coffee stand in the Kwik Mart. His hair was still wet from a hot shower and he felt better. At least comfortable in the doubts department, for whatever the fuck that was worth. From forty feet the endless line of black script tattooed into his flesh looked like a well-tailored shirt. He considered it part of the new him, one that began when he had stopped speedballing his way through life on heroin and cocaine and baby laxative. The end of the before. The end of the drugs and the booze and the heart attack trifecta that he had somehow managed to cheat. The end of the bad times before he had found Kay and Jeremy. Before they buried a cardiac resynchronization appliance under his chest muscle, almost in his armpit, to keep his heart from simply forgetting to beat. Before he had decided that life wasn’t shitty all the time. Before the new and improved Jake Cole.

He still missed the cocaine and the heroin. The booze, too.

But the coffee was good, and he raised his cup in a silent toast to the before, to the memory of his mother. To the good old days. Back before the whole thing had somehow just gone up in flames.

He was pouring another cup when the bell rang. He wondered if it was Hauser’s men or the news—both would be dropping by sooner rather than later. Out of habit, he dragged the cold stainless revolver off the counter, put it into the waistband at the small of his back, and walked to the door with the mug of coffee in his hands and another bologna on Wonder Bread clamped firmly in his teeth. He chomped down on the soft bread and it molded to the roof of his mouth. He tore the welfare sandwich away from his teeth and opened the door in one movement.

The bright panel of sun flooded the dark front hall and the space went from dead grays to dusty wood and chrome. Jake squinted into the figure at the door, haloed in light, features obscured in shadow, only one known quantity: male. The image slowly materialized, like an old-timey dial-up Internet connection, pixels slowly morphing into focus. Jake didn’t recognize the face behind the big Ray-Ban aviators, but he recognized the smile again, still amazed that it wasn’t broken like he had left it the first time they had met.

“Jakey!” Spencer yelled and barreled through the door, enveloping Jake in a bear hug that lifted him off the ground. Jake wasn’t small, but he was eclipsed by the mass of the man squeezing him.

“Jakey!” he hollered again, this time in Jake’s ear.

“Yeah, yeah. Jesus, you trying to make me deaf?” Jake wriggled out of the clinch, spilling coffee and losing the tail end of the sandwich.

His old friend backed away and held up the gun that Jake had put into his waistband. “Not very trusting I see.”

“Not particularly, no,” Jake said flatly and took it back. When it was in his hand, he looked the man up and down, taking in what twenty-eight years had done. “You look good, Spencer.” And he did. Better than the flashing blue-and-red Christmas monster at the entrance to the death house last night.

Spencer nodded, smiled. “Thanks. Yeah. You—” He stopped and looked Jake over, taking in the sinewy build, the tattoos. His eyes slid back to the pistol in Jake’s hand. “—too.” He paused. “Really.” Paused again. “Different. But good, man. Wow.” He grabbed Jake by the shoulders and held him at arm’s length like a client sizing up a painting. “You look just the same. Charles Bronson.”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Thanks. Really. Come on in.” He ushered his friend into the house. “Coffee?”

Spencer lumbered by and the floor shook. “Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Holy shit, this place hasn’t changed at all. I mean at all.” He walked through the hall and stopped at the geometric model on the console by the door. It was the size of a library globe. “I forgot about that thing. Now it’s like I was here yesterday.”

Jake followed his eyes to the stainless-steel sphere. “I know what you mean.” Jake walked into the house, took his FBI T-shirt from the back of a chair, and slid it on. “What do you take in your coffee? I got sugar.”

“Black’s perfect. Unless it’s some chocolate vanilla crap, then just get me a glass of water. Tap water. The bottled shit gives you Alzheimer’s and cancer—” He stopped cold, reconsidered his words. “Aw, shit, Jakey. I didn’t mean—”

Jake dismissed it with a shrug. “Fuck it.”

The question of whether or not his father had drunk too much plastic bottled booze was asked by that creepy little voice he had already heard too much of in the past half day. He topped off his coffee, poured one for Spencer—into an old superhero mug that had held brushes for three decades—then slid it across the counter. “Thanks for coming by.” And he meant it, which surprised him almost as much as hearing himself say it out loud.

“You scared the shit out of everyone last night. And I mean everyone.” Spencer stopped and his face grew serious, almost grave. “Even Hauser, and he’s a tough man to get to.”

“Has Hauser briefed you on a media plan?”

Spencer nodded. “He’ll be handling all releases. He called all the reporters on your list and three of them were already in the area on another story. You’ve gained a lot of trust from the department so far.”

“You here on any sort of a mission?”

Spencer waved it away. “I haven’t told Hauser I know you. Not yet. I wanted to be allowed to drop by and have a talk before I was prohibited from dropping by and having a talk.”

“I appreciate it. Especially after Scopes.”

Spencer’s tone dropped an octave. “Everybody’s heard about that, Jakey. Scopes is mean.”

“My kind of mean?”

Spencer looked at him and thought about the question. It was purely academic. They had met in second grade, after Spencer had transferred in from another school. Spencer, in an attempt to carry over his title as resident bully, decided he wanted alms from some of the smaller children. At recess, Spencer informed the eight-year-old Jake that he had to pay fifty cents a day for protection. Jake listened calmly as he stapled a project on leaves together, five or six sheets of construction paper adorned with oak, maple, and elm leaves. When Spencer was through talking, Jake looked up at him, smiled, then knocked his mouth into a bloody mess with two rapid slams of the heavy steel stapler. While Spencer was on the floor, teeth and blood leaking from his face, Jake leaned over and asked, “Protection from what?”

They had stayed best friends until Jake walked out nine years later.

“Nobody’s your kind of mean, Jakey.” He took another sip of his coffee. “Can I ask you why you didn’t let me know you were coming to town?”

It was an honest question—one Jake had expected. He thought about lying, about saying that he had been busy, that he had his hands full with his father’s affairs, that he hadn’t planned on staying around for long. But he had tried to give up lying when he had kicked the drugs and he had gotten pretty good at the truth. At least his version of it. “I spent a lot of time trying to forget this place. You remind me of what I had no intention of coming back to.”

The big cop in the civilian clothes took another sip of his coffee and nodded seriously. “Thanks for not bullshitting me.” He put the mug down. “So what are you going to share, Special Agent Jake Cole?”

“You first. How’s your father?”