When he woke up, he stumbled into the bathroom and stood naked for half an hour under the hottest spray he could endure. His skin screamed and he screamed. But the spray was loud and the walls were sturdy and nobody reported it to the front desk.

Later, he ordered room service, and while he waited he looked out at the skyline of Montreal. His mind was a furnace.

When the porter knocked, he opened the door and stood looking at the floor while the young man set up a table and laid out the meal. Hopkins gave him some cash and locked the door again when he was gone.

The food was cold before Hopkins finally sat down to eat. He removed the metal cover to see how the steak had been cooked.

There was no steak. The plate was clean. But it was not empty.

Instead there was a folded piece of paper.

Hopkins rushed to the door and checked through the peephole, but the hall was empty. He parted the curtains, but he was on the ninth floor and there was no one down on the street that looked like police or military. No SWAT.

Cautiously he crept toward the table and the note.

He was sweating, heart hammering as he picked it up.

The sheet was a single piece of legal-size computer paper folded into a small square. Hopkins carefully unfolded it. Most of the sheet was given over to a printed list of charity organizations around the world, the majority of which were devoted to poverty, clean water, and other humanitarian causes in third-world countries. None of them were high profile. Nothing that would get headlines.

Below that was a printed list of forty-seven numbered accounts and the balances of each. He knew those account numbers by heart. The amounts in each were untouched.

And below that, written in a neat hand was a short note.

The road to redemption is paved with rocks.

There are no third chances.

Do it right.

Hopkins read the note over and over again. There were only two men powerful enough to have gotten this information and arranged its delivery. He had abandoned one, and he was sure the other wanted him dead.

And yet.

The note was unsigned.

But it was not Hugo Vox’s handwriting.

The young man clutched the note to his chest. The first sob nearly broke the world. The tears burned like acid. He slid out of his seat onto the carpeted floor.

And, in the silence of his cheap hotel room, Toys wept all through the night.

(5)