It was less risky overall, too, in terms of leaving behind evidence. Fire destroyed nearly everything.

Sebastian had lost count of the number of enemies they had killed and reduced to ash in the crematorium—people who had, effectively, vanished from the planet without a trace. And now he had to do the same with Frank.

The mortuary was no longer open to the public, and it didn’t advertise its services. Frank had been the only one who had keys to the place. Now Sebastian had those keys in his possession. He entered through the door in the private garage that had once housed a hearse.

The crematorium area would have looked like an old high school locker room from the turn of the twentieth century—gray industrial tiled floor and walls, the white ceiling yellowed from time and covered in decades of soot and grime—if it weren’t for the three ovens set up in the center of the room and, to the far right, a wall-sized refrigeration unit that could store up to nine corpses.

There was only one body in there now. Frank’s corpse had been resting in it for the past three days, and Sebastian had finally screwed up the necessary courage to take the next and final step.

After Sebastian fired up an oven, he sat on the floor, the machine rumbling against his back, coming to life. In all their years together, he had never imagined either himself or Frank going out this way. He didn’t know how they would die, but it wouldn’t have been like this. Not like this.

This was the second time death had stolen an important person from his life, and what struck Sebastian was how quiet his mind still was. Like the smooth surface of a pond. In prison, when he’d been told his mother had died, he had experienced a piercing loss, but he didn’t cry—couldn’t, even if he wanted to, because showing any weakness in that hellhole would single you out, make you a target. He bottled it up, which turned out to be an easy thing to do since his grief had quickly been replaced by rage at the injustice of being denied his God-given right to attend his mother’s funeral. He tucked away the rage, too, focused his time and energy on staying vigilant, on finding a way to get out of here and then properly deal with his enemies.

With Frank’s death, the only thing he felt was alone. Marooned. Alien. Sebastian also had the additional burden of dealing with the practical matters of the death of a man who, arguably, was as close to him as a brother. He had already told the people at the real estate office that Frank had decided to take a vacation, but that would work for only so long. At some point he’d have to come up with a legitimate reason why Frank hadn’t returned. Thank God Frank didn’t have a family or any close friends who would be coming around, asking questions.