Jim blinked and stopped chewing, like he was trying to match up the Leave It to Beaver lines he’d been fed with the Vivid Video routine Vin had gotten.

“She was”—Vin leaned to the side and snapped free two paper towels—“exactly who I wanted her to be.” He handed one to Jim. “She gave me free rein to do whatever I wanted business-wise, didn’t care if I was gone for a week on no notice. She’d come with me when I wanted her to, stayed home when I didn’t. She was like…a reflection of what I wanted.”

Jim wiped his mouth. “Or in my case, what would get to me.”

“Exactly.”

They finished their sandwiches and Vin made two more, and while they ate the second round, they were mostly quiet, as if they were both recalling their time with Devina…and wondering how they’d been played so easily.

Vin eventually broke the silence. “So they say they have me on a surveillance tape from last night. Coming up in the elevator. Security guard tells me he saw my face, but that’s impossible. I wasn’t here. Whoever that was, it wasn’t me.”

“I believe you.”

“You’re going to be the only one.”

The other man paused with the sourdough halfway to his mouth. “I’m not sure how to say this.”

“Well, considering you just told me you fucked my ex-girlfriend, hard to imagine anything’s trickier than that.”

“This is.”

Vin paused in midbite himself, not liking the look on the guy’s face. “What.”

Jim took his own damned time about it, even finishing his frickin’ lunch. Finally, he laughed short and tight. “I don’t even know how to talk about this.”

“Hello? The aforementioned ex-girlfriend sex thing? Come on, grow a set.”

“Fine. Fuck it. Your ex doesn’t cast a shadow.”

Now it was Vin’s turn to laugh. “Is that some kind of military lingo?”

“You want to know why I believe that wasn’t you in the elevator last night? It’s because you called it. She’s a reflection, a mirage…she doesn’t exist and she’s totally dangerous, and yeah, I know this doesn’t make sense, but it’s reality.”

Vin slowly lowered what was left of his roast beef. The guy was serious. Dead serious.

Was it possible, Vin wondered, that he could talk for once about the other side of his life? That part that involved things that couldn’t be touched or seen, but that had shaped him sure as his parents’ DNA had?

“You said…you’d come to save my soul,” Vin murmured.

Jim braced his hands on the granite counter and leaned in. Under the short sleeves of his plain white T-shirt, his arm muscles thickened under the weight. “And I mean it. I have a happy new job of pulling people back from the brink.”

“Of what?”