Jim looked at what was in Eddie’s arms and then down at himself. His body seemed the same, big and muscular and solid. Eyes, nose and ears seemed to function just fine.

How the hell was this going to work?

“There’ll be a better time and place to explain shit,” Eddie said, holding out the clothes.

“No doubt.” Jim took the jeans and the AC/DC T-shirt and the leather jacket. The boots were shitkickers. Socks were thick and white. And everything fit.

As he dressed, he kept glancing back at Adrian every now and again.

“Is he going to be all right?” Jim asked quietly.

“In a couple of days.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Yup. Don’t ask him about it.”

“Roger that.” After he did up the buckles on the boots, Jim pulled the jacket on over his shoulders. “Listen, how are we going to explain that I’m back from the dead? I mean, there’s going to be a body missing—”

“No, there won’t.” Eddie pointed to the table Jim had been on and…holy shit. It was his body. Lying there like a slab of beef, with gray skin and a bullet hole right in the center of the chest.

“Your probationary period is over,” Eddie said as he tugged the sheet in place over the face. “There’s no going back now.”

Jim stared down at the peaks and valleys that contoured the shroud and decided he was really glad his mother wasn’t alive to “mourn” him. Made shit much easier.

And now Matthias was off his back.

This made him smile briefly. “There are advantages to being dead and gone, aren’t there.”

“Sometimes, sometimes not. It just is what it is. Come on, let’s blow this place.”

Still staring down at his corpse, he said, “I’m going to go up to Boston for a little while. Not sure how long. The boys upstairs were cool with it.”

“And we’re going with you. Teams stick together.”

“Even if it’s not your fight?”

“Yup.”

The idea of having his own backup was attractive. Three could definitely cover more ground than one, and God only knew how long it was going to take to find Matthias’s target.

“Okay, cool.”

At that moment, two white coats came in, both with coffee mugs in their hands and mouths that were flapping. Jim got ready to bolt behind something, anything—and then realized that whereas he could see the pair, and smell what they were drinking, and hear their Crocs across the tile floor, they were utterly unaware that there were three other people in the room with them.

Or not people, he supposed.

“You want to do the paperwork on that one?” the guy on the right said, nodding to Jim’s body.

“Yup. And I have a name to call if no one claims him. It’s…Vincent diPietro.”

“Hey, he built my house.”