As they headed for the downtown area and got caught in a net of traffic, he stared into the other cars and saw people drinking coffee, talking to passengers, stopping at red lights, going on green. Totally foreign to him, he thought. The kind of life where you nine-to-five’d your way into a grave at the age of seventy-two was not how he’d lived.

So what was, he asked his dumb-ass gray matter. What the fuck was?

All he got back was a headache while he strained for an answer.

As the Caldwell Courier Journal facility came into view, he took out one of the ten twenties in the wallet. “Keep the change.”

The cabdriver seemed more than happy to get rid of him.

Taking up res on the periphery of the front doors, Matthias loitered in the sunshine, being careful not to meet any stares—and there were a lot of them: For some reason, he tended to attract attention, usually from women—then again, the Florence Nightingale stuff was something the fairer sex was known for, and he did have scars on his face.

Ooooooh, romantic.

Eventually, he took cover across the street at the bus stop, parking it on the hard plastic bench and breathing in the secondhand smoke from people impatient for their public trans to arrive. The waiting didn’t bother him. It was as if he were used to lurking, and to pass the time he played a game, memorizing the faces of the people who came and went out of the CCJ offices.

He was extremely good at it. One look was all it took, and he had the person in his database.

At least his short-term memory was working—

The double doors pushed wide, and there she was.

Matthias sat up straighter as the sunlight hit her hair and all kinds of copper showed. Mels Carmichael, associate reporter, was with a heavyset guy who had to hitch his khakis up higher around his hips before they hit the steps. The two appeared to be arguing back and forth about something in the way friends did, and when Mels smiled, it appeared as if she had won whatever debate—

Like she knew he was watching, she glanced across the street, and stopped dead. Touching her buddy on the sleeve, she said something, and then parted ways with the man, cutting through the traffic, coming over.

Matthias plugged his cane into the pavement, and tugged his rags into place as he stood. He had no idea why he wanted to look better for her, but he did—then again, hard to look worse. His clothes weren’t his, his cologne was Eau d’Hospital Soap, and he’d washed his hair with the antibacterial stuff because that was all he’d had.

Naturally, his bad eye, that ugly, ruined thing, was what she looked at first. How could she not?

“Hi,” she said.