And the truth was, this trip was beneath him, the kind of thing he’d ordinarily have assigned to his right-hand man—and yet he had to do this himself.

It felt like a pilgrimage.

Although if that was what he was on, things had better get inspiring pretty frickin’ quick. The road he was currently following was just a generic stretch of boutique shops and Walgreens and gas stations that could have been any city, anywhere. Traffic was light and of the pass-through variety; everything was shut up for the night, so you were here only if you were going somewhere else.

For most of the people, that was. Unlike the rest of them, his destination was . . . right here as a matter of fact.

Easing off on the accelerator, he pulled over to the side and parked parallel to the curb. Across a shallow lawn, the McCready Funeral Home was dark inside, but there were exterior lights on all over the place.

Not a problem.

Matthias placed a call and was routed around from person to person, skipping like a stone through the phones of others until he found the decision maker who could get him what he wanted.

And then he sat and waited.

He hated the silence and the darkness in the car—but not because he was worried that there was someone in his backseat or that somebody was about to go click-click, bang-bang from the shadows outside. He liked to keep moving. As long as he was in motion, he could outrun the twitchies that inevitably T-boned his adrenal glands when he was at rest.

Stillness was a killer.

And it turned the Crown Victoria into a coffin—

His phone rang and he knew who it was before he checked. And no, it wasn’t going to be the people he’d just spoken with. He’d finished his business with them.

Matthias answered on the third ring, just before voice mail kicked in. “Alistair Childe. What a surprise.”

The shocked silence was so satisfying. “How did you know it was me?”

“You don’t honestly think I would let just anyone get through to this phone.” As Matthias stared through the windshield at the funeral home, he found it ironic that the pair of them were talking in front of the thing—given that he’d put the man’s son in one. “Everything’s on my terms. Everything.”

“So you know why I’ve spent all day trying to find you.”

Yes, he did. And he’d deliberately made himself hard to reach for the guy: He firmly believed that people were like pieces of meat; the longer they stewed, the softer they became.

The tastier, too.