Jim grinned like a crazy motherfucker. “I’m your worst nightmare. Someone you can’t touch and you can’t control and you can’t kill.”

Matthias slowly shook his head back and forth. “This isn’t right.”

“Isaac Rothe. You’re going to let him go.”

“This doesn’t . . .” Matthias used Jim’s jacket as a counterbalance while he shifted to the side and looked at the wall that had been cosmetically wounded. “It isn’t right.”

Jim gripped that fist and squeezed hard, feeling the bones compress. “Do you remember what you always tell people?”

Matthias’s eye flipped back to Jim’s face. “What. Are. You.”

Jim jerked the two of them together so their noses were an inch apart. “You always tell people there’s no one you can’t take, nowhere you can’t find them, nothing you won’t do to them. Well, that would be a right-back-at-you. Let Isaac go and I won’t make your life a living hell.”

Matthias stared hard into his eyes, probing, seeking information. God, this was a head trip in a good way. For once, the man who had all the answers was off his game and floundering.

Christ, if Jim was still alive, he’d take a picture of that puss and make a calendar of the damn thing.

Matthias rubbed the eye that was visible, like he was hoping what vision he had left would clear and he’d find himself alone—or at least the only person standing in the embalming room.

“What are you?” he whispered.

“I’m an angel sent from Heaven, buddy.” Jim laughed low and hard. “Or maybe I’m the conscience you were born without. Or maybe I’m a hallucination from all the prescription meds you need to control your pain. Or maybe this is just a dream. But whatever the case, there is only one truth you need to know—I’m not letting you take Isaac. That’s not going to happen.”

The two held eyes and stayed that way as Matthias’s brain clearly churned.

After a long moment, the man apparently decided to go with what was in front of him. After all, what was it that Sherlock Holmes had said? When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Therefore, he clearly concluded that Jim was some flavor of alive: “Why is Isaac Rothe so important to you?”

Jim released the grip on his old boss. “Because he is me.”

“Just how many more of ‘you’ are out there? We’ve got this thing on the slab—”

“Isaac wants out. And you’re going to let him go.”