Jim felt a wave of anger crest—but then as he thought about it all, the emotion ebbed into something else. Sadness, maybe.

“I should have let you die in that desert.”

“Which is what I asked you to do.” Matthias grabbed onto his own left arm again and dug in, like he’d just been sucker punched in the pit. “You should have followed the orders I gave to leave me there.”

So hollow, Jim thought. The words were so hollow and dead. As if they were about someone else entirely.

“Compelled,” indeed. The guy had wanted to get out so much he’d been willing to kill himself to do it. But Devina had pulled him back in; Jim was sure of it. That demon and her thousand faces and her countless lies were at work here. Had to be. And hadn’t her manipulations set the scene perfectly for the battle over Isaac: that solider had done evil, but was trying to start over, and this was his crossroads, this tug-of-war between Jim and Matthias over his what-next.

Jim shook his head. “I’m not going to let you take Isaac Rothe’s life. I can’t. You say you work with a purpose—so do I. You kill that man and humanity’s lost more than an innocent.”

“Oh, come on. He is not innocent. His hands drip with blood just like yours and mine. I don’t know what’s happened to you, but don’t romanticize the past. You know exactly what he’s guilty of.”

Pictures of dead men flashed in front of Jim’s eyes: stab wounds, gunshots, leaky faces and crumpled bodies. And those were just the messy jobs. The stiffs who’d been asphyxiated or gassed or poisoned had just been gray and gone.

“Isaac wants out. He wants to stop. His soul is desperate for a different way and I’m going to get him there.”

Matthias winced and went back to rubbing his left arm. “Want in one hand, shit in the other—see what you get the most of.”

“I’ll kill you,” Jim said simply. “If it comes down to it—I’ll kill you.”

“Well, what do you know . . . there’s a news flash. To quote yourself, do it now.”

Jim slowly shook his head again. “Unlike you, I don’t pull the trigger unless I have to.”

“Sometimes getting a jump on the showdown is the smartest move, Jimmy.”

The old name momentarily flipped him back into the past, back to basic training, back to sharing a bunk with Matthias. The guy had been cold and calculating then . . . but not through and through. He’d been as loyal as someone could be to Jim, given their situation. Over the years, however, any trace of that limited slice of humanity had been lost—until the man’s body was now as mauled and decrepit as his soul.