“It was . . . shockingly uncomplicated for me.” He looked at his hands. “It was like something came over me and put a lockdown on my emotions. Afterward? I just went out to eat. I had a steak with pepper—ate all of it. Dinner was . . . great. And it was while I was having that meal that I realized they’d chosen wisely. Picked the right guy. That was when I threw up. I went out the back of the restaurant, into an alley just like the one I’d murdered that man in an hour before. You see, I hadn’t really believed I was a killer until it didn’t bother me.”

“Except it did.”

“Yeah. Fuck—I mean, hell, yeah, it did.” Although only that once. After that, he was good to go. Stone-cold. Ate like a king. Slept like a baby.

Grier cleared her throat. “How did they recruit you?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Give it a shot.”

“sKillerz.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a video game where you assassinate people. About seven or eight years ago, the first online gaming communities were getting big and integrated play had really caught on. sKillerz was created by some sick bastard—no one’s ever met the guy, apparently—but he’s a genius at graphics and realism. As for me? I had a head for computers and I liked”—to kill people—“I liked playing the game. Pretty soon there were hundreds of people in this virtual world—with all these weapons and identities in all these cities and countries. I was at the top of all of them. I had this, like . . . knack for knowing how to get to people and what to use and where to put the bodies. It was just a game, though. Something I did when I wasn’t working on the farm. Then, about . . . about two years into it . . . I started to feel as though I was being watched. That went on for, like, a week, until one night this guy named Jeremiah showed up at the farm. I was working the back rails, mending fences, and he drove up in an unmarked.”

“And what happened?” she asked when he paused.

“I’ve never told anyone this before.”

“Don’t stop.” She came over and sat beside him. “It helps me. Well . . . it’s disturbing, too. But . . . please?”

Right, okay. With her looking up at him with those big, beautiful eyes, he was prepared to give her anything: words, stories . . . the beating heart out of his chest.

Isaac rubbed his face and wondered when he’d become a sap—oh, wait, he knew that one: the moment he’d been escorted into that little room back at the jail and she’d been sitting there all prim, and proper, and smart as hell.

Sap.

Wuss.

Nancy.

“Isaac?”

“Yeah?” Well, what do you know—he could still answer to his own name and not just a bunch of ball-less nouns.