There had been a number of times when he’d been out in the field, in the middle of an assignment, and things had gone tits-up on him: You thought you knew your target’s patterns and resources, weaknesses and protective covers, but just as you were about to move on him, the landscape changed sure as if someone dropped a bomb in the middle of the town square of your perfect plan. Weapon malfunctioned. A potential witness fucked your timing up. The target stepped out of range.

What you had to do was a fast recalibration of the situation, and Isaac had always excelled at that. Hell, that video game he’d unwittingly trained himself on had made his mind totally open to the lickety-split.

But this shit was out of his expertise. Big-time.

And that was before Jim took out a long dagger . . . that was made of crystal. “You’re going to let me handle this now. Step away from the body, Isaac.”

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 40

Matthias spent way too much time in the stone embrace of that church. And when he finally forced himself to leave, he assumed he’d been there a good hour or so, but the instant he looked at the sun’s position in the sky, he realized he’d wasted all of the morning and most of the afternoon.

Yet he would have stayed longer if he could have.

He was hardly a religious man, but he’d found a shocking and rare peacefulness beneath the stained glass gallery and before the glorious altar. Even now, as his mind told him that it was all bullshit, that the place had been just another building, and that he was so tired you could have put him on a Disney ride and he would have fallen asleep, his heart knew better.

The pain had stopped. Shortly after he’d sat down, the pain in his left arm and chest had disappeared.

“Whatever,” he said out loud as he got in his car. “Whatever, whatever . . .”

Getting back in the game was something he felt compelled to do, and there was a pleasurable, needling sting to it, as if he were picking a scab. On some level, he was captivated by what he’d found in the church, but his job, his deeds, his very way of life was a whirlpool that sucked him in and kept him down and he just didn’t have the energy to fight it.

Still . . . maybe there was a middle way, he thought, when it came to Isaac Rothe. Maybe he could get the guy to keep working only in a different capacity. The soldier had obviously responded well to the threats against Grier Childe—that could be enough to keep him in line.

Or . . . he could let the guy go.

The instant the thought crossed his mind, some inner part of him slammed it down as if it was an utter blasphemy.