“He would have been right, though.”

“No, he would have been evil. That’s what he was. Think about it. Although you tried to get out of XOps, he pulled you back in.”

“FYI, you’re talking to a sociopath. So I’m in my element.”

“Uh-huh. Right. Sociopaths who are about la vida loca don’t plant bombs in the sand and step on them. Admit it, you wanted out back then in the desert—and you want out now. Admit it.”

For a while, there was nothing more than that whirring in the background. And then Matthias dropped another bomb, so to speak.

“It was Childe’s son.”

Jim frowned and recoiled a little. “Excuse me?”

“Childe’s son . . . was what changed everything. I watch the tape of it . . . of Childe weeping while his son died in front of him. My father would never have done that if I’d been on that couch. More likely he’d have tapped my vein with the needle. I couldn’t get that . . . out of my mind. The way that poor bastard looked and what he’d said . . . he’d loved that kid like a father should.”

Yeah, whoa . . . on some level it was hard to imagine Matthias had had a parent. Spawned was more like it.

Jim shook his head, feeling bad for the guy for the first time since they’d met all those years ago. “I’m telling you, let Isaac go. Forget the vengeance. Forget XOps. Forget the past. I’ll help you disappear and stay safe. Leave it all behind . . . and trust me.”

Long pause. Loooooong pause where there was nothing but that white noise of a car in motion.

“You’re at a crossroads, Matthias. What you do about Isaac tonight can save you . . . and save him. You have more power than you know. Work with us. Come here and sit down and talk with us.”

Probably best to keep the whole slitting him wide with a crystal knife and pulling Devina’s pestilence out by the throat thing on the QT for the time being.

Matthias let out a shuddering exhale. “Never pictured you for the ‘Kumbaya’ type.”

“People change, Matthias,” Jim said roughly. “People can change. You can change.”

Standing across the kitchen, Isaac wasn’t sure he’d heard right: Matthias had set the bomb that had exploded all over him?

God, he remembered driving that Land Rover through the dunes, back to camp. As soon as Matthias had been unloaded from it, the boys with the bags of blood and the sharpies and the latex gloves had swarmed over him and that was pretty much all Isaac had known.