Matthias had turned the video off and gone to bed. And the next morning he’d woken up and decided enough was enough. Time to leave the party he had started all those years ago—let the guests take over his house and burn it down, fine. But he was done.

Straw. Camel’s back.

Focusing on his hands on the car wheel, he realized someone else had been driving him, steering him, dictating his exit ramps and his directional signals. How had it happened?

And why the fuck did Jim Heron know?

As his mind went laundry machine on him and started another spin cycle on the past, he decided all that mental wash and rinse wasn’t material. Not tonight. Not on this road. What mattered was not how he’d gotten behind this wheel and found himself on the way to Boston. What mattered was what he did when he got there.

Crossroads was right. He felt it in his bones—the same way he had when he’d prepared that bomb years ago.

The question was, What now? Believe what Jim Heron had said. Or follow through on the anger impulse that was driving him east.

Which destination did he go to.

As he ruminated, it sure as fuck felt like he was choosing between Heaven and Hell.

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 46

As Adrian watched over a gray clapboard gentleman’s estate from a stand of oaks, he was beginning to feel like a fucking tree himself. Except for that skirmish back in town the night before, he’d spent waaaaaay too much time waiting in the wings over the last two days.

He’d never been a big bencher to begin with, but on a night like tonight, when the action was in town and he and Eddie were stuck out in the sticks babysitting for a couple of grown-ups, he got really damn twitchy. Especially given that the pair he and his buddy were in charge of were locked into a house that made Fort Knox look like a Porta-Potti in the sturdiness department.

Fucking hell. He couldn’t believe they had been going after the wrong soul.

All their conclusions had seemed sound, but in fact, the shit was like an algebra equation that had gone awry: looked great on paper, but the answer was incorrect.

And what a squeaker this one had been. It gave him a case of the cold sweats to think they had been so close but so far away at the end of a match.