Eli squinted in the middle distance, then shook his head slightly again. A small, fragile gesture, all the more painful because small and fragile just didn’t suit Eli’s personality at all.

“Right.” Cooper nodded. He wondered if he should reach out and touch him in comfort, but quickly dismissed it. Cooper sure as hell wouldn’t want to be touched right now, and he had a sense Eli was more like him in certain ways than not. “Do you want a drink?” he asked, instead.

Eli’s expression turned surprised and briefly unguarded. “I could use a tipple.”

Cooper leaned out of bed, grateful he’d left the wine bottle here to deal with in the morning. He only had the one glass, but poured generously and offered it to Eli, who held it in both hands and swirled it gently, less like a sommelier and more like he was grateful to have something to do with his hands. Something to focus on.

“I never could decide if I should go looking for him or not,” Eli said abruptly. “People like to throw around words like closure and forgiveness, but I’ve long suspected that’s because they don’t want to admit how often healing is cruelly arbitrary. Some things just hurt until they don’t anymore and no one can tell you why, so they pretend you must have gotten closure.” He sighed. “Regardless, the decision was taken out of my hands. A month ago, I got a...letter. He found me.”

“James is blackmailing you?” Cooper asked, not sure if he was more astonished or repelled. Hadn’t the man done enough harm?

Eli shrugged, looking exhausted. “He has a...recording. Incontrovertible proof of what I can do and what I did do. He wants payment or he’ll send it to those big packs we stole from.”

“But wouldn’t they come after him as well?”

“What’s more valuable, revenge for money lost or a brand-new key to the bank? Anonymity is the only thing protecting me right now.”

Cooper nodded.

“I tracked him down here to DC. He works as a zookeeper. Rest assured the symbolic resonance isn’t lost on me.” Eli’s mouth twisted into the semblance of a smile and he stared at the swirling wine. “I’d always felt he was out there still. But there’s a difference between knowing someone’s alive and seeing them living. Breathing air, drinking coffee, existing. Like he still has that right.”

“What did you do?”

“I followed him,” Eli admitted. “I started following him a lot.”

“To kill him?” Cooper asked.

Eli held eye contact. “Would you? If you were me?”

Cooper tried to imagine being in Eli’s shoes. Realized he couldn’t even begin to.