Surprised and a tad uneasy, Cooper glanced at Park, who looked utterly stone-faced. “What makes you think that?”

Neil shrugged and shifted in his seat, eyes flicking to the side as a group of what looked like work colleagues, some of them in business attire, some in Halloween costumes, walked into the bar, bringing a draft of cool October air with them. “Guess I can’t imagine how else anyone got the drop on him. Man had a sixth sense for it. I couldn’t tail him a block without turning the corner to find him staring at me, grinning. Hell, I had to wait ’til he was dead to get a look around his room.”

Neil laughed without humor, finished his cider and put it back on the table with a loud clink. “Some eulogy, eh? Second round?” he asked, eyeing their drinks and then Park in a clear implication of who he wanted fetching them.

Park turned to Cooper. “Thirsty?” he asked.

Cooper wasn’t. Desperately didn’t want to sit here alone at the table with Neil and do anything remotely like reminiscing, as was clearly his intention. But he also thought agreeing to another round might work out some more details of the case. Because if he knew Neil, what they’d gotten was only a carefully curated ten percent of the whole story.

“Sure. Thanks,” Cooper said. He carefully touched Park’s foot with his own under the table and caught his responding ghost of a smile.

“Be right back.”

Cooper watched him walk to the bar, then turned to find Neil studying Park as well.

“You know, I heard you’d been scooped up by some elite, shadowy agency. That’s your partner?”

“Yes,” Cooper said, painfully aware that Park was still close enough to hear them if he chose to.

“Let me guess, he’s the strong and silent type.”

“You don’t know his type,” Cooper said quietly.

Neil looked at Cooper then, clearly performing surprise at his defensive tone. “Fair enough,” he said, raising his hands in acquiescence, supposedly unwilling to fight. Why did people always do that to him? Like they were warding off evil.

Cooper shook his head, irritated that he was already irritated. “The FBI wouldn’t send you undercover for some Hollywood embezzlement.”

“My bright, clever boy.” Neil smiled, and Cooper felt a flush of heat through his body that had nothing to do with pleasure.

He leaned forward. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

Neil matched his pose, bringing their faces closer together. “What’s the matter? Don’t like it when I stroke your ego anymore?”

“Nah. You never could quite get the rhythm right.”

A flicker of something dark passed over Neil’s face. It was the first organic, familiar expression yet, and Cooper couldn’t stop the shiver of recognition as if his body had finally caught on to who it was sitting across from and wanted to run away screaming.