The original plan for the bomb must have been to blow up that Toyota, with Litvinov in it. Maybe Karloff’s assignment for Joey, dumb Joey. Untrustworthy, inept Joey. Because how could you screw that up? Enter the number that you see on the license plate into your phone, Joey, and kaboom. Simple. Foolproof.

But Karloff must have decided, somewhere along the way, he wanted more. More elaborate. More interesting. More lives. More damage. So a bigger plan was hatched. A plan to get inside Litvinov’s courtroom. A plan that involved a victim’s family, and a lawsuit, and a gullible lawyer, and a jailhouse informant, and a lot of patience. A plan that in the end was too ambitious.

If he’d kept to his low profile, his invisibility, Karloff could have gone on forever—stealthy, effective, terrifying, unknown. But he hungered for a larger “justice.”

A larger justice that eluded him.

777548. At last Zack knows what it signifies. Karloff’s hubris. His arrogance.

But more than that, his darkness.

Why didn’t he simply kill Zack and Emily? “You fooled me, and I fooled you,” he had said. Implying that we’re even. And what good is getting even, what good is revenge, if no one’s there to see it?

The courtroom revenge drama he’d planned had been ruined. So did all that pent-up drama need to go elsewhere?

And a drama needs an audience. Even a small audience. And, well, a live audience. Karloff’s hubris. His arrogance. Maybe, strangely, it had saved them.

“I could have texted you but I wanted to see your face,” says Steve.

“Well, you can see I’m pretty impressed.”

“I solved it,” says Steve. Leaning back from the laptop. Lifting his coffee cup to Zack in the gesture of a toast.

And Zack is thinking about that phrase: solved it. Because he suspects that Steve is fully aware that he’s here solving something else too. Restoring their friendship. Putting the pain behind them.

“Yeah,” agrees Zack, reading between the lines, dropping his wariness, smiling at his old friend at last, “looks like you solved it.”

SIX MORE MONTHS LATER

88.

88.

Zack sits waiting for Joey Richter.

Visiting hours are Fridays, 2:00 to 4:00.

Joey shuffles out in his loose prison grays, smiling. Smiling to see Zack.

“Hey,” says Joey brightly.

“Hey,” says Zack.

He watches Joey settle into the folding chair on the other side of the clear plastic divider.

“I’ve never been inside a prison,” says Zack.

Joey looks at him. “I’ve never really been anywhere else.”

Zack notices immediately. Joey seems calm. Untroubled. His drawn, haggard appearance, his air of desperation as he begged for Zack’s help, the mixed terror and fury of a cornered animal—all seemingly gone.