“You’re going to make this hard on yourself, aren’t you, Zack? Hey, I’m good with hard. Hard is what I know.” A long, menacing pause. “You got a lot of friends, don’t you, Zack? Wow, look at ’em all. Looks like your life is a lot of fun. Now who’s this one here? She’s particularly cute. Emily. Such lovey-dovey texts between you two. Maybe you’ll be sending her one more lovey-dovey text right now. Hey Em, let’s get together. Beautiful day. See you in a few minutes.”

“Leave her alone! She’s not involved!” It comes out of him, unbidden, instinctively protective. He immediately regrets it.

“They’re all involved, Zack. They’re all on your phone. They’re all fair game.”

“So what are you gonna do, shoot them all? Is that the best way to get your phone back? Shoot everyone?”

The irritation bubbles over. “How ’bout you shut the fuck up and listen to my instructions, you nosy smart aleck, and maybe no one gets shot. Just bring me back my phone.”

“And what happens to me?”

A pause. As if the businessman is thinking it through, to make it sound reasonable, reassuring, to phrase it exactly right. “Look, you seem like a smart enough kid. Smart enough to remember the code you saw, when you saw that we swapped phones. So maybe you’re smart enough to not say anything to anyone. Smart enough to forget all this. Smart enough to go on with your happy life with Emily. Are you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m smart enough for that.”

But, Joey, are you smart enough to believe me?

“There’s a diner,” Joey instructs him. “Aldo’s. Back table. Fifteen minutes.”

Some haunt of Joey’s? Enemy turf? “Look, how ’bout just a street corner somewhere?”

An explosion of anger. “This ain’t a fuckin’ negotiation! Aldo’s, fifteen minutes. Aldo’s in fifteen, or Emily and I go on a little date.”

A first date. A last date.

It hangs unsaid between them.

Zack swallows. “Okay. Aldo’s.”

If Zack goes to Aldo’s, he doesn’t know exactly what will happen to him. But he has a pretty good idea.

Aldo’s is suicide.

And not going may buy him a little time.

When Zack doesn’t show up at Aldo’s, it’s going to make the guy even madder, Zack knows. But as long as Zack still has the phone, there’s still a reason for him to be alive, because the guy needs Zack in order to get his phone back. It’s a bleak logic—and the only logic he’s got to work with. Until he can somehow manipulate that logic. Rework it. Make it change somehow.