I flipped to the cover. The photo had been taken seventeen years ago, which meant he’d been thirteen at the time of the photograph, if the date on his driver’s license was to be believed. Obviously, it wasn’t. No thirteen-year old boy in the world looked that mature.

Christian handed me another magazine, this one featuring a gathering of wealthy socialites at a gala at a British museum. Again, Barrons was unmistakable in it, even half turned as he was from the camera. Same hair and faultlessly tailored clothing, same expression on the haughty old-world face: a mixture of boredom and predatory amusement.

I flipped to the cover. This photo had been taken forty-one years ago. I flipped back to the photo and studied it carefully, looking for anomalies. There were none. It was either Barrons, or he had a grandfather who’d been his identical twin, and if this was Barrons in the photo, he was currently seventy-one years old.

Next, Christian passed me a photocopy of a newspaper article with a faded black-and-white photo of a group of uniformed men. Barrons was the only one not wearing a uniform. As was the case in the last two photos, he was angled slightly away, as if trying to slip off before the shot could be snapped. And, as was the case in the last two photos, he didn’t look a day older or younger than he did today.

“Do you know who that is?” Christian pointed to the big, rawboned, thirtyish man in the center of the photograph.

I shook my head.

“Michael Collins. He was a famous Irish revolutionary leader.”

“So?”

“He was killed in 1922. This picture was taken two months before he died.”

I did some rapid math. That would mean Barrons wasn’t seventy-one, he was an extremely well preserved one hundred and fifteen. “Maybe he had a relative,” I offered, “with a strong genetic resemblance.”

“You don’t believe that,” he said flatly. “Why do people do that? Say things out loud they don’t even remotely believe?”

He was right. I didn’t believe it. The pictures were too identical. I’d spent enough time with Jericho Barrons that I knew the way his limbs moved, the way he stood, the expressions he wore. It was him, in all those pictures. Inside, a part of me went very still.

Barrons was old. Impossibly old. Being kept alive by Gripper possession? Was that possible? “Are there more of these?” I wondered how far back Christian’s uncles had traced him. I wanted to take these photographs with me, slap them against Barrons’ chest and demand answers, even though I knew I’d never get any.

He glanced at his watch. “Yes, but I have to go.”

“Let me hold on to these a few days.”

“No way. My uncles would kill me if Barrons got his hands on them.”