Back then, he’d been able to unplug from his life legitimately. Sell his condo. Quit his job. Move. Change his name the proper way and do it far away from anyone who might care. And still, it was nerve-racking.

John Cooper had thoroughly unanchored from Jonathan Spera, which should have made John Cooper more likely to get hit by a bus than caught.

The only loose end had been Roy.

Roy Dorring was the only one who knew John Cooper used to be Jonathan Spera. Roy was the only one who’d known Jonathan Spera was connected to the painting.

But he could handle Roy. Roy was an idiot. Roy would always be an idiot. John was pretty sure that it would take him all of six minutes to convince Roy that the earth was actually flat and spinning through the universe like a fucking Frisbee.

Four years ago, John had told him a different, more useful lie about how the world worked. John told Roy that he hadn’t been able to retrieve the painting. He told him they were safe because the buyer’s guy, the one Roy didn’t get a chance to shoot, took it.

If they kept their heads—meaning if Roy did what John told him to do—they could make it. Roy had believed him, and John had spent the last four years trying to scrape him off his shoe.

Roy’s blundering had put John’s life on hold. But now the video.

It might be better if they just had it out. Waiting and wondering what Roy was thinking, however pale and pointless his thinking ever was, wasn’t going to do anything good for John’s mood.

Roy needed to get it out of his head, right fucking now, that he was getting anything out of this catastrophe. John felt it might, for once, come down to physically knocking the idea out of Roy. With a wrench on his skull, if need be.

It had been less than twenty-four hours since any possibility of anyone connecting John Cooper to the painting, and already he was exhausted by the whole thing.

You can pay for a hotel room in cash, but they’ll notice you. It wouldn’t do to be remembered when the type of people looking for you can keep mayhem off the news. He didn’t have time to outrun his new name. If he had to run, this time it would be cash running, which was the hardest kind.

The painting had to come down out of sight. If there was going to be any margin to find, any hope to try to sell it or disappear with it, it couldn’t stay on the wall. He had to be cool about it. If he could manage to walk away instead of run, he might be able to make this work again.