“I tried to arrest him,” said Solomon, speaking to her now, about Blackwood. “A few times. Early on. Bust his ass. When I saw what he was doing.” Solomon pointed at Blackwood again, so that Odessa would have no question to whom he was referring. “He’s an assassin. It’s evil spirits he’s after. But he will go through anyone and anything to do it. He has committed murder. I’ve seen it. To protect others, he says. To save the world. But at the cost of a human life.”

Blackwood listened without reaction.

Solomon found the angry strength to raise his head off the pillows, confronting Blackwood. “You’re running from something you can’t escape. And chasing something you can’t catch.”

The effort was too much for him, and Solomon sank back deeper into the pillows and mattress than before. He looked at the window beyond Blackwood and Odessa.

“All I wanted was to be a cop,” he said. “Since I was a kid. They said, ‘Black kid, you ain’t never gonna be no cop.’ I went to Morehouse College, and I told people, ‘I want to be a detective,’ and they said, ‘Why you want to waste yourself on that?’ And then the FBI announced they were taking black agents into the academy. I said, ‘I want to be an agent of the FBI.’ And I was. One of the first.”

He licked his lips, his tongue pasty and parched.

“I had a silver badge, all right, but I still had a brown face. I was still out on the fringes. An outsider. They didn’t know what to do with me. And he used that. He took advantage of that, exploited that. Made some sort of arrangement with the Bureau. Made me his ‘boy.’”

Odessa stood frozen. Solomon’s emotions were raw. She felt that most of this was due to his declining health, the stroke that affected his brain. He was so changed from when she’d first encountered him just a few days before.

Blackwood said, “You asked me to show you what was out there. You had a great curiosity for things that challenged your faith—”

“Maybe,” said Solomon, his jaw trembling. “Maybe at first. But all I ever wanted…was to be a cop.”

Odessa said, “You were a cop, Solomon.”

Solomon looked at her. “And now you. There’s a reason why he’s with you. No accidents, right, Blackwood? No coincidences. Everything is connected.”

In an attempt to settle him down, Odessa said, “You wouldn’t have sent me to him if you didn’t think he could help me.”

That made Solomon blink a few times. “I didn’t have a choice. You were assigned to me, Odessa Hardwicke. That’s no accident. That’s no coincidence.”