Barely visible in the dimness at the back of the room was the outline of a face.

A man sitting on the upholstered settee, swallowed by the shadows.

René forced a smile. “Evan,” he said, loud enough for the surveillance equipment to pick up. “I knew you’d find me.”

René let his eyes tick over to that connecting door across the tile, checking to see if any movement interrupted the seam of light across the bottom. He pictured Dex readying the halogenated ether. The Greek henchmen moving on Despi. The door opening and Dex filling the frame. Given that Dex was down to one hand, it would take him so much longer to do to Evan what needed to be done.

The outline of the face stared back at him, a featureless mask. René stayed upright in his chair, staring at the reflection in the mirror.

“The thing is,” René said, listening for the hiss to come through the vents, “this situation is more complicated than you’ve accounted for.”

Something crashed into the mirror, leaving a red streak, and landed with a slap on the counter. Pill bottles skittered across the surface, bouncing on the floor.

René shrieked.

He stared down at the enormous hand resting on top of the jumble of knocked-over beauty products.

Tattooed across it, an eerie, too-wide smile.

His rolling eyes found the connecting door. For a moment he felt an irrational stab of hope—there were Dex’s size-eighteen boots shadowing the gap beneath. Then the darkness spread and spread, seeping beneath the door, creeping across the tile.

He felt his insides wither, his heart drop down the bottomless pit of his stomach.

Still, it seemed, the Nowhere Man had not moved.

René’s throat seized up, too dry to speak. He croaked out the words. “You can have your money back.”

“I don’t want my money back,” the voice said.

“What do you want?”

“Someone once told me, if you control time, you control everything.”

The dark form rose and approached.

Too terrified to turn around, René stayed locked in his chair facing the mirror.

A hand drifted forward into a fall of light. It clutched a syringe filled with a viscous clear fluid.

René’s mouth wobbled open as the needle slid into his neck.

Still the face remained lost to darkness.

René’s last thought before the thumb depressed the plunger was of the double-cylinder dead bolts on the front door, trapping him in.

And then time stopped moving, sealing him inside it like a bug in amber.

*   *   *

Her cell phone held at the ready, Candy leaned against the door to René’s condo, straining to listen for movement inside. A single text to Orphan M and Van Sciver would make it rain.