Jack is sitting at a dinner table set for two, a steaming turkey in a basting pan set on a trivet before him. He sips a vodka martini, still ice-crystal cloudy from the shaker.

Evan crosses his arms, winces from the pain. He thinks back to Van Sciver, how when they were kids he always seemed to loom overhead, backlit by the sun, the edges of his red hair turned golden, the bearing of a god. He would’ve done better. He would have faced the wild fearlessly. He would have known to avoid the energy bar. He would have made it out a day quicker. Or two.

Evan feels emotion in the back of his throat, in his nostrils. The words come like broken glass. “I didn’t do so hot.”

Jack is all rough edges and rugged exterior, but his eyes and the etched skin around them convey something much, much softer. “Next time,” he says. “Next time.” He rubs his hands, appraises the turkey. “It still needs to rest before carving. There’s a hot bath waiting for you.”

Evan nods and heads upstairs.

Several years later on a bleak gray morning, Evan finds himself riding shotgun east on Route 267, a carry-on bag across his thighs. In his back pocket is a real passport with real stamps and a false name. Jack’s hands grip the wheel in the ten-and-two, and he gazes straight ahead as signs for Dulles International float overhead.

“I am the only person who knows who you are,” Jack says. “What you do. The only person inside the government or out. The only person in the world.”

This is not news. Evan wonders what is motivating Jack to break character this dreary East Coast morning by repeating the obvious.

“I am your only connection to anything,” Jack continues. “Anyone else contacts you, says I told them, do not believe him. I am it.”

“Okay,” Evan says.

“I will always be there. The voice on the other end of the phone.”

Evan realizes he is witnessing something he has never seen before: Jack is anxious.

“Jack? I’m ready.”

The airport cop flicks a gloved hand, and Jack coasts up to Departures. At the curb ahead of them against the backdrop of a minivan, a teary mother and a stoic father hug their son. The teenager wears a college shirt with intersecting lacrosse sticks. He looks impatient.

Evan reaches for the door handle. “See you when it’s clear.” He starts to get out, but Jack’s hand grips his forearm firmly, stilling him in the passenger seat.

“Remember, the hard part isn’t killing,” he says, not for the first time, or the fiftieth. “The hard part is staying human.”

A microexpression flickers across Jack’s features so fast that Evan might have missed it if he didn’t know him the way he does.

Fear.