Locked in his room, Evan paced circles in his boxers, waiting for the fire in the hearth to burn down. It was going at a pretty good clip, the roaring cedar bringing memories of his penthouse perched on the twenty-first floor of Castle Heights. The logs had been restocked while he was at dinner and would likely burn through the night.

He moved to the sliding glass door and peered out at the mountain rims, barely visible, deeper black in the black night. The north slope was most gradual; that was probably why René had parked a sniper there. But were there more long-gunners on the other slopes? Evan gauged the rest of the range. A dip to the west looked promising. He’d have to assess it in the cold light of day.

For now he had to keep his head clear. Mind and body. The Second Commandment: How you do anything is how you do everything. Above all else, Jack had taught him to train his focus. To be one thing at a time, one thing and one thing only.

He stretched. The push-ups felt less painful, the bruises dissipating. His ribs still ached—Manny’s kick to the gut hadn’t hastened healing—but the pain was manageable. He sat on the bed, crossed his legs, aware of the camera charting his every move. Then he closed his eyes and let the hidden lens fade into inconsequentiality, let his focus turn inward, let himself find the breath and only the breath. It moved inside him, a breeze whispering through flesh and bone. The transience of each instant also held its beauty. This one breath, this single moment in time. This one body, impermanent and perishable and gloriously mortal. There would be this breath and then another, and at some point he will have drawn enough breaths to be still. He could control only how he chose to spend each one. And only in choice was there meaning.

A whip-poor-will was at it outside, whistling into the gloom, lonely and haunting. The roar of an engine came audible, drowning it out. Tires crackled across frostbitten ground.

Evan hopped from the bed, stepping out onto the balcony in time to see one of the G-Wagons slalom up the drive. It skidded to a stop, the driver’s door popped open, and David spilled out. Two men and two women, also in their early twenties, emerged from various doors, pint glasses in hand. A bottle shattered. Peals of laughter.

Snatches rose to Evan, distorted by distance and the wind:

“Nice house, dude!”

“I hafta pee.”

David dug a slender white remote from an inner jacket pocket, raised it over his head, and clicked. Lights flared from beneath the eaves, flooding the grounds.

The young women tittered, wobbling on high heels.

“Whoa,” one of the guys said. “That’s so James Bond.” Gauge earrings the size of silver dollars stretched his lobes to tribal proportions.