Satisfied that the warehouse was adequately set up for Detective Fog's arrival, Jason needed to collect Nick Minardos. A glance down at his Omega Seamaster told Jason that Nick would arrive outside the warehouse in four minutes.

Much about the plan had been anything but elegant, hacked together to look like a reasonable strategy to Mena but promising to allow Detective Fog's survival.

Getting Paul to the warehouse had been clumsy and frustrating. But there was an elegance to the next phase of the plan when Nick would go where he was asked by Mena Sigler under the impression that he was being tasked with Paul's execution. It was often a test of loyalty to choose the executioner based on intimacy with the victim; the mob asked the best friend to do the honors. Little did Nick know, he too was slated for execution.

Jason moved quickly back to the main door to the warehouse. Jack was in place inside the door where Paul was now chained up, ready to pounce with his ether if Nick entered from a different entrance.

Nick wouldn't be stupid; he would know there was a chance today, like any day, the mob would choose to end his life, whether for suspected wrongdoing for which he was innocent or some disloyalty actually committed against Mena Sigler. Well aware that a wrong move could end his life instead of Nick's, Jason moved into the shadows on the other side of the door and chased moving shadows with his eyes in all directions, listening for movement from anywhere it might come.

Three minutes later, the front door, which had been left unlocked, jingled on its hinges as if about to be pushed open. An ether soaked cloth in one hand, the other free to go for a gun he didn't want to use and with which to create another mess to clean up.

The door opened, swinging wild enough that Jason could tell it had been thrown open rather than pushed by someone meaning to come on through. Like sticking a twig in a bear trap. So Nick was nervous but not smart enough to come up with a smart counter to Jason's trap. There wasn't an ounce of him that would have sprung at the door the second it opened. Not when it flew open like that. He was patient and lying in wait.

Nick's first move told Jason that he would check the corners fast, most likely with gun in hand and safety off. His nervousness might still save him.

The worst place for Jason to be was where Nick expected him to be, but luckily the young soldier hesitated. The free hand designated for gun use took a chance going for his phone instead, and it pressed one button without even leaving his pocket, which would send a signal to Jack: a pre-planned play, he's at the door, come and welcome him.

Too late by a millisecond, too short a time for it to be Jack leaving the kill room, a double door crashed open in much the same swinging wild and clamor, from somewhere beyond Jason's vision at the other end of the building. Doors beyond the stairs to the second level led to what could be a whole warren of hallways and chambers, and there was no telling where exactly the noise had come from. Jason's imagination filled in some of the blanks; Nick had gone around the building and tried his stick in the trap trick at one of the other entrances.

Three seconds after that, Jack came out through his heavy metal door, thankfully having the good sense to open and close it silently. He swept toward the front door looking like he was ready to greet Nick with a bear hug.

Jason shook his head as Jack came over and raised his arm high in the air to signal Jack to go back. His partner had avoided looking at him, expecting Nick to stroll inside and for Jason to sneak up behind him while Jack distracted him with pleasantries, but the big gesture attracted his attention, and he stopped in his tracks. But Jack saw something Jason didn't, and a third of a second later, he took another step forward.

"What are you doin' here, Makris?" Jack said the second the door opened a crack. It stopped there, and he had to repeat himself when she opened the door the rest of the way, but he had said it for Jason's benefit, and not that of Jennifer Makris, anyway. "What you doin' here?" he said again.

Jennifer came in and didn't check the corner. "Nick asked me to come along. That all right, Jack?" she said, a challenge in her voice, like if it wasn't all right, she had him all figured out. If it wasn't all right, she'd know Nick had been brought here to die.

There hadn't been a way to tell Jack in so many words that someone, possibly Nick, had come in the back door, but Jack wasn't as dumb when it came to tactics as he was when it came to debate and persuasion. He knew he needed to get Jennifer into the kill room without letting her see Jason. "That's all right, come on in," he said and showed his back to her. That demonstration of vulnerability put her hackles down, and she followed him back.

Ten more steps and a messy and painful firefight could have been avoided.

Ten steps from the heavy closed door, Nick Minardos came out of a door at the back, to Jason's left, and stared him right in the face.

He didn't have time to wonder why Jason had been chilling in the corner, even if he had known it the instant he saw him. Jason went for Jennifer's gun arm. He took it, aimed her piece at Nick, and took the shot through the risers of the wide metal stairs down the middle of the corridor, ether cloth in his left hand, trigger pulled by the trigger finger of his right hand. The first bullet hit him square in the jaw. Jason adjusted Jennifer's gun arm for the falling body and shot again during the same second, and hit Nick in the chest.

Before Jennifer Makris knew what hit her, Jason pulled the gun from her hand and took her out with a single headshot. Still with her own gun. She never even saw him before her vision went black.

"So close," Jason muttered, looking with dissatisfaction at all the blood and flesh and cranium bone he would have to clean up before Detective Fog arrived. Or maybe he should just let her find it like this and send him and Jack to prison for the rest of her lives. He could count that as some kind of sad victory.

Jack came around, temper in full flare now. "What the fuck was that, Jason? That was even worse than picking up Paul, at least we didn't have to kill him." He was waving his arms around, turning back and forth from Jason and from the bodies of two mobsters. "I'll just hide in the corner," he said mockingly. "No one will see me. Who let you coordinate? Fuck Mena Sigler."

He pulled his gun out and pointed it at Jason. "You forget I said that or it's lights out for you too," he said and put the weapon back down.

​Jason was amazed at his sense of calm despite the carnage and Jack's explosive anger. "Let's not waste time," he said, not elevating the argument, not even meeting Jack's eyes. What's done is done, his body language said. "Do we have a third set of chains, or what?" he asked as he started moving, making it to Nick's mangled body in a dozen long and fast strides.

It wasn't going to be that easy to defuse Jack. "Chains? What the fuck for, what are you thinking? Like we can continue from here, just press rewind and keep going? You've colossally fucked up this entire procedure, and we are not going to continue. We're going to call Mena, tell her we're idiots — hey, I'll do you a square and take some of the blame despite the fact that this is entirely your own fault — and we can't do this. Everything has gone wrong, and we need to call it. Come up with some other way to get rid of smarty pants. Stop where you are," he started shouting when he saw what Jason was doing. He started waving the gun around. "Don't give me another damn mess to clean up, Nakos. Stop!"

Jason spun around and shouted back, "Skip the idle threats. You kill me, you'll just have to bring me back. Then you've got me to help you with the cleanup, huh? Sounds to me like another waste of time. So drop the tantrum and do something productive. Bring me the chains, please."

He didn't wait for the chains to be brought. First, he took his knife and slit into the corpse's throat, to perform a total Laryngectomy​. He removed the entire larynx, taking the vocal cords along with it. He made a hole in Nick's trachea, a stoma through which he would breathe for the final hours of his life. It was a good thing Nick was dead throughout the procedure because without anesthesia, Jason's impromptu surgery would have been a hell of pain.

Next, Jason restored Nick's body and soul. Thirty seconds later, the man was sitting upright, dazed, back from the dead and trying to glare death rays at Jason but in too much pain to do more than grimace between flashes of hatred.

Then he opened his mouth to speak.

Jason could read his mind, no speech necessary, but when Nick opened his mouth, only gasps of voiceless breath came out. Then came the truly hellish moment when Nick began to scream at the top of his lungs, agonized fists flailing and only a wet gargle sound coming out.

Thirty seconds after that, Nick passed out, slumping back down to the floor as if a corpse again already. Which was when it hit Jason that he hadn't given the man painkillers of any kind. Slapping his forehead, he did Nick one better: the tissue surrounding the larynx healed, good as new, except for the absence of the voice box.

He remained unconscious while Jason and Jack tied him up in the chains and dragged his body across the cement and into the room with Paul, where he would next be killed.

There was still the problem of Jennifer Makris. Jason didn't talk over the issue with Jack.

The second Nick was in place, where he should have been with only a few detours — if the removal of his voice box and the exploding and subsequent restoration of his cranium could be understated to such a degree — Jason brought Jennifer Makris back from the dead.

Easy as hitting the reset button. Getting the blood out of her hair and that designer blouse would be a different story, but she was otherwise no worse for wear. When she sat up, Jason's gun was placed to the same spot on her temple that had just been a gaping hole.

"How about forgetting everything you just saw. Or I'll surgically remove your larynx," said Jason.

"What?" Jennifer said, dazed, moving her head slowly back and forth while she worked her jaw to make sure it was good as new and simultaneously trying unsuccessfully to detangle a lock of hair gunked up with her own blood and brain matter. Another reason why it wasn't worth it to get yourself killed, even if you could be brought back. He would have to be patient with Jack's temper. Jason liked the coat he had chosen to wear today.

"It's my new signature. Tell your friends. Or rather, don't, or I'll remove your larynx, and you'll never tell anybody anything else ever again."

I could remove her memory with a spell, but the amnesia would disorient her, perhaps rob her of information she needs. It's kinder for her to decide to forget, rather than me poking around and trying to remove her entire time with Nick up to this moment without accidentally deleting crucial adjacent remembrances.

She was brave, even with the gun barrel pressed into her recently shattered and put-back-together skull. "You're not thinking straight, Nakos — I tell one word of this to Mena Sigler, and I'll be singing while you sleep with the fishes. I like my voice. And I don't like you."

"Who do you think hired me, Makris? Listen, just go home, take an Ambien — heck, maybe you take a Rohypnol​ — just get some sleep and don't remember this happened one way or the other. You wanna tell Ms. Sigler you threw a wrench in her scheme, you go right ahead, you talk to her, but no one else. This stays between the three of us."

Smartening up, Jennifer nodded. She blinked and seemed to get her head together. "You know," she said, "I kinda feel better? I had a monster migraine this morning, some tension in my lower back. It's all gone. I mean, it's beyond drowsy and hella soul-sucking to die and come back, but I think net positive. Once I get cleaned up, I'll be better than before you killed me. They should offer this as like a service, like massage or facial, come in and get killed and resurrected. Don't miss your monthly appointment. What do I owe you, doc?"

"Just leave," Jason said, offering her a hand and helping her up. "You know the rest."

"Yeah, take it to my grave or roofie myself. Got it. Have a nice weekend, Nakos," said Jennifer, and she slowly meandered out of the warehouse.

Jason wasn't satisfied he was done with her, but killing Jennifer Makris was a much bigger problem for him than pretty much anything she could do to him alive. Jennifer Makris was more trouble to him dead than she could possibly be alive.

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