"She's going to kill us," Vincent said, looking over at Cooper from where he sat against the wall just outside Calla's apartment, their asses half-frozen against the concrete. "You do realize that."

"Don't be so dramatic," Cooper said, with absolutely no conviction whatsoever.

Vincent just rolled his eyes and readjusted his beanie, the ends of his hair curling out from under the wool.

Shivering, Cooper drew up the hood of his jacket to ward away the cold—the very same jacket Calla had given him for Christmas, warm and soft and more importantly, hers. An appeasement. Because Vincent had been right about that, at least.

Calla was not going to be pleased to find them outside of her apartment on a random Wednesday afternoon.

Cooper had tried calling her, to give her some sort of warning that they were on their way and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it, but she hadn't answered, just as she hadn't answered his calls the night before last, or the night before that. It was her silence, more than anything, that had clued him in that something was very, very wrong.

Which could really only mean one thing.

"She's going to try and do this thing alone," he'd told Vincent earlier that morning. "I just know it."

Vincent had tried to talk him down with (admittedly) logical reassurances, insisting that Cooper was going to see Calla that weekend anyway, so why not just have a little patience and wait until then—but Cooper wasn't about to budge, not on this.

He knew Calla better than anyone. Her patterns. Her misguided, infuriating judgment calls. In her mind, the incident with Kevin had only solidified the need to keep Cooper at arm's length from the situation with Michaels, for what she likely imagined to be his own safety.

Not that she was wrong. Cooper was at risk, yes. But so was she. They were all at risk, so they were damn well going to figure out a solution together.

Vincent had seen the stubborn light in Cooper's eyes, and instead of arguing the point further, he'd merely shrugged and offered to drive them both to Ithaca, snatching his beanie and keys off the coffee table with a resigned scowl.

"Cooper?" Vincent asked now, blowing warm air into his hands.

Cooper drew back his hood to get a better look at him. "Yeah?"

Vincent wouldn't meet his eye. He gazed straight ahead, at the bare white railing that dropped down to the concrete parking lot below. "The email we got from the university, the night of the championship. About Professor Li." He dropped his hands, shoving them between his thighs. "That day in his office...you called me to distract him and it was no questions asked, but—well, now I'm asking."

It was Cooper's turn to look away. He shuddered as a gust of wind tore down the breezeway. "Don't ask."

"I—"

"Need-to-know basis, Vincent." He braced the back of his head against the concrete wall. "Trust me when I say this. You really, really don't need to know."

Vincent's boots scraped against the concrete as he shifted, restless. "Okay," he said quietly.

And really, what was there to say after that?

While Vincent lingered on things unsaid, Cooper contemplated the predicament with Michaels, lulled into an almost trancelike state as the wind rattled through the bare trees lining the parking lot below, the day flat and gray and dreary. 

In an ironic twist of fate, Stephanie Brighton had saved them, Cooper supposed; the evidence Calla had quite literally dug up from the old shoebox Steph had left behind would prove invaluable in positioning Michaels right where they wanted him. But the question remained...

Where did they want him?

Not in an old warehouse, Cooper thought wryly. Somewhere public. But that had its drawbacks. How were they supposed to...well, take care of Michaels with eyewitnesses all around?

A dangerous dance. That was what this had become.

Cooper turned the problem over, using his phone to map out the town, weighing the odds that even if they were to meet Michaels in a public spot, he might just crack and shoot them dead right there for everyone to see. And wouldn't that just be terrific?

So engrossed was he in this endeavor that he almost didn't hear Vincent when he asked, "You sure Calla's in trouble, Coop? Maybe she's just figuring out how to dump your ass."

Cooper shot him a withering glare. "I hate you."

"Hate you more."

"And I hate you both," a familiar voice snapped from the end of the breezeway.

Vincent and Cooper wasted no time in scrambling to their feet as Calla stalked toward the apartment, steps cracking against the concrete in a furious tempo, a dark scowl on her face.

Vincent jabbed his thumb in Cooper's direction. "This was his idea."

"Thanks for the support, dude," Cooper mumbled.

Calla held up a hand. "Stop talking." Waving them aside, she pulled out a set of keys from her pocket and unlocked the apartment, ushering them inside with an angry flick of her fingers.

Oh, he was so in for it.

"I can explain—" Cooper started, shuffling over the threshold.

Calla, apparently not in the mood for his explanations, slammed the door in his wake and unleashed holy hell upon them. "What are you two idiots doing here?" Before either one of them could dredge up an excuse that wouldn't completely piss her off, she snapped, "Don't answer that. I know what you're doing. You're trying to get yourselves killed. You." She jabbed her index finger against Vincent's chest; Vincent, who had faced down athletes approximately the size of a midsize sedan, flinched. "Your truck's the one out in the parking lot. So, not only did you not stop him," her eyes narrowed, "you enabled him."

Vincent flushed. "I—he—"

"Stop talking. And you." She turned the full force of her glare on Cooper. It took every ounce of self-respect he had not to shrink away from her. "Do you have a death wish?"

"I—no," he stammered. "But—"

"But nothing. This isn't a game."

"I know!" he burst out, throwing up his hands. "This is literally life or death, and for some unknown reason you're insisting on doing everything yourself, which is the best possible way I can think of to get yourself killed. If that's not a death wish, I don't know what is. And don't even try to deny it," he warned her, catching the stubborn tilt of her head. "You were never going to wait for me to come up this weekend, were you?"

Her black, fathomless eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.

That was all the confirmation he needed. "I told you," he said, turning to Vincent. "Why am I the only one here who understands that we need to be working together on this?"

Calla shoved past him with an impatient growl. "You're acting like this is some sort of...group project, or something." Throwing herself down on the couch, she let out a derisive laugh. "In that case, I've got some bad news, boys. We're probably going to flunk out since we killed the fucking teacher."

Cooper grimaced. She must have guessed, and rightly so, that Vincent would've put two and two together about Professor Li. Vincent, who had indeed guessed that somehow, someway they'd been responsible for what had happened, flinched at the implication that he'd had anything to do with the professor's death, but there really was no getting around it. Cooper had used him as bait.

Neither Vincent nor Cooper could meet the other's eye. "Calla," Cooper admonished, hesitating only a fraction of a second before following her into the living room. "I know you're upset—"

"Upset," she said through clenched teeth, "doesn't cover it."

"—but you're just going to have to take that out on Michaels," he continued, as if she hadn't spoken. "Not us." Tentatively, he sat on the cushion beside her, leaving just enough space between them so that they weren't touching.

Calla glared at the sliver of space between them. "Why are you here?" she asked, biting off the words. Cooper knew they weren't for him.

Sure enough, her eyes flicked over to Vincent, who stepped forward somewhat sheepishly, hands shoved in the pockets of his sweats. He shrugged. "I owe you for last time."

Her brow furrowed. Clearly, it hadn't been the answer she'd been expecting. "Last time?"

"At the highschool," Vincent elaborated, shrugging again. Uncomfortable. "You knew what you were getting into and you came with Cooper anyway. I owe you." He rocked back on his heels, lingering on the edge of her beloved rug. "Anyway, I've got workouts this weekend so I'm gonna need us to wrap this shit up nice and tight before Friday, if that's not too much trouble."

That elicited a scoff of contempt as Calla readjusted, only barely brushing Cooper's thigh with her own. "So glad you could pencil in some good old fashioned murder into your busy schedule," she drawled.

Vincent bit the inside of his cheek, looking suddenly queasy.

Cooper nudged her side. "Can you knock it off? Just because what we're doing is necessary doesn't make this...easy."

"Is it?" Vincent asked quietly, looking at Cooper hopefully. "Necessary, I mean. Do we really have to..."

"Kill Michaels?" Calla supplied cheerfully. "Yep."

Cooper met Vincent's eye over the couch. It is what it is, he tried to communicate, shrugging almost imperceptibly. Vincent frowned but moved to the other end of the couch, sandwiching Cooper in the middle.

"So. You have a plan?" Cooper asked, eyeing Calla hopefully.

"I might."

"Then—"

"No." She stood abruptly and went into the kitchen. "You two aren't getting anywhere near this."

"Calla," he said, exasperated. Standing, he waved for Vincent to stay on the couch, who looked a little too relieved at the opportunity to stay as far the hell away from the current conversation as possible.

Cooper found Calla standing at the kitchen sink, but unlike his last visit, there was no bowl of pancake batter cradled in her arms. Only the sharp reflection of a gleaming white-handled knife between her fingers.

"You'll die," she said flatly, without preamble, running her thumb along the knife's edge.

"Maybe." He stepped behind her, cautiously wrapping his arms around her waist. "But if you do this alone, you'll definitely die." When she said nothing, he kissed her shoulder. "Three against one. Those are pretty good odds."

"He keeps a gun in the safe." One hand drifted to her left shoulder, the other still clenching the knife. "Gun trumps knife. Bad odds."

"The safe?" Cooper went still. "What safe?"

"The one I found in his office. After I broke into his house."

Oh, Christ's sake. "After you—"

"Broke in, yes." She twisted around in his arms, the knife poised between them, the blade nearly flat against his chest. "And found his gun."

"Is that all you were looking for?" Grim silence. "Calla. Talk to me."

Her eyes shifted to a point over his shoulder. When she moved away—his arms falling back to his sides, empty—he knew they weren't alone.

"Yo." Vincent knocked on the wall between the living room and kitchen. "I'm coming in."

Calla dropped the knife into the sink and turned, bracing her hands back against the sink's edge as Vincent shuffled into the kitchen. He glanced between them. "We good?"

Her eyes dropped to her fingernails, which she inspected with the same indifference Cooper had once loathed. "Good enough."

"Charming." Vincent caught and held Cooper's wary eye. "So, what's the plan?"

Silence. Then Calla sighed. "I'm meeting with Michaels tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Vincent asked, incredulous, just as Cooper said, "That's too soon."

Her brows drew together. "Do you two want in on this, or not?"

They traded another long look. "Not really," Vincent said slowly. "But I'm sort of already in it, aren't I?"

Cooper braced his elbows against the kitchen island, brushing aside a torn and tattered newspaper. What was with all the newspapers lately? "Tomorrow. When tomorrow?"

"Three o'clock."

"Where?"

"Not an old warehouse, if that's what you're thinking," she said dryly.

Vincent frowned at them. "Why would you ever meet anyone at an old warehouse? That's a fucking murder scene waiting to happen."

"My point exactly," she said. "I selected a more...public location."

Vincent folded his arms. "How'd you manage that? Michaels doesn't seem like the compromise and get along type."

Calla smiled then. A soft, dangerous smile. "Let's just say Steph came through, for once."

Vincent's eyes lit with recognition. He looked at Cooper, startled, and then back at her. "You found it. The evidence Steph told you about."

"I did."

"What was on—"

"Don't ask," she warned. "Let's just say we've confirmed Michaels is a real piece of shit."

Vincent scowled. "No one ever wants me to ask anything."

"Yes, that is the idea," Calla grumbled. Vincent shot her a nasty, narrow-eyed look, and Cooper stepped between them.

"Can we get back on track?" Cooper begged. "No warehouses. Check. Where are we meeting this asshole, then?"

"We," Calla said pointedly, "are not meeting him. And not because you can't be involved," she continued quickly, catching his agitated frown, "but because if three of us show up, he's going to bolt."

"That's fair," Vincent mumbled.

It was. Cooper hated to admit it, but—it was.

"DeWitt Park," she continued, before Cooper could ask, again, for a specific address. "That's the plan."

Cooper knew the spot. And still he frowned. "That's not a plan. That's a place."

"Hold on," Vincent interjected. "Don't get me wrong, the old warehouse idea was a crapshoot. But if we're in, like, public public, how are you planning on..." He made a morbid slashing motion across his throat. Cooper stifled a groan.

Calla slowly stepped away from the sink, drifting closer to the kitchen island. "I'm not going to drop him in the middle of the park, if that's what you're asking."

"Sorry," Vincent said with false cheer. "I'm new to the whole murder thing. Not really sure how it works."

Cooper dragged a hand across his face with a sigh. This was going to be a long day.

To her credit, Calla merely clasped her hands together and, rather calmly, explained: "This meet-up is just a front. Michaels wants what I have. I want what he has. And we're both trying to screw the other over, somehow, without being painfully obvious about it." She glanced at Cooper. "I could complete the hand-off and then spend the next few hours tailing him to try and get him alone. But that leaves way too many variables. We need to steer him where we want him."

Cooper didn't like the way she was looking at him. "And that means what, exactly?"

"You and Vincent are going to lure him back to his house."

"Lure him?" Vincent broke in, sounding on the verge of laughter. "Lure him how?"

Calla swept aside the tattered newspaper and planted her index finger on the counter. "Once Michaels and I have completed the trade, you two will break into his house." She moved her finger to the opposite side of the counter. "He's got a pretty solid security system in place, so he should get some sort of alert on his phone. There might even be a video feed. If there is, he'll see you two going for the safe—"

"The safe?" Vincent asked.

"God." Calla closed her eyes. "Trying to get through a conversation with you is like talking to a seventh grader. Stop interrupting me."

"Forgive me for not taking everything you say at face-value," Vincent snapped back.

"Guys," Cooper interjected wearily, feeling very much like the mediator of this particular conversation. "Focus."

Calla took a deep breath. "The safe," she started slowly, "in Michaels' office. I've seen it. I've opened it. I know what's inside." At their expectant stares, she added, "Cash. Lots of it. A few other keepsakes." Something in her expression shifted, but before Cooper could ask about it, she said, "And a gun, which he'll likely already have on him."

"Hold on." Vincent held up his hands in a time out gesture. "You want us to piss off the guy with a gun?"

"I want you to get his attention," she corrected. "I'll be tailing Michaels the whole way home. All you have to do is get in, get the cash, and get out. I'll take care of the rest."

"Wait." Cooper shook his head. "We only have one car. How are you going to tail him from the park if we have the truck?"

She shook her head. "I'll have the work van. My boss will let me borrow it."

Cooper pursed his lips. "I don't like this whole splitting up idea."

"We need the work van," she said patiently. And then she cocked a skeptical brow at Vincent. "Unless of course you're okay with cramming Michaels' dead body in your truck bed?"

He shot Cooper a panicked look, eyes widened rather comically. "Absolutely not."

"Okay, okay." Cooper held up his hands. "Everyone relax. Calla will take the work van. We'll take the truck. We get in, we get out. Calla..." He trailed off. "Calla will do what Calla does best, and then we'll all live happily ever after."

"If the cops don't catch us," Vincent added miserably. "Let's not forget that part."

Calla just grinned at him. "They'll never catch me alive," she sang. Snickering, she gestured for them to follow her, back into the living room and over to the front door, where she picked up her apartment keys from a plate on the entryway table. "Come on, boys. Fajitas are on me tonight."

Fajitas. Cooper had to smile. "Feels like old times," he announced, ribbing Vincent's side.

"Yeah," Vincent said, feigning enthusiasm as he followed them out the door. "Just like old times. Fajitas with a heaping side of peril."

# # #

Cooper was standing in a graveyard.

Not like, a real graveyard. A dream graveyard. Because this had to be a dream, he thought, gazing overhead at the sky that was not a sky but a gaping, endless black hole that unsettled him in the extreme.

Shuddering, Cooper started forward, deeper into the unfamiliar cemetery, peering down curiously at the headstones as he passed. Leonard Li, the first marker read, chilling him right down to the bones. On the next, Jeremy Kepner. And Liberty Schwartz after that.

Harlan Burke.

Kurt Rivera.

Owen McCormick.

Cooper paused at the next marker, dark with age, and crouched, running his index finger along the grooves of the name chiseled into the stone: Venus Upton.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, and then stood.

Knowing now what he would find, he hurried past the next line of headstones, the names a familiar blur. Cory Michaels, Jessica Sneider, Rachel Smith, Jacob Stein—

He stopped again, panting, at the last lot in the row, the stone marker crawling with moss, the name barely legible.

Tracy Smith.

Someone had left behind a bundle of flowers at her grave—roses and peonies, their petals shriveled and brittle, long dead now.

Cooper's eyes skipped beyond the age-worn grave, over to the next marker on the row adjacent: Leonard Li.

Panicked, Cooper darted down a different aisle, but the order of the headstones never changed.

Lenny and Jeremy, Liberty and Harlan, Kurt and Owen. Venus. Cory. Jessica and Rachel and Jacob and Tracy.

And again. And again. And again.

Finally, gasping for air, Cooper dropped to his knees, eyes firmly closed. He didn't want to look at the black, black sky above, but the headstones were worse, so much worse. They followed him like an accusation. You know who did this, they seemed to say. You know.

Wrapping his arms around his middle, he forced himself to count to a hundred and back down to zero. Only then did he open his eyes.

The headstones had vanished, leaving him alone in an empty, dead field—except for one.

The grave he knelt at now was newer than the others had been, the earth freshly turned. And at the base of the headstone—pale white lilies.

Shaking, Cooper set his hand against the stone's face, covering the name carved there with his palm.

Calla Parker.

# # #

Cooper jolted awake, bolting upright—only to find Calla right there in front of him, alive and well and slipping into a pair of black jeans, her closet door thrown wide open.

She glanced over at him, all tangled up in the sheets. "Bad dream?"

"Yes," he whispered, flinging back the covers. He untangled himself and walked over, pulling her into his chest, inhaling the scent of her hair.

"It's going to be alright," she said quietly, attempting to soothe him. That had to be a first.

Cooper's throat tightened. He couldn't shake the feeling, inexplicable as it was, that if he let her go now he would never see her again. "You can lie better than that," he croaked.

She slipped her arms around his waist and said nothing. Holding him as he held her, clinging to this moment. The only moment that mattered.

The calm before the storm.

She pulled away, too soon. "You have the address?"

He nodded, the tips of his fingers still lingering against the sleeve of her tight black sweater. "Cherry Street. Little blue house on the right. End of the row."

"And don't even think about going to that house until you get my text," she reminded him, holding up a finger. "Wait for my cue."

"And your cue will come as soon as the trade is done," he said firmly, watching as she slipped the strap of her work bag over her shoulder. "Right?"

"I'll take it under advisement."

"That's just a fancy way of saying no."

That earned him a smile. "I will, Cooper. I promise."

Cooper gazed at her, soaking in every detail. The curl of her hair, gathered back so that he could see the curve of her jaw, the slant of her lips. That one freckle near the corner of her right eye.

He could spend a lifetime memorizing every little thing about her.

"Cooper," she said from the doorway, glancing over her shoulder at him, hair sliding across her back. She hesitated. Cooper thought she might not say anything at all, but then: "Look after each other."

And then she was gone, leaving behind a gust of cold air as she slipped through the front door, the lock snapping into place.

# # #

The next hour crawled by with agonizing slowness.

Cooper showered, brushed his teeth, and dressed in less than fifteen minutes. Which left forty-five minutes of a whole lot of nothing. He waited on the couch while Vincent hopped in the shower, but waiting on the couch made his skin crawl, so he got up and went into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee, but—well, watching the coffee drip-drip-drip into the pot was so much worse, which was exactly how he found himself pacing from Calla's bedroom, staring dejectedly at her bed, and back to the kitchen, staring dejectedly at the coffee maker.

He was going to lose his mind if he didn't leave this apartment, and soon.

But then the water cut off in the shower and the coffee pot had filled, so Cooper busied himself with looking, well, not busy. He poured himself a cup and settled back on the couch, crossing his legs—no, folding his legs. Cool as a cucumber, he thought.

Vincent popped out of Calla's bedroom, clothes on and scrubbing a towel through his wet hair. He paused, eyeing Cooper with deep suspicion. "You're acting weird," he announced.

Cooper blinked up at him innocently. "No I'm not."

"You look like you're about to jump out of your skin."

"I'm drinking coffee."

"You—"

"Alright!" Cooper snapped. "I'm freaking out, okay? I just want this day to be over."

Vincent rolled his eyes and tossed the towel over the back of the couch. Calla will kill him for that. "Relax, Coop. Everything is gonna work out." He checked the time on his phone. "How long do you think it'll take to hear from her?"

"I don't know," Cooper said, his nerves completely fried.

"Well." Vincent sat on the other end of the couch. "Let's figure out how we wanna play this in the meantime."

By the time Cooper got through his second cup of coffee, he was practically bouncing off the walls, but Vincent kept him grounded with logistical questions, like how exactly they wanted to break into Michaels' house—through the front door, or a back window? Cooper figured the front door might be a little much, given the neighbors.

"Isn't a little much what we're going for?" Vincent asked.

"Breaking down the front door will get us arrested," Cooper pointed out.

Which is precisely when the conversation shifted to the matter of actually breaking said window. Vincent seemed to think a sturdy rock would do the trick, but Cooper wasn't entirely convinced. Calla had mentioned the house appeared older than most, and Michaels had clearly done very little to renovate it—so maybe there was a chance a rock would do the trick, after all. And if that didn't work, Vincent reasoned, they could always just throw their weight against the front door 'til it gave. Cooper was quite positive the effort would dislocate his shoulder, but Vincent liked slamming into things, and he was big enough to walk away from something like that with little more than a bruise and a wild, childlike smile.

Thirty minutes became one hour, and one hour became two. Cooper periodically checked his phone for the time, until eventually he was just staring at his screen, watching the minutes trickle by. 

"Something's wrong," he said into the silence. He and Vincent had long ago run out of things to talk about.

"How long has it been?" Vincent asked quietly.

Too long, Cooper thought. His grip on the phone tightened. "Two hours."

Vincent rubbed his hands over his knees. "You don't think..."

Cooper didn't think. He knew. 

I will, Cooper. I promise. Look after each other.

He closed his eyes, faced with an undeniable truth. "She lied to me."