Horus scratched his way through the New York Times' Sunday Crossword. The reading glasses weighed heavy on his nose. He hadn't worn glasses in years. It was funny the habits the body forgot. His back kept falling into a hunch over the page no matter how many times he straightened up. In the old day, he always leaned back against the chair while he worked on a puzzle. So many things to relearn. Some easy, some difficult.

He bit into a slice of bacon to find it cold and the grease congealed. A week ago he would have found it an unimaginable delicacy, but already he was getting used to fresh, warm food. It didn't stop him from finishing it off, but he had to wash it down with a sip of orange juice.

The door opened and Wiley came in. He had been stopping by regularly enough that the entrance didn't warrant a greeting.

Maxwell poured himself a coffee from the carafe on the table and settled down across from Horus.

"How's it coming?" he asked gesturing at the newspaper.

It was a roundabout attempt to start a conversation. Maxwell could clearly see that it was less than half solved. Horus could get the easy questions and the throwaways. There were the words like alee and oleo that popped up in almost every puzzle because the designers fell back on these vowel heavy crutches. But the meatier questions, the ones with double meanings and the ones looking for people's names or geographic places, eluded him. And he hadn't even begun to decipher the general theme yet.

"Slow," Horus said. "The old brain doesn't work the way it used to."

"I know what you mean." Wiley smiled. "To be young again."

"Age isn't the problem." He didn't really want to say what the problem was. Living in this luxury hotel room, it was easy and comforting to lock the problem away, keep the memories out of mind, where they did nothing but fester. "I guess I'm just out of practice."

The lying bastard nodded like of course that's all it was. Horus slid the paper away and dropped the pencil. It rolled along the table until it came to a rest against the vase of tropical blooms. The colorful flowers reminded him of his peaceful days in Hawaii. Was that why they had been placed there? To remind him of who he once was? Perhaps believing it was a way to keep him calm?

Horus asked, "Is it actually Sunday?"

"What other day would it be?" Wiley said.

"Don't play that game with me. I know that one only too well." He had practically built his career on turning patient's questions back at them to probe. "Answer the damn question."

"The temper is still short. But that's not something I mind. It just shows you still have fight in you, which is good considering the battle ahead. But in reply to your query, it is Sunday and that's today's paper. I have no reason to conceal anything from you."

"Sorry. Stuck in this room, under your care, I'm starting to feel like that girl." He couldn't bring himself to say her name. Fate had seen him go from warden to prisoner, and although her jail was a paradise compared to what his had been, the flattening he received from the karmic hammer was still raw and the guilt at how he watched over her impassively, boundless.

The role of prisoner was now ingrained in him. Even here, in this pleasant suite of rooms, he felt jailed. "When can I get out of here?"

"Soon." Maxwell must have seen in Horus's expression the irritation with the vagueness. "Look, I can't give you a better answer right now. Things are explosive at the moment. The Agency is still trying to assess the threat that Kyle Silver poses to both you and the country."

Yes, the Domestic Threat Assessment Agency, Horus thought. What the hell else would they be doing?

"Are you worried about them? Is that the reason you haven't been sleeping?" Horus asked.

Maxwell chuckled. "Still the psychiatrist? Yes, of course I'm worried about them. But there are other things going on as well."

At the mention of other things his mask seemed to slip. There was a raw nakedness to the words that weren't normally there. His eyes flickered to the ceiling as he said it as though the thing that worried him was directly above their heads. But in a flash it was over and he was back to being the smooth as glass Maxwell Wiley.

"I might not be a psychiatrist but one of these days when you're ready, I'm going to need the full story of what happened."

"What happened?"

"Why you fell off the Earth and showed up four years later on a murder spree."

"It wasn't a spree. He's only one man and he's already dead. He just keeps coming back...through other people. He's like a disease."

"I understand. No, that's a lie. I don't, really. But things like people coming back from the dead was the reason the DTAA was created. So once you've had a chance to recuperate, maybe put some meat on those bones, we'll discuss what happened."

"And then you'll let me out of here?" In the end, that was the difference between a cell and a room: the freedom to come and go as he wanted. Looking back at the long expanse of his life that was really the only freedom he had ever known. It sounded ridiculous to call it precious, but it was.

"We'll do more than that." Wiley said with the chipper enthusiasm of a personal trainer on the first session. "We'll make you an agent."

"An agent? What the hell would I do as an agent?"

"Exactly what you've been doing. Killing the things that should be dead."

***

R.J. had fallen asleep somewhere over the Atlantic. The plane's austere interior and the knife edge of terror made him think sleep was impossible, but by the time he awoke, they were in descent and he had a kink in his neck that would take days to recover from.

He blinked at his surroundings, trying to fool himself it was nothing but a dream but it didn't work. His abductor, Sabastien, was sitting across from him on an identical white metal box with a single slab of cushion as the only concession to human comfort. Unlike R.J., his seatbelt was undone and hung loose from where it was bolted to the fuselage. He was reading a popular Dan Brown novel. The cover was familiar but the title was in Cyrillic.

"Welcome back to the world of the living," he said putting the book down on his lap. His belly wedged the paperback in place and kept it from falling during a slight tremor of turbulence. He looked a lot heavier sitting down than he had standing on the street.

"Where are we?"

"It's not for me to say. Not even supposed to talk to you."

"Why not?"

"My friend, money answers all questions, so I do not ask. They say: go get this man and bring him here and do not talk to him, so that is what I do. Da?"

"But you're talking to me now."

He shrugged and made an exaggerated frown. "Are you planning to tell on me?"

R.J. stared out at the grid of fields and roads outside the window. The way he had to twist to see outside worked against the kink and caused an exquisite pain in the nerves in his neck and shoulder. There was a Europe-ness to the land rushing to meet them, but that may have just been his brain mapping onto it the things he guessed. Wherever it was, it was thousands of miles from Nikki.

How long had she waited for him not to come back? Had she gone to the police? Did she have the good sense to cut her losses and head home or would she wait days for him?

"Do not look so glum, my friend. You are like this man in this book. A college professor caught up in a world of international mystery. It is exciting. Da?"

"I'm not a professor and this is not exciting."

"Hmm. You look like one. And you must admit, it sure isn't boring."

"I'm happy my plight amuses you."

"It is far more appealing to believe that you are on the trail of an ancient mystery and have run afoul of a ruthless cabal, than that you owe much money to some angry men who plan to beat you until you satisfy your debt."

"Beat don't you mean kill?" R.J. could see no future beyond this. Each passing mile was bringing him closer to his grave.

"My friend, if they wanted you dead. They would have paid me to kill you and save the cost of smuggling you into the country."

This was probably true, but it didn't give R.J. any hope. As if needing to disagree with this man, he said, "I don't owe anyone any money."

Sabastien raised his hands in a gesture of indifference. "So it's a ruthless cabal then." And then, as if he had lost interest in R.J., he focused his attention on fastening his seatbelt for the landing.

After they touched down and taxied to a hangar, the plane was met by a black Audi with two grim young men who handed Sabastien an envelope of cash and ushered R.J. to the car at gunpoint.

"Goodbye, my friend. This is where my part in the story ends. Good luck with the ancient mystery. And watch out for albinos. Da?" He laughed as he climbed the stairs back up to the cabin.

The road signs were all in German, which managed to narrow down the possibilities of what country he was in. They weren't near any major city, which made it hard to pinpoint where they were or where they were going. R.J.'s knowledge of the German countryside was negligible and he knew less about Austria and Liechtenstein.

The goons with him were no help. They were much better at following the no talking rule than Sabastien had been. Their mouths didn't so much as twitch when R.J. questioned them about what was happening. He started to wonder if they didn't speak any English and when a few attempts at broken German failed, he started to wonder if their tongues had been cut out.

R.J. calculated his odds at taking out the one in the backseat with him. The man looked more like a bookkeeper than a henchman. Wispy blond hair covered a narrow knob of a head. Wireframe glasses covered watery, toad-like eyes. His lips were big and sensuous and his body was almost frail. If he didn't have a gun trained on him, R.J. felt he would have had a good shot at it.

It was a short drive to an isolated complex of angular glass in a clearing surrounded by dark forests. The building looked like a colony dome from a sci-fi movie or the offices of an obscenely wealthy dot-com corporation.

While the other one drove the car off to the lot in back of the building, the bookkeeper directed R.J. inside. "Move," he said, prodding his lower back with the pistol.

"So you can talk. I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what this is about."

"You will move." Despite his slight stature, there was no softness to this man. He was all tooth and claw. He didn't look like he had laughed once in his entire life and probably spent his off hours torturing small animals.

Reluctantly R.J. followed his directions. They crossed the neat concrete lobby, where none of the office workers seemed concerned that he was being marched at gunpoint to a security door at the far end. Bookkeeper swiped an ID card and opened it. They traveled down a series of hallways until they came to a gray steel door.

"Inside," he said.

"What's in there?"

"You go inside." The barrel of the gun raised to the level of R.J.'s chest and a familiar twinge of pain ran down his side from the last time he was shot. He hated to admit it but he was missing Sabastien.

"Alright. Alright." The cold metal handle chilled him to the bone as though a boreal wasteland was seeping through from the other side. He had no idea what was in there but he knew conclusively given a choice, he'd rather not find out. Bracing himself for some fresh hell, He opened the door.

The room he walked into was vast. The banks of computer servers and the oversized digital map of the world made it feel like the lair of a James Bond villain. Exposed ductwork blasted out chilled air.  Four large glass prisms rose out of the ceiling along one side. Greenery filled them. A darkening indigo sky peeked through the branches. The only light came from these windows and the electronics. For all its size, there was only one occupant. She was hard to make out in the gloom. R.J. assumed it was a she because of the long black hair, neatly knotted on the back of her head. A lab coat hid the rest of her features as she leaned over, scanning through documents on a table.

"Just what the hell is going on? Why have I been brought here?" R.J. yelled feeling emboldened by the lack of guns and thugs.

She turned around and the first thing he saw was her smile. It hit him with an impact that would make a bullet seem inconsequential.

"Well, you have to admit," she said. "You wouldn't have come if I asked."

An atomic burst of emotions detonated in his body. All the pain and anger came flooding back like none of the years in between had ever happened.

"Mila," he whispered out loud without him meaning to.

In a horrible nightmare, his legs crossed over to the woman who had put him through so much grief. His career had been ruined because of her. His heart irreparably broken. And now somehow, for some insane reason she had dragged him halfway across the globe. For years, he had waited for this moment—dreamed of it—prayed for it. It had been such self-delusion. So much willful forgetting of the bad, distilling the past until it was only the good. But now he remembered clearly.

His arms were trembling in rage by the time he was directly in front of her.

"God, Reggie, how I've missed you."

He grabbed hold of her shoulders and squeezed roughly, an aneurysm level of tension shooting through his head. In that moment he wasn't sure what he might be capable of. Then their lips met and the ice shattered. Their arms wrapped around each other with desperate need and the world around them spiraled away into nothingness until it was only the two of them, like it was always supposed to be.

***

Author's Note: Here it is the beginning of the end (of book 2). Just a short note, in case you're cursing me right now,  we'll see more of R.J. and Mila before things wrap up.