Cole clenched his jaw as her breath whispered the choice he would rather her not take in his ear.

“Throw out the white hat, the gray hat, and go stone cold cracker black.”

“No. We are not dropping down from the fence on opposite sides of the law again.”

She would have pulled back from him, but Cole locked his hands on her hips.

”No, Tessa. Although I like your black hat, you won’t fight alone this time. He’s the head of the Russian mob! He controls the vast and dark cyberwar.”

“I have to go up against him.”

He wanted to shake her. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted her. “You best keep hidden from eye in the sky, Tessa Kendall. He’s ordered you snuffed if facial recognition software shows you in the city to test for his enemies, the U.S. government. You better believe he has the power and the inside connections to track you.”

Cole released her and she stepped back from him as if proximity would make a difference in the pull between them.

She tilted her head and studied him like he was a tangled algorithm. “If he isn’t the problem you mentioned, the one where you can’t go forward with me until it’s settled, then what is?”

“We have to share the same faith.”

“Like religion? Let’s talk politics too, Stone!”

“Switch on your logic for a minute.”

“Calling me stupid again? I don’t believe there is a Higher Purpose guiding me. If there was, how could God let me be in one train wreck after another . . . and how could He let me survive with this pain?” She slapped one hand over her heart.

“Give Him a chance to save you from the road you travel. Can you no longer hear His voice at all?”

“Not since I ignored it a decade ago to stay out of chat. No.”

He sighed. “You know about teamwork, Tessa. You headed up a department! I thought maybe . . ..”

She scoffed. “That I believed in Santa again? How about happily ever afters?” She shook her head, damp tawny curls springing with the force. “How about believing the Patriot Act is to protect U.S. citizens?”

“Lots of hurt there, babe, behind your sweet and spicy temper. He’s waiting, Tessa. I won’t argue with you about it. All you have to do is accept what He is offering. Until then, you’ll accept what I’m offering . . . my hospitality and my expertise. Break out your laptops, let’s practice battle.”

She did bring out a single laptop. In no time, she’d bypassed his encryption and surfed his wireless signal. “Bring it on, babe,” she taunted him. Instead of battling with radio frequencies and looped signals of ICDs, he invited her to a game. “Oh yes. Bring on FPS. I so want to shoot you in the head right now.”

As he had known first person shooters deflected her anger, Cole gamed with her for hours.

The room was dark, another middle of the night, when her cell phone sang out. She snagged it to her ear. “Hey, Glenn,” she answered.

Cole stretched and made no attempt to hide his interest in the one-sided conversation he could hear.

“Oh my, the short monkey one was mean as hell. Great job!” She paused again and lowered her voice like she didn’t want Cole to hear. “A demonologist? Sounds creepy. How about Shadow? You didn’t hurt him did you, Glenn?”

Cole copied a page from her and held up one hand in the universally accepted sign to cease and desist. “You named the big dark shadowman? Like a pet?”

Glenn must have asked her something similar because she answered into the phone. “No. I don’t want him to follow me, but once you get past the scary parts he isn’t half bad.” She paused, listening, and then snorted her disbelief. “Oh he is not a jealous ghost!” she protested.

Cole rubbed his forehead. Not only playing with the head dude from the Russian mob, she had a protective friend from the shadowlands! Before deciding if it was wise or not, Cole snagged the phone from her hand. “Tell me,” he demanded of Glenn.

“Cole!”

He glanced back at her. “I’ll get you a kitten, babe.”

He switched his attention back to Glenn. So the demon was still in the house, as well as the shadowman. He sighed unhappily. Glenn and his fellow paranormal investigators hoped the more Glenn tore up the land to landscape, the more the spirits in her spooky house would rise to the bait. It seemed that taking Tessa from the area had definitely caused Glenn more grief. “Keep in touch,” Cole said before hanging up.

He handed her the cell phone. “He’s sending the evidence of your shadowman intelligently interacting with them, of it answering questions.”

“I don’t want to go there,” she stated.

“Me either, but I intend to see it and to hear it with my own skeptical eyes and ears. Turn off your cell phone.”

“Don’t you sleep?” she asked him and yawned.

He grunted. Probably not after the scare he’d be witnessing via Glenn’s evidence. “Go ahead and go to bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

She snorted. “Keep your bed, Mr. Stone.”

He left the room before coming back and throwing a pillow and blanket at her on the couch. Great. His bed smelled like her. There surely was a reason God created man to have a sexual thought every seven seconds? Dealing with Tessa in real-time was tearing him up. He wanted her in bed with him, but knew their future would depend on if he could show her, not tell her, about Christ’s code.

Five days and much practical hacking application later, Tessa hung up her cell phone. Cole looked at her expectantly like she was going to share this burden. She paced his house, living room, bedroom, kitchen, dining room, computer room. Tick tap. Tick tap. Tick tap.

Gorgeous as always, he stepped in front of her forward charge to retrace her steps. “What’s wrong?”

She bit her lip, trying to take the stinging threat from her eyes. “I failed!” She flicked on the TV, changing the channel to the news. A report rolled in about a senator dying.

“What has this got to do with you?”

She swung one arm toward the man pictured on the TV. “I was on his payroll.”

Looking like he might collapse, Cole sat on the couch. As his brilliant mind was programmed, he leapt ahead. “Hacked his heart.”

“He’s looking for me!”

“The Russian mafia leader?”

Tessa nodded and sniffled once. “He has an insulin pump.”

“I know,” Cole frowned. “No one knows it’s a hit?”

“Other people on the senator’s payroll, geeks and security freaks like me, no one caught it. Yori’s stepped ahead of the pack.”

A muscle ticked in his square jaw when she’d mentioned the Russian by first name. “Were you on call?”

“No, but—“

“No,” Cole interrupted. “No buts.”

She fisted her hands on her hips. Was he going to try and convince her that like her dead husband Sammy, the senator’s death didn’t rest on her head?

“You’ve been out of contact with Yori for how long?”

“A week.”

“And?”

“He wanted an answer yesterday.”

“Let’s not listen to the crap the media is feeding the public.” Cole shut off the TV. “He wants to rattle you before you try out for the counterterrorism team.”

“It worked! I need to leave here, Cole.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to kill Yori! I’m gonna remotely shoot him with so much insulin, his heart stops. I’m gonna assassinate him,” she hissed like she was not plotting a man’s demise.

Cole picked up his cell phone. “I’ll call in some other outlaws turned angels. We’ll help you, Tessa. It’s kill or be killed time. God won’t hold it against you. Men die waging war all the time. Yori is truly evil, brilliant but malicious.”

She shook her head, making up her mind on her hack to break into the government team.

Whether she had said something aloud, or Cole picked up the frequency her thoughts broadcasted on, he stood. “Oh no you won’t! Try that in front of the feds and they’ll hold a gun to your head until you stop or they stop you!”

“Not before I take Yori with me.”

“Tessa, you make me crazy.”

She shot him a half-hearted grin. “Welcome to the club.” Tessa glanced at her watch. “Wow. Look at the time. Goodnight, handsome.” She hugged him hard. “Sweet dreams, Cole Stone.”

When she released her deathgrip hug on him, Cole did not release her. His mouth slid past her hair near her ear. “No. You are not telling me goodbye, Tessa Kendall.”

“How do you think you can stop me? I’m gonna hit him when he shows up for the senator’s memorial service.”

“How convenient for it to fall on tryout day.” His heart thundered under her ear. “Smells like a trap to lure you out into the open.” His lips touched her ear again and she shivered. “Come to bed with me, Tessa.”

Her stomach flipped a complete circle. Yeah, that would do it. That would keep her from leaving. She wanted to, oh she wanted him.

“It’s a fact of humanity that people procreate after a death.”

“Logic!” Tessa fumed. She wanted him naked and panting, but he was going about it like a vulnerability needing a security patch. “Don’t push me, dude.”

He released her, so she paced some more. When she rounded the corner into his bedroom, three candles sputtered a romantic glow in the darkness. His stereo kicked on, a slow song, and he had her wrapped in his arms, spinning her around the room before she could form two thoughts.

She did not slow dance with anyone, yet she relaxed in his arms, her body fitting more intimately with his. When his mouth came down on hers, her knees grew so weak that he held her against him by male strength. The part of her aching nudged up toward the part of him aching. She moaned into his mouth.

The next thing she knew, a soft mattress was under her. Cole lifted his mouth from hers and their harsh breathing rasped and waltzed in ¾ time with the music. His gorgeous face hovered directly above hers. “Oh, Cole.” When he rolled, taking her over on top of him, she panted. “No fair. Brute force vulnerability attack.”

Cole tilted his head toward the candles and then toward the speakers. “Only you would think such a thing.” He rolled again, taking her back under him. “You love me, Tessa, I know as sure as I know I love you.”

She moaned again, her loins heavy and pulsing with need.

“This is not the order I would have it, but I won’t sit back and do nothing again as you walk out of my life.” Navy eyes closed and he settled more of his weight on her body. Yet twin dimples winked at her as the gleam of his bewitching smile lit up his face. “Mmm. This is some sacrifice.”

Tessa groaned. He wanted this, she didn’t doubt that now. He did not want this, not like this. He was breaking his honor code for her. He’d shown her this week a few truths about Christ’s code. Was she poisoning the honeypot, the one where she and Cole stood a real chance? “I don’t want this,” she whispered.

He groaned. “You do.” He pressed into her again. “I do.”

Tessa slid one hand to cup his handsome face. “You can’t stand between me and Yori. You’ll get hurt. I won’t be the cause of it. I won’t live with that guilt trip.”

“I’m already standing between you, babe. I won’t watch you go to prison. I won’t let him turn you into a killer. I won’t let him kill you either. If you can find nothing else to believe in, believe in me.”

Her heart thumped hard and heavy, the urge to run from him raging inside her head.

“No, baby. It’s too late. I’m past your encryption.”

Lord have mercy, he’d hacked her life again. Her computer had nothing to do with it this time. Cole Stone, security mastermind, had wound his heart around hers. No sparks flying from his keyboard, no fingers flying over the keys, his strong long fingers smoothing over her body this time. He held her spellbound in the candlelight. She hadn’t even known she was falling, but he’d caught her. He was still a thief, sneaking past her firewall to steal her unhackable heart this time.

Her cell phone rang out from the other room. He kept shutting off her cell and she kept turning it on. Tessa wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer to her. She closed her eyes. If Yori had her cell number, then triangulating her position would be fast. He’d be breaking down Cole’s door any moment. Because she had never given the Russian her number meant less than nothing. “I’m scared,” she admitted.

“I know.” Cole made no move from the top of her even if she did want to answer the phone. She didn’t though and like he stayed on the same frequency, so in tune with her now, he seemed to know. He swallowed hard once. “I’m scared for you. You aren’t ready to meet your Maker, Tessa.”

His cell phone rang this time from beside the bed.

“Glenn,” she said with a little sigh of relief. “Not Yori.”

Cole blew out a relieved sigh too. “Turn off your cell or I’ll take out the battery.” He rolled off her and she jumped to her feet to lock off a hole in her security. He picked up his ringing cell. “Yeah?”

Glenn sounded like he’d been through the wringer, tired and cranky. “It’s done. The demon is gone. All of the spirits have moved on.”

“Good job, Glenn. Flipping great job! Do you have all the evidence you needed to prove your theory?”

“Yeah.” After a pause, Glenn asked, “How is she?”

“Knocking on heaven’s door.”

“Hmm.” Glenn paused again, longer this time. “Does she love you yet?”

Cole raked one hand through his too long hair. He didn’t want to tell Glenn anything about Tessa. “Why; are you in love with her?”

“I’m exhausted, landscaping by day and hunting ghosts by night for the last week. Tell her the house is ready to go on the market.”

“Job well done, Glenn.”

“And you? How is your job coming along? She’s isn’t really involved with the Russian mobster, right?”

“She’s in trouble,” Cole admitted.

Glenn growled. “What else is new?” he asked sarcastically. “I’m about all prayed out for the day, but I’ll pound on heaven’s door on her behalf again.”

“Thanks, bro.” Cole paused. “She’s turned off her cell and won’t be turning it back on this time, in case you want to talk to her. No need to leave that bleeping for him to find her.”

“That’s impossible. She registered her phone under a guy’s name with an equally fraudulent address. Besides, I didn’t try her cell.”

“Gotta go.”

Cole strode in the living room. “Tessa?” When he didn’t see her or her phone, Cole walked to the front door. His security alarm was still armed and activated to detect intruders. “Tess,” he called out, but all he heard in reply was the music in his bedroom. He switched it off and sighed deeply at the burning candles.

He heard it then, retching coming from the bathroom. The toilet flushed like he wouldn’t know she had just puked out her guts. He pushed open the door to find her sitting on the floor as she leaned back against the tub in the dark. He didn’t say anything, but wet a washcloth and bent down in front of her to wash the sweat from her face. He waited patiently, even though it was killing him, for her to tell him.

Tessa held up her phone, still on, and showed him the text message.

LINCOLN MONUMENT. 2 HOURS OR STONE DIES. BRING NO ELECTRONICS. LOOK UP @ THE CAMERAS SO I CAN TRACK U.

When Cole grabbed the phone and removed the battery, she stood and brushed her teeth.

“Don’t suppose,” she began in a whisper, “I could borrow your bike?”

Why did he have to love a beautiful yet brilliant woman who was the top of her class in hacking medical implants? Whose thirst for knowledge continually came in a cup of trouble? “No, sorry.”

She exhaled once out her mouth and nodded. The stale yet crisp scent of fear curled off of her like smoke. “Lose-lose situation.” Then the foolish female stuck out her hand like she wanted to shake his. “Bye.” Her other hand slid into the back waistband of her jeans and came back with her gun.

“You’re planning to shoot him?”

“If I have to get close to him, yes. If I can’t get my hands on the technology to send an insulin shock to explode his heart.”

“Don’t you think he’s patched that hole, that vulnerability, yet?”

“Who do you think wrote the program to patch it?”

“Damnation, Tessa.”

He glanced at his watch, five more hours until tryouts for the CT team. “Come back to bed.”

“Hindsight.” Her lips lifted in a sad little smile. “I should have swung the other way, and gone for a job with the scientists testing invisibility.”

He spun around, searched under his bed, and came back with a bulletproof vest from when he had worked as a fed. “He’ll be wearing one. So will you. Put it on under that shirt, Tessa, or, God help me, I’ll strip off your shirt and do it myself.”

She pulled off her shirt and strapped on his vest. He tightened Velcro straps around the back and then gently slid her borrowed baggy shirt back over her head.

He walked out of the bathroom and into the living room where she followed him. “Here’s the plan,” he began.

She walked fast to his front door and shut off his security alarm. She wasn’t planning to listen to his plan.

She no sooner swung open his front door, than the whoosh whoosh whoosh of rotating helicopter blades reached his ears. She stepped outside. She lifted her face and then her middle finger toward the helicopter hovering over Cole’s home.

Cole reached out and yanked on her shirt, pulling her back inside his house. He slammed the front door and then grabbed her by the shoulders. “That is not part of the plan.”

“You,” she said, voice cracking with anger, rising in decibels, “are not part of the plan!”

He snorted. “He’s using me to motivate you, the protector in you, to obtain his goals.”

She grabbed his left hand and tapped one finger over his watch. “The clock is ticking, Cole.”

Just like that, his thin hold on his calm demeanor snapped and his temper ticked like a bomb planted by a terrorist on her favorite first person shooter game. Tick. Tick. Tick. He pulled the cell phone from his pocket, but she reached for it. Even as her pretty lips formed the word no, he barked, “Give me some credit, woman. He’s my adversary, not my intellectual superior.”

She smiled at him then. “That’s what I like about you, Stone.”

He didn’t bother to verify if it was his confidence or his cocky gray matter. Instead he pushed in the number and, then to keep her out of his plans, spoke in Russian to the outlaw turned angel over the phone.

She frowned now. “Nyet is no. Korskovf is Yori. The rest was too fast and over my head.”

Cole picked up pen and paper. “Give me the names of the politicians Yori wants assassinated.”

She clamped her hands over her eyes. “What is the point? It’s too late for that.”

He flicked on the TV and a ticker tape listed man after man as reported found dead. He arched one brow at her and held the pen her way. “The rest of the targets, Tessa. Now!”

“Are they really dead?” she asked in utter amazement.

He sighed and pointed at the TV. “It’s the news. What do you think?”

She wrote down the names of every politician across the globe with an implanted medical device that Yori had ever mentioned to her. She handed it to him, but asked, “Who are you?”

“Your guardian angel.”

“Do you still work for the FBI?”

“No. I have friends in high places though.”

“Who are you,” she demanded. “NSA?”

Cole raked one hand down his face. She was gonna nuke out. “DHS.”

While he placed another call on a secure channel, Tessa paced the room muttering, “Homeland Security? No. No. No. Oh no!”

He’d no sooner hung up, than she walked back into the room with one burning candle from his bedroom. She snuffed it out and swung her other arm toward the bed. “So that was all just—“

“No. I don’t headhunt in bed.”

“Homeland Security is . . . Satan,” she spat.

“All the way and without a doubt if the right people don’t stay in power there.”

She growled and closed her eyes. “Does Glenn know what you do for a living? He told me you were in medical security!”

Cole cupped her angry yet lovely face. “Focus, Tessa. Big deep cleansing breath in, slow deep exhale of anger out, okay?”

Instead she poked him in the chest with one long manicured nail. “I was ready to have your babies!”

He blinked, brain lagging for second to take that in.

She poked him again. “You said you didn’t carry a badge anymore!”

“I don’t,” he answered in a tone the polar opposite of hers. “An ID badge, who doesn’t when working in technology?”

She cussed and paced and spouted off about the evils of government. He winced. Most of what she said was true, but most people didn’t spell it out to his face. This was Tessa, though, and she certainly wasn’t like most folks.

He walked over to his safe and pulled out his gun and a tiny yet powerful notebook with a flexible keyboard wrapped around it. So far her crisis prevention classes were not floating to the forefront. He held it out to her when she took a breath from her tirade.

She tossed her arms up in the air. “He said no electronics!”

Cole smiled at her. “And you’re gonna let a mere mortal man like Yori Korskovf tell you what to do?”

She snagged the arsenal from his hand before reaching under her shirt to unlatch a purple USB from her necklace. “One keystroke to set off a worm in the security patch in his insulin pump. Get me within 500 meters of him and I'll be close enough to be in range. That’s all it will take.” She plugged it in. “Let’s go.”

When he walked into his garage door, he suggested, “Smile, babe, you are about to be on candid camera.”

She growled again and hopped on the back of his bike as the door slid open.

Although he started the engine, Cole turned his face to study hers. “My babies, huh?”

In answer, she glared at him like she was debating whether to pull her pistol and shoot him in the head for real. No, Korskovf’s threat to Cole meant less than ever at this moment.

He offered her one last piece of advice before opening the throttle. “Now would be a great time to take up the art of praying.”

Her lips did move, but whether she was talking to God or cussing Cole, he couldn’t hear her words. He noticed she smiled at the traffic cameras with an icy coldness like the grim reaper. Yeah, his woman was ready to warrior up. He sure did like that about her. And then Cole prayed for protection for them both.

He pulled to a stop five hundred yards out from Lincoln Memorial. While he held the weight of the motorcycle with one foot, he tilted his head to his right. “Sniper, four o’clock.”

“Yours or his?” she asked as she pointed the small long range antenna toward the Memorial. Between her stomach and his back, she opened the little powerful notebook and hit one key.

He nodded again toward the two o’clock position. “There’s ours.” He paused. “Have you tested that malicious code?”

“Not since I last tweaked it at Haven.”

“Here they come. I believe in you, Tessa.”

Two men dressed in all black walked under a security light hanging from the closest pole. The muffled black guns in their gloved hands lifted toward Cole, not Tessa.

Tessa started to swing off the back of the bike, but Cole revved the motor like he was about to take off again. She grabbed hold of his waist and he opened the throttle toward Lincoln Memorial, bumping and flying up the long steps to the statue of Lincoln at the top.

Yori bowed deeply toward her as if paying her a great respect. “Tessa Kendall.”

Tiny beads of sweat lined his upper lip. Was her worm working, buffer overflowing, sending mass doses of insulin to flood through his system?

The Russian mafia leader held out one hand to her, waiting for her to join him. When she paused a second too long, Yori lifted one finger toward his sniper. “Would you rather a bullet pierce Stone’s brain first?” He lifted his other hand out to her again. “I’m feeling very gracious though since you killed off my enemies in rapid succession after my text.”

Yori was no fool; did he believe mainstream media news reports? He was brilliant and malicious.

Tessa swung off the back of the bike, stepping in front of the motorcycle and the sniper’s position to Cole. She nodded at Yori. “So you owe me like a trillion U.S. dollars now?”

“Perhaps your value to me is nill now. Perhaps your value is priceless. Take my hand, Ms Kendall, and we will discuss the merits of your brain and your body on the way back to Russia. We take my private jet from a private airstrip. Neither you nor I can go through the airport. Both of us are misunderstood; both of us listed as terrorists by your government.”

She shot Cole a narrow-eyed glare. When she lifted her hand to place it in Yori’s, Cole swung off the bike and swatted her hand away. “No, Korskovf, the lady rides with me.”

Yori wiped one black long-sleeve over his sweaty forehead. “I prefer dealing with you in our little cyberwar. It’s humid in your country, Stone.”

“Or,” Cole offered, “you are about to become a ghost for real. Know any prayers, Yori?”

Yori lifted his shirt, adjusted his Kevlar vest, and then studied his insulin pump readout. He grunted and doubled over. He pointed at Tessa. “Fix it!”

She stood frozen, watching a man die by her hand as surely as if she had shot him . . . only slower and much more painfully.

Yori snagged the phone from his belt loop. He pushed one button and growled in Russian.

Cole hit the ground before the echo of the sniper’s bullet ricocheted off the building.

Tessa dropped to her knees next to Cole. Blood gushed from his temple!

“Fix it,” the Russian mafia leader demanded. He held a gun toward her, red laser glowing over her heart.

She placed Cole’s head in her lap. “Never!”

Yori fired a bullet at the gasoline tank on Cole’s motorcycle. The bike splintered with the explosion. Shards of chrome hit them all with shrapnel, but most flew into Cole’s big body.

Another sniper rifle sounded in the distance, but when she wasn’t hit, Tessa decided it must be the sniper on their side taking out the sniper on Yori’s.

Korskovf grabbed at the notebook computer hanging from her shoulder. Tessa snagged the purple USB programmed for his insulin pump from the notebook first. She tossed it aside, before pulling her gun and shooting the plastic device into a million shattered pieces.

“Fool,” Yori growled and fell to his knees. He lifted his gun toward her head.

A bullet barked from the side of her peripheral vision. Another zinged from the sniper in the tower. Blood splattered on her face from the two holes in Yori’s forehead as the force flung him back.

The gun in Cole’s hand clattered to the ground.

Her tears dropped down on his face as she leaned over him.

“Not the way I wanted it to go,” he choked.

“Hold on, Cole.” She pressed one end of her baggy shirt to apply pressure to his gushing head wound. With her other hand, she yanked out of a piece of steel from his shoulder.

His eyes shut though as he lost consciousness, his breaths short and erratic. Tessa threw back her head and bargained with God.

Two uniformed paramedics ran up the steps with a stretcher. Tessa refused to leave Cole’s side, praying silently now but as desperate as before on the ride to the hospital. Holding his hand, she said aloud, “I hate tragedies, Cole Stone. Don’t you dare die!”

He flat-lined in the ambulance and paramedics shoved her back to cut off his shirt and to zap him with the charged paddles.

She bowed her head, no longer trying to bargain with God. “I’m sorry for way I’ve been living my life,” she prayed. “Give me one more chance to get off the path I’m on. Please don’t let Cole pay for the consequences of my choices.” She cried as the ambulance stopped and the paramedics zapped Cole’s chest once more.

Doctors met them at the emergency room door and ran the wheeled gurney to surgery.

Blood splattered on her face, on her clothes, Tessa called Glenn from the emergency room payphone. He accepted the collect call, but she hoped he made out her message since she was crying hard.

“On my way,” the only thing Glenn said after her blubbering.

Four hours later, Glenn rushed through the emergency room doors in time to see two cops handcuffing Tessa and quoting the Miranda. He stepped too close and a suited fed shoved him back, so Glenn roared, “What are you charging her with?”

“Murder. Terrorism.”

“Shit!”

Tessa, coated in dried blood, her green eyes ringed with red puffy skin, said calmly. “It’s okay, Glenn. Cole hasn’t come out of surgery yet. Stay and pray.” She turned to one of the feds. “I want an attorney.”

They hauled her out of the building. Glenn wasn’t sure whether he was more shocked that she was calm, or distressed that she wasn’t spitting in their eye letting them know she hated them.

He marched to the front desk and demanded to discover Cole’s status.

The nurse glanced up at him. “Are you family?”

“Yeah. He’s my half-brother.”

She paged a doctor who met Glenn and led him into another private room. The doctor shook his head and clamped one hand on Glenn’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. He didn’t make it.”

“I want to see him,” Glenn demanded.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” the doctor asked.

“I’m not just any dumbshit off the street! I know who he works for. Let me see him with my own eyes.”

Another man in a black suit entered the room and nodded at the doctor. “Calm down, Mr. Reston.”

Glenn growled as the surgeon left them alone.

“Both your brother and Ms Kendall are ghosts now. Understand?”

Glenn blew out a shaky breath, his eyes stinging, grateful he knew how the game was played.

“Perhaps,” the fed continued, “since you hunt ghosts, they will revisit you sometime.”

“Oh yeah? And where would you suppose they might haunt first?”

“Bora Bora.”

Glenn shook his head.

The Suit handed Glenn a black cowboy hat. “Ms Kendall wanted you to have this.” Her black hat.

“You need to appear grieved, Mr. Reston. Do we understand each other?”

“Thank you, Jesus,” Glenn shouted and walked out of the hospital into bright sunshine.

Happily Ever After?

And this is the way it went down with Cole and Tessa, the 1st of 16 alternate endings. As you might imagine for happily ever afters, it wasn't going to work to kill off the hero and heroine. Where's the fun in that? That's what happens when you theme after a song like too much, too young, too fast, when it's screaming in your ear. So excuse the twist.