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“Grand?!” the dead men spat in unison.

“This was a mistake,” Greer said again, her movements quicker and more determined this time. “It’s too much to ask after so long.”

“It’s not that,” Jack said before Greer could fully finish her sentence. “I’d do it in a heartbeat, Greer. You know I would. But I can’t.” Greer said nothing to this, which told Jack everything he needed to know. She didn’t believe him. She thought, honestly seemed to believe, that despite all they’d been through together and all she meant to him, that Jack wouldn’t move heaven and earth, and hell too, for good measure, if Greer asked him to.

“Look, Margaret is loaded, sure,” he said to Greer’s profile. “But beyond her weekly paycheck, I can’t actually access her money. I still don’t really understand how this all works, but it’s like Margaret gets to choose what parts of her thoughts and memories I have access to, and her bank details are tucked away somewhere she won’t let me reach. I’ve tried. Believe me. Hell, as soon as I realized my host body was wearing real diamonds, I had a whole future on a beach in the South of France planned out. But her bank requires very specific details to get anywhere near her money, and every time I think I’m getting close to finding them in here, she moves them somewhere else. Somehow the stats of her favorite golfers are just lying around up here, but everything that actually matters is under lock and key.”

Jack gulped in his first breath since he began his rant. In truth, it was as much a relief to get that off his chest as it was to see Greer warily ease herself back into her seat. This whole possession thing was still so new and confusing, and he’d had no one to talk to about it until now. It reminded him a bit of going through puberty, but at least sex ed had prepared him for those body changes.

“Okay,” Greer said after a long moment.

“Yeah.” Jack searched her face. “Wait, okay what?”

“I’ll do it.”

“Do…?”

“It. Whatever it is. The job you tried to rope us into. You said there’s big money involved, right? So whatever idiotic thing came out of the fucked-up mind of Jack McCoy this time, I’ll do it.”

“My fucked-up mind too,” Dale corrected.

“Dale’s here,” Jack said absently. Greer’s brow furrowed, her gaze shifting to the empty space beside Jack he’d tipped his head toward. Jack continued. “You will?”

“Yeah.”

Jack ran his hands up and down his trousers. This was incredible. This was wrong. “What do you need the money for?”

“Jesus Christ, Jack. I just said I’m in. Isn’t that enough?”

It was. It was everything. “Greer. What is it?”

Greer’s face drooped back toward her mug. She shook her head, but not with her usual defiance. With something that looked almost like defeat.

A hand crept unbidden from Jack’s lap back onto the table, inching toward hers again. But then he caught sight of the veins and the sun spots, the creases and arthritic bends. He wanted to comfort her, but not like this. Not with a stranger’s hands. He retreated.

“It’s my youngest,” Greer continued, oblivious to the hand that wasn’t Jack’s. “She’s been sick for a while now. We were managing as well as possible, keeping her stable, keeping our heads above water. But Curtis lost his job last month. I can’t keep the four of us afloat on a hairdresser’s salary, much less afford all of Mia’s treatments. If this job is really a guaranteed payout, then I need it. My family needs it.”

Her family. Greer’s family. Greer’s family with her husband. A man named Curtis. Who even went around with a name like Curtis? It was the celery of names: tasteless and weirdly stringy.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “About Mia.” And about Curtis, but this was probably not the moment to add that. What mattered right now was that Greer needed Jack just as much as Jack needed Greer. His army wasn’t completely disassembled. Balance was ever so slightly restored to the universe. And to top it off, he could actually help. He could do something for Greer. It had been years since he’d been in such a position.

Greer nodded into her mug. “Thanks.” She looked up again. “So, what is it?”

“What’s what?”

“The job.”

Jack looked over at Dale, who puffed up slightly beside him. Jack did his best to break down the nature of his job at S.C.Y.T.H.E. in as few words as possible.

“So the idea is, there has to be some kind of Master List somewhere with all the details about people’s deaths,” Jack said. “Those details would be worth a ton.”

“So the plan is to steal the Master List?”

“That’s the plan,” Dale confirmed.

“That’s the plan,” Jack reiterated.

“Right.” Greer’s hazel eyes bored into him again. “Do you actually know this list exists? Or where it is?”