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“Don’t get cute, Jack. We didn’t come to hurt anyone, but that doesn’t mean we won’t.”

“Just let her go,” Jack pleaded. “She’s your friend, she doesn’t need to be caught in the middle of this.”

“Yeah, I think you’re wrong there,” said Dale. “Because I think she makes a pretty compelling bargaining chip, don’t you? Like I said, Jackie, I learned from the best.”

“I’d never do this.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. Things would have been different with me in charge. So here’s how this is going to work. You’re going to give up on the list, all of you. You’ll walk back out of here knowing I won, unless you’re ready to join me. Because I’ve got big things planned, Jackie, for all of us. Turns out once you start, it’s addictive. A guy could get used to it, you know? Being you.”

This was useless. Dale was so hopped up on his own ego he couldn’t see beyond it, but Jack could, and what Jack could see horrified him. Greer’s cheeks were lined with a steady flow of silent tears. Every time Gerard shifted even slightly, a bright red indent revealed itself on Greer’s temple from beneath the gun’s barrel. Bile and anxiety rose up Jack’s esophagus. He needed to do something quickly, before Dale’s power trip completely overtook him, but any wrong moves would put a bullet in Greer’s head. He was running out of options. Dale was a lost cause. The only choice now was to appeal to the man holding the gun.

“Gerard,” Jack said carefully, “you don’t have to do this. Dale promised you a cut of the take, right? Whatever it is, we’ll double it. Just put the gun down. Please.”

Gerard studied Jack, seeming to contemplate this proposal on a long inhale.

“He’s here because of you,” Dale said before Gerard could reply. “This is what I mean when I say you’ve lost your touch, Jackie. See, Gerry saw us on the archives’ security footage that night we broke in. The old Jack McCoy would never have let that happen. The next day, he dropped by for a visit. I guess he was too sweet on Margaret to turn her in without talking to her first. But you were out, and I decided to see who it was. Never expected it to be someone who could see me too. That’s when it hit me. The reason all your plans worked. It wasn’t because you were some genius, it was because you had a brilliant right-hand man doing all the dirty work for you. And suddenly I had mine. Good thing you kept that spare key under the flowerpot. Made it much easier to meet with ol’ Gerry here.”

Jack’s mind whipped back to all the times he’d come home to find Margaret’s front door unlocked. He’d always assumed it was Eli letting himself in with his lock picking skills, but that, along with everything else he thought he knew, was clearly not the case.

“We just needed to stay one step ahead of you, and no offense again, Jackie, but you made that pretty easy. Especially because I got to hear all your plans before you ever followed through on them.”

Jack’s head was spinning. He had known Dale almost all his life, and yet the spirit in front of him was little more than a stranger.

The sound of loose pebbles skittering across the ground pulled his attention back across the chamber just in time to catch Carter dissolving into a blur as he bolted headlong toward Gerard, who whipped around, gun raised. The shot rang out like a scream, its piercing echo bouncing off every surface. Jack held his breath as a plume of dust erupted from above. As it settled, Carter’s silhouette emerged upright and unharmed in its wake, a bullet lodged in the stone just above him.

“Consider that a warning shot,” Gerard snarled with a feral quality Jack had never heard from him before. “I was a military man most of my life. I won’t miss again.” Then he shifted the still-steaming gun back to Greer.

Carter took a wobbly step back. Cyrus was on his knees now, muttering unintelligibly. Jack still hadn’t exhaled.

“Okay, whoa,” said Dale, making his way over to his gunman. “Easy. Let’s not get too trigger-happy here, Gerry. We’ve been over this.”

“We have,” Gerard sneered back. “We’ve been over a lot. Charming you think I’m actually listening to any of it.”

That seemed to hit Dale like a blow to the gut. His brows tightened toward each other. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re morons, the lot of you. Have none of you taken a single moment to read this list you all so covet?”

To the silence, Gerard continued. “Of course not. It’s just a way to make a fast dollar for you. But if you glanced at it, even once, you’d see my name right up at the top. Of course, I’d never have known it was there if you lot hadn’t brought the Scroll of Souls to my attention in the first place, which I suppose I must be grateful for. But you’d sell my soul, and the souls of everyone else on that list, to some twisted associate of that morally bankrupt individual”—he waved the gun in Cyrus’s direction—“to do god knows what with, and I won’t stand for it. Margaret—Jack, I used to see you in the archives, poring over all sorts of S.C.Y.T.H.E. literature. You must’ve read about afterlife experimentation, so you know souls are vulnerable to those with ill intent. I thought it would be enough to take the list before you had the chance so that its contents couldn’t be sold off, but you’ve proved too stubborn to see reason. If I must harm the few to spare the many, then so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Gerard’s finger danced on the trigger again, the barrel still aimed toward Greer. Before Jack could find Margaret’s feet to move or her tongue to speak, Eli tumbled into the room, eyes wild as they landed on the scene before him.

“Greer!”

Another blast barely missed its target as more rock loosened from the wall just behind Eli and showered onto him, a heavy shard of stone shrapnel cracking him across the forehead. The curls above his left eyebrow grew slick, a thick ooze of red cascading down his cheek. The blue at the shoulder of his T-shirt quickly purpled as a thick, dark liquid dripped down in fat splashes. Eli staggered back, grasping the wall behind him for support.

“Dude, stop!” Dale shouted over the reverberation. “Enough. We’re not doing it like this.”

Gerard didn’t even look in Dale’s direction as everyone froze breathlessly in place, the gun tipping back toward Greer.

“Hey,” Dale tried again, desperation fraying his tone. “Gerry. Dumbass. I’m in charge here, remember?”

A snort from Gerard. “Of course you aren’t, boy. You never have been.”

Jack braved a glance over his shoulder to where Eli stood several feet behind. Through the pain, a glimmer of recklessness shone in Eli’s eyes like sunlight on a tumultuous sea. Jack knew that glimmer, and it terrified him nearly as much as the weapon in Gerard’s hands. Eli moved like a flash, but Jack was ready. As Eli barreled headfirst toward his sister’s captor and Gerard raised the gun to face Eli, Jack was already on the move, screaming a heedless war cry that echoed with a voice not quite his and not quite Margaret’s, one that had been gone for too long.

In a heartbeat, Jack flung his full body weight onto Eli, dragging both of them to the ground in a tangle of limbs as another bullet hissed past. Margaret’s entire mass pressed across Eli’s torso, knocking the wind out of him long enough for Jack to scramble to his feet without risk of Eli following. The gun’s barrel followed him as he rose, its metal gaze locked on his, and for the second time in his existence, Jack found himself staring directly into the eyes of Death. When they’d met before, he’d been a different man in so many ways, and Jack McCoy had done what he always had when trouble caught up with him: he’d come up with a plan and evaded the consequences of his actions. This time he greeted Death with a very different goal. No one else would die because of him. Not again. He’d spent his whole afterlife running from Death and only now he realized it had never been his own he couldn’t handle. If the next bullet came for him, he was ready for it.

Not yet.