Erik spent a half hour at Lake Union Park watching sea planes land, and then walked south on Westlake Avenue just after five, falling into the slipstream of employees spilling out of their buildings toward home or in search of an after work happy hour.

A large man, he felt conspicuous in the white-collar crowd and took a hunched seat at an outdoor café. He removed a laptop from his bag, placed it on the table, and scrolled through a news site wearing a practiced expression of bland neutrality on his face.

This provided the best possible camouflage. A man in his mid-thirties wearing a button-down shirt and staring at a MacBook was as notable as a mailbox or lamppost. After a moment he gradually shifted his gaze an imperceptible inch upwards, just above the bezel of the screen. Plastic ID badges clipped to the belts and lanyards of passing employees fell into his eyeline. Dog tags in the war for productivity, the stream of names and pictures passing at eye level allowed him to scan every face in the crowd without calling attention to himself.

One of the pictures carried a promising likeness to Dean Hamlin. He glanced up at the face, but it was a false positive and the person–a fit, thirtyish man with a slighter chin and thinner hair than his quarry–met Erik’s upturned gaze, forcing his eyes back down to the laptop.

The top story on the screen concerned an orca in the Puget Sound who was carrying her dead baby afloat in an evident demonstration of grief. Interest in the story had picked up with each passing day over the previous two weeks, and now held a share of global attention. No matter who you are in the world, eventually you will relate to having had and lost something that cannot be recovered.

A pang of feeling hit Erik, and then he felt foolish. The animal kingdom in the news was a sign of domestic tranquility, after all. Go look up the front page of any newspaper from September 12, 2001, or December 8, 1941, he thought. You won’t find that any moody fish made it above the fold.

The news on the next page informed him that the local population was up, wages were up, housing was up, and stock prices were up. Someone was sleeping in the bus shelter in front of the café, and the workers took a wide step to avoid the legs stretched across the pavement. You always see an uptick in people choosing to live al fresco when the economy is really booming.

He ordered a local IPA from an indifferent waitress and was about to turn his attention back to the door badges when he saw Dean Hamlin, for certain this time, exit the office across the street and turn briskly south, away from him.

—

“This guy is going to be squirrely,” Dash had said when he showed him the file. “Once you find him, don’t let him get away from you. OK?”

Dash said “OK?” to let you know he was done speaking. He never gave the impression of wanting to know if you were in fact OK with what he had said.

“For what you take as a finder’s fee,” Erik said, “I was hoping for more useful insight than ‘don’t let him get away’.”

“His name is Dean Hamlin. Desk jockey by day and weekend warrior when he’s not at the office. Ultrarunner. Triathlons. CrossFit. That type of stuff. A real Captain America type. You’re not going to want to spend too much time grappling with him, OK?”

The man in the picture was smiling. He had small, light blue eyes sunbaked into crow’s feet and his square jaw connected straight down into a wide neck. He had what would pass in Seattle for a deep tan and carried almost no subcutaneous fat, making his exterior an anatomy lesson in sinew and tendon. The veins on his neck stood out like cables, and Erik could almost hear them thrumming with blood. It was a professional habit: when he looked at someone he saw a series of systems, structures, and hydraulics, each with its own pressure and failure points. 

“You wouldn’t have much luck waiting for him to keel over with a coronary,” Erik said. “So who’s in a hurry?” 

They stood shoulder to shoulder on the high bluffs of Fort Ebey State Park, a few hours north of Seattle by ferry on Whidbey Island, looking east toward the gray-blue water of the Salish Sea.

“His employer.”

“And what type of business has he gotten himself into that his employer wants someone like me to administer the health plan?”

“Online retail, mostly. Warehouses and logistics, among other things.”

Erik didn’t say anything.

“The thing is, they find themselves facing a lawsuit about their working conditions in those warehouses. It’s their fifth such lawsuit, in fact.”

“It’s a hard job,” Erik said.

“It is. And made harder still when there is a digital thumb on the scale. Each worker in the warehouse wears a device on their arm.” Dash made a circle around his thick wrist with his thumb and finger. “It buzzes your wrist if you lean in a position that’s bad for your back. It buzzes if you’re taking too long to pack a box. It buzzes when your shift is over. Real Big Brother stuff.” 

Erik knew nothing about Dash’s personal life, but he had picked up little glimpses of his personality that suggested a history. He was ex-military, Erik guessed, with the trademark contempt for authority, particularly government, that bordered on paranoia. He now lived somewhere remote, he thought. Maybe in a cabin near the mountains, with solar panels and rainwater irrigation, growing his own food. 

No matter what your political affiliation, go far enough toward either extreme and you’ll eventually find yourself with chickens and an organic garden. It’s where we all meet back on the other side.

Dash flicked the photo of Hamlin. “Anyway, our man here was at work one day and stumbled across a line in the computer code in the device. The line adds a few micro-seconds to each item they pack, making their work day longer, but not noticeably so. This makes the whole operation something like zero-point-zero-zero-five-percent more efficient, ensuring their dog food and coffee makers stay a few pennies cheaper than shopping brick-and-mortar.”

Erik thought it over.

“Doesn’t anyone notice that they clock in at nine a.m. and their shift ends at five-oh-three p.m.? All that added time has to go somewhere.”

“Indeed it does. And where it goes, according to Dean Hamlin, is smack into their legally required fifteen-minute breaks, which are helpfully tracked on the same device. Or fourteen-minute breaks, I should say.”

This new innovation in corporate thievery was interesting but not shocking to Erik, who recalled with distaste several damning headlines he had read about workplace conditions in those warehouses.

“And they’re worried Hamlin will go public with it?”

“It’s worse than that. He already has, in a way. Ever since he made his little discovery he has been collecting evidence on the sly at work and funneling it back to federal officials. And the company just found out, OK?”

“This evidence he gave them is pretty damning?”

“It sounds like it. Before Hamlin butted in, if anyone noticed the timers were off the company could have just said Oh, what an unfortunate mistake, somebody put a zero where there should be a one in the matrix. So sorry. Won’t happen again.”

Dash continued, “This is different. Evidently Hamlin’s testimony is the smoking gun. Proof that what they’re doing is intentional, which I guess is an important legal distinction. It was ‘willful,’ is the term. And now somebody’s about to go to jail.”

“And somebody really doesn’t want to. Which is why we are now involved.”

“That’s right. And here’s another thing: Hamlin doesn’t know that they know. He’s been acting like employee of the month, all the while funneling information back to the feds. Meanwhile they’ve picked up on the fact that he’s the rat, and someone is really not pleased, OK?”

“Understood. When do they want it to happen?”

“Tonight, ideally. The word I received is that he has a meet up with their legal defense team tonight, and that’s when they want you to pick him up.”

“No problem.” Erik said. “Where is the meeting?”

“That I don’t know. Go earn some of your money. He’s at work right now.”

“All right.” Erik took the file and leafed through it.

“And you’re sure you want this one? I know local work is usually not preferred, but they don’t have time to import somebody, and they are paying accordingly, OK?” 

“It will be fine. During the workday that whole area is mostly recent California tech transplants or H-1B Visas. I’m not very likely to see anyone I went to elementary school with.”

The massive hazard pay made it worth it to Erik, but any risk to their anonymity was usually a nonstarter. They didn’t even know each other’s real names. Dash called him Erik, as in “Erik the Red,” because he usually ended a job with some colorful splashes of exsanguination as a calling card.

Erik called him “Dash” because the first time they met had been in Dash Point State Park, and Erik had to spend forty-five minutes hiking around the place to find him. Dash picked the meeting locations, and every one was in a different park or nature area around the region.

“Maybe next time I pick the meeting place,” Erik said.

Dash looked out over the bluffs toward the glimmering Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the brilliant white sunlight bouncing off the snow on the Olympic Mountains to the south.

“Where would you rather be?”

“If I have to be in South Lake Union by five, I’d rather be on the ferry back.”

“Well then you’d better hurry, OK?”

—

Hamlin, the “real captain America type,” had slipped into the after-work crowd as Erik followed. Lost in a shifting array of computer bags and business casual, he didn’t see anyone in blue tights.

He spotted Hamlin down the block, then lost him again, and repeated that sequence maybe five times, moving fast, trying to make up ground at the brisk walking speed of a triathlete without actually breaking into a run.

Erik was covered in a light sweat by the time Hamlin ducked into the light rail station at Westlake, and he was grateful for the break in the action.

He loitered at the end of the southbound platform until Hamlin boarded, then found a standing spot in the crowded car behind him.

The car lurched forward. “You’re on the One Line,” a woman’s voice helpfully announced from the overhead speakers. While technically accurate, this statement was a meaningless bit of civic aspiration. A decade after the ribbon cutting on the first rail stations, the whole system still had only one line in total. The lie was only in the inflection, Erik thought. She could have said, “You’re on the one line.” As in, the one and only.

At Pioneer Square station, Hamlin exited with Erik close behind, walked two blocks west on Yesler, then turned onto First Avenue and ducked into the doorway of a bar-restaurant with a black-and-white awning and a French name.

Knowing better than to follow him inside immediately, Erik walked past the restaurant and took a looping ten-minute walk down First and back again, weaving through the crosstown grid. In Occidental Square, a woman sitting cross-legged on the flagstones was selling a pile of obviously shoplifted clothing. She waved an item at him, a fuchsia women’s sweater with the plastic security tag still clipped to it, as he walked by. 

No thanks, he thought. Doesn’t match my skin tone.

At Washington Street an ageless form in a hooded sweatshirt stood motionless in a fentanyl nod, completely folded over at the waist, a marionette with half of his strings cut.

Things were looking more polished in the restaurant when he entered. Overhead Edison bulbs were sparingly hung around a tastefully underlit dining room of dark wood and black metal fixtures, with an off-white granite bar running along the east wall. A man dressed all in black behind the host station performed his dual function of concierge and bouncer, a border agent protecting the place from outside threats to the ambiance. After a moment of hesitation, he allowed Erik entry to the bar area.

Erik spotted Hamlin at a table with two others in the far corner of the dining room and he took a barstool with his back to them, watching the mirrored wall behind the liquor bottles.

The bartender, a short, plump man in his early forties, expertly shook two whiskey sours with perfectly frothed egg-white tops into etched old-fashioned glasses.

Erik indicated that he would take one as well, and had two of them over the following hour, watching the interesting dynamic playing out as Hamlin sat with the lawyers. They knew he’d turned on them, but he didn’t know that they knew.

Erik watched Hamlin speak, pretending to be helpful, and the lawyers smiling and nodding. But he could see their awareness in the way they didn’t fully meet Hamlin’s eyes after he made certain comments, and a near-invisible contempt simmering behind their smiles. 

Erik took professional stock of the room. Even knowing he would not make a move in such a public setting, his mind began cataloging options without any conscious effort. He saw a steak knife gleaming on a service tray within reach, and a wood-handled steel corkscrew even closer. After the second drink, he started calculating the mental geometry of the angle you would want use when lifting someone over the railing of the lofted upstairs dining area to maximize the odds of them landing on their neck. There was opportunity everywhere.

He turned his attention back to the table. The two lawyers—one man and one woman—had put their notes away, and the woman was paying the check. Hamlin made an inaudible joke and flashed his winning Captain America smile as both of the lawyers laughed.

The woman was very pretty. Chestnut brown, shoulder-length hair, lively dark eyes, perfect white teeth and a radiant smile. As she ducked to return her card to her bag, the mask slipped for just a fraction of a second and he saw behind it a white-hot rage. He had the sudden certain realization that he was looking at his client.

He had assumed this job was pure corporate skullduggery, sanctioned by some grimacing bald gargoyle in the C-suite, but this looked more personal.

He had watched her for the past hour and had formed a picture of her. She was small and came off as friendly. Because of that, she was easily underestimated. Likely top of her graduating class, then onto a top law school, Yale or Harvard, or Stanford if she wanted to be on the West Coast. She had moved from one rung to another in life, winning and winning again, until she didn’t have to think much about what it would take to keep going. Maybe she could not abide this whistleblower sitting across from her, eating her food, making bad jokes, about to fuck up her winning streak.

Or maybe it was pragmatic. Win this case and earn a massively lucrative promotion. Or, hell, quit and go private and keep all future billings for herself.

Maybe she really didn’t like being lied to.

Or, maybe, she just didn’t really mind killing people, and would have found an outlet for that impulse regardless of career.

Erik motioned the bartender over.

“Another one?”

“These are fantastic, but I’m driving so I better not. What I’d really like is some information. I have been sitting here for the past hour, and I am finding that cannot take my eyes of that woman over there.”

The bartender smiled.

“Sure. Her name is Luongo. Lisa Luongo. She’s in here all the time, always for what look like work meetings, always pays with her corporate card.”

“Anything else you can tell me about her?”

“Not really. I think she’s a lawyer. Sometimes I get the sense that they are negotiating over there, and I also get the sense that she always wins.”

“Very interesting,” Erik said, placing five twenties on the bar top.

The bartender laughed. “Best of luck buddy, but be careful. She’s a real killer.”

“If you say so.”

Erik felt a bit of pity for Hamlin who suddenly seemed ridiculous, sitting at that table thinking he was getting away with something, and being completely outclassed the whole time. 

The kitchen door swung open for a moment as a waiter passed through, and Erik saw a busboy hunched over, carrying a heavy-looking rack of steaming plates from the dishwasher. From there his mind jumped to the warehouse employees that Hamlin was trying to help, spending their days stooped or reaching, straining their backs and joints, afraid to get a drink or take a bathroom break. Long days. Even longer than they knew.

When Erik came back to reality, Hamlin was outside climbing into an Uber home to his family. He had entirely missed his window to follow him out.

—

At home, Erik was restless. A lapse like he had just experienced at the restaurant was not just rare, it simply did not happen.

He filled a tumbler with crushed ice, added bourbon and water, and turned on the news, catching the last few seconds of the daily orca update. Sixteen days and counting. Erik took a drink.

Changing tack, the anchor then smilingly announced the results of a survey of local residents. The majority of respondents agreed that “the tech industry has been positive for the region.”

“Some good news there,” the anchor said. “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

Erik could not help thinking that asking a population now dominated by industry transplants what they thought of themselves was more than a little funny. A bit like asking the Germans, after occupying France, how they were enjoying the croissants. 

Uh…Gut, sehr gut. Danke.

The “rising tide” of the past decade was functioning more like a flash flood. The water level was indeed higher today, but a lot of the original boats were flushed out of the harbor by the sudden onrush of labor and capital, replaced by newer ones.

Erik turned off the set, feeling no closer to sleep.

He took a seat at his desk and opened a window in a traceless relay browser. He spent the next hour digging for online dirt on Dean Hamlin.

Through various backchannels, he had access to not only archived news stories and community notices, but also full criminal records, even those that had been expunged. Part of his process was getting a vivid picture of a subject at an unflattering angle before completing the contract. Be it a DUI stop from twenty years ago, a child luring complaint, or a particularly obnoxious LinkedIn post, it was never difficult to gin up some animus on a given subject. There is always at least one good reason to hate someone if you are determined to find one.

But at the end of the hour all he had found was that Dean Hamlin, born and raised in Seattle and a father of two, was virtually spotless. He had found only one item for his trouble: a write-up in an elementary school flyer about Hamlin reading to children in the after-school program. In the picture above the text Hamlin looked, to Erik, a little pompous.

Erik closed the browser, turned off the computer, poured another drink. He sat in the dark with a growing headache, listening to the sounds of the evening traffic outside. He thought about how he had frozen back at the restaurant when he had his opportunity to close in on Hamlin. He thought about how he had never made a mistake like that before. Then, he thought, maybe it was not a mistake.

He turned the light back on, re-opened the traceless browser. Lost in thought, his fingers moved over the keys.

Looking down, he realized he had typed Lisa Luongo into the search box.

—

The following day was a Saturday, and Dean Hamlin spent the morning at home. Erik was ready to fall in behind him when Hamlin exited the front door of his building just after eleven.

When Hamlin slid into a booth at Emmerson’s Oyster Bar on the waterfront thirty minutes later, Erik wasted no time in joining him on the opposite bench.

“Excuse me,” Hamlin said, a little stiffly. “I’m here to meet someone.”

“I know exactly who you are here to meet, Mr. Hamlin” Erik said. “The question is: do you?”

Hamlin, already bracing for a very unusual day, was easily thrown. 

“Who are you?” His usually reliable Captain America smile faltered into a queasy grimace. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“I can tell you exactly what it means,” Erik said.

Hamlin listened without interruption, and five minutes later he was staring down at his congealing cup of salmon chowder without appetite.

“So, you’ve been hired to kill me.”

“That’s right.”

“And that’s what you’ve come here to do now.”

“No, that’s wrong.”

Hamlin looked hopelessly disoriented. “Then what is it exactly that you want from me?”

“I want to convert you. Instead of my target, I want you to become my client. I want you take over my contract, move it from your head to that of Lisa Luongo, and in doing so solve both of our problems.”

Hamlin shook his head. “Oh, I couldn’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Kill someone. I just couldn’t do it. I’m against it on principle.”

“Principle? Who gives a shit? She is going to kill you. She’s from California, for christsakes.” 

Hamlin shrugged.

“I don’t believe this. I came here to save you.”

“Yes, from you.”

“Listen, Hamlin. If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.”

Hamlin thought for a moment.

“You said it would solve both of our problems. My problem is obvious. What’s your problem?”

“My problem is simple: I don’t want to kill you. Are you really too principled to join me in that goal?”

“I don’t kill people,” Hamlin said fixedly.

“In about twenty minutes she’s going to walk through that front door with her buddy, and either way I am going to walk out the back. Really think about what tomorrow looks like for you if you don’t take this deal. Think about what’s at stake here.”

“I don’t believe you,” Hamlin said weakly. “And even if I did, at least my family will be provided for. I’ve planned ahead. I’ve saved.”

“I’ve seen your financials,” Erik agreed. “You have saved. You saved for Uncle Sam, and he is very grateful to you, I am sure. There is a saying here that Washington state is a great place to live and a bad place to die. They say this because the estate tax here is so punishingly high. So you can take all that you’ve saved, and then cut it about in half.”

Erik held up a napkin and tore it down the middle.

“Your wife will have to sell the house just to cover the tax bill on it. She can take what’s left over to a nice little townhouse in a so-so school district. Sure, she will have to scramble back to work just to keep the lights on in that cracker box, but with enough luck she’ll be able to send one of your kids to college. Which one do you think she’ll pick?”

“They weren’t really going to kill me, right?” Hamlin said, sounding panicked.

Erik looked at the time.

“I’m sorry, we don’t have time for denial. This is bargaining.”

“Those lawsuits are going to continue without me. I was just helping. What would killing me guarantee them in the long term?”

“In the long term?” Erik asked. “Hamlin, do you know what liquefaction is?”

“What? Uh, no.”

“Let’s say you have started a business not unlike the one you currently work for, and you have set up your thriving little tech company right here down the street.” Hamlin indicated Alaskan Way, running behind them along the waterfront, ridged with countless office buildings on the other side of it. “Liquefaction means that your MacBooks, and your Teslas, and, less alarmingly, all of your employees, are going to show up to work one fine morning and find themselves at the bottom of Puget Sound by lunchtime.

“This whole city is made up of internet-based offices that could be run from literally anywhere on the planet, and these people chose to build them on loose soil spread shallowly over a tectonic fault line that is way overdue to blow. These are not people who are thinking long-term. Somebody sees a chance to make Monday’s hearing a little better for themselves, and they are taking it. So why won’t you?”

Hamlin sat silent for nearly a full minute.

“All right,” he said finally.

—

On Monday morning, Erik met Dash at another of his hand-picked locations, just off a trailhead in timberland on the Olympic Peninsula. They began to walk together into the forest. 

Monday had been slated to be the first day of the preliminary hearing, but it had been postponed due to the tragic development and was yet to be rescheduled.

After a while, Dash said, “This is not exactly what I expected from Erik the Red.”

Erik shrugged. 

“Have you ever used that particular method before?”

“Nope.” 

“Does it have a name?”

“Saxitoxin.” 

“What?” 

“Also known as paralytic shellfish poisoning.” 

“You’re kidding,” Dash said.

Erik shook his head.

“Yeesh. Sounds like a real nasty way to die.”

“Not really. Just a little tingling and numbness before you freeze up and lose consciousness. Kind of like going to sleep.”

“Incredible. This is one for the scrap book.” He handed Erik a small clipped item from that day’s paper, only a few inches long.

Erik looked down at the news clipping in his hand and skimmed it. In his mind’s eye he saw them as they must have looked sitting across from each other at the oyster bar, each there to kill the other, Lisa Luongo wearing her hard professional smile and Dean Hamlin trying to regain his lost sense of super hero control.

He re-read the headline: Seattle Man Dies on Light Rail. “A light rail passenger died in a north-bound car Saturday afternoon. Dean Hamlin, 37, was found unresponsive at the Northgate station…” It went on for a paragraph or two, offering few details.

“Northgate? So, he made it all the way to the end of the line before they found him,” Erik said.

He wasn’t really surprised. There was a term for the region’s characteristic cool disinterest in other people: the Seattle Freeze. Once Hamlin made it onto the train, he was almost certain to be ignored while he seized up and stopped breathing in his seat.

Sitting there quietly, he could have ridden unbothered up and down the one line all day long if a fare enforcement officer hadn’t tried to wake him for proof of payment.

“You know I’m glad this worked out,” Dash said. “Some people get a little weird doing this kind of work so close to their home. They can lose perspective.”

“It went very well,” Erik said quickly. “No hesitation at all.”

—

And it had gone well, for at least a few minutes after Hamlin accepted his offer. Erik ordered a round of Kumamoto oysters to celebrate, awash in the generous feeling of someone having his cake and eating it, too.

Then Hamlin excused himself to the restroom. And Erik found himself alone with his thoughts.

And what was he thinking, really? Hamlin was now the only person in the world besides Dash who could identify his face, and Erik didn’t even really know anything about him. In fact, the only thing he did know for sure about Hamlin was that he screwed over his last professional partner.

And who the hell did this guy think he was, anyway? Making Erik practically beg for the privilege of saving his life. For all he knew, Hamlin was in the bathroom testing the wire on a hidden microphone, all excited to tell the feds that he had snared them a two-for-one deal today.

And here Erik was, risking everything to screw over a client who had done him no wrong, who had offered good money, and who might offer repeat business if Erik could manage to scrounge up even the slightest amount of professionalism. He lightly touched the pocket that held the vial of saxitoxin he had brought for Lisa Luongo.

Hamlin returned to the table a few minutes later to find a fresh tray of oysters resting on ice chips.

“Olympias,” Erik said. “Small in size, but big in flavor.”

He handed one to Hamlin, and ate one himself. 

“It tastes like copper,” Hamlin said.

“Great minerality,” Erik said. “Like tasting the ocean.”

He picked up another and raised it, indicating Hamlin to do the same.

“To the good guys,” Erik said, and tossed it back.

—

“Why this sudden change in tactic, anyway?” Dash asked. “Your calling card is usually a bit more spatter. You know,” he waved his hands in the air, “kind of Jackson Pollock-y, OK?”

“Staying local carries enough risk without my dropping a calling card.”

“It sure sounds like a better way to go out. Just drop off to sleep,” Dash mused. “There’s at least some mercy in it.”

Erik said, “I read once that mercy and mercenary both come from the Latin word for ‘reward.’”

Dash looked at him.

“So now that Dean Hamlin has gone onto his,” he held out his hand, “I await my own.”

“Ah, right.” Dash handed him an envelope. Some cash, some account information. Erik didn’t need to inspect it. He looked around at the dense walls of Doug fir and cedar around them.

“You know,” Erik said, “I actually spent a summer in this area years ago, trying to make it as a logger when I was just a kid out of high school. ‘Learn a trade,’ my dad said, and I liked being out in nature.”

“You didn’t end up liking the job, though?”

“I liked it fine.”

“You don’t do it anymore.”

“The sports complex in Seattle has been re-named Climate Pledge Arena, if you’re curious how the logging industry is doing around here these days.”

Dash laughed, just as everyone who heard the name laughed.

“It used to be ‘learn a trade,’” Erik said. “Now it’s ‘learn to code.’”

“And we saw how well that worked out for Hamlin.”

“Tomorrow it will be something else, and I don’t much care what it will be. I have a job. It’s not for everyone, but no job is. There is an ethic to it, and I do it well.”

—

Erik sat on the exposed the upper deck of the ferry on the way back. A smattering of tourists were out to sight-see, but a light rain had kicked up and most riders were down in the main cabin, or waiting it out in their cars.

Looking out over the water, he thought again of the mother orca, still dragging literal dead weight through the shifting waters, unable to move on. Better adapt fast, he thought, or become yet another local resident who can’t hack it in a rapidly changing environment.

He felt the weight of the envelope in his pocket and considered what it could buy him. A fresh start, if he wanted one. He could move someplace warm. A new job, or no job at all for a while. Many possibilities presented themselves, and he considered each one in turn.

The sound of the heavy metal door banging closed brought him back around. The tourists had gone below, and he was alone on the top. The rain had picked up, along with a stiff headwind. Cold rainwater ran down his neck and under his collar. He considered following the others inside, but decided against it. He had seen lots of days like this before, and the clouds would break eventually. He was sure of it.

A Bad Place to Die was originally published in The Killing Rain, and reprinted in The Best American Mystery and Suspense