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bar. Nine o’clock. He’ll be there then.”
    “Who?”
    “Your mark. Shit, I know it’s been awhile, but get it together, Buckner. I’ll send you the rest of the info.” The line went silent.
    What the hell had Will agreed to do? He sat down on a kitchen chair, running a hand through his hair. Whoever was on the line had called  James.  James had done a lot of nefarious things in his life, but murder wasn’t one of them. The thought only reassured Will slightly. The guy said he’d send details. If whatever he agreed to do was tonight, there was no way he’d be mailing it. It had to be e-mail. Will found James’s computer, frustrated when he found it password-protected.  Of course , it was password-protected. This was James. But what would James use for a password?
    Instead of wasting time trying to figure it out, Will called James’s cell phone.
    “Where the hell are you?” James growled. “You’re supposed to be down here helping me.”
    “Dude, you know I suck at this job. I need to find another one. I need your computer password so I can go online and look for a new shiny career.”
    James hesitated. “What are you going to look for?”
    “I dunno… maybe security.”
    James hesitated again. “What kind?”
    “Seeing how I don’t have any job at all, beggars can’t be choosers. Whatever I can get.” Will decided to take it a step farther. “You said you’d done some work while you built up your fishing business. You said you used your skills from the Marines. Maybe I could do something like that.”
    “You sure as shit don’t want to get mixed up in that.”
    Dread tickled the hair on Will’s arms. “What did you used to do?”
    James paused so long that Will wondered if he’d hung up. “Shit I regret. We’ll leave it at that.”
    If James regretted it, then it had to be bad. Still it was one thousand bucks and Will needed the money. He didn’t even have a car. Besides, it wasn’t like it was going to stain his impeccably clean character, Maybe a few years ago he would have worried about that, but he didn’t how you could get much lower in the gutter than  child killer . “I still need your password.”
    James sighed. “Fine.” Then he rattled off a string of letters and numbers that he had to repeat twice for Will to get.
    “What the hell does that stand for?”
    “What does it matter? I’m going to have to change it when I get back anyway.”
    That was fine with Will. He only needed it to access James’s e-mail right now. The problem, he quickly realized, was that he didn’t know what e-mail address James would have such information sent to. And he was sure James was smart enough to clean it off his internet history.
    Just when he was about to give up, the phone rang again. “Your e-mail isn’t going through.”
    Will heard the irritation in his voice and he didn’t sound like a man you wanted irritated. Nevertheless, Will couldn’t believe his luck. Perhaps fate or the stars or some kind of cosmic collision was intervening to make this happen. “Yeah, that one got compromised. I had to open a new one.”
    “And it is…?”
    Will gave him his personal e-mail, thankful it didn’t give away his identity. Then the line went dead.
    He logged onto his account, ignoring the three e-mails from his sister. She was better off not knowing the drunken details of his life and he was too apathetic to lie to her. He realized he’d promised to call her, but he’d never said when. Still, his conscience nagged at him, telling him he wasn’t being fair to her and worrying her unnecessarily. But the old Will would care about that. The sooner Megan realized that he wasn’t the person she used to know, the better off she’d be. He’d call her, but he’d wait until he could tell her he had a job. Even if he couldn’t share the details.
    While he studied his unread messages, a new e-mail popped up, one from an address consisting of random letters and numbers. Taking a deep