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felt for someone. There had to be a shred of humanness left in him.
    The man patted Dan’s shoulder. “You’re in luck, my friend.” He smiled wide and it was a genuine smile. “Because time is on my side.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” The man made no sense.
    â€œI have a gift for you, Daniel Blakely, a second chance, if you wish. I’m going to give you the opportunity to live a little longer.” He looked at his fingers as if inspecting his carefully trimmed nails. “Funny how everything changes when your time is up, isn’t it? When you’re this close—” he held his thumb and index finger a half inch apart—“to the end and can feel the life slipping from your body, fading like vapor disappearing into the atmosphere. Things change, don’t they? It’s as if the veil has been thrown back and you can finally see clearly.”
    â€œWhat are you getting at?”
    â€œMy gift, Danny. My gift. I’m getting to it. I’m going to extend your life seven more hours. You can relive any seven hours from your past or spend the next seven hours right here, waiting for help to come. But either way, at the end you’ll be forwarded through time—” he drew an arc in the air with his index finger—“to the moment of your death.”
    Either the man was a hired gun and was just having some last-minute fun with his mark, the kind of amusement only heartless killers could enjoy, or he was plumb nuts and was no hit man at all but rather a narcissistic maniac who believed himself a god.
    â€œYou’re crazy.” Dan’s only other thought was that he was hallucinating, that the trauma his body had suffered, the stress it was under, had caused the synapses in his brain to misfire and concoct an image of this man, the man he’d seen on campus.
    â€œOh, I’m not crazy. Quite the opposite actually. I’m probably the most sane thing in your life right now.”
    â€œWho are you?”
    â€œMy name is Thomas Constant.” The man stuck out his hand, looked at Dan’s bloody and dirty hand, then withdrew the offer of geniality. “So what’ll it be?”
    â€œWhat if I don’t want to play your game?”
    Constant shrugged. “That’s your choice. But please know, this is no game. It’s quite serious actually. Of course, you can choose to do nothing and die. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
    It was what Dan wanted, or at least what he thought he wanted. He had enough life insurance that Sue and the boys could stay in the house and get out of debt. She would be okay and wouldn’t have to worry about money for a very long time.
    Constant slipped the watch from his pocket and glanced at it. “Time keeps ticking forward, Danny. It waits for no one. And your time is almost up. I need an answer.”
    The way Dan saw it, he had two choices: lie there and die a slow, lonely death or take this Constant fellow up on his ridiculous offer. He was now convinced Thomas Constant was nothing more than a raving lunatic, but he had nothing to lose by playing along.
    A bolt of pain shot up Dan’s back and landed in his skull. A pounding headache set in, throbbing out a steady rhythm like a primal war drum calling the demons of death. Like a ceiling breaking free from its support beams, the sky suddenly grew darker and loomed closer. Snow landed lightly on Dan’s face; he licked the wetness from his lips. He was so thirsty. The sound of his own breath, that raspy, labored breathing, faded to a whisper.
    The time was upon him. In desperation he said, “Fine. Okay. Let me . . . I want to start this day again. If I can make it turn out better a second time around . . .”
    Constant stood and looked down on Dan. Against the gray-and-white backdrop his face all but disappeared. Only his black suit and those radiant blue eyes were visible. “Very well.