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number of times, his face turning red.
    “You need some water?”
    “You got any schnapps?”
    Jake hesitated and then said, “I have no alcohol at all.” He had used the long hospital stay to not only rehab his physical body, but also to dry out from too much alcohol over the past year or so. Anna had finally forced the issue with Jake, especially after his last case in Bulgaria.
    “Sorry, I forgot,” Franz said.
    “Anna?”
    “Yeah, she was concerned.”
    Jake rose to his feet and ran his fingers through his long hair.
    “Sit, Jake.”
    He did so and then said, “I wasn’t drinking when Anna was killed.” Jake hesitated. “Well, we were going to share a bottle of wine. It didn’t affect my reaction, though.”
    “I know. Interpol did a blood alcohol on you and Anna. She had nothing and you barely spiked.”
    “Bulgaria was difficult for me,” Jake said, his mind drifting back to the case he had last worked there. He’d been hired by one of the new uber-rich to recover over a hundred million Euros that had been embezzled from his company by a group of uber-deadly thieves with ties to worldwide terrorism. Anna had been assigned the case by Interpol. Jake had been forced to lie to his own girlfriend many times as he went about his investigation. The case had ended well for Jake, having taken in a ten-percent recovery fee, but Anna had almost been fired for not keeping her boyfriend out of the way. It had strained their relationship somewhat. Jake’s drinking hadn’t helped much. Their trip to the cabin patched things nicely. Until the shooting. Jake’s first thought about who had struck them there was someone from that group he had taken down in Bulgaria. But the Agency had looked into that option and found nothing.
    Franz folded his hands onto his lap. The old Polizei man looked older by the second.
    “What’s up?” Jake prodded.
    Coughing again, when Franz finished he said, “There’s a contract out on you.”
    “No shit!”
    “It’s not what you think, Jake. It’s now become non-specific.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning. . .whoever whacks your ass gets one million Euro.”
    Jake whistled softly. “Christ, I might kill myself for that. You getting ideas, my friend?”
    “Of course not.” Franz smiled now, his face becoming a field of wrinkles. “Maybe if I wasn’t dying I might consider.”
    Thinking hard now, Jake guessed his plan to simply stay put and wait for someone to come and kill him was no longer a sound decision.
    “This will bring any crazy bastard with a gun or knife out of the woods to take a poke at me,” Jake said pensively. Considering it more, things became much more clear to him. He laughed and said, “The bastards. They’re trying to dilute the gene pool. They figure if they send every Tom, Dick and Harry after me I’ll never see the real hit man coming. I’ll be too busy sifting through all the wannabes.”
    Franz nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. Why I’m here, Jake.” He opened his coat, revealing a handgun strapped under each arm.
    “No. No way. I need you behind the scenes feeding me information. I need an inside guy, Franz.”
    The old cop rose as nimbly as possible yet shaky nonetheless. “What you’re saying is you don’t want some old kränklich watching your back. That’s what you mean. Just say it.”
    Jake let out a deep breath. It was a no win situation. “All right. You’re right. I can’t trust you. Jesus Christ, look at you. Age has nothing to do with it. You should be in the damn hospital, not out chasing bad guys. You can barely stand.”
    With no grace or speed Franz drew both of his guns and pointed them to either side of him. “It’s not how fast you pull the gun, Jake, it’s the truth of your aim. And I can still shoot, damn you.”
    “Put the guns away. At the range I’m sure you can still hit the target. But what if we have to run? Cancer has eaten you alive. And the cigarettes have clogged your lungs with black sludge.