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Nate came in at seven with the pillow crease still on his cheek and got the coffee going before he said anything at all. He looked better. Not good, exactly since the shadows were still there, but better.

And Leo looked at him and wondered. He’d been wondering all night since Nate had gone to sleep. “Why are you doing this for me?”

Nate paused with his coffee mug half-raised to his lips. “I said I would help you restore your memories, didn’t I?”

“So you can exorcise me?” Leo remembered that part; he’d just needed to make sure that was still Nate’s plan because last night... He’d almost gotten the impression that Nate actually cared about him.

And it hadn’t been the first time either.

But the worst part was that Leo had cared about Nate a little too.

So he needed to remind himself that they were not friends.

For some reason, though, Nate was just looking at him now.

“Well?” Leo prompted, maybe a little more aggressively than necessary.

“Yes,” Nate said finally. “I will help you move on at the end of all this.”

“You’re using different words,” Leo noted, “but the meaning doesn’t change.”

“No,” Nate agreed. “It does not.”

“Good.” Leo nodded. “As long as we’re clear.”

“Crystal.” Nate sat down and opened the laptop. “I think we stopped at Kowalski” he said, and scrolled to find his place.

The remaining two decades went fast. Nate was awake now and wasn’t stopping for interruptions.

Kowalski, Kramer, Lang… Leo read every name and waited for the dread to come back. It never did. What came instead was a warm, dangerous feeling that grew with every year that ended without a name that Leo recognized.

Two thousand nine. Two thousand fourteen. Two thousand nineteen.

Morrison. Nagel. O’Brien.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Twenty twenty-three.

They were flying toward the end. The last page was short, and Leo read those slower than any of the others, holding his breath even though he was already dead.

Vail, Christopher. Wallace, Anne-Marie.

The page ended.

Leo stepped back without taking his eyes off the screen. “That’s all of them?”

“Yes,” Nate confirmed. “Did any name ring a bell for you?”

“No.” Some of the tension that had kept him going drained out of Leo. If the boy wasn’t on the list… “It’s 2026, isn’t it? And you think I died in the seventies.”

Nate confirmed both of these claims.

Leo nodded to himself. Fifty years.

That was nothing. That was absolutely nothing.

“Leo.” Nate’s full focus was on Leo again. “What did the list tell you?”