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same ocean view, the rubber ball instead of a chair, the desk encrusted with decks and monitors Even Erich didn’t look different Maybe better dressed, even It was the context that changed it all The screen showed an ocean of gray and white, and Erich’s clothes looked like a costume

Butch and the four other heavily arer discipline who’d escorted the the door behind theone before he spoke, but the tiny fist of his bad ar the way it did when he was nervous

“Well A more alive than I’d expected”

“Not looking too dead yourself”

“As I recall the e left it, you weren’t ever co back to my city Open season, I called it”

“Wait a second,” Peaches said “He said if you came back here, he’d kill you?”

“Nah,” Amos said “He broadly implied that one of his employees would kill me”

Peaches hoisted an eyebrow “Yeah, because that’s different”

“If this is about the old man, I haven’t checked to see if he made it or not Deal was he kept the house, and I did that More than that, and I’ve got other problems”

“And I got no trouble to cause,” Ah reat fit for the new situation”

Erich walked over to the wall screen, liainst the colorless sky Fros that should have provided a foreground Most of them were still in place close in Out toward the shoreline, things were shorter now

“I was right here when it happened,” Erich said “It wasn’t a wave like a wave, you know? Like a surfer wave? It was just the whole fucking ocean huhborhoods I used to run just aren’t there now”

“I didn’t see anything happen,” Ah”

“Where were you?”

“Bethlehem,” Peaches said