good times never last.

  What Jacob doesn’t say, he makes up for with a sharpened gaze. He’s had time to mull this one over. He’s damn certain he would kill Richter again, and again– however many times it takes to snuff him out for good. The guy just isn’t worth the breath in his lungs.

   The instant Richter rises, so does Jacob. His chair screeches out from behind him. And then he follows, quietly, without making a scene of it.

  Not that anyone’s going to stop him.

     Natural instinct screeches for him to grab something-- anything-- to defend himself with. His body  makes him look at each crevice in this back alley-- looks at the street beyond-- and he know that he should run. Should hide. There’s a certain inevitability that follows him around, though. There always is.

     This man’s made of fucking steel. Maybe Richter is, too-- at least enough to keep him from dying when he could have. That doesn’t mean anything at this point, though. Jacob’s obviously seconds away from scraping him off the face of the earth. Does Richter believe that things should go any different?

     Would he kill Jacob if the tables were turned? If it was his mother who had been killed? If he had been shot? If he found him here, in this bar, alive?

  “–You– ow– You can’t tell me what to do. What is all this shit?”

  The man brushes him. He doesn’t think anything of it, at first. It happens in places like this. It’s the sudden, unexplained tension that gets him to look up; gets him to see and know who it is.

  Jacob’s gaze is deadlocked from that point. Eyes brim with a quiet hatred and, above all, disbelief. The last time he saw Richter was when he had both hands crushing down on his windpipe. He felt the man dying beneath him. It’s… not possible. It’s not possible that he stands here, gawking at him. A deer in the headlights.

  But the dread in Richter’s eyes is a little too fucking genuine to be a hallucination.

     It’s time to go. Richter’s got the idea that Jacob won’t blink an eye at killing him in this bar-- he hasn’t forgotten the last time they met. Neither of them have, he’s sure. And while he could try to defend himself here, the idea of anyone calling the cops isn’t something he’s interested in. Not when he just got out of that heat.