Outside, Vancouver rain sheeted down the glass, blurring the parking lot into grey. The man in the black overcoat had been the eleventh. He'd come in complaining of a cough, and now he stood at the counter with his medication bag, silver wolf insignia catching the fluorescent light on his cuff.

Then the bell chimed a twelfth time.

The man in the overcoat went rigid. His fingers closed around the paper bag.

In the doorway stood a figure in a black suit — sharply tailored, shoulders straight. The hard edge that had once made men step aside in hallways was gone. What was left was exhaustion, and strain held down by force of will.

Five years. The same face. The same stillness. He stared at the woman behind the counter for so long it seemed he had forgotten how to breathe.

Then he walked to the desk. Water dripped from his hair onto the laminate.