Jinger's bedroom was just as she'd left it. Even now as he sat across from her parents having breakfast, her funeral seemed so surreal to Gerry. The fact that her body was in the faithless ground and not in his arms made him feel lost. The day he came to their doorstep, his heart felt like it was pounding hard in his feet. His throat was dryer than a scouring pad. There was too much noise from the thoughts in his head that he couldn't concentrate on the words he had to say to them.

After Jinger's dad offered him a beer and he took it, without drinking he stared into the bottle at the liquid inside. He thought about how long she'd been in the water unnoticed.

He imagined how she must've felt as she was being murdered and no one able to or knowing she needed to be rescued. He hated himself for not knowing she was missing. Not knowing Traveling Salesman wasn't her. That the connection he and she had was long ago broken. And he had no idea. Before he knew it he'd said the words he at first couldn't bring himself to say or admit aloud, "Jinger's dead."

He saw disbelief on their faces and heard words of shock and dumbfounded tones then sobs from both parents and a thud as Jinger's mother's body hit the floor. This all seemed to happen in stages in intermittent frozen and slow motion. He wanted to drink the beer but was too sick inside to take a sip.

He gripped the neck of the bottle, tilting the bottom of it upward wanting so badly to throw it across the room. To smash it into a million pieces like his heart had been. But he came to his senses and realized where he was and put the bottle down gently on the table.

For a moment as he looked at the bottle, he could see Jinger's lifeless body on the surface of the beer inside. Tears streamed down his face as he clenched his jaw in disdain over the way in which she left this world. The deafening silence in his head drowned out everything and nothing.

Jinger's parents had been more than kind allowing Gerry to sleep on their sofa until Watch is released from the hospital. He couldn't bear to go back to their yacht or home right now. Those places were too awkward and a bit tainted without her.

When days seemed more tangible and in an unsettling semblance of calm in the midst of lingering sadness, Gerry found himself answering either parent who'd ask the same question on that occasional day, "Who would do this to our girl?"

"I don't know," he'd say feeling the bile of that lie crushing his trachea each time as he shaped his mouth to speak the sentence. If he told them the truth, that would be like telling them the boogieman is real. Very few saw Traveling Salesman or lived to tell about it. And besides, its existence, real or fable wasn't known in residential circles like Colorfed. Jinger's parents knew she, Watch and Gerry were bounty hunters, but that was all.

A few days later, Watch was released from the hospital. As several more days passed, Watch was still weak and he'd spike a series of fevers weekly. He was readmitted to the hospital.

"He'll have to have around the clock care for the rest of his life. We'll transfer him to a permanent care facility as soon as possible," the doctor said.

Watch was barely out of his teens and could hear the explosion of his future. There were women he wanted to date. More bounty hunting he wanted to do. He wanted to retire one day and go to university.

"I regret the life we lived, Watch," Gerry said sighing.

"I don't. I just wish I could have had a chance to live the rest of it on my own terms the way I was doing."

"I'll come see you when I can, buddy," Gerry said as he was leaving.

"Where are you going?" Watch asked.

"To hunt down Traveling Salesman. It's all I have to live for now," he said smiling a half-smile. But he remembered when he got to the jetty, he couldn't leave town he was still a suspect or at least a person of interest in Jinger's murder. He also knew he couldn't leave even in spite of that since he now discovered the yacht was gone. He knew the police couldn't have taken it because he never told them about the boat. His face stayed paralyzed in shock and his eyes brimmed with speculation. He looked out at the water. There was something floating on the surface. He blinked not sure of what he was seeing. He went over and knelt down on the jetty and fished it out. It was a sign. "Property of Blue Ghost," it read.