[It's a lot to take in all at once, he knows that, but she's handling it okay as far as he can tell. And while it's hard as hell to get the words out—it feels like he's unscrewed the top of a salt shaker and dumped it directly into a wound—it's getting strangely easier as he goes along, like he's on a roll.

It's been so, so long since he even said Sam's name out loud, but now that he has it's almost like a release.]

That was taken the night we left the orphanage for good, actually. Well, he was already gone, this visit just turned into me never going back, either. I was twelve and he was seventeen.

[A ghost of a smile appears on his face at the memory. Hard times had followed, harder than he'd expected when he'd asked Sam to take him along to wherever he was going. But it had been worth it to be together. He doesn't regret those times at all.]

We looked after each other, but we got into trouble too, and he was in jail when I met Sully. One of the longer stretches.

[His smile fades away. This is the hardest part. His fingers dig into the plush of the chair as he forces himself to continue.]

When I was about twenty-two, we were in prison together, in Panama. On purpose, if you can believe it—there was this old, half-crumbled tower in the old part of the prison, and Sam thought we could find something in it to trace Henry Avery's missing treasure from from the Gunsway heist—doesn't matter now.

[There was nothing, in the end. Sam had died for nothing.]

Things went wrong and we had to escape in a hurry, us and this rich dickhead who was financing the search and bribing the guards. We almost made it—got to the edge of the prison and there was one more jump to make, I had him.

[Give me your other arm!]

They shot him to death in front of me.