Thank you very much, my friends,” said Leroy as he raised his glass. “Say, the dude in the suit, looks like he has us all on the same flight. I didn’t know there’d be any more flights tonight. I was sure I’d missed mine in that darned snow, but he said he’d make everything work out.”


“Glad you made it, Leroy.” Max raised his pint and lowered the level by several inches. “You know, Dolores was telling me her story just before you came. Now I’ll tell you mine, if you’d like to hear it.”

There were no objections. “So this is why I’m leaving the old country,” began Max. He’d been a technology whiz since his teens, when the first personal computers came on the scene. At university, he’d picked up more than a degree. He’d rubbed shoulders with some seriously geeky types, one of whom had taught him the trick that had, indirectly, brought him to the airport this evening. Identity theft was easier than most people imagined. Everyone’s online life had a permeable back door. It was just a matter of finding the hole. Max had not intended to steal his victim’s identity as such. Just to borrow it for a while. If his plan had clicked, his colleague would never have known. Max had just needed a few hours to complete the deal, place the money back in Bryn’s account and cover the digital footprints of its ever having been gone. Thing was, the scheme hadn’t worked out. Bryn Gross happened to check his bank app and discovered all his savings gone, and a massive overdraft. Perhaps he thought his wife had done something stupid. Maybe there was something else he’d been up to his eyes in, and he thought it had come home to roost. Whatever way, he went straight off the balcony. Twenty-seventh floor - one for each year of his life. Max had braved the funeral, the two young children’s tears as holy water to Count Dracula