So Jim waited again. If the waiting had been painful before, it was excruciating now. Jim had lived through some long days in his past-over a decade on the LAPD, the break-up of a marriage, the loss of a daughter-but nothing compared to those two days, holed up in his hotel room with only a bottle of scotch and a Bible for company, waiting for a message from a man who told him that the world was about to end. It all would have been very simple if Jim thought that Vintner was crazy. Jim had met a lot of crazy people in his day. Vintner hadn't even been the first person to tell Jim that the world was ending. Vintner was just the first person that Jim ever considered believing.