“Just wanted to let you know the pizzas are here. Conference Room B.”

“Thanks. You all go ahead, I’ll catch up.” Not only was Wantaugh a wise-ass, but Swanson thought he might be trying to put the moves on her as well.

She picked up the papers again—eyewitness reports from victims of a bank robber who’d cut a wide swath up and down I-25 three years ago—and tried to get her mind back into focus. Then she turned toward her keyboard and began typing her summary report. Not that there was much to summarize—she knew everything by heart already, and there was nothing new of value to add. Five banks robbed in a space of two months. Two tellers shot, neither fatally. The perp was conscious of security cameras and had walked into the banks wearing a variety of cowboy hats, under which was concealed a balaclava he’d roll down immediately upon entering. Total take, $694,000. Last seen at the Third National Bank in Alamogordo, just off the Mescalero reservation. No ID, no license plates, no nothing; the eyewitnesses could agree only that the guy appeared Caucasian and under forty. Word from a CI was that he’d skipped across the border. And even that word was already two years old.

Swanson let her hands drop from the keyboard, stacked the papers neatly on her desk, and slid them into the official case folder, sighing. It was ironic: the reason she hadn’t heard Wantaugh calling her was because she still hadn’t gotten used to being called agent.

Special Agent Swanson. To think how long she’d dreamed of being addressed like that. It was a dream that had taken her from Medicine Creek, Kansas, all the way to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City; followed by the requisite work experience, in her case a year as an assistant probation officer in the lower Hudson Valley; and then, finally, on to the FBI Academy at Quantico for twenty weeks of new agent training. Twenty weeks of endless case exercises and “practicals”; of humping her way over the obstacle course again and again as winter rains turned the dirt to icy mud; of refining her firearms skills and combat tactics in the Hollywood-like set of Hogan’s Alley; of executing coordinated spinouts and PIT maneuvers until she felt more like a stunt driver than a law enforcement trainee. And she had loved it—every filthy, exhausting, stressful minute. Because every minute brought her that much closer to being a special agent.

And then at last it came: graduation and the swearing-in, receiving her badge and credentials. It had been the proudest moment of her life. As well as one nobody could have predicted: Corrie Swanson, the foulmouthed, purple-haired goth who’d grown up a latter-day rebel without a cause in a shithole prairie town. Her mother hadn’t bothered to come to graduation—drunk, probably—and it had stung that the prime mover behind her budding career, Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast, had been unable to attend…but her father, Jack, had been there, beaming with pride despite his obvious discomfort at being surrounded by so many people with the power of arrest.

And then it was over. She was issued her duty weapon—a Glock 19M with four fifteen-round magazines equipped with orange followers, along with several boxes of Winchester PDX1 +P 124-grain hollow points—and she was off to her new life.

Little did she know at the time that her “new life” would consist of reporting every morning at eight thirty to 4200 Luecking Park Avenue NE—the Albuquerque, New Mexico, field office—for administrative duties. She’d met Supervisory Special Agent Hale Morwood, the advisor who would manage the first part of Swanson’s two-year probationary period. He was the mentor who would “ghost” her, show her the ropes, rate her…and, it seemed, rein in her expectations.

Now she’d spent three months reviewing cold cases and working with the PIO on public relations outreach to the community. Occasionally, for a change of pace, she’d get to accompany Tech Ops…as they put up new pole cams.

This was not what she’d expected. Surely not all new Quantico graduates spent their probationary periods like this. She couldn’t imagine getting a worse detail—until Morwood took her to visit the resident agency at Farmington, up by the Colorado border. If Albuquerque was the ugly, dusty ass end of nowhere, then Farmington was the inflamed boil on that ass. If she ever ended up in a satellite office like that, she just might rob a few banks herself.

She could hear a low hubbub of conversation from Conference Room B, where her young confrères were chatting over lunch. But Swanson wasn’t hungry. She was eyeing Morwood’s office. The door was closed, and the wall of glass beside it was, as usual, obscured by beige vinyl blinds, lowered to floor level. Morwood was on a conference call: the weekly status meeting for Operations. She glanced at her watch: it should be over anytime now. She took a deep breath. And then, as anticipated, the door opened and Morwood emerged, shrugging into the jacket of his dark blue suit. She watched out of the corner of her eye as he disappeared into the maze of cubicles. He was short, in his late forties, a little overweight with a thinning crown of red hair. When she’d first seen him, Swanson had thought he looked more like a train conductor than an FBI supervisor. But that was before she’d had the chance to observe him over a couple of months: the way he kept his own counsel, the sly intelligence that glittered in the sleepy brown eyes.

Now Morwood had re-emerged from the cube farm and was coming back, fresh cup of coffee in one hand. Still sticking to schedule. That meant he wouldn’t get called into another meeting for fifteen minutes. Taking another deep breath and composing herself, Swanson picked up the folder, rose from her desk, and exited her cubicle.

Morwood was seating himself back at his desk, stirring Splenda into his coffee. Seeing Swanson approach, he nodded. “Good afternoon, Swanson.”

“Afternoon, sir. Do you have a minute?”

Morwood nodded toward one of two identical chairs placed against the glass wall. “Please.”

Swanson sat, file on her lap. Something about the detached way Morwood observed her always made her slightly uncomfortable, as if her hair was askew or she’d put her blouse on inside out and the label was showing. Too many years of torn jeans and nearly identical black T-shirts, no doubt. She resisted the impulse to smooth her skirt.

“I’ve finished reviewing the I-25 robberies, sir,” she said.

Morwood took a sip of coffee. “Anything to report?”

Swanson hesitated. She didn’t want to appear ineffectual, but on the other hand she didn’t want to go on having cold cases dumped on her. “No significant developments. I re-interviewed the tellers and bank employees to make sure nothing had changed in their recollections. I went over the surveillance footage. Even running it through our latest recognition software produced no useful results. Using image enhancement I was able to identify the brand of one of the perp’s cowboy hats. It was a manufacturer common to Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona that recently went out of business. Their records proved useless.”

“Any new robberies that fit the MO?”

“No, sir. I checked into that carefully, both north and south of the border. Plenty of bank robberies, but none with more than a single-point match.”

“I see. Well, good job, Swanson. You’ll send me your report?”

“Just completing it now.”

Morwood nodded, began to speak, then reached into his pocket and snatched out a handkerchief in time to cover a series of sharp, wheezing coughs. Swanson waited politely for the fit to pass. Morwood was a bit of a mystery. She’d heard her share of rumors. Apparently back in the day he’d been a hotshot Chicago agent with enough commendations to fill a desk drawer. Some said his slow, lethargic movements and heavy-lidded stare were just put on. Others said he’d been in a terrible accident chasing a suspect through an industrial dye plant in Gary that ruined both his lungs and his promising career. Whatever the case, here he was: a man of obvious intelligence and long experience, finishing out his twenty as the FTO for groups of new agents.