In the first days of my training, my hands weren’t strong enough to discharge a weapon with speed. After three rounds, pain shot through my palm. I worked at it until I could empty a magazine, but the recoil and vibration were so intense, my hand wasn’t agile enough to change the magazine afterward. I dropped it and everyone laughed. I went to bed with a hand stiffly curled into a claw.

Now, the shooting range clears away the fog of my emotions. After the emergency meeting today, I need a lot of head-clearing. The gun pop-pop-pops.

Ken’s uncovered a lead into Third Psyche’s plans, and they’re a doozy.

Orlando called him out for great work in front of everyone. I’m jealous and pleased at the same time. But more than that, I’m not getting promoted unless I do what he’s done.

Pop-pop-pop

I need to make rain.

I review Orlando’s speech in my head.

Ken’s lead is flesh and blood. This was good, solid investigative work. Old-school. We cannot do this all online.

Of course that was the issue. Online leads meant looping in the cybercrime division. I’d been too stupid to see that Orlando wanted all the credit. Once another division is on the case, we go back to being a sleepy field office in the middle of nowhere.

We’re getting together a team to head up to Springfield. The subjects are operating out of a strip club, so ladies, you’ll be giving us backup from here while we talk to the asset.

Pop-pop-pop. I shoot until my hand hurts.

You mean stuffing dollar bills in g-strings.

Tito believed they were going for better-looking strippers. As if. Ken has a smooth fucking lump where his dick should be, but he plays such a man to the crowd.

It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to serve my country.

Lolz. Fucking rolling on the fucking floor you assholes.

This FBI thing is going nowhere. I have to find another path, but where? To do what?

I don’t know how to quit. Ken or no Ken, I don’t know how to just give up, even when I should.

I squeeze the fourteenth round into the target’s chest. Chamber the last one. Pop a new magazine and empty my anger into the target.

Pop-pop-pop.

“Grinstead!”

It’s Shadow Horse Brady, the guy who runs the field office’s tiny firing range. He’s in his thirties, built like a football player, with a long black braid over each shoulder. FBI agents don’t usually have long hair, but they’re not usually Sequoia tribesmen either.

“Yeah?” I take off my earmuffs.

“Someone left you a note.” He holds out his hand. A yellow Post-It is stuck to his middle finger. It’s blank on top.

“Thank you.” I take it off, flip it. There’s a phone number on the back. “Did he just walk in and leave this?” The range is pretty secure, but maybe not as secure as I thought.

“It was here when I got in. Is it civilian?”

“I don’t think so. Just asking.”

“Nice shooting.” He points at the poor black silhouette I’ve left with a nearly hollow chest.

“Missed three.” I point at the three holes in the white area around the target.

“Perfect’s the enemy of the good, Agent.”

“So I hear.”

---

I pull the car to the side of the road and call the number on the back of the Post-It. The two-lane road is thinly lined with trees, newly paved, with a sharp double yellow in the middle that goes straight a long way before disappearing into a single point.

“Keaton,” I say when a ring cuts off and I can hear someone breathing. “You left this number.”

“I have something for you.” He’s clipped and businesslike. I thought I’d never hear his demanding British voice again, and when I do, I catch myself smiling. With Ken outrunning me, I needed the help, and the package it came in made my nerves vibrate.

He continues. “It might be of use.”

“Might?”

“I believe—”

“You believe?” I tap the steering wheel as I decide how much more to tell him, and how, because it will determine how much I want from him. I open my mouth to carefully ask what “might” might mean. That’s not what comes out. “I don’t have time for ‘might,’ okay? Or ‘I believe.’ I’m getting steamrolled over here. Actually, if I come in with something ‘you believe might’ not be exactly perfect, I’m going to get laughed at, and I have to tell you, getting laughed at is going to put me over the fucking edge.”

I should be ashamed of my behavior in front of a man I barely know, but here’s the rub. I’m not ashamed at all. As a matter of fact, I feel a little relieved to have it off my chest.

“I like the fight in you,” he says.

“I don’t like having to show it.”

There’s a silence that’s kind of comfortable, kind of tense. I can’t discern where he is from the background buzz.

“Cassie?”

“Yeah?”

“I want to see you again.”

He doesn’t mean he wants to wave from the window. That’s for sure.

“Is that a good idea?”

It isn’t. He knows it. For better or worse, once he passes me information on an active case, he’s an asset. I don’t know what kind of trouble this can land him in with the players in his world, but for me it’s a no-no.

“It’s a terrible idea,” he says flatly.

I smile and look at my lap. He said it as a fact, and in stating it as a fact, he made it somewhat less terrible and completely unavoidable.

When I ask the next question, my voice sounds softer and lower than I intend. “When?”