Chapter 1

Trenton, New Jersey

“Three cards,” Jacob Dolan said, laying three cards face down on the cheap table between him and his partner.

“Why always three? Seriously. You have to be throwing away decent cards to do that every single hand, or you’re the most unlucky son of a bitch that’s ever lived. Or, you keep throwing away decent hands fishing for a straight. But you’re not that dumb, are you?”

“Just deal the cards and shut up,” Dolan said again, not wanting to repeat the conversation they’d already had three times.

His partner, however, wasn’t going to be deterred.

“You’ve lost, what, five hands in a row? Change the strategy, my man. I mean, even dumb odds say you have three of a kind or a couple of low pairs at some point, right? Not even you are dumb enough to throw away something like that ‘cause you think you might pull a straight.”

Both of the men at the table practically screamed ‘cop’ to anyone who’d seen them, in their cheap suits, comfortable shoes, and a slight bulge in the side of their jackets made by shoulder-worn side-arms.

“Do the two of you ever shut up?” the third man in the room said.

Angelo Bartolini was a stark contrast to the other two men. Where their suits were off the rack and poorly fitted, his had clearly been tailored and the material didn’t look rough and itchy like the cops’ suits. Even without the suit jacket, which was on the bed next to him, you could almost smell the money on him.

Everything else about him was just as well put together, from the slicked back, expertly styled hair to the highly shined leather shoes. The only thing that didn’t fit this well-put-together look was the five-o’clock shadow and the dark circles under his eyes.

“Nope,” Dolan said, not even bothering to look his way. “You don’t like it, feel free to go take a stroll in the parking lot. I’m sure your buddies won’t whack you while you’re getting some fresh air.”

“F•©k you,” Angelo said, but didn’t get up and didn’t say anything else about the bickering.

The two agents played a couple more hands, and then gave up. Neither had really been focused on their game, and they were just doing something to keep their hands busy, and give them a reason to argue.

“So what’s the deal, anyway?” Dolan asked turning to the man on the bed. “Why’d you decide to suddenly roll on your bosses like you did?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Angelo said, not bothering to look at Dolan.

“You think you’re the first mobster we’ve had in here, waiting to testify. Trust me, I’ve heard it all. So what, they were about to pop you? You guys always have fancy lawyers and do pretty easy time, so it can’t be to avoid jail time. It’s not like you were a hitter up on murder charges and looking at the needle or anything.”

“‘Cause it ain’t like the old days when, if you stayed loyal to the family, they stayed loyal to you. It’s like the rest of the country, once they’re done with you, they’d rather throw you away than put any more money into you than they have to, except if they think you know too much, they’re gonna make sure you don’t have a chance to talk.”

“Yeah, I guess. It’s not like...”

Whatever Angelo was going to say next was never finished as the back of his head exploded, painting the off-white motel wall in brains and blood. Both cops reacted fast, pulling their weapons and dropping to the floor almost instantly, not that it, or anything, mattered to Angelo anymore. His body slid sideways against the wall, leaving a gory streak in its wake until he fell off the bed, his body making a thumping sound as it hit the floor.

“Did you hear anything?” Dolan asked, looking around the room, trying to identify where the shot had even come from.

“Not a thing,” his partner said, and crawled forward on the carpet, staying as low as possible. “Look.”

Dolan looked up at the curtain his partner had just moved aside, exposing the window with a very large hole in it, cracks spidering in all directions. For a moment, Dolan wondered how the window hadn’t just shattered entirely. Maybe it was one of those things where the bullet passed through at just the right angle to leave a hole and not break it entirely, not that it mattered. Bartolini was dead on their watch.

Nothing much else mattered.

Washington D.C.

“Jesus Christ!”

Taylor looked up as the front door opened and a cursing Whitaker came waddling through the door. She was in one of the several maternity pants suits she’d gotten when she decided she still wanted to go into the office every day instead of working from home, despite being permitted to do so when she hit the final month of her pregnancy.

“Problems?” He asked, only setting aside what he was working on, but not getting up yet to go help her.

Normally, Taylor would have been on his feet to check on his wife, but over the last few months, he’d learned to be a bit more cautious with her. Her mood fluctuated wildly. Sometimes she wanted him to be Johnny on the spot when she was having problems and other times she was pissed he had the audacity to suggest she couldn’t do things on her own.

He’d given up trying to predict which Whitaker he was going to get at any given moment, so he’d settled on a safe third option, attentive probing from a distance. It still had the chance to get him yelled at if the mood struck her, but less so than options A and B.

“The car service couldn’t get me to the front door because of construction at the front of the street and had to drop me at the end of the block. My ankles feel like they’re going to burst.”

Since she’d insisted on still going into work but couldn’t drive, Joe Solomon, the director of the FBI and their boss, had sprung for a car service to pick her up and bring her back. Taylor had come back home from an assignment the night before and had offered to take her into the office, but she liked her routines and declined any special treatment.

“Do you want to come sit down and put your feet up?”

“Do you want to bite me?”

“I’m not sure how that’ll help, but if you insist,” he said, half rising until she chuckled, waving him back down.

“Fine, fine. Yes. I do want to put my feet up. My ankles feel like they’ve swollen to the size of watermelons and I think my spine’s about to crack in half.”

Finally getting permission to help, he assisted her down into the soft, cushiony chair they’d moved into the living room specifically for this reason, a task that was easier said than done, since even with his help she had to kind of lean to the side and roll into the chair instead of sitting straight back like she would have when she wasn’t almost nine months pregnant.

“Heating pad?” Taylor asked as he helped pull off her shoes.

“You’re a good man,” she said, flopping her head back and letting out a weary sigh. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

Taylor just shook his head as he got up and went to their bedroom where she’d left the heating pad last. The further into the pregnancy she’d gotten, the more Jekyll and Hyde she’d gotten. Although he hadn’t had a lot of experience with pregnant women, he knew not to take it seriously. Whitaker was one of the most level-headed people he knew, when her body wasn’t swimming in hormones, and she often apologized to make sure he knew she didn’t actually hate him.

“You really should just start working from home. You’ve been approved to start maternity leave since you’re this close to your due date, and Joe would understand.”

“I will soon. I just have a couple of files I want to close out before the baby comes and I’m out for six weeks.”

“I’ve seen those files, and there’s nothing in them one of the other agents can’t take care of. You just hate the idea of that place running okay without you.”

“No, I hate the idea of how much all of my hard work is going to get screwed up when I’m not there looking over their shoulders.”

“Control freak,” he said, with a smile so she knew he was kidding.

She just shrugged and settled into the heating pad.

“You might be right, though. I’m the size of a f•©king house. Just walking down the hall feels like I’ve run a marathon.”

“So you’ll switch to working from here until the baby comes?” he asked, hopefully.

They’d had this conversation a dozen times already, and this was the first time she’d admitted, even grudgingly, that she might not be able to keep going as if nothing had changed.

“Soon,” she said, and then held up a hand to keep the snarky comment she knew was coming at bay. “I know, I know, I keep saying that, but I mean it this time. I just can’t keep lugging this baby around.”

“You realize we have years left of lugging her around,” Taylor said.

Whitaker gave him a look, partly because he knew what she meant and partly because, even though she’d decided she didn’t want to know the sex of the baby before it was born, he’d decided it was going to be a girl and had insisted on saying it whenever they talked about the baby.

“Don’t you have your thing to go to?”

“I do, but I can cancel if you need me here. He’ll understand and I’m not actually there to do anything other than offer moral support.”

Despite their bickering, she reached out and softly held his hand. He knew she loved him, but physical touch had never been part of her love language, until she hit her second trimester. Since then, even when they were fighting, she always wanted to hold his hand or sit in a way where she was leaning against him. Not that he minded. He actually found he liked it, although it made him even more reluctant to leave.

“Go, go,” she said, finally letting go of his hand. “You’re bothering me.”

He smiled and shook his head as the old Whitaker showed back up. The woman was a whirlwind, but at least things never got boring with her.

Taylor made his way down to Main Justice, which is what most of the agents in the FBI called the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice building. Although Taylor wouldn’t call it that where anyone other than Whitaker could hear him, mostly out of stubbornness, he hadn’t been able to keep the nickname out of his head.

The good part about his work with the FBI was being able to flash his badge and get through the security in the lobby without much hassle. Although he hadn’t been here very often, since Joe Solomon didn’t like to remind people that Taylor worked for him, the building was well labeled, allowing him to weave his way through hallways until he found the conference room he was looking for. Inside was an Assistant US Attorney whose name Taylor could never remember, a DOD lawyer, and Rodolfo Lopez, a young ex-marine who’d been a member of a private military contractor sent on an ill-fated mission to retrieve defense contractors being held captive by a Somali warlord.

Lopez had gotten shot up on the poorly planned and even worse executed rescue mission and Taylor had barely been able to drag the young man away before the rest of his team got shot to hell. Taylor managed to get him extracted with the help of some friendly locals before finishing the rescue mission himself, but that didn’t end Lopez’s journey. Far from it.