Sam let the tears flow until there were no more. She heard a couple of women enter the bathroom at some point, but they must have heard her sobs and elected to do their business elsewhere. Sam had the marble-and-chrome monstrosity of a water closet to herself.
When the flow of tears stopped, she righted herself, straightened her dress, and walked to the sink. She cupped her hands beneath the ornate faucet and splashed cold water on her face. Only then did she venture a look in the mirror.
“Balls,” she said, pulling at the purple pouches beneath her eyes. “You don’t look a day over ninety-two.” She took a few more minutes to compose herself before she left the bathroom.
Against the director’s orders, which had been to vacate the premises without delay, Sam stopped by her office on the fourth floor to pick up a few items. She’d be damned if she was going to let a bunch of slack-jawed desk jockeys paw through her things, especially her investigative notes.
She looked around her office and sighed. She’d spent far too many hours in this room over the past decade. Stacks of paper littered her desk. A University of Maryland diploma hung on the wall, crooked as always. It didn’t matter how many times she righted the damn thing.
Her eyes gravitated to a framed photo of Brock. He wore a green flight suit and he had one foot on the ladder of his F-16. The photo was easily five years old, but there was something about the look in his eye that kept her from replacing it with a newer one. God damn, I love that man, she thought with a lonely sigh.
Sam took a last look around the office. There was no telling when she would be back. There was no guarantee she would ever be back, depending on how Homeland’s inquisition went. Would she miss it? Would moving on really leave as big a void in her life as she’d feared? Had she been foolish to dig in her heels with Brock over her career? No answers came, and she didn’t have much energy to search for them.
She turned to leave and smacked into a stocky, muscled man. “Dammit, Dan, you scared the hell out of me.”
“Nice to see you too, boss,” Dan Gable said with a smile. “This place is dead without you.”
Sam managed a weak smile as her deputy released his embrace. Dan was built like a bowling ball, except made of muscle. He stood half a head shorter than Sam, but twice as wide. He had thick shoulders, thick arms, and thick fingers, which were murder on a computer keyboard. Dan had worked for Sam before either of them knew heads from tails. He had saved her life countless times, and he had once kept her alive for ten minutes after her heart stopped. Dan was one of the good guys and Sam loved him like a brother.
“I’m not exactly sparkling company these days,” she said. “You’re definitely better off without me sulking around.”
“Debatable,” Dan said, “but a little work might take your mind off things.”
Sam shook her head. “Not an option. I’m officially persona non-grata.”
Dan frowned. “Suspended?” Sam nodded. “Bastards,” he said.
“I don’t think they had any choice in the matter. It would have been bad enough if she were a random girl off the street, but the daughter of a senate chief of staff? I’m lucky I’m not chained to a stake.”
Dan grimaced and nodded. “Things definitely could have turned out better.”
The silence grew awkward. “What are you still doing here?” Sam finally asked, suddenly cognizant of the time. “Shouldn’t you be home by now?”
Dan shrugged. “Tying up some loose ends.”
“You should stop hiding from your wife.” Sam said with a halfhearted punch to his arm.
“You should mind your own business,” Dan retorted with a sheepish smile. “Besides, things are much better at home now that I’ve hidden all the knives.”
“Good thinking.”
“Actually, I was on my way out when I got a call from the security people downstairs. Somehow my name ended up on their technical consult list.”
“Your nerdy reputation precedes you,” Sam said absently, slinging her bag over her shoulder.
Dan chuckled. “The call was legit, though. Some idiot tried to smuggle a listening device into the building.”
“No way,” Sam said, looking around her office with a frown, searching for her coat. “Nobody’s that stupid.”
“Somebody evidently is that stupid. Went to a lot of trouble, too. The bug was fancy and expensive.”
Sam grunted, not listening, still searching for her coat, but then quickly realized that it had been confiscated by security. She stopped. “What did you say?”
“I feel less valued when you don’t listen to me,” Dan said, faking a hurt expression.
“Seriously. About the bug.”
“High-end,” Dan said. “Pricey and tough to get. Made to look like a coat button.”
“Oh shit,” Sam said. “We may have a problem.”
Sam explained the kerfuffle at the security checkpoint. Dan listened with a troubled expression on his face.
“That’s not good,” he said when Sam had finished. “Any idea who it might have been?”
Sam shook her head. “I was at the memorial, then I walked around in the rain for a couple of hours. I probably crossed paths with a thousand people.”
Dan nodded. “We need to get Mace involved. I don’t want this to add to your troubles.”
Mace McLane was Sam’s immediate boss. He ran Homeland’s covert operations directorate. His employees included spies, counter-spies, and, increasingly, a horde of computer-savvy millennials battling evil one byte at a time. McLane had been in the job a couple of years, which was something of a record. Both of his predecessors had wound up dead.
Sam had deep-seated authority issues in general, but Mace McLane had won her trust by leaving her alone to do her job and by backing her up when she needed it. He was more politician than operator, but he was smart enough to know his limitations and he made it a point to stay out of his people’s way. McLane worked hard and rarely left the office before nine or ten in the evening. He was also a nice guy, rare in Sam’s experience for someone in his position.
Sam and Dan marched up to McLane’s office, which was a hundred paces and a million miles from Homeland Director Evan Kent’s lair. McLane’s office featured a full-length window with a similar view to the director’s, but it was sparsely appointed. There were dusty photos of two grown kids with families of their own, but there didn’t appear to be a woman in McLane’s life and he didn’t wear a wedding ring. Maybe that was related to the hours he kept.
“God, Sam, you look like hell,” McLane said. He stood and walked around from behind his desk and wrapped his arms around her.
“Thanks,” Sam said. “Same to you.”
“Are you taking care of yourself?”
“Somebody has to,” Sam said.
McLane let a small laugh escape. “No argument there. Lord knows I’ve tried, but when the White House calls with their panties in a wad . . .”
Sam nodded. She understood the physics all too well: shit gathered momentum as it rolled downhill.
McLane nodded toward the listening device perched on his desk. Evidently security had delivered it to him shortly after it was discovered. The device was small, the size of a button, with a smooth black surface. “Old friends or new ones?” he asked.
Sam shook her head and shrugged. “I thought it was just the new scanner malfunctioning. The whiz kids are sure it’s really a bug?”
“Sure as sunrise,” McLane said.
Sam shook her head. “Could have been anybody. My head’s not really in the game right now.”
“Understandable,” McLane said. “We’ll let Dan loose on it, see what he can sniff out.”
“That’s what I’d do,” Sam said. “In the meantime, if it’s all right with everyone here, I’m going to go home. It’s maybe the worst week on record, and I need some sleep.”
McLane nodded. “I’ll call security and make sure you’re not hassled on the way out.”
Sam left the Homeland building and caught a cab. It was half past seven in the evening. It seemed like eons ago that she had left her house to attend Sarah Beth McCulley’s funeral. Her eyes burned, and her stomach growled in discontent. She’d barely eaten anything in the days since the incident. Her muscles were weak and she looked forward to a hot shower and a long night’s sleep.
She took the cab all the way to her house in Alexandria, not bothering to fetch her car. It was still parked near the church where the girl’s memorial service took place earlier in the day. She didn’t want the reminder.
She had the vague sense that the cabbie was eyeballing her in the rearview mirror, but she didn’t much care. Her disregard was resigned, not reckless. She didn’t have the energy for operational alertness, despite the poignant reminder of the need for continuous vigilance that someone had dropped into her pocket earlier in the day.
Her tired mind churned. Who might have been responsible for the listening device? What did they possibly hope to gain? Sarah Beth McCulley’s death had made national headlines. Sam wasn’t yet mentioned by name, but it wouldn’t take much insight into the Tariq Ezzat incident to make the connection. As was Homeland protocol in such cases, she was suspended and off the investigation. Anyone eavesdropping on Sam would be disappointed by what they heard: lots of tears and very little interesting conversation.
To boot, Ezzat hadn’t survived the encounter. Milliseconds after Ezzat fired the fatal bullet that struck Sarah Beth McCulley, Sam’s team opened fire on him. He died before the ambulance arrived. His secrets died with him and the investigation—dubbed the “Doberman case” by the Homeland team after a pair of stone dog statues standing guard at the entrance to one of the criminal organization’s safe houses—stalled completely.
She still couldn’t believe how violent things had turned. Before that day in the park, the case had been little more than a somewhat routine terror financing investigation. Ezzat was a mid-level guy in a loose affiliation of petty criminals who sent a portion of their illegal proceeds overseas to fund jihad. She had trouble wrapping her mind around the tragic turn of events.
The cab pulled up to her Alexandria brownstone. She paid the driver and headed up the walkway. A noise grabbed her attention. The neighbor kid futzing with his car again, one of those cheap imports tricked out with shiny rims and an exhaust pipe the size of a storm culvert. It sounded like the world’s largest swarm of houseflies. Her jaw clenched. That little bastard had woken her up at least a dozen times over the past few months, zipping around the neighborhood, revving the engine to an ear-splitting whine.
She shook her head, put the key in the lock, keyed the alarm code, dropped her bag and coat on the entryway floor, kicked off her shoes, and sank into an easy chair in her living room.
The big, empty house made big, empty sounds. She had invested wisely over the years and had rewarded herself with the mortgage-free acquisition of much more house than she needed. Brock came into her life around the same time and before she knew it, they were picking out colors and finishes and appliances for an extensive remodel. Brock’s touch was in every corner of the place, and spending time at home while he was stuck halfway around the globe was a source of both comfort and unease. She loved him but hated missing him.
She dialed a lengthy series of numbers on her phone and heard the hiss of static and the clicks and clunks of half a dozen relays as her phone tried to connect to the one in Brock’s quarters on the other side of the planet. Brock’s location was classified, and the call routing was electronically laundered to keep his location secret. The call failed, which was not unusual. Four out of every five attempts to reach Brock over the past several months had ended in frustration. As much as she wanted to hear his voice, Sam didn’t have the energy to try again. She dropped the phone in her lap and stared at the wall.
Did I shut the front door? She couldn’t remember. Groaning, she rose from the chair and padded to the entryway. The door was closed and locked, but she had forgotten to reset the alarm. She kept the perimeter sensors activated while at home as an added safety precaution. Catching spies was a dangerous business and their home had been compromised by armed intruders in the recent past.
She typed in the code, listened for the two-toned beep, scrolled absently through the primitive event log on the display, and froze. Could that be right? She pecked at a few more buttons on the alarm control, making sure she wasn’t reading it wrong.
The log showed she had armed the home’s internal motion detectors when she left for the memorial service at 2:21 p.m. It also showed that she had disarmed them when she returned home just moments before.
But this didn’t make any sense at all:
Maintenance Event: 15:09 March 1 2017
Sam never scheduled alarm maintenance while she wasn’t home. Ever. Best way in the world for a counterespionage agent to wind up dead. It was just too easy for someone to plant a “backdoor” that allowed an intruder to bypass the alarm or otherwise manipulate the system. She always insisted on watching the alarm maintenance guy herself, and always insisted that the security company send the same guy each time, whom she tipped handsomely. And she always asked Dan Gable to look over the alarm’s logs afterwards to be doubly sure.
But there it was, plain as day. Less than an hour after she left for the memorial, someone had accessed the maintenance function in the system.
Oh, shit. Had someone let themselves in? Were they still in her house?
Sam quickly grabbed the .45 Kimber handgun from her purse and released the safety. Her heart pounded as she searched slowly throughout the house, turning on the lights as she methodically cleared each room. She found no sign that anyone had been here. Once confident the house was secure, she called her alarm company. No record of any maintenance, scheduled or otherwise.
“It’s right here on the display,” Sam protested. “At nine minutes after three in the afternoon.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. The system has absolutely no record of any maintenance on your alarm today.”
“You’re looking at the right account?”
The man on the phone re-verified Sam’s information with a note of exasperation in his voice. “I can confirm that our system shows no record of any maintenance activity today,” he summarized.
“Then why does the alarm think otherwise?” Sam asked.
“I would hesitate to speculate, ma’am. All I know is that your system passes all our remote checks, and all the sensors are operating. But we can send a service technician out first thing in the morning, just to be sure.”
Sam agreed and ended the call. She stood in her kitchen with her gun in hand. It could just be a glitch or a software bug, she thought. Computers were awesome, except when they weren’t. And it was usually impossible to tell from the outside when a computer system was telling you a bald-faced lie. But one thing would tell her for sure if something wasn’t right.
She walked down to her basement, gun still drawn. She felt behind the bookcase at the far end of the space, clicked a latch, and swung open the false wall to reveal the vault door behind it.
She never referred to the space as her “panic room,” but that was the idea behind it. When the shit hit the fan, she could lock herself inside the vaulted room and survive for weeks on end, if needed. It held water, food, guns, passports, cash, and other necessities, and featured a well-appointed living space. She and Brock had used the room during several crises over the years, including once when a bomb detonated in their front yard.
The room also had another feature: all the closed-circuit video cameras in the house piped their video feeds to a ridiculously large hard drive on an encrypted computer in the vault. The system had saved Brock’s life several years ago by providing her with a close-up snapshot of the gargantuan goon who had shot and kidnapped him. She hoped the video feed would provide a little peace of mind about the alarm anomaly.
But it didn’t. The hard drive was still in place, the computer worked just fine, and she watched footage of herself leaving the house at around two-thirty in the afternoon. But half an hour after that, everything went blank. Someone had broken into her system and erased the video.