6

Sam slept fitfully, her dreams haunted by wailing mourners and angry, accusing faces demanding justice for her failures. In her misery, Sam agreed with their hateful chorus.

Dawn finally arrived to end her torment. Sam showered, drank a cup of godawful swill mislabeled as coffee, and used a fresh burner to call her deputy’s off-the-books cell phone number. She and Dan had found themselves in many situations over the years that required anonymous and untraceable communications. No method was truly secure, but prepaid phones were a good start, and they always kept fresh burners handy.

“How do you wind up in these situations?” Dan wanted to know.

“Born lucky, I guess,” she said, trying to rub the sting out of her tired eyes. “Any ideas?”

“None. This all sounds too organized and over the top for the Doberman people.”

“My thought too,” Sam said. “Doberman seems dime store. This was a difficult move to make. They had to hack my security system password and vault access codes. That took some doing.”

“That sounds damn close to professional-grade,” Dan agreed. “Someone from your long and checkered past?”

“Maybe. But why now?”

“Why ever? They saw an opportunity, maybe.”

“Impossible to say, which leaves me back at square one.”

“You have made an enemy or two over the years,” Dan said. “Compiling a list of your haters would take all week.”

“Thanks. Why did I call you again?”

“Comic relief.”

“You’re fired. For the moment, maybe we should assume the break-in was somehow related to Doberman. Let’s look closely at our arrests and probables and see what comes up.”

“We haven’t run a four-tier background check on anybody in the Doberman case yet,” Dan said. “Didn’t seem worth the trouble.”

“Seems worth the trouble now,” Sam said.

“I’ll let you know what comes up.”

“Thanks. And I need a couple of new IDs, too, clean ones. And make sure they’re off the books.”

“Anything else? Can I pick up your dry cleaning?”

Sam smiled. “Thanks, Dan. You’re a lifesaver. I’ll put you in for a raise,” she said. “If I don’t get crucified first.”

She sat on the bed, still struggling to come to grips with all that had happened over the past few days, and especially over the past few hours. Less than a week ago, she was poised to finish a lengthy investigation by taking down a nascent terror financing operation. Now, she found herself in a seedy hotel room, suspended from Homeland, running from unseen forces and reeling to figure out who might have her in the crosshairs. She shook her head. Jesus, what a week.