Scott walked up his driveway toward the open garage, where his wife's Ford Explorer and his F-150 pickup were parked. On the way he picked up a bicycle with pink and white tassels hanging from the handlebars and a set of training wheels. His daughter couldn't ever seem to remember that at night her bicycle went in the garage with mommy's and daddy's cars.
When Scott stepped into the kitchen, his wife, Victoria, was setting the dinner table for three: herself and their two children, six-year-old Samantha and nine-year-old Jake. It had been a while since Victoria had set a place for Scott. Most nights she put a plate in the microwave for him. Some nights she didn't.
Samantha was the first to spot him. "Daddy," she shout-ed as she hopped off her booster seat and ran toward him with her chubby arms outstretched. Scott scooped her up and spun her around at arm's length. He hugged her tight and planted a kiss on each cheek.
"Dad, did you catch any bad guys today?" Jake said from his seat at the table.
"Yeah," Samantha said, echoing her brother. "Did you catch any bad guys today?" It was the same question they always asked him on the nights he got home before their bedtime.
"As a matter of fact, I did catch a bad guy today," he said.
"How bad was he?" Samantha said.
"Really bad," Scott said. "Super bad."
As Scott set his daughter back down on her booster seat, Samantha gave her brother a cocky look. "I told you daddy always catches bad guys."
"Not every day he doesn't," Jake told his sister.
Samantha looked up at Scott. "Daddy, don't you al-ways-"
"That's enough, you two," Victoria said. "Time to eat."
The two kids dug into their roast beef and mashed pota-toes.
"I didn't hear your car," Victoria said.
Scott looked at his wife. Tall, blond, green eyed, and quite beautiful at thirty-five, in a Dallas debutante WASP sort of way, with the trim well-toned legs of an avid tennis player and a self-esteem-boosting postpartum boob job. "I took a cab home."
A crease of worry crossed Victoria's face. "A cab?"
He nodded.
"What's wrong?" she said.
Scott looked at the kids. They were chomping down dinner, seemingly oblivious to everything else, but he knew that both of them kept at least half an ear cocked toward anything their parents said. And that was especially true with Samantha, who, like all women, had bionic hearing. So Scott nodded and Victoria followed him into the den.
"What happened?" she said. "Are you in trouble again?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing," Victoria said. But of course that wasn't true. "Tell me what happened?"
"I lost three agents."
Her forehead wrinkled. "What do you mean, lost?"
"Killed."
Victoria's hand shot to her mouth. "Oh, my God." She didn't know his agents well. She'd only met them once, when, at the end of his first week as the new resident agent in charge, Scott had hosted an all-hands barbeque at their house, but she knew their names well enough to at least put faces with them. "Who?"
"Miller. Lundy. And Kat."
"Kat?" Victoria said with pain in her voice. "I talked to her for over an hour about...nothing. Girl stuff. She asked me where I got..." Victoria covered her mouth again with her hand. "Oh, my God, Scott. How?"
"Across the border."
"Jesus Christ," Victoria said. "Were you there?"
"Nearby," he said. "But we got separated."
"How did they...How did it happen?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Scott said. Then he saw the look of hurt on his wife's face. "I really can't even if I...There's an investigation."
She stared at him for a moment. "That's not all, though. There's something else. Something you're not...Why did you come home in a cab?"
He hesitated. But Victoria didn't say anything. He al-ways thought she would have made a good interrogator. She knew how to use silence as a tool. Finally, he said, "I got suspended."