“I know you don’t have them,” he said. “I overheard your man talking in the car. He’s not a big fan of you, by the way. Said you were frigid and arrogant. Frankly, I don’t see it.”
Torn between her urge to throttle Theo or Ross Daley, Melissa stashed her rage behind a smirk. “We’ll have plenty of time to correct our misconceptions about each other.”
She closed the door behind her, then marched to Ross in the bullpen. He slouched in his desk chair, reading baseball scores on his handtop. Melissa slapped the screen shut.
“I need a list of all the private schools within a hundred miles of Nemeth, current and defunct.”
“Why?”
“Because Theo said something about it earlier. It’s a possible lead to the location of the others.”
“The guy’s out of his skull. If we investigate every crazy thing he mutters—”
Melissa leaned in close, cutting Ross off with a harsh whisper.
“Agent Daley, in forty-five seconds I’m going to employ a supervisory tactic that’s not endorsed in the handbook. In fact, it’ll earn me quite a nasty reprimand from my superiors. I expect to recover. You, however, will look back on this night for a very long time. You’ll wish you’d done things differently. This is your last exit. Nod your head, say, ‘Yes, Melissa,’ and then do what I ask.”
Ross looked around the bullpen at his colleagues, then forced a breezy shrug.
“Fine. Whatever. No need to get menstrual.”
“Eight seconds . . .”
“I said fine.”
“Seven . . .”
“Yes, Melissa. Yes. I will get you your list of private schools.”
She rose to her feet. “Thank you.”
Howard swooped in from the stairwell. He looked to Melissa with urgent worry.
“Uh, we have a guest.”
—
The gray-haired man in the lobby was, like Melissa, a conspicuous presence. He stood as tall and thin as a beanstalk, with spindly fingers that were as long as most hands. He wore a fedora, longcoat, and gloves, all woolly black relics from a more conservative decade. Deep wrinkles ran like circuitry across his gaunt, handsome face.
The moment Melissa spied his shrewd blue eyes, she knew and feared his true nature.
“Good evening, sir. I’m Melissa Masaad. Supervising Special Agent, DP-9.”
The man removed his hat and procured his government ID. He spoke in a soothing lilt, as if reading a bedtime story.
“Cedric Cain. Associate, NIC.”
Melissa scanned his badge. “That’s quite a vague rank, sir. Can’t say I’ve heard of it.”
“I never need to make my own coffee, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I suppose I’m dancing around the larger question.”
Cain smiled slyly. “You are. But you look good doing it.”
The National Integrity Commission was formed in 1913, during the great American panic that followed the Cataclysm. Though their original mission statement involved the “neutralization of foreign threats and influences,” their first two decades were little more than a systematic purge of immigrants, illegal and otherwise.
In 1932, the NIC was re-formed into a global network of strategic intelligence operatives. They worked mostly in secret, virtually always outside the nation’s borders. Though crackpot rumors of their activities remained, Integrity held a mostly positive reputation among U.S. citizens. To the lay public, they were the stalwart souls who kept the world’s problems from becoming America’s problem. How they did that was their own business.
Melissa knew the shades would come sniffing around her case sooner or later. The question was whether or not they deemed her fugitives to be a foreign threat.
“Melissa,” Cain cooed. “Pretty name. Does anyone ever call you Missy?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, I’m going to start calling you Missy if you don’t stop calling me sir.”
“Apologies, Mr. Cain. My strict British conditioning.”
“It’s Dr. Cain, actually. You can start there and work your way to Cedric. You smoke?”
“Are you asking me if I break the law, Dr. Cain?”
“I’m inviting you to break the law with me, agent.”
Two minutes later, they sat in the parking lot, in the front seat of Cain’s black Cameron Bullet. Melissa found it a surprisingly compact car for such a stretched man. The driver’s seat had been altered to retract another ten inches, all the way to the back cushions.
“So how’s Andy handling his sunset?” Cain asked.
Her mind danced with pleasure as she took a drag of Cain’s Cuban cigarillo. “You know Andy Cahill?”
“Oh, we go way back. You were probably in diapers when he and I had our first turf war.”
“Really? Who won?”
Cain let out a coughing chuckle. The question was rhetorical sarcasm. Integrity was the rock to the Bureau’s scissors, trumping them on all jurisdictional matters. Only an act of paper from the White House could stop them from taking Melissa’s case away from her.
“Andy’s fine,” she responded. “He says he hates retirement, which I assume to mean he loves it.”
“Last of the cowboys, that one. You know, I tried to poach him a couple of times. The man was too damn smart to be a Dep.”