CHAPTER FOUR

"You look even more excited to see me than to talk to me," Michael said when Faith arrived at the coffee shop.

She sighed. "I just wish we could meet for reasons other than the brutal deaths of innocents."

"Well, Wal-Mart's hiring," he said, "from what I understand, the job of greeter is marginally less traumatizing than the job of Special Agent."

Faith chuckled. "I'd be fired within a week for chasing someone down over a shoplifted candy bar."

"That's your problem," he said, "I will have no problem looking the other way and letting the twenty-year-old security agent tackle them."

She grinned at him. "Feeling our age a little bit, are we?"

Michael was five months away from his fortieth birthday and had made no secret of his displeasure about that fact. "I've been feeling my age since I was twenty-five," he replied. "It just gets worse and worse every year."

"Well, maybe you'll get to do Gordon's job soon," Faith suggested. "Then you can sit behind a desk and listen to all the agents grouse about funding and authority in the field."

He chuckled without humor. "I won't be SSA as long as you're my partner." Faith's smile faded, and he clarified, "Joking, Faith. That was a joke. If I wanted to be SSA, I would have applied. Desrouleaux turned it down, too, and no one else is qualified. It's just the Boss for now."

They got in line for coffee, and Faith asked, "How long do you think the Boss has?"

"‘Til what?"

"Until he retires?"

He smiled wryly at her. "Why are you gunning for the job?"

She laughed aloud at that, "Me? Hell no. Even if someone in Washington got stupid and offered me the job, I wouldn't want it. Me as a bureaucrat? No, thank you."

"I think you'd be a good SAC," Michael said.

She stared frankly at him, and he chuckled. "Okay, I was just being polite."

"Don't bother," she said, "I know what my limits are. Maybe I'll train one day. Even I'll have to admit to being too old to keep wrestling mutants in caves eventually."

"You'd be a good trainer," Michael offered. "No joke. You're a damned good detective, and even if you can't train that, you're also a damned good K9 handler. Firearms need a little work, but if you had nothing to do but practice—"

She shoved him playfully and said, "Well, I have a while before I have to worry about that, at least."

They reached the front of the line and placed their orders: coffee for Faith—"black like your soul," Michael joked—and a doppio macchiato—a "dopey Mac," Faith retorted with a grin—for Michael. They received their coffees and sat at a table near the back of the café where they could keep an eye on the front door and the bathroom doors. Faith wondered when that instinct developed in law enforcement to always have eyes on the entrances and exits. It wasn't something she had been taught. It was just something she did now.

"Desrouleaux and Chavez talked to Ellie yesterday," Michael said.

"Oh yeah?" Faith replied. "How'd she take it?"

When Faith gave Desrouleaux the list of names mentioned in her sessions with West, he had decided to petition for the FBI to offer surveillance to every potential victim. Since the people in question were in danger due indirectly to their association with an active-duty agent, they had agreed readily. Now, agents across the country were breaking the news to everyone Faith had known since high school. None of them had sent angry and panicked letters or emails to Faith yet, but she was pretty sure that once someone figured out her contact info, she would get a lot of hate from people whose entire lives had suddenly been upended.

More fun to look forward to.

"Not so well," Michael replied, answering Faith's question. "She made it clear that she was staying put."

The look on Michael's face suggested she had said more than just that. "Was that all?" she prompted.

He sighed. "Well, she offered some suggestions. Most of them had to do with relieving you of duty. A few had to do with shooting West on sight."

"I like that one," Faith said. "She has my full support there."

He chuckled briefly, then said, "They offered her surveillance."

Faith hadn't mentioned the surveillance to David, and she didn't plan to. If he wouldn't take himself somewhere safe, then maybe she could force at least a little safety on him. "Which one did she choose?"

"Neither," Michael replied. "She said that she was staying put, and if she saw a damned FBI van outside of her house, she'd report the Bureau for harassment."

"Wow," Faith said, "I'm surprised to hear that."

"I'm not," Michael said grouchily. "She was married to that schmuck for twelve years, took two years to divorce him, and now her first year of true separation from him has been dominated by him and their relationship. She's at the point now where I think she'd almost rather die than deal with it anymore."

"What do you think?" Faith asked.

"I told Desrouleaux to watch the house anyway," he said. "I gave him some places where agents could camp out that Ellie wouldn't notice. I would rather she was in the loop on this, but she wouldn't appreciate that. She doesn't want to be constantly reminded of West."

"Hmm," Faith said, sipping her coffee. "Well, David wasn't very happy about it either."

"No?" Michael said, "they talked to him too?"

"I did," she replied. "I asked him to leave, but he wouldn't. I didn't tell him about the surveillance."

"Probably smart," Michael opined. "Keep him as safe as you can." He sighed and added, "It sucks because I understand where Elli's coming from. If I were her, I'd probably feel the same way. But I'm not her, and I understand a lot more about this than she does. I just wish I could let her read my thoughts for a moment to know why it's so important that they watch her."

"Me too," Faith said.

She smiled at Michael. It was nice to have the two of them on the same page again. "Well, with the Bureau watching them, they should be safe enough. West works alone, after all. A pair of armed agents shouldn't have any trouble with him."

"Yeah," Michael said. "Hope so."

***

Grant Monroe—the Boss, as he was affectionately known to his agents—greeted Faith stiffly when she and Michael entered. Faith returned an equally awkward acknowledgment as she took her seat. Turk barked formally, and earned the closest thing to a respectful greeting the Boss was capable of.

Prior to her and Michael's last case, the Boss had suspended her for continuing to pursue West, and she had essentially blackmailed him into letting her keep her job. He agreed with her reasons for staying—that West would escalate if it looked to him like Faith was giving up—but he still refused to allow her to participate actively in the case.

Now, someone else was dead, and Faith was sure it was to get her attention. She planned to ask Michael's help pursuing him, but she hadn't done so yet, knowing that when she did, it would probably be the end of her career and would put his own career at great risk.

Michael had taken it upon himself to keep Faith updated on the case as much as he could, but now that Faith was acknowledged to be the sun around which West orbited, there was no need. She would be kept abreast of it by necessity.

All of which no doubt only compounded the Boss's frustration.

"The case is in Atlanta," the Boss said without preamble when both were seated. "Two victims so far, both believed to be connected to the same criminal organization."

"Who are the victims?" Faith asked.

"Victim one: Harvey Harris. He went by the name H-Bomb back in the days he was a small-time pusher. He'd moved up in the world by the time of his death. He was running his own crew and insisting that people called him by his first name or by Mr. Harris."

"Guess someone took that the wrong way," Michael quipped.

A glare from the Boss wiped away Michael's smile.

"Victim two," he continued. "Vincent Mariano. Used to be a soldier for the Franco Family in Jersey. He ended up disappearing when Tomasso Franco was arrested and his family broke up. I guess he ended up in Atlanta. Homeowner found him dead in their backyard when they returned home. The backyard fence had been cut. Looks like he was trying to steal from them and ended up dead."

"We know that's not the homeowner?" Michael asked.

"Homeowner has an ironclad alibi. He was at work, and three different security cameras confirmed he was there."

"Got it."

"What do we know?" Faith asked.

"I just told you," the Boss replied. "The police are treating these like gangland killings, but the crew Harris was running is associated with the Georgia Syndicate."

Michael whistled. The Georgia Syndicate was a loosely associated crime "family" believed to control over thirty percent of the distribution of cocaine in the United States. They were known to be unusually violent and were believed to be responsible for over fifty murders since their formation in the nineties.

That explained why the FBI was involved. If one of the cartels was in a dispute with the Syndicate, they could be looking at a lot more death soon. It was critical that Faith and Michael solve this case as quickly as possible.

"I assume we're leaving tonight?" Michael asked.

"Unless you have somewhere better to be," the Boss replied.

"Do you want me to answer that?" Michael asked drily.

"I do not," the Boss replied. "I want you to get to the airport ASAP and get to Atlanta. The sooner the better."

"Well, the flight leaves when it leaves, doesn't it?"

The Boss glared at him. "You decide to be an extra pain in my ass today, Prince? The plane leaves when the two of you have your butts in seats. So take the damned file and piss off."

He tossed the file at Prince, who caught it with one hand and said, "All right, on our way."

The three of them left the office and headed to the airport. On the way, Michael said, "So what do you think? Gangland killing?"

"Probably," Faith said, "but with the potential to turn into a real problem. Atlanta has its share of street gangs, but they're disorganized and not much of a threat outside of their neighborhoods. The Syndicate likes it that way because there's less infighting, but if there is infighting or trouble with rival cartels, they can organize everyone in a heartbeat, and then we're looking at a situation like L.A. in the eighties or New York in the fifties."

"So why us?" Michael asked. "Why not the DEA?"

"I imagine they're involved as much as they can be," Faith opined, "but since drugs aren't considered a primary motivator in this case, they're probably waiting on the outside until we uncover something that gives them an excuse to muscle us out of the way."

"Would I be a bad agent for saying I wouldn't mind being muscled out of the way on this one? There's a reason I steered away from organized crime when I was in training."

"I don't think it matters," Faith said. "We're there to do our jobs and get out. As long as the first part happens, I'm fine with the second one."

Michael sighed and shook her head. "Between you and me, Faith, I'm no longer ruing the day when it won't be me having to drop everything in my life to go figure out who killed a couple of scumbags."

Faith looked over at him and studied his face. The brashness he used to carry was gone, the cockiness mellowed considerably. The lines in his face had deepened, and his eyes showed little of the fire she knew.

This job weighed heavily on everyone. For some, like Faith, the pressure emboldened them, drove them to fight harder and harder until they burned themselves out or finally achieved whatever satisfaction they were looking for.

For others, it wore them down until they were reduced to an echo of who they once were.

Was Michael becoming an echo? Would he, like so many others before him, fade into nothing more than a sad, bitter shell?

And was that any worse than flaming out like a firework the way Faith feared she might?

Go out in a blaze of glory, she used to say to herself. Don't fizzle.

She was nearing her blaze of glory. Michael was fizzling. Only time would tell which of them had made the right choice.

Or if both had made the wrong one.