True Blue

Fallen

1

Jamie Meldon rubbed his eyes vigorously, but when he stared back at the computer screen it was still no good. He glanced at his watch; nearly two in the morning. He was toast. At age fifty he couldn’t pull these all-nighters consistently anymore. He slipped on his jacket and pushed back his thinning hair where it had drifted down to his forehead.

As he packed his briefcase he thought about the voice from out of the past. He shouldn’t have, but he’d called; they’d talked. Then they’d met. He didn’t want that part of his life dredged up again. Yet he would have to do something. He’d been in private practice for nearly fifteen years, but now represented Uncle Sam. He would sleep on it. That always helped.

A decade ago he’d been a hotshot and highly paid criminal defense attorney in New York, legally handholding some of the sleaziest of Manhattan’s underworld. It had been an exhilarating time in his career, and also represented his lowest point. He’d lost control of his life, been unfaithful to his wife, and become someone he’d grown to loathe.

When his wife had been told that she had perhaps six months to live, something had finally clicked in Meldon’s brain. He’d resurrected his marriage and helped his spouse beat a death sentence. He’d moved the family south, and for the last ten years, instead of defending criminals, he was sending them to prison. Everything about that felt right, even if his financial circumstances weren’t nearly as rosy.

He left the building and headed home. Even at two a.m. there was life in the nation’s capital, but once he got off the highway and rode through the surface streets toward his neighborhood it grew quiet and he grew more drowsy. The blue grille lights flashing off his rearview mirror jolted him to alertness. They were in a straightaway not a half mile from his house, but one bordered on both sides by trees. He pulled off the road and waited. His hand slid to his wallet where his official credentials were contained. He was worried that he’d dozed off or been driving erratically because he was so tired.

He saw the men coming toward the car. Not uniforms, but suits, dark ones that made their starched white shirts stand out under the three-quarter moon. Each man was about six feet tall with an athletic build, clean-shaven face, and short hair, at least that he could make out under the moonlight. His right hand gripped his cell phone and he punched in 911 and kept his thumb poised over the call key. He rolled the window down and was about to hold up his official creds when one of the other men beat him to it.

FBI, Mr. Meldon. I’m Special Agent Hope, my partner Special Agent Reiger.

Meldon stared at the ID card and then watched as the man flicked his hand and the familiar FBI shield appeared on the next slot in the leather holder. I don’t understand, what’s this about, Agent Hope?

E-mails and phone calls, sir.

With whom?

We need you to come with us.

What? Where?

WFO.

The Washington Field Office? Why?

Questioning, Hope replied.

Questioning? About what?

We were just told to make the pickup, Mr. Meldon. The assistant director is waiting to talk to you.

Can’t it wait until tomorrow? I’m a United States attorney.

Hope looked put off. "We are fully aware of your background. We are the FBI."

Of course, but I still—

You can call the AD if you want, sir, but our orders were to bring you in ASAP.

Meldon sighed. That’s all right. Can I follow you in my car?

Yep, but my partner here has to ride with you.

Why?

Having a highly trained agent riding shotgun for you is never a bad thing, Mr. Meldon.

Fine. Meldon slipped his phone back in his pocket and unlocked the passenger door. Agent Reiger climbed in next to him while Hope walked back to his car. Meldon pulled in behind the other car and they started on their route back to D.C.

I wish you guys could have come to my office. I just came from town.

Reiger kept his gaze on the other car. Can I ask why you’re out this late, sir?

As I mentioned, I was at my office, working.

Sunday night, this late?

It’s not a nine-to-five job. Your partner mentioned phone calls and e-mails. Was he inferring ones that I made or received?

Maybe neither.

What? Meldon snapped.

"The Bureau’s intel division gets chatter and scuttlebutt all the time from the dirtbag world. It might be that someone you prosecuted wants payback. And we understand that when you were in private practice in New York you did not leave on the best of terms with some of your, uh, clientele. It could be coming from that sector."

But that was a decade ago.

The mob has a long memory.

Meldon suddenly looked fearful. I want protection for my family if there’s some nut out there gunning for me.

We already have a Bucar with two agents stationed outside your house.

They crossed over the Potomac and into D.C. proper, and a few minutes later neared the WFO. The lead car hung a left down an alley. Meldon pulled in behind it.

Why this way?

They just opened a new underground garage for us to use with a hardened tunnel right into WFO. Quicker this way and under Bureau eyes 24/7. These days who the hell knows who’s watching? Al-Qaeda to the next Timothy McVeigh.

Meldon looked at him nervously. Got it.

Those were the last words Jamie Meldon would ever speak.

The massive electric shock paralyzed him even as a large foot stomped down on the car’s brake. If Meldon had been able to look over he would’ve seen that Reiger was wearing gloves. And those gloves were curled around a small black box with twin prongs sticking out. Reiger climbed out of the car as a twitching Meldon slumped over.

The other car had stopped up ahead and Hope ran back to the second car. Together they lifted Meldon out and leaned him face first against a large Dumpster. Reiger pulled out his pistol with a suppressor on the muzzle. He stepped forward, placed the barrel against the back of Meldon’s head, and fired one round, ending the man’s life.

Together they heaved the body into the Dumpster. Reiger climbed into the dead attorney’s car. He followed his partner’s ride out of the alley, turned left, and then headed north while Meldon’s corpse finished sinking into the garbage.

Reiger pushed a speed dial button on his phone. It was answered after one ring. Reiger said, Done. Then he clicked off and slipped the phone back in his pocket.

The man on the other end of the phone did likewise.

Jarvis Burns, his heavy briefcase pressing against his bad leg, struggled to catch up to the rest of the party as they headed across the tarmac, up the metal steps, and into the waiting aircraft.

Another man with white hair and a heavily lined face turned back to look at him. He was Sam Donnelly, the Director of National Intelligence, which essentially made him America’s top spy.

Everything okay, Jarv?

Perfect, Director, said Burns.

Ten minutes later Air Force One rose into the clear night air on its way back to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

2

Sixty-eight . . . sixty-nine . . . seventy.

Mace Perry’s chest touched the floor and then she rose up for the last rep of push-ups. Both of her taut triceps trembled with this max effort. She stretched out, greedily sucking in air as sweat looped down her forehead, then flipped over and started her stomach crunches. One hundred. Two hundred. She lost count. And next came leg lifts; her six-pack ridges were screaming at her after five minutes and still she kept going, driving through the pain.

Pull-ups were next. She could do seven when she got here. Now she lifted her chin over the bar twenty-three times, the muscles in her shoulders and arms bunching into narrow cords. With one final shout of endorphin-fueled fury, Mace stood and started running around the large room, once, twice, ten times, twenty times. With each lap, the lady increased her speed until her tank shirt and shorts were soaked through to her skin. It felt good and it also sucked because the bars were still on the windows. She couldn’t outrun them, not for three more days anyway.

She picked up an old basketball, bounced it between her legs a few times, and then drove to the hoop, which was a netless basket hung on a makeshift backboard bolted to one wall. She sank the first shot, a layup, and then paced off fifteen feet to the left, turned, and sank a jumper. She moved around the floor, set up, and nailed a third shot, and then a fourth. For twenty minutes she hit jump shot after jump shot, focusing on her mechanics, trying to forget where she was right now. She even imagined the roar of the crowd as Mace Perry scored the winning basket, just as she had done in the high school state championship game her senior year.

Later, a deep voice growled, Trying out for the Olympics, Perry?

Trying for something, said Mace as she dropped the ball, turned, and stared at the large uniformed woman facing her, billy club in hand. Maybe sanity.

"Well, try and get your ass back to your cell. Your buff time’s up."

Okay, said Mace automatically. I’m going right now.

"Medium security don’t mean no security. You hear me!"

I hear you, said Mace.

"You ain’t here much longer, but your ass is still my turf. Got that?"

Got it! Mace jogged down the hall that was enclosed by stacked cement blocks painted gunmetal gray, just in case the residents here weren’t depressed enough. The corridor ended at a solid metal door with a square cutout at the top as a viewpoint. The guard on the other side pushed a button on a control panel and the steel portal clicked open. Mace passed through. Cement blocks, tubular steel, hard doors with tiny windows out of which angry faces peered. Clicks to go. Clicks to get back in. Welcome to incarceration for her and her fellow three million Americans who enjoyed the luxury of government housing and three squares for free. All you needed to do was break the law.

When she saw who the guard was she muttered one word. Shit.

He was an older guy, fifties, with pale, sickly skin, a beer belly, no hair, creaky knees, and a smoker’s caustically cracked lungs. He’d obviously switched posts with the other guard who’d been stationed here when Mace had come through for her workout, and Mace knew why. He’d developed an eye for her, and she spent much of her time ducking him. He’d caught her a few times and not one of the encounters had been pleasant.

You got four minutes to shower before chow, Perry! he snapped. He moved his bulk into the narrow passageway she had to navigate through.

Done it faster, she said as she tried and failed to dart past him. He spun her around and leaned his heft against her while she braced herself with her palms against the wall. He shoved his fat size twelve boots under the flimsy soles of her size sixes; now Mace was on her tiptoes with her back arched. She felt the brush and then grip of his meaty hand on her butt as he pulled her to him, doggie-style. He’d managed to position them both in the one blind spot of the overhead security camera.

Little patdown time, he said. You ladies hide shit everywhere, don’t you?

Do we?

I know your tricks.

Like you said, I only got four minutes.

I hate your kind, he breathed into her ear.

Camels and Juicy Fruit are quite a combo. He slid a hand across her chest, squeezing hard enough to make her eyes water.

I hate your kind, he said again.

Yeah, I can really tell, she said.

Shut up!

One of his fingers probed up and down the cleft of her butt through her shorts.

There’s no weapon in there, I swear.

I said shut up!

I just want to go take a shower. Now, more than ever.

I bet you do, he said in his gravelly rumble. I just bet you do. One hand riding on her right hip, the other on her butt, he shoved his boots farther under her heels. It was like she was tottering on four-inch stilettos now. What she wouldn’t have given for a stiletto, just not the shoe kind.

She closed her eyes and tried to think of anything other than what he was doing to her. His pleasures were relatively simple: cop a feel or rub his hard-on against a chick when he got the chance. In the outside world this sort of conduct would’ve earned him a minimum of twenty years on the other side of these bars. Yet inside here it was classic he-said, she-said, and no one would believe her without some DNA trace. That’s why Beer Belly only pantomimed it through the clothes. And throwing a punch at the bastard would earn her another year.

When he was done he said, You think you’re something, don’t you? You’re Inmate 245, that’s who you are. Cell Block B. That’s who you are. Nothing more.

That’s who I am, said Mace as she straightened her clothes and prayed for an early diagnosis of lung cancer for Beer Belly. What she really wanted was to pull a gun and lay his brains—on the off chance he had any—against the gray walls.

In the showers she scrubbed hard and rinsed fast, something you just innately did in here. She’d already experienced her initiation in here after only two days. She’d busted the woman’s face. The fact that she’d avoided solitary or time tacked on had not endeared Mace to her fellow inmates. They simply tagged her as a privileged bitch, and that was about as bad as it could get in a place where your cell rep defined every right you had or didn’t have. Nearly two years later she was still standing, but she wasn’t exactly sure how.

She hustled on, every minute now precious, as she counted down her time to freedom, with both anticipation and dread, because on this side of the wall nothing was guaranteed except misery.

3

A few minutes later a wet-haired Mace walked through the chow line and received her basic food groups so crapped and fatted up that in any other place—except possibly high school cafeterias and airline coach class—they would be deemed inedible. She swallowed enough of the garbage to keep from passing out from hunger and rose from her seat to throw the rest away. As she passed by one table a drumstick of a calf shot out and she fell over it, her tray clattering away, the goop on it painting the floor a nice greenish brown. Up and down the perimeter line, guards tensed. The inmate who’d done the tripping, a prisoner named Juanita, glanced down as Mace slowly got to her feet.

You a clumsy bitch, said Juanita. She looked at her crew who sat all around the queen bee Juanita had become in here. Ain’t she a clumsy bitch?

Every member of Juanita’s crew agreed Mace was the clumsiest bitch ever born.

Juanita carried two-hundred-and-fifty-plus pounds on a wide six-foot frame, with each hip the size and shape of a long-haul truck’s mud flap. Mace was five-six, about one-fifteen. On the surface Juanita was soft, mushy; Mace was as hard as the steel doors that kept all the bad girls inside this place. Yet Juanita could still crush her. She’d landed here after a sweetheart plea deal for murder in the second in which her tools had included a tire iron, a Bic lighter, and lots of accelerant.

It was said that she liked this place much better than she ever had her world on the outside. In here Juanita was queen bee. Out there she was just another GED-less fat chick to punch the hell out of, courier drugs and guns through, or make babies with before the man abandoned her. Outside prison Mace had known a thousand Juanitas. She was doomed from the moment she’d tumbled from the womb.

That might have explained why Juanita had done enough crazy stuff inside here, including two aggravated assaults and a weapons and drugs bust, to tack twelve more years onto her original sentence. At that rate the woman would be here until they hauled her carcass out and slipped it into a potter’s field somewhere. Her fat and bones would soon fertilize the earth and no one would either care or remember her.

However, that left the living woman with nothing to lose, and that’s precisely what made her so dangerous, because it carved normal societal inhibitors right out of her brain pattern. That one factor turned mush to titanium. No matter how many reps or laps Mace did, she could never match what Juanita had. Mace still had compassion, still had remorse. Juanita no longer had either, if she ever did.

Mace held the fork ready. Her gaze drifted for a moment to Juanita’s wide hand planted flat on the table, orange nail polish muted against her skin that was obscured only by a tattoo of what looked to be a spider. An obvious target, the hand.

Not tonight. I already two-stepped with Beer Belly. I’m not dancing with you too.

Mace kept walking and slid her tray and utensils into the dirty bin.

Only as she was leaving did she glance over at Juanita, to find the woman still watching her. Keeping her gaze dead on Mace, Juanita whispered something to one of her crew, a gangly lily white named Rose. Rose was in here for nearly decapitating her husband’s sexy plaything in a bar restroom using the gutting knife hubby kept for his fish catches. Mace had heard that the husband hadn’t come to Rose’s trial, but only because he was so upset she’d ruined his best blade. It was definitely more the stuff of Jerry Springer retro than Oprah couch chatter.

Mace watched as Rose nodded and grinned, showing the nineteen teeth she had remaining in her gaping mouth. It was hard to believe she was perhaps once a little girl playing dress-up, sitting on her father’s knee, forming her cursive letters, cheering at a high school football game, dreaming about something other than one hundred and eighty months in a cage playing second fiddle to a bloated queen bee with the mental makeup of Jeffrey Dahmer.

Rose had visited Mace on the second day she’d been here and told her that Juanita was the messiah and what the messiah wanted, she got. When the cell door opened and the messiah appeared, she would like it. Those were the rules. That was just the way it was in Juanita Land. Mace had declined Juanita’s offer several times. And before things had truly gotten out of hand, Juanita had suddenly backed off. Mace thought she knew why but wasn’t sure. Yet it had led to two years of fighting for her life every day, using her wits, her street smarts, and her newly found muscle.

Mace trudged to Cell Block B and the doors slammed into place behind all of them at precisely seven p.m. So much for another exciting Sunday night. She sat on the steel bed with a mattress so thin laid over it that Mace could almost see right through the damn thing. Over the two years she’d slept on it her body had absorbed every buckle and bend in the old metal. She had three more days to go. Well, now really only two, if she made it through the night.

Juanita knew when Mace was getting out. That’s why she’d tripped her, tried to bait her. She didn’t want Mace to leave. So Mace sat in her cell, crouched into a hard, tight wedge in the corner. Her fists were clenched and there was something shiny and sharp in each one of them that she kept hidden in a place not even the guards could find. The darkness came and then strengthened into the time of night when you figured nothing much good was going to happen because the evil that was coming scared all the good away. And then she waited some more. Because she knew, at some point, her cell door would open as the guards on the night shift looked the other way in consideration for drugs or sex, or both.

And the messiah would appear with one goal in mind: to never again let Mace experience the light of a free day. For two years she’d been building herself up for this moment. Her buffed body waited with anticipation as adrenaline pumped with each exhalation of breath.

Three minutes later the cell door slid open, and there she was.

Only it wasn’t Juanita.

This visitor was tall too, over six feet with the one-inch polished boots she wore. And the uniform was not like that of the guards. She wore it well, not a baggy part or dirt stain to be seen. The hair was blond and smelled good in a way that no hair in here ever could.

The visitor took a step forward, and though it was dark, there was enough light coming from somewhere out there that Mace could see the four stars on each shoulder. There were eleven ranks in the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, and those four stars represented the highest one of them all.

Mace looked up, her hands still clenched, as the woman looked down.

Hey, sis, said the D.C. chief of police. What say we get you the hell out of here?

4

Roy Kingman pump-faked once and then darted a bounce pass between his defender’s legs and into the paint, where a giant with rockets in his legs named Joachim stuffed it home, the top of his head almost above the rim.

That’s twenty-one and I’m done, said Roy, the sweat trickling down his face.

The ten young men collected their things and shuffled off to the showers. It was six-thirty in the morning and Roy had already gotten in three games of five-on-five full-court at his sports club in northwest D.C. It had been eight years since he’d suited up for the University of Virginia Cavaliers as their starting point guard. At only six-two without rockets in his legs, Roy had still led his team to an ACC championship his senior year through hard work, smart court sense, good fundamentals, and a bit of luck. That luck had run out in the quarters of the NCAA when they’d slammed headfirst into perennial power Kansas.

The Jayhawks’ point guard had been a blur of cat quickness and numbing agility, and, at only six feet tall, could easily dunk. He’d poured in twelve threes, mostly with Roy’s hand in his face, dished off ten assists, and harassed the Cavs’ normally solid point man into more turnovers than baskets. It was not exactly how Roy wanted to remember his four-year collegiate career. Yet now, of course, that was the only way he could recall it.

He showered, dressed in a white polo shirt, gray slacks, and a blue sports jacket, his standard work wear, threw his bag in the trunk of his silver Audi, and headed to work. It was still only a little past seven, but his job demanded a long, full day.

At seven-thirty he pulled into the parking garage of his office building in Georgetown located on the waterfront, snagged his briefcase off the front seat, chirped his Audi locks shut, and rode the elevator car to the lobby. He said hello to Ned the thirty-something heavyset guard, who was cramming a sausage biscuit into his mouth while leisurely turning the pages of the latest Muscle Mag. Roy knew that if Ned had to get up from his chair and simply shuffle fast after a bad guy, he not only would never catch him but someone also would have to perform mouth-to-mouth on old Ned.

As long as it’s not me.

He stepped on the office elevator and punched the button for the sixth floor after swiping his key card through the slot. Less than a minute later he reached his office suite. Since Shilling & Murdoch didn’t open until eight-thirty, he also had to use his key card to release the lock on the law firm’s glass doors.

Shilling & Murdoch had forty-eight lawyers in D.C., twenty in London, and two in the Dubai office. Roy had been to all three places. He’d flown to the Middle East in the private plane of some sheik who had business dealings with one of Shilling’s clients. It had been an Airbus A380, the world’s largest commercial airliner, capable of carrying about six hundred ordinary people or twenty extraordinarily fortunate ones in ultimate luxury. Roy’s suite had a bed, a couch, a desk, a computer, two hundred TV channels, unlimited movies on demand, and a minibar. It also came with a personal attendant, in his case a young Jordanian woman so physically perfect that Roy spent much of the flight time pressing his call button just so he could look at her.

He walked down the hall to his office. The law firm’s space was nice, but far from ostentatious, and downright slum-dogging it compared to the ride on the A380. All Roy needed was a desk, a chair, a computer, and a phone. The only upgrade in his office was a basketball hoop on the back of the door that he would shoot a little rubber ball into while yakking on the phone or thinking.

In return for ten- or eleven-hour days and the occasional weekend work he was paid $220,000 per annum as a base with an expected bonus/profit share on top of that of another $60,000, plus gold-plated health care and a month of paid vacation with which to frolic to his heart’s content. Raises averaged about ten percent a year, so next cycle he would ratchet to over three hundred grand. Not bad for an ex-jock only five years out of law school and with only twenty-four months at this firm.

He was a deal guy now, so he never set foot in a courtroom. Best of all, he didn’t have to write down a single billable hour because all clients of the firm were on comprehensive retainers unless something extraordinary happened, which never had since Roy had worked here. He’d spent three years as a solo practitioner in private practice. He’d wanted to get on with the public defender’s office in D.C., but that was one of the premier indigent representation outfits in the country and the competition for a slot was intense. So Roy had become a Criminal Justice Act, or CJA, attorney. That sounded important, but it only meant he was on a court-approved list of certified lawyers who were willing basically to take the crumbs the public defender’s office didn’t want.

Roy had had his one-room legal shop a few blocks over from D.C. Superior Court in office space that he’d shared with six other attorneys. In fact, they’d also shared one secretary, a part-time paralegal, one copier/fax, and thousands of gallons of bad coffee. Since most of Roy’s clients had been guilty he’d spent much of his time negotiating plea deals with U.S. attorneys, or DAs, as they were called, since in the nation’s capital they prosecuted all crimes. The only time the DAs wanted to go to trial was to get their in-court hours up or to arbitrarily kick some ass, because the evidence was usually so clear that a guilty verdict was almost inevitable.

He’d dreamed of playing in the NBA until he’d finally accepted that there were a zillion guys better than he would ever be, and almost none of them would make the leap to professional hoops. That was the principal reason Roy had gone to law school; his ball skills weren’t good enough for the pros and he couldn’t consistently knock down the threes. He wondered occasionally how many other tall lawyers were walking around with the very same history.

After getting some work lined up for his secretary when she came in, he needed some coffee. It was right at eight o’clock as he walked down the hall to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The kitchen staff kept the coffee in there so it would stay fresher longer.

Roy didn’t get the coffee.

Instead he caught the woman’s body as it tumbled out of the fridge.

5

They rode in a black Town Car, an SUV loaded with security behind them. Mace glanced over at her older sister, Elizabeth, known as Beth to her friends and some of her professional colleagues. However, most people just called her Chief.

Mace turned and looked at the tail car. Why the caravan?

No special reason.

Why come tonight?

Beth Perry looked at the uniformed driver in front of her. Keith, turn some tunes on up there. I don’t want you falling asleep. On these roads we’ll end up driving off the side of a mountain.

Right, Chief. Keith dutifully turned on the radio and Kim Carnes’s jagged voice reached them in the backseat as she crooned Bette Davis Eyes.

Beth turned to her sister. When she spoke her voice was low. This way we avoid the press. And just so you know, I’ve had eyes and ears in that place from day one. I tried to run interference the best I could for you.

So that’s why the cow backed off.

You mean Juanita?

I mean the cow.

She lowered her voice further. I figured they’d planned on giving you a parting gift. That was the reason I showed up early.

It irritated Mace that the chief of police had to have the radio playing and whisper in her own car, but she understood why. Ears were everywhere. At her sister’s level, it wasn’t just about law enforcement; it was about politics.

How’d you manage the release two days ahead of schedule?

Time reduced for good behavior. You’d earned yourself forty-eight whole hours of freedom.

Over two years, it doesn’t seem like that big an accomplishment.

It’s not, actually. She patted Mace on the arm and smiled. Not that I would have expected it from you.

Where do I go from here?

I thought you could crash at my place. I’ve got plenty of room. The divorce was final six months ago. Ted’s long gone.

Her sister’s eight-year marriage to Ted Blankenship had started to unravel before Mace had gone to prison. It had ended with no kids and a husband who hated his ex principally because she was smarter and more successful than he ever would be.

I hope my being in prison didn’t contribute to the downfall.

What contributed is that my taste in men sucks. So I’m Beth Perry again.

How’s Mom?

Still married to Moneybags and the same pain in the ass as always.

She never came to see me. Never wrote me a single letter.

Just let it go, Mace. That’s who she is and neither one of us is going to change the woman.

What about my condo?

Beth glanced out the window and Mace saw her frown in the reflection off the glass. I kept it going as long as I could, but the divorce took a big slice out of my pocketbook. I ended up paying alimony to Ted. The papers had a field day with that even though the file was supposed to be sealed.

I hate the press. And for the record I always hated Ted.

Anyway, the bank foreclosed on your condo four months ago.

Without telling me? They can do that?

You appointed me as your power of attorney before you went in. So they notified me.

"So you couldn’t tell me?"

Beth glared at her. And what exactly would you have done if I had?

It still would’ve been nice to know, Mace said grumpily.

I’m sorry. It was a judgment call on my part. At least you didn’t end up owing anything on it.

Do I have anything left?

After we paid off the legal bills for your defense—

"We?"

That was the other reason I couldn’t keep paying on the condo. The lawyers always get their money. And you would’ve done the same for me.

Like you ever would’ve ended up in a pile of crap like this.

Do you want the rest of the bad news?

Why not? We’re on a roll.

Your personal investment account got wiped out like everybody else’s in the economic freefall. Your police pension was history the moment you were convicted. You have a grand total of one thousand two hundred and fifteen dollars in your checking account. I talked your creditors into knocking your debt down to about six grand and got them to defer payments until you got back on your feet.

Mace was silent for a long minute as the car rolled along winding roads on the way to the interstate that would eventually carry them into Virginia and then on to D.C. In all your free time while you were running the tenth largest police force in the country and presiding over the security details for a presidential inauguration. Nobody could’ve done better. I know that. And if it had been me overseeing your finances, you’d probably be in a debtor’s prison in China. Mace touched her sister’s arm. Thanks, Beth.

I did manage to keep one thing for you.

What’s that?

You’ll see when we get there.

6

The sun was starting to come up when the Town Car turned down a quiet residential street that dead-ended in a cul-de-sac. A few seconds later they rolled to a stop in the driveway of a comfortable-looking two-story frame house with a wide front porch that sat at the very end of the road. The only giveaway that this was where the highest-ranking cop in D.C. lived was the security stationed outside and the portable barricades that had been moved out of the way when they’d turned onto the street.

What the hell is this for, Beth? Mace asked. You never had a security detail at your house before. You usually don’t even have a driver.

Different world and the mayor insisted.

Has there been a threat?

I get threats every day. Stalkers at HQ, here at home.

I know, so what’s changed?

Not for you to worry about.

The car slowed and Beth Perry rolled down her window and exchanged a few words with the officers on duty, and then she and Mace headed into the house. Mace dropped the duffel bag containing everything she’d brought to prison with her and looked around. You’re not going to tell me the truth about all the new security?

There’s nothing to tell. I don’t particularly like it, but like I said, the mayor insisted.

But why did he—

Drop it, Mace!

The sisters did a staredown and Mace finally backed off.

So where’s Blind Man?

As if on cue, an old fifty-pound mutt with gray, black, and tan markings came into the room. As it sniffed the air, it gave a yelp and bounded toward Mace. She knelt and scratched Blind Man behind the ears and then gave the dog a lingering hug, pushing her nose into its smooth fur as Blind Man happily licked her ear.

I think I missed this guy almost as much as I missed you.

He’s been pining for you.

Hey, Blind Man, you missed me, man, you missed me?

I still can’t believe they were going to put him down just because he can’t see. That dog’s nose is so keen it’s better than having two pairs of twenty-twenties.

Mace rose but continued to stroke Blind Man’s head. You always have been one to bring in strays with special cases. The deaf cat, and three-legged Bill the boxer.

Everybody and everything deserves a chance.

Including little sisters?

You’ve lost weight, but otherwise you look to be in great shape.

Worked out every day. Only thing that kept me going.

Beth looked at her strangely. It took Mace a few moments to interpret. I’m clean, Beth. I was clean when I went in and I didn’t touch anything while I was in there, although let me tell you there were more drugs in that place than at Pfizer’s world headquarters. I exchanged meth for endorphins. I’ll take a pee test if you want.

"I don’t, but your probation officer will as a postrelease