“I’m way ahead of you.”

“I had a feeling you might be. Hightower terminates Babbitt, we float the intel in-house it was Gentry.”

“If nothing else it will light a fire under Suzanne Brewer and the targeting officers. Show them just how dangerous their target is.” Denny picked up his paperwork and reached for his glasses. “Talk to Hightower.”

—

Zack Hightower had spent the first part of the morning on the fourth floor of the Old HQ building, working with Suzanne Brewer on possible staging locations Violator might use here in D.C. Former haunts in the area, suitable locations to train and store materiel. They also discussed his knowledge of current and former SAD weapon caches on the East Coast, thinking it possible Gentry would try to raid a stockpile somewhere to acquire more equipment.

Zack had enjoyed this work for about half an hour, but since then he’d been bored. This was analytical shit, not his forte. He wanted to be out in the field, in the city, man-hunting.

At noon Brewer had a lunch of Chinese food brought in to the tactical operations center, and Zack was seated at a desk picking through his shrimp lo mein when Jordan Mayes stepped into the room and hurried over. “I need to speak with you.”

Zack put down his cardboard carton and his chopsticks, stood smartly, and stepped into the hallway. Mayes looked back to Brewer as he headed out himself. “I’ll have him for the rest of the day. Maybe tomorrow, as well.”

Hightower fought a smile. “It’s party time!” he told himself.

The two men went upstairs to Mayes’s office. Once there, Mayes closed the door and walked over to a small sitting area. When he and Hightower were seated close together, he leaned closer still and said, “I have a problem.”

Hightower always sat ramrod-straight, but he tightened his posterior chain muscles even more. “Not for long. I’ll take care of it.”

“You know a man named Leland Babbitt?”

“No, sir. I do not.”

“He runs Townsend Government Services.”

Zack nodded. “I know those assholes.”

Mayes sighed, adopting a worried look on his face. “Babbitt has made himself a clear and present danger to our operation at the Agency. We have tried to dissuade him from this, but he persists. He has threatened to go public detailing some classified intelligence programs that, if revealed, would be devastating for our mission here.” He shook his head, an expression of disbelief. “There is no question but that these revelations will put good men and women in the field at great personal risk. Frankly, Zack, at this point, we have exhausted all of our options.”

Zack Hightower grasped instantly that he was being asked to assassinate an American citizen in the United States. He blinked hard at this realization.

But only once. “I’ll take care of it.”

“I need you to do this alone.”