Zane followed Mason out the door, down the hall, up two flights of stairs, and finally into another empty conference room.

“They’ll be here in a minute.”

“What do you think is really going on here?” Zane asked him.

“I wish I knew, but I’m not going to lie to you, Zane. You need to be on guard and make sure you are being completely truthful, because if they catch you in any lie, even if it has nothing to do with this investigation, it could be real trouble. The higher-ups are getting nervous, and they want to make someone pay for this.”

“You know me. You have to realize I couldn’t have done any of this.” Zane sounded more desperate than he’d intended, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide his feelings on this topic.

“I do, but the problem is that you don’t have to convince me. You have to convince the powerful people above my pay grade, and to do that, you first have to win over the investigators.”

As if on cue, the door opened and two people walked in—a short, stocky bald man and a younger redheaded woman. The man introduced himself as Palmer Sanchez, and the woman was Maddie O’Leary.

Mason excused himself, and then it was just Zane with the two suits. He couldn’t imagine that either of them had seen any time in the field, but here they were, ready to pass judgment on him. Interestingly enough, these were not the people who had questioned him previously.

Sanchez opened a folder in front of him. “Your supervisor explained why the team was being questioned today, correct?”

“Yes,” Zane said.

O’Leary leaned forward. “We’ve read your entire file, and we want to state up front that we are not here today to talk to you about the topic you’ve previously met with our team on, regarding the mole inside DEA. Is that clear?”

He wondered why they were so intent on drawing such a bright line, but he figured now wasn’t the time to argue over an irrelevant point. He had bigger problems. “Yes, I understand.”

“Great,” O’Leary said. “We’ll jump right in. You obviously recall retrieving funds from the Mejía safe house and bringing them back to the United States, right?”

“Yes.”

“Were you ever alone with the cash?”

“I have absolutely no idea. I wasn’t keeping tabs on things like that. My bigger concern was helping the team get in and out without one of us getting killed. That’s the way it works in the field. None of us were taking the time to steal any money, since that’s what you’re getting at. And no, of course I didn’t take any of the cash while in Honduras or back stateside. Is that clear?”