After the meeting, I was one of the agents invited to a smaller briefing held in the director’s conference room. The mood continued to be somber, serious, and angry. Burns took the floor again, and he seemed more upset by the Stacy Pollack shooting than anyone else.

“When I said that we were going to bring that Russian bastard down, I wasn’t using hyperbole for effect. I’m establishing a BAM team to go after him. Sorokin said that the Wolf would come after us and he did. Now we’re going to go after him, with everything we have, all our resources.”

Heads around the room nodded their approval. I’d heard of the existence of BAM teams in the FBI but hadn’t known if they were real or not. I knew what the acronym stood for: By Any Means. It was what we needed to hear right now. It was what I needed to hear.

BAM.

Chapter 111

Chapter 111

EVERYTHING FELT LIKE it was going much too fast, like it was spinning out of control. Maybe that was right. The case was out of our control—the Wolf was running it.

I got a phone call at home two nights later. It was quarter past three in the morning. “This had better be good.”

“It isn’t. All hell’s broken loose, Alex. It’s a war.” The caller was Tony Woods, and he sounded groggy.

I massaged my forehead as I spoke. “What war? Tell me what happened.”

“We got word from Texas a few minutes ago. Lawrence Lipton is dead, murdered. They got to him in his cell.”

I was starting to wake up in a hurry.

“How? He was in our custody, wasn’t he?”

“Two agents were killed with Lipton. He predicted it, didn’t he?”

I nodded, then I said, “Yeah.”

“Alex, they got to the Lipton family too. They’re all dead. HRT is on the way to your house, also the director’s, even Mahoney’s. Anybody who worked on the case is considered vulnerable and at risk.”

That got me up out of bed. I took my Glock out of the locked cabinet beside my bed.

“I’ll be waiting for HRT,” I told Woods, then I hurried downstairs with my gun in hand.

Was the Wolf already here? I wondered.

The war came to our house a few minutes later, and even though it was HRT, it couldn’t have been much scarier. Nana Mama was up and she greeted the heavily armed FBI agents with angry looks but also offers of coffee. Then she and I went to wake the children as gently as we could.

“This isn’t right, Alex. Not in our home,” Nana whispered as we went upstairs to get Jannie and Damon. “The line has to be drawn somewhere, doesn’t it? This is bad.”