Kit finished her second drink and headed home. It was a subway ride with a switch, followed by a bus. She usually drove, but she’d known that she would be having some drinks, so she’d left the car at home that day. It was fine with her. She was feeling free and relaxed, and looking forward to the evening.

She got off the bus and walked the four blocks to her perfect little house.

When she was a block away, though, she saw the lights. The police were there, and the ambulances. At first, she thought they were in front of a different house, but as she drew closer, she knew she was wrong. It was at that moment, as her perfect future stretched out before her, that everything changed.

She played the events of that day over in her head now as she stood in the central command center at FMC Devens, watching the monitor that displayed the constant video feed of Vincente Carpio in his cell. It was four in the morning. He sat motionless on his cot, eyes ahead, back straight, as though in meditation. Steele had visited the facility multiple times since her first meeting with the warden, learning everything she could about the security protocols that were being used to keep Carpio safely in custody. So far, she had been impressed, but not enough for her to give up on her quest to find the gap in the armor. She knew that Carpio’s people would never stop searching for it, and that meant she had to find it first.

There was always one corrections officer in the command center, monitoring everything. Usually it was one of the junior officers, as it was at the moment. The warden had given them all instructions to cooperate with her.

“FBI, huh?” the screw on duty said to her. She could hear in his tone of voice a hint of admiration. Or was it flirtation?

“That’s right,” she said. She didn’t look at him.

“Pretty cool. I’m taking the test to get into the Staties,” he replied. “It’s not the Feds or nothing, but it’s still pretty hardcore.”

“That right?”

“Fuckin’ A.” It was clear that he was trying to keep the conversation going. It was equally clear, though, that his conversational skills were limited. He stared at Carpio’s image on the screen for a moment, then said with bravado, “He doesn’t look so hardcore to me.”

Steele finally looked at the young corrections officer. He sat to her left, at the center of the control panel, an array of forty-odd video monitors in front of him. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, and he had a buzz cut and gym-fed muscles. He wore the gun off his hip like a second penis. Or maybe a first. She looked at the name tag on his chest.

“Officer Teadic, is it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”