Ron agreed. Before he left for Vegas, he had bugged Faye’s bedroom, even the bathroom she used down the hall, with hidden mikes and cameras.

In the two weeks she’d been his driver, neither Sebastian nor Ron’s people had caught her snooping or making any phone calls other than to her boyfriend, Max. Sebastian heard recordings of their phone calls and gathered that Max was getting frustrated that Faye was no longer available to him. Faye informed him that she had been given more responsibility at her job, which meant she had to work longer hours, and if Max didn’t like that, well, sorry. Her career came first.

Faye didn’t tell Max that her new job was being a driver. Max still believed she worked at the LA Health and Wellness Center.

Sebastian didn’t think the two of them would last.

It was Sunday, the morning bright and glorious. Sebastian stood in front of his bathroom mirror, finishing up shaving, while he talked to Ron over a wireless earpiece connected to a burner. Ron had been in Vegas over the week, posing as a vanilla government wonk saddled with the sad-sack task of performing a fastidious background check on Faye Simpson, who had recently applied for a federal job that required midlevel security clearance.

“The next-door neighbor was a boatload of information,” Ron said. “Told me Faye was an only child and pretty much a tomboy until around thirteen or so. She also got into a lot of fights. Didn’t have much in the way of family—the mother, the neighbor said, was kinda tight-lipped, didn’t really like to talk about her past. Neighbor had the impression there was a lot of sadness there, so he never pried all that much. He did, however, remember one time the mother had a birthday party when Faye was really young—maybe about three or four—and the mother said she had family there, some cousins and stuff. One of them might be the kid in the picture.”

“What about the story she told us about the mother’s boyfriend teaching her how to shoot?”

“It’s one hundred percent true. The neighbor remembered the guy’s name—Daryll Parson. I tracked him down yesterday. Lives in Seattle now, retired. That’s why him and Faye’s mother broke up. He got a job for Seattle PD, but the mother didn’t want to move, so they split up. Anyway, I got him talking about firearms, and he told me Faye took an interest when she was about fifteen. Had a real skill when it came to shooting, he said, so he took her under his wing. For a while there she had shown interest in becoming a cop, and then she got real good at cards, namely blackjack, and we know what happened there.”

Sebastian rinsed off his blade and picked up the towel. “What about the photograph? You show it to him?”

“I showed it to everyone. Nobody here knows anything. Could be a cousin.”

“What about the boyfriend, Max?”

“I told you, he’s clean. We’ve done our due diligence on the both of them, and then some.”