“You’ve probably been hatching plots for days and weeks, and I’m sure you never passed along any intelligence you happened to have access to.” Marino keeps his tirade going. “After all it’s only family we’re talking about. Why should you tell us a goddamned thing?”

Benton is quiet. He knows when not to take verbal swings at Marino, who is keyed up and furious.

“Right now plain and simple we may have an officer down.” He isn’t going to stop. “And I sure as hell don’t need the friggin’ FBI’s assistance. In fact maybe if you assholes had kept your nose out of what’s going on Carrie Grethen wouldn’t have just murdered someone else, this time a cop.”

“Be careful …” Benton says but Marino cuts him off.

“Be careful? Be careful! It’s a little fucking late for that,” Marino yells at him, and I realize what this is about.

Marino is terrified. He’s afraid we’re going to die. He’s trying not to panic, and anger is his remedy. It’s safer than debilitating fear.

“Are you telling me you’ve been careful, Benton? Let’s talk about Erin Loria. If she was a cop she’d be a fucking bad one. As an FBI agent I guess she’s typical, a lying, manipulative bitch who has an axe to grind and an old score to settle. To put her on Lucy’s case is like asking John Wayne Gacy to babysit your kids.”

“I’ve made it clear I had nothing to do with Erin coming here,” Benton says.

“Well what a strange coincidence that Lucy knew her from their Quantico days.”

“I doubt it’s a coincidence.”

“Jesus Friggin’ Christ! You have this way of saying shit like it’s normal. You doubt it’s a coincidence? And you just sit back and watch it happen like a fucking wooden Indian.”

“I don’t just sit back and watch anything unless I have a reason,” Benton says as I park a generous distance from at least half a dozen police cars, marked and unmarked.

The three of us get out and I walk around to the back of the SUV, my boots crunching through gravel and swishing through puddles. The smacking of the rain is slower and softer, and cops in slickers and rain suits are huddled a good hundred feet from Hyde’s cruiser. It’s rain spattered and splashed with mud. It looks empty and dead. Whatever we do we run a terrible risk. I see no option that doesn’t include a potential horrific consequence, and Marino has every good reason to react the way he is.