“Well they sure as hell aren’t going to tell me,” she says. “I don’t know where they’ve been flying or for what reason, and there hasn’t been time for me to check. After their cars showed up I no longer had privacy. It wasn’t a smart idea for me to check with ATC or tune into their freq to hear who was buzzing around and maybe why. Plus I had a lot of other things to attend to. The K-nine in particular is upsetting—intentionally. What I call being a real asshole.”

“Who?”

“Erin, I can only conclude. If she’s gathered any information about me she realizes that I have an English bulldog named Jet Ranger who’s so old he can hardly walk or see, and to have a Belgian Malinois searching the house would scare the hell out of him. Not to mention scaring Desi. Not to mention hassling Janet to the point she was about to deck someone. This is personal.”

Her green eyes are intense. She holds my stare.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that.” I’m cautious about what I say. “I wouldn’t take any of this personally,” I advise my niece even as I wonder about her. “All of us need to be coldly objective and think clearly right now.”

“It feels like someone is settling a score.”

“I admit I’m wondering the same thing,” Marino says.

“This is planned.” Lucy seems convinced. “It’s been planned for a while.”

“What score and who?” I inquire. “Not Carrie.”

“Not Carrie my ass,” Marino snarls.

“I’ll just come right out and say it.” I keep going but I’m careful. “Carrie isn’t giving orders to the FBI even if she might have known Erin Loria while all of you were at Quantico together.”

“The two of them weren’t exactly strangers.” Lucy stretches out her lean strong legs, starts doing lifts for her abs, her eyes fixed on her blaze orange running shoes moving up and down. “Not hardly,” she adds.

“Oh hell. Don’t tell me they were sleeping with each other too.” Marino shifts his position on the hard bench, massaging the small of his back. “Does the judge know?”

“I don’t know how much sleeping went on,” Lucy says, as if it no longer bothers her, and I don’t believe that.

“Well one thing we know about Carrie is she’s an equal opportunity employer,” Marino says. “Age, race, gender, nothing holds her back. This story’s only getting worse.”