“You’ll survive.” Sam slapped the phone closed and got into the car, cranking the heat as she tried to figure out her next move. She had a million questions about the Hamilton family and the abduction of Taylor Rollings and whether the two were somehow related. Under normal circumstances, she might head to HQ for a few hours to do some digging. But that wasn’t an option today.

She’d heard every word the chief had said, and was well aware that his patience with her was waning. Uncle or not, he had a job to do, and her recent actions had made that job more difficult for him. She regretted that aspect of what she’d done. It was never her intention to cause him heartburn. The heartburn seemed to find her whether she toed the thin blue line or not. How was that her fault?

While she took the chief’s annoyance seriously, the fact remained that her suspension didn’t extend to online research she might do on her own. With that in mind, she headed home.

Her phone rang while she was stopped at a red light.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Captain Malone said when she answered.

“Hello to you too, Captain.”

“Hamilton’s son thinks he was kidnapped from a family in Tennessee thirty years ago?”

“That’s about the gist of it?”

“Holy fucking shit.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“I know him a little bit.”

“Who?”

“Director Hamilton. I shadowed him for a month years ago when he had Hill’s job,” Malone said, referring to Special Agent-in-Charge Avery Hill, who oversaw the Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Division. “The shadowing was part of an interagency coordination effort.”

“What do you think of all this?”

Malone hesitated for a couple of seconds. “Meet me at your dad’s in thirty minutes.” The line went dead before Sam could reply.

“Well, alrighty, then.”

The half hour Malone had given her allowed for time to stop at home and check on her patients, both of whom were sound asleep as war raged on in a galaxy far, far away. She worked the remote out of Nick’s hand and shut off the TV before tiptoeing from the room.

In the hallway, she sent a text to both their phones. I’m at Dad’s if you need me. Sure, she could tell the agents on duty where she’d be, but she refused to run her family life through the Secret Service.

She zipped up the coat she’d left on for the check-in at home and went down the ramp to the sidewalk. To her right, she glanced at the reporters who had gathered outside the checkpoint, probably hoping for another glimpse of the vice president. She wanted to tell them to go get a life, but chasing the big story was their lives. Poor bastards. What a way to make a living.