Late last night she’d been ordered to report to the resident agency in Harrisburg, which was too small to have a field office, and at the early morning briefing, she and the other agents who’d been called in had learned of Cornelia Case’s disappearance. As concerned as she was about what had happened to the nation’s First Lady, she was excited to be part of an elite task force of agents assigned to find her. Unfortunately, she’d been given a new partner—one who wasn’t even with the Bureau. And, although she’d worked with the Service before, the agents had been seasoned veterans, not twenty-six-year-olds named Jason.

He had that scrubbed-up white bread look of a lot of Secret Service agents. Short light brown hair, symmetrical features, and what looked like a tiny zit on his chin. How could they have given her a partner who still got zits?

They’d also given her a partner who didn’t have to battle his weight or worry about wrinkles. A partner with no gray in his hair. She didn’t have to look in the rear-view mirror to know how much of it threaded her own short dark hair. Still, her olive skin was relatively unlined, and even though her shape was curvier than she’d like, she was still fit.

So far, she and the kid hadn’t said more to each other than they needed to, but now Toni decided it was time to put her new partner through his paces.

“So tell me something, kid. Whose butt did you have to kiss for this assignment?”

“Nobody’s.”

“Yeah, tell me another one.”

He shrugged.

She was Italian, and she hated being put off with white bread shrugs. The kid sank another rung lower in her estimation. “Interesting. All you had to do was show up, and they decided to put you on an elite task force. Aren’t you the lucky one? In the Bureau, we have to work for assignments like these.”

He turned to her and smiled. “I was handed this assignment because I’m very good at what I do.”

“They gave me a real live hotshot,” she drawled. “Isn’t this my lucky day?”

He frowned, so she knew that she’d scored. Her satisfaction faded, however, as she realized the frown wasn’t a sign of irritation but deep thought.

“How bad do you want this?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“How bad do you want to find Aurora?”

Aurora was the Service’s code name for Cornelia Case. The members of a president’s family always had code names that started with the same letter. Dennis Case had been Arrow.

She took her time deciding how to answer. “I wouldn’t mind having it on my record.”

“Not good enough. And not honest, either. The word is, you’re the one who’s a hotshot.”

“Is that so? What else have you heard?”