The headache was instantaneous. She had no voicemails, but Tilly Erickson knew that nineteen missed calls from Rick at 1 a.m. couldn’t be anything other than trouble. Scrabbling through her nightstand, she found some loose pills and tossed them back, hoping they were Advils and not the leftover ibuprofens from her root canal. She didn’t check.

Her temple continued to thump as she made her way downstairs, heading to her work desk. She had left DC so she could avoid nights like this, but Atlanta was rarely the dream destination people wanted it to be, even for FBI agents.

Easing into her office chair, she turned on her computer and logged into the FBI remote server, opening other tabs to catch up on news while she waited for access to her inbox. Three-step authentication was great for security, but awful for end users.

“Atlanta is nothing but traffic and fraud, my ass,” she muttered aloud, shutting her laptop. She didn’t even need to log in to the server. The news had told her enough. Leaving her phone on her desk, she headed back to bed. This might be her last opportunity for sleep.

By 6 a.m., the missed call count had expanded to twenty-four. Tilly moved quickly, darting between the bedroom and the bathroom, gathering clothes and cosmetics.

At 6:22 a.m., she was in her car, a Cadillac STS, racing toward the office. Buford Highway was chillingly empty. For four miles, Tilly didn’t see a single car in the parking lots of its endless shopping plazas. And the only vehicles on the road itself were MARTA buses, which seemed to rejoice in the ambient desertion, zooming past vacant bus stops at breakneck speeds. The number of cars slightly increased as she turned onto Clairmont Road, but Tilly still felt unsettled. She’d always wished for a better commute, but this was damn near teleportation.

Century Parkway appeared quickly. Tilly parked and entered her office building, laughing at herself for wearing heels on a day when there was no one present to impress or command.

Rick was sitting in her office, in the sole guest chair, wearing running shorts, a polo, and worn sneakers, along with a shoulder holster. Tilly went to her desk without greeting him.

“Why does your voicemail say ‘Call me back!’ if you know you’re not going to answer?”

“Because I don’t believe coworkers should text.”

Rick sucked his teeth. “You’re a real piece of work, Erickson. I guess I’ll fax you the status report then. Since you only read emails from your phone, I might instigate an ethical crisis if I email it to you. Technically, sending government emails to your phone isn’t allowed since our emails are government property, but hackers get to do what they want, right?”

Tilly didn’t respond. She’d never arrived at the office this early. Her ritual of applying her makeup using her unlit monitor didn’t quite work without a surfeit of morning light. It was only 6:43 a.m. Her eyebrows would have to wait at least another hour. Ready to tolerate Rick, she turned to face him, his eyes already on her.