Lola sighed heavily. She then went through a long and passionless diatribe about the day her husband left for his latest assignment. She shared what he ate for breakfast that morning, how he kissed her good-bye and said he’d call her soon, same as he always did when he left on an assignment. She was adamant that he did nothing at all out of the ordinary—no indication that he was planning on going rogue.

McCall dutifully took notes, even though Lola had already provided the same information to the agents who had been there before.

“So there’s nothing else?” McCall said. “No explanation for your husband’s actions? No idea where he might be?”

Lola shot McCall an angry sideways glance. “I don’t have any information, Agent McCall. I’d be more interested to know what you all have come up with.”

Jackpot.

This was the opening Vaill had been waiting for.

“You want our theories?” he asked.

“I’d like to think the massive manpower of the FBI could come up with something, so yes.”

More anger. More negativity. More lies.

“I can’t speak for the Bureau,” Vaill said, his eyes fixed on her, “but I’ll tell you what I think. There are three possible reasons why someone would betray their country: money, sex, or ideology. Now, you’re a good-looking woman, Lola. If you don’t mind my saying so, any man would be a fool to betray you in that way. That doesn’t mean anything, though. As they say, love is blind and it can be blinding. But you don’t seem like a woman scorned, and if your husband had left you for another woman, if he’d been seduced into this betrayal, you’d have had at least some suspicion along the way. You seem angry with us for intruding, but not angry at Alexander. So let’s take sex off the table for the moment.”

“Whatever.”

“How about money? Did he get paid to murder two agents? If he did, it had to be a hell of a lot of money, which would make me think again about sex … or drugs, I suppose. But when I look around this house, and from what I could tell of Alexander, I don’t see a man obsessed with money, or on drugs. Just my opinion, maybe I’m wrong.”

“You’re not,” Lola said flatly.

“So, that leaves ideology—a belief so profound, so consuming, it could make a person commit an unspeakable act. It would need to be something at their core—a powerful, misguided sense of justice. Maybe you share that belief. Maybe that’s why you’re angry with us instead of outraged and sickened by your husband’s actions. Is that your husband, Lola? Was he a misguided individual? Is that why you’ve lost him?”

“Misguided is your word,” Lola said, looking away.