Yoshida looked at his watch, checked his phone, and maintained his half-smile. Loria puffed out his chest and said, “This is my building, and I want—”

Carter said, “With all due respect, Mr. Loria, this is an active crime scene. You’re the one that shouldn’t be here. And your friend from the agency has no jurisdiction to operate on US soil.”

Yoshida walked over to one of the metal sorting tables and hopped up onto it like a kid jumping onto a kitchen counter to watch his mother prepare dinner. “Actually,” he said, “this is part of a foreign intelligence investigation, so I’m perfectly within the boundaries of the law.”

And again, Yoshida looked down at his watch.

“Are you late for something?” Nic said. “Don’t let us keep you.”

Yoshida didn’t say a word. He just kept toying around with his phone.

Nic felt the Juliano temper flaring up. He suddenly didn’t feel like a cop. He felt like Nicky Jewels, escalation management issues and all. He stomped over to where the CIA agent sat. Yoshida was probably eight inches shorter and sixty pounds lighter than him, but the agent didn’t even flinch when Nic slammed his hands down on each side of the metal table and looked Yoshida right in the eyes.

“I don’t care about jurisdiction or politics,” he said. “One of my brothers died today, and there’s a group of people wasting away in agony just across the parking lot as you sit there with that smug little grin on your face. It’s time to start talking. Is the CIA using this place to develop chemical or biological weapons?”

Yoshida tilted his head. He seemed amused by Nic’s threatening demeanor. “Off the record?”

“Screw the record. I could care less about all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense. All I care about is helping those people and catching the bastards who killed my friend. I’m going to do that by whatever means are necessary, and I wear a size-fifteen boot, which is not going to feel good stuck up the ass of whoever gets in my way.”

“The Central Intelligence Agency is not in the business of creating weapons of mass destruction. We’re the good guys who stop people from doing such things. And we also take our jobs very seriously. However you think the agency is involved here, I’ll tell you this, it has nothing to do with biological or chemical weapons. And don’t ever threaten me again. I know all about your background, and so you may think that growing up rough and tumble makes you a force to be reckoned with. But you see, while your kind may come to the house of an enemy and threaten to break their knee caps with a baseball bat, my kind plays by entirely different rules of engagement. In my world, I would simply put a bullet between that enemy’s eyes from a thousand yards. No bravado. No threats. You don’t want to make enemies like me, Officer Juliano.”