“He’s a wreck. The house is a pigsty.”

“He’s sitting in a mess of his own making. I hope he spends all day every day thinking about how he betrayed Skip, Steven and every officer who’s ever honorably served this department. I hope the guilt keeps him awake at night and eats away at him.”

Jake had never heard Joe speak so forcefully about anyone else, but he wasn’t surprised. Conklin’s deceit had rocked the very foundation under them. “I think it’s safe to assume it’s eating away at him.”

“Good. That’s the least of what he deserves.”

“Even with months to wrap my head around it, I still can’t believe he knew the whole time and said nothing. It’s unfathomable.”

“It certainly is, and he’ll have decades behind bars to think about what he did.”

“Decades won’t be enough.”

“You sound exhausted.”

“I am. I’m on the way home now to change for the funeral.”

“See you there, and thanks for taking one for the team.”

“No problem,” Jake said with a laugh.

An agent named Dalton drove Sam home to change for the funeral as the sun was rising over the capital city on the day they would lay Spencer to rest. At least she could tell Angela and Spencer’s family why he’d been taken from them, not that it would matter much to them today. She looked forward to being able to call the other families to tell them they’d gotten the drug dealers who’d taken their loved ones from them.

She thought of them all on the way home, about the lives of vulnerable people that had been changed forever by a man determined to run a rival out of business any way he could. As usual, the senselessness of murder was what stayed with her in the aftermath of all her cases. The motives hardly ever justified the outcome.

Even at five thirty in the morning, an usher was at the door to greet her when she stepped inside the White House.

“Morning, Mrs. Cappuano,” he said.

“Morning. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“I’m Roger, ma’am.”

Sam shook his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Roger.”

“You as well, ma’am.”

“Would you mind asking the kitchen to send up coffee and breakfast for myself and the president when they get a chance?”

“I’d be happy to.”

“Thank you so much.”

Sometimes living at the White House had its advantages, she thought as she trudged up the stairs, weary to her bones and with no time to rest before another emotional day. Despite being exhausted, she was also euphoric to know they had captured Vincent and shut down his operation. She’d done that. Not Narcotics or the DEA.

Her.

The next time she questioned what she was doing with her life, she would remember this moment and the lives she’d saved by rounding up Vincent’s dealers before anyone else could be harmed by them. That thought led to another that had her calling Malone.

“We need to announce the arrests and name the dealers who were most likely in possession of laced pills, so anyone who might’ve bought from them knows not to take them.”