He trod lightly when it came to the children, he’d learned all too well.

But as he pulled on his light-framed glasses—after cleaning the lenses—and read the perplexing then troubling then shattering words, the Smoke formed, fast and unyielding, more a gel than vapor, and it closed around him. Suffocating. He found himself quivering, jaw clenched, hands clenched, heart clenched.

Metzger had recited: I can handle this. This is part of the job. I knew there was a risk of getting found out. He’d reminded himself: The Smoke doesn’t define you; it’s not part of you. You can make it float away if you want. But you have to want. Just let it go.

He’d calmed a bit, unclenched fingers tapping his bony leg in dress slacks (other soccer dads were in jeans but he hadn’t been able to change between office and field). Metzger was five ten and three-quarters and clocked in about 150 pounds. Formerly fat, as a boy, he’d melted the weight away and never let it return. His thinning brown hair was a bit long for government service but that’s the way he liked it and he wasn’t going to change.

Yesterday, as he put the phone away, the twelve-year-old midfielder had turned toward his section in the stands and smiled. Metzger had grinned back. It was fake and maybe Katie knew it. Wished they sold scotch but this was middle school in Bronxville, New York, so caffeine was the strongest offering on the menu, though the Woodrow Wilson PTO’s kick-ass cookies and blondies gave you a high of sorts.

Anyway, liquor was not the way to defeat the Smoke.

Dr. Fischer, I believe you. I think.

He’d returned to the office last night and tried to make sense of the news: Some crusading assistant district attorney in Manhattan was coming after him for Moreno’s death. A lawyer himself, Metzger added up the possible counts and knew the biggest, bluntest truncheon would be conspiracy.

And he’d been even more shocked that the DA’s Office had learned of Moreno’s death because the Special Task Order had been leaked.

A fucking whistleblower!

A traitor. To me, to NIOS, and—worst of all—to the nation. Oh, that had brought the Smoke back. He’d had an image of himself beating the prosecutor, whoever he or she was, to death with a shovel—he never knew the themes his rage would take. And this fantasy, particularly bloody and with a gruesome soundtrack, both mystified and viscerally satisfied with its vivacity and persistence.

When he’d calmed, Metzger had set to work, making calls and sending texts wrapped in the chrysalis of sublime encryption, to do what he could to make the problem go away.