“When I looked at the list of residents tonight, your background check had Harper listed as retired from the State Department. It should’ve raised a red flag and caused you to do a deeper dive into his background,” Griffin said accusingly. “But it’s not all your fault. I missed Chambers because he must live on a different street, which you’d organized the list by. Once I saw Harper’s name. I stopped looking and came right here. You had no context about Chambers because I never talked about him, but Harper’s on you.”

Barrett knew his boss was right. In the rush to plan the operation, he’d completely forgotten how often agency personnel tell other people they’re with the State Department—it’s easy, and everyone accepts it without question. You screwed up, royally, and you and Griffin may pay for it. “I’m sorry,” was all he could summon. Even though he’d never worked at the agency, he knew that even deputy directors tried to hide their identities. If he’d been agency personnel, like Griffin, he’d have spotted it immediately. But he also knew Griffin didn’t care about his excuses and had punished others for much lesser errors. He just prayed the merciless man next to him, a man he called his friend as well as his employer, would accept it.

Griffin glared at him momentarily, the contempt for the oversight rising to the surface until Barrett felt like it would explode from beneath his skin. But just as quickly, it dissipated, and Griffin turned away. “Hopefully, it doesn’t cost us our lives,” Griffin said as the SUV slowed to a halt.

Before Barrett and he had jumped into the Explorer, Griffin had tossed a flare off his vest toward the back of the pavilion, which had ignited the structure instantly. He figured no one would actually die, but he wanted to see how they’d escape, and with the appearance of his old team member, he needed to watch. The physical compulsion, a trait of his psychopathy, demanded that he stay, but not too long. He needed to escape the range of the jammers and contact the buyer, who was not going to be pleased, to say the least.

“Are you sure about this? We need to get out of here, or our chances of survival dwindle by the minute.”

“I’m sure,” Griffin said, even as Zack crashed the SUV into the pavilion. “He is decisive. I’ll also give him that.”

“I wish I’d known who he was and that he lived here. I would’ve killed him before this even started,” Barrett said, waiting for his friend to give him the order to leave the neighborhood.