They were on standby and were finally going to make the approach to Vaughn. Their boss George Abe would handle it personally. She knew all this, of course, but steering the conversation back to business usually kept Hendricks from going off on a rant.

Usually.

Eight years in the CIA had taught her the art of working with men in close quarters. The first lesson was that men never adapted to women. It was a boys’ club, and you either became one of the boys or you became a pariah. Anything regarded as feminine was considered soft. The women who thrived were the ones who cursed louder, talked more trash, and showed no sign of weakness. Eventually, you got branded “one tough bitch” and earned a grudging tolerance.

She’d earned her “tough bitch” merit badge the hard way. On some of those forward bases in Afghanistan, she’d gone weeks without seeing another woman. Out there alone, you could never be tough enough. You were always going to be the only woman for a hundred miles. She’d seen men’s eyes go from hungry to hostile to predatory, and she’d learned to sleep very, very lightly. It was akin to prison, everyone sizing you up, sniffing for vulnerability. It had gotten so bad on one base that she had contemplated sleeping with the CO in the hope that his rank might shield her. But the idea of being someone’s prison bitch hadn’t sat well with her.

Jenn ran her tongue over her front teeth again. They felt real enough, although her tongue remained unconvinced. The dental surgeon had done good work once she’d been medevaced to Ramstein Air Base. The experience would have been even more traumatic if she’d known that it was her last real day in the CIA, but that took months to dawn on her. She missed the Agency more than her teeth.

The man who kicked them out hadn’t needed a dentist. Hadn’t needed much of anyone except maybe a priest. His partner had made it home, though. He was still on her to-do list, along with one or two of the higher-ups who’d turned on her when she refused to play ball. She’d wanted her attacker tried, but it would have meant disclosing a sensitive Agency operation. Lying in a hospital bed in Germany, jaw wired shut, she’d listened to one of her superiors explain the reality of her situation: “Unfortunately, it’s the price of doing business in this part of the world,” he told her, as though she’d been assaulted by a couple of Taliban fighters and not a pair of sergeants in the United States Army.

But it wasn’t until he patted her hand like he was doing her a favor that he went on her list.

Her tongue ran across her teeth again. Never leave accounts unsettled. Her grandmother had taught her that.