“He’s not stupid enough to fire you. Beth would have his hide. At the end of the day, he’s a political animal. Self-preservation will trump revenge.”

“He’ll find a way to get rid of me, I just know it.”

“You just have to keep your head down till Beth comes back. Avoid riding in elevators with the guy. You’ll be okay.”

“I hope you’re right about that.”

Lila tried not to seem dazed as she stood to leave, counting her steps as she walked to her office. On her desk lay a stack of files. Fraud cases. Numbers. Math. Not the kind of thing she dreamt about in law school, but the kind of thing that a newbie should be working on—at least according to Oscar Hernandez.

She fired up her computer, the hum of its fan teasing the empty room, and tried to get her head into the groove. When her screen popped on, she glanced up to see if she had any emails to answer, and there, in the upper corner of the screen, blinked a message from Frank Dovey. A tendril of dread crept its way up her spine and into her chest.

She opened it and read. Come see me.

Chapter 4

Gavin Spencer always thought of himself as a man who wore his plumage on the inside. Born with a body and face that were genetically forgettable, he had been further hobbled by a tongue that wheezed a sloppy hiss when he spoke the letter S. He was a backdrop, a weed. He was the beige Crayola in a box of sixty-four. But once he came to understand the power of his invisibility, it suited him well. What the rest of the world saw as indistinct, Gavin used as a disguise, turning his weakness into his strength. Gavin was happy enough to let his brilliance shine behind that mask.

Part of that shine had always been the care that Gavin took to understand his craft. Excellence didn’t come by accident; it took effort. Take photography: The world was awash with happy amateurs taking crooked pictures with their cell phones. They had no appreciation for balance, or ratios, or rhythm. Just point and shoot—the resulting aesthetic no more pleasing than a finger painting smeared on paper by somebody else’s child.

Similarly, Gavin believed the prisons of the world to be populated by thick-minded thugs who cared not a lick for their craft. Their paths led to incarceration not because of their calling, but because they refused to take that calling seriously. Just point and shoot. Not Gavin. He was a craftsman.

He had been up late taking photographs at the wedding the previous night, so Gavin allowed himself the luxury of sleeping in until nine in the morning. A good night’s sleep heightened creativity and attention to detail. His breakfast consisted of two eggs and a piece of toast, with orange juice to wash it down. Showered and shaved, he dressed like a man going to work—khakis and a long-sleeved shirt, buttoned to the neck—because that’s exactly what he was doing, even if that work was burrowing through the tunnels of the internet in search of his prey.