Instinctively she flung an arm across the bed; Andi's side was still empty. Myka groaned and ground the heels of her palms into her eyes. Andi hadn't slept in this bed for more than six months, but the habit of reaching out and touching Andi's hip, lightly, affectionately, hadn't yet left her. Opening her eyes, she rolled over and picked up her phone from the nightstand. 5:30. She had 15 minutes before she had to get up and start her run. She hated it when she woke up early, especially when she woke up because she had reached for Andi and Andi wasn't there. Andi was in California, Los Angeles specifically, following her dream . . . yet again. After another groan, Myka sat up and pushed herself to the edge of the bed. Last night had been a long night, everyone trying, after the fairgrounds closed at 9:00, to put away and clean up as much as possible, but her parents and some of the "Shack staff" would be at the Cookie Shack today doing the big clean and shut down for next year. As she stumbled across her bedroom to pull a pair of shorts and a tank from her dresser, her thoughts touched briefly on Helena. She hoped that her day was getting off to a better start.

Her morning runs had two or three different loops through her neighborhood, more for the sake of variety than concern that she could be stalked or attacked. She might be white collar FBI, but she was still FBI. Her snicker didn't diminish her pride, but, really, the most dangerous weapon she generally handled was a heavy-duty stapler. As she dodged trash cans and recycling bins set out for pick-up, she recalled how her father had bragged about her being FBI to Helena. It wasn't the same as working for the CIA, but, still, she didn't like to advertise the fact, and yet her father never failed to find an opportunity to mention it to practically everyone they met. Most people were curious, full of questions, while others were more noncommittal, murmuring, "I'm sure that's interesting work," turning back to the books they were perusing, if she were helping out her dad at the bookstore, or placing their orders for cookies, if she were helping out at the Cookie Shack. But a few reacted as Helena had, a coolness entering their expressions, their smiles shrinking. Myka didn't take it personally; they were reacting to their image of the agency, what they had heard or read. They didn't know its true workings any more than they knew her.

But she had to admit that she had been disappointed when she saw Helena's face freeze at her father's reassurance that Christina had been in the best hands possible. Holding out her hands, Myka stared at them. They were nice hands, okay, ordinary hands. There was nothing "agenty" about them, as Pete might say. They didn't frequently hold guns or flash badges or handcuff people; usually they were typing on a keyboard or working through a financial statement. They could just have easily been an accountant's hands. From the moment that her father had said those three letters, however, Helena had been in retreat. Physically she had never left the table, but the dark eyes in which Myka had seen so many emotions, panic, gratitude, guilt, humor, friendliness, had seemed to grow darker and the only emotion Myka could see in them when she and Helena would exchange looks was wariness.

Why was she moony about a woman she had met only yesterday, who obviously didn't like the FBI, and who was probably dating the stolid-looking guy, Nate, who had brought her to the fair? Myka increased her pace, frustrated that she was spending time thinking about Helena. Now that her off-and-on again relationship with Andrea Martino was off, over for good – or at least until the next time that Andi swept back into town and swept her off her feet –it was perfectly normal to be attracted to another woman. Probably even healthy. But maybe this time, finally, it could be someone who was both available – not only emotionally but physically as well – and ready for a relationship? She had had hopes that she had found her future in Andi, although everything about Andi had signaled that she had her sights set on a future that wasn't in this city and wasn't with an agent who was a few pay grades away yet from being a Special Agent in Charge. Andi was an actress, and despite having crashed and burned in Los Angeles a few years earlier, and New York before that, she had been eager for the next opportunity that would take her back. Even when they had been at a fever pitch in their relationship, Andi had always kept one eye on her phone, looking for a good news text from her agent.

When she had gotten that text, an offer to star as a recurring character on a new series produced by a streaming service, Andi hadn't hesitated, but this time she had also asked Myka to join her. The more cynically-minded, Pete among them, suggested that Andi had extended the invitation because she knew that Myka wouldn't uproot herself for a limited run on a show that would garner, at most, a couple million viewers. Myka had a healthy skepticism when it came to doing her job, but she tried not to give her friends and lovers the same gimlet-eyed look – it wasn't a trust builder. She believed that Andi, a part of her, anyway, really did want them to be together, on her terms. In the end, they had agreed that Andi should take her third or fourth shot at stardom unencumbered, and if it didn't work out, then they could see where they were. Because you know I'll be here, Myka hadn't been able to squelch the uncharitable thought.

Letting herself back into the house, Myka turned on the Keurig for what would be the first of her many cups of coffee. She opened her refrigerator and pondered the cancerous sprawl of yogurt containers on the topmost shelf. For someone who acted high-minded about sugar, she managed to get her daily allowance and more of it by relying on slightly more subtle delivery systems, like yogurt. As she ate her yogurt and waited for the Keurig to stop its tiny trickling of coffee into a mug, she glanced around her remodeled kitchen and tried to convince herself that the quartz countertops and new cabinets made up for the fact that there was no one to chide her for her excessive reliance on caffeine or, better yet, sidle up to her sweaty body and convince her that they had time for a long, hot shower together before they had to leave for work.

Forty minutes later she was on her way into downtown, caught in the rush hour crush and inching off the exit ramp into one of the main thoroughfares. The Bureau's field office was in a nondescript high rise in a cluster of skyscrapers that gave the city its claim to a skyline. As her car idled at a stoplight, she drank from her second cup of coffee – in addition to her run, a stop at Starbucks was also part of her morning routine – and reviewed her schedule for the day. Most of it would be taken up with finalizing her report on a money laundering operation that she and Pete had helped break up, which had crossed several states and involved payday lenders and rent-to-own stores. Other law enforcement had been involved as well, but she and Pete had logged a lot of miles and spent more nights in hotel rooms than she cared to repeat anytime soon. Drug money had been used to finance loans and store credit to customers who, if they could no longer meet the astronomical monthly interest payments, were then coerced into transporting drugs to homes and businesses, sometimes hundreds of miles away, for further refining or distribution. It had been a departure of sorts from their usual work, but the novelty had been lost in the grind of endless phone calls, meetings, and coordination of personnel and information. They hadn't rushed into drug houses, guns at the ready, or faced down criminals sporting military hardware; they had been working out of conference rooms in local sheriff offices and police departments, their most dangerous weapons their smart phones.

It wasn't shaping up to be a bad day at all, a low-stress one, which was a rarity, and she was smiling in anticipation of Pete's greeting, which usually involved finding the most absurd news item on the Internet and asking her opinion about it. On Friday, he had found a story about a dispute between two men over the ownership of a twelve-foot wooden Santa that they had carved from a tree together. Pete had asked her to put her "brilliant legal mind to the question and 'render a decision.'" He had giggled at "render," before saying, "You're gonna say it should be chopped in two, right, to see which guy loves it more?"

"No," Myka said over her shoulder, as she started walking toward the breakroom, which housed a couple of microwaves, a refrigerator, and, most importantly, a catered coffee service. The coffee was freshly brewed and regularly replenished. She couldn't ask for more. "I'd bring their spouses in and see which one of them was closest to taking an axe to it – or him – at this point. The winner would be the one who wasn't on the verge of committing murder. It's all about bringing the crime rate down, Pete."

This morning Pete had no "From the Archives of the Absurd" greeting. He stopped by her cubicle only long enough to advise her to get her coffee and meet him in the office of their boss, Special Agent in Charge Irene Frederic. Pete claimed, always under his breath, that Irene had been Special Agent in Charge when Hoover had run the FBI. Granted, there was an agelessness about her that led a wacky kind of credence to the view, but putting cryogenesis or starting at the FBI at age 12 aside, the Bureau's history as an all white, all male (and wholly closeted) preserve continued to weigh against women of color becoming Special Agents in Charge over field offices or assistant directors. Name the last woman who was a director, Myka silently demanded of the heavens as she hurried to pour herself a cup of coffee. But knowing Irene, she thought that Special Agent in Charge Frederic might actually have a chance. Myka had been a junior-level employee, a couple of years out of law school, when Irene had been chosen to head the field office, and she had developed a ferocious case of hero worship. Although her admiration had matured as she had grown in the work, her respect for Irene had only deepened. Consequently, coffee was sloshing over the rim of her cup as she walk-raced to the conference room. The heat stung her fingers but she hated to be late, especially when it was Irene who had called the meeting.

She was surprised that she and Pete were the only agents in the room besides Irene and more surprised to see Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Martino at the table. It wasn't all that unusual to have a representative from Justice attend one of their meetings, but typically it was in the context of a pending court case, and none of her cases were at that stage, not even the money-laundering one. A woman sat next to him, her dark hair drawn back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a stylishly cut dress suit. She sprang up from the conference table to shake the non-coffee-smelling hand that Myka offered her. "I'm Kelly Hernandez, from the district attorney's office." Flashing a cheeky grin at Pete, she added, "Glad to meet his professional better half."

Myka glanced from one to the other. "Softball?" Pete's other hobbies were gaming and poker, and she didn't see Kelly hunched over a controller or eating Doritos from a family-size bag with Pete and his poker buddies.

"Kelly's our shortstop. Great fielder except that she overthrows home plate." Pete wadded a stick of gum into mouth. Myka hoped it wasn't bubble gum, not with Irene in the room.

"Says the man who spends his time at home plate whiffing at strikes," Kelly jeered. Then she blushed and said sheepishly, "This is probably a conversation we should have outside work."

"I agree, Ms. Hernandez, as time is short, and I'm sure that we all have much to get done." Irene had been reviewing a file, which, while not auspiciously thick, had nonetheless brought a frown to a face that Myka thought was best characterized as unreadable. Irene's expression was always the same, regardless of how well or badly an investigation was going. Pete joked that she cracked a smile only at Christmas-time. "If you or Mr. Martino would care to start?"

Sam didn't clear his throat but his play with his suit sleeves and the resulting rattle of his cufflinks on the table was as good an indicator of his nervousness. Irene could do it to anyone. Myka had seen assistant directors falter for words under her impassive regard. He shot Myka a beleaguered glance before beginning, "Kelly and I are here because of a call she received . . . ."

Myka knew she should be paying attention, but there remained an underlying awkwardness between her and Sam. The look he had given her had had everything to do with feeling that he was arguing a case before the Supreme Court – with Irene capably standing in for all nine justices – and nothing to do with Andi. Yet it had been uncannily like the look he had given her when she told him that she wanted to date his sister instead of him, dread, disbelief, and frustration commingled. He and Andi had been born 18 months apart, and their mother had claimed more than once to Myka that they had been trying to outdo each other since they were toddlers. Anything that Sam could do, Andi wanted to do better, and vice versa. While Sam had gone to law school and taken a position in the district U.S. Attorney's office and Andi had left for Los Angeles to become an actress, the one's position was hardly less reliant on dramatic skills than the other's. It took acting chops to persuade a jury, and Sam wasn't so proud that he hadn't asked his sister for some basic pointers on working an audience.

Myka had met Sam when he had been the attorney assigned to help prosecute an embezzlement case. She was the investigator who had assembled the evidence sufficient to arrest the president and chief financial officer of a regional bank, and both before and during the trial, Sam had relied on her attention to detail and analysis of the facts. They had spent days and nights going over the case, marshaling the evidence into a narrative that explained the inception of the crime to its discovery. Neither had been reluctant to work long hours or to eat dinner from a vending machine. Myka would think later that they had mistaken their mutual admiration of each other's work ethic as attraction and had read too much into their occasional escapes from the Bureau's office to have a drink or a late evening snack. Even so, their nascent relationship hadn't developed much beyond an occasional heated goodnight kiss; sleeping together would have required a larger commitment of time and energy than they were willing to claw back from their jobs.

That had been the status when, on a Saturday afternoon that had found them working together on some details of the investigation that he intended to use in a cross-examination of a defense witness, Sam had invited her to his condo for dinner. Myka had agreed, uncertain whether it was a sign that he wanted to deepen their relationship and equally uncertain that it was something she wanted. Her last clear memory of that night was of seeing a woman in Sam's kitchen who turned away from a stovetop crowded with skillets and pots bristling with spaghetti on the boil. She had Sam's fair coloring, but the resemblance ended there, and the amusement in her greeting revealed a playfulness that Myka had yet to see from him. "I've gone from being your wingman to a third wheel? It's about time, big brother." It would be an exaggeration to say that she hadn't given Sam a second thought after meeting Andi, but he had been, at best, a shadow at Myka's side during dinner, indistinct and visible only from the corner of her eye. At the end of the night, it was Andi who walked her to her car and surprised her with a kiss that ignited hormones Myka didn't know she had. Two days later Andi was back in New York, but Myka had already ended things with Sam, and the next weekend, with a rare Monday off in her back pocket, she flew to New York to see the woman she was convinced was the love of her life.

. . . . She heard Pete stop chewing gum long enough to whistle between his teeth. He slid toward Myka an even slimmer file than the one Irene had been reviewing. She opened it, understanding Pete's whistle. On top of a small stack of documents was a photo of Helena Wells. It was a shot of her descending the steps of a government building, a courthouse, given the crowd of reporters at the bottom and the ring of men shielding her. Myka closed her eyes in frustration; for the first time in years, she had let her mind wander during a meeting, and this was the result. What had Sam been talking about? As rapidly as she could, she fit the various words that had filtered through into a rough chronology. An anonymous source had called the city's district attorney's office about potentially fraudulent activity at a securities firm. Helena hadn't been the source, of that she was sure. She remembered too well how Helena had reacted at "FBI."

Pete was looking at her expectantly. He hadn't yet said anything about meeting Helena and her daughter. He was always willing to let her take the lead when it came to dealing with Irene. He was man enough to admit, he would say (when he and Myka were safely out of Irene's hearing), that she scared the hell out of him. "We know her slightly. We met her yesterday at the fair," Myka said cautiously. "She had gotten separated from her daughter, who had taken off to buy a cookie for her from my parents' stand. We returned her daughter to her, gave them some free cookies, and that was it. An upset, frazzled mom, that's all I took her for." She knew that neither Sam nor Irene was accusing her of anything; they couldn't have known until just now that she and Helena had met. But Myka knew that a defensive note had crept into her voice, and she wasn't willing to volunteer, not yet, how Helena had seemed to fold in on herself once she learned of her and Pete's connection to the FBI.

"That may be what she is now, but a few years ago, she was better known as Stuart McKnight's girlfriend." Sam wasn't trying to read her expression, although he might have wondered why she was blushing. Irene hadn't missed it, however. Myka blushed the harder. Great, she had progressed from being attracted to unreliable actresses to felons. More precisely, girlfriends of felons. Stuart McKnight's trial had garnered a fair amount of interest even this deep in the Midwest, but she had been working a fraud case of her own and dealing with the first of her break-ups with Andi. Both the water cooler gossip (maybe bottled water gossip was more apt) and the news coverage had been no more than a buzz in her ears.

"You said your source contacted you twice, but they mentioned Helena only the second time?" Pete leaned over the elbow he had planted on the table to peer at Helena's picture.

"Could be they didn't know who was behind it at first," Kelly said. "The first voice mail we got suggested we should look into some alternative energy start-ups that Amundson's firm had encouraged their clients to invest in. The second voice mail we got said that Helena Wells was working for Amundson Securities and did we know what she had done. There was no name, no valid call-back number. He must have found one of the few working pay phones still around. Without anything more solid we weren't going to follow up, but then we found out that two of the start-ups he had identified on the first message had just filed for bankruptcy."

Amundson. Myka heard the thud of the other shoe dropping. No, the other boot dropping, a work boot with a steel-reinforced toe. Amundson was a very, very powerful name in the city, in the state, to be linking to a potential fraud. The family had been an economic, political, and social force for generations. Nolan Amundson was a former lieutenant governor and the CEO of Amundson Companies, Ltd., a corporate giant involved mainly in agribusiness activities, but the family had other business interests as well, including the investment firm. He was chairman of Amundson Securities, and two of his sons were executive officers. It was common knowledge that Kelly's boss had political ambitions of his own. It could end a career – or make it – to launch an investigation into the Amundson family. Yet why would someone as reputedly sharp as Nolan Amundson hire a woman who was linked to a highly publicized securities fraud? Myka shook her head. There was still too much that was unknown to start making assumptions.

"Even if the start-ups' bankruptcies are the result of fraud, it doesn't mean that the Amundsons had a hand in it. Unless you have something that shows a stronger connection to them than a couple of voice mails and –" Myka gestured toward Helena's picture without looking at it, "the fact that Stuart McKnight's ex-girlfriend works for their wealth management company, what would we be investigating, exactly?"

"We do have something stronger," Kelly said swiftly. "We received in the mail, again anonymously, internal documents from the company, memos and emails about misleading information on the start-ups being given to investors."

"It's not a smoking gun, but it's enough for you to start poking your noses in Amundson's business." Sam didn't quite phrase it as a question to Irene, but the "isn't it" was unmistakable.

Irene's mouth almost imperceptibly twitched up. "Let us review the information and consult with Washington. We'll get back to you." Her eyes were almost closed as she turned to Kelly. "Quite a coincidence, isn't it? Information potentially detrimental to the Amundson family lands on your desk just as, rumor has it, your boss is about to declare a run for Congress."

Kelly's smile was closer to a wince, but she didn't look away from Irene. "The sword cuts two ways. When an Amundson's involved, it's always a delicate situation. Besides, if investors have been defrauded, the investigation would go to you, anyway. Adwin knows that, and it's why we wanted to reach out to the U.S. Attorney's office as well." With a proud, slightly defiant tilting of her chin, she added, "He doesn't need an Amundson on his wall to burnish his record."

Pete mouthed "Burnished?" to Myka and waggled his eyebrows as Irene said smoothly to Kelly, "We've always had a good relationship with the district attorney's office, and I look forward to the opportunity of working with Adwin again."

There ensued the usual promises of follow-up and cooperation, which, Myka knew, Irene would choose to only strategically observe. A minimum level of sincerity achieved, Sam and Kelly shut their attaché cases with almost perfect synchronicity. As they left the conference room, Pete called out to Kelly, "Next time I'm at the plate, out of the park, I tell you." Not bothering to look back at him, she held her arm out to the side, moving her thumb and fingers in imitation of a mouth talking at full speed.

"She's got you down," Myka said as they turned toward their desks. They passed the darkened office of Steve Jinks, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, and she resisted the impulse to press her nose against the panel of glass bordering the door. Someday, maybe, she would get this office, or another one like it in the suite, and the same title, but there could be a reason, other than the vagaries of fate, that Steve had gotten the promotion ahead of her. He was happily married to Liam, a pastry chef; the most criminal thing Liam had ever done was to mix one chili too many in the frosting for his "diablo chocolate" cupcakes, which had been Steve's contribution to the office's Christmas potluck. Steve was attracted to good-looking, charming, pastry chefs whose only brushes with the FBI occurred at dance clubs – when he was out on the floor with them. She could learn something about the rules of attraction from him.

"Hey," Pete tugged at her arm, leading her away from their desks, "want to step outside for a breath of fresh air?"

Myka regarded him skeptically. Pete would step outside for a good many things, most of them food-related, but fresh air wasn't one of them. "Come on," he urged her quietly, "little pitchers are full of listening devices."

"That makes no sense," she complained.

"It does at an agency that wiretaps," he hissed.

"Not each other and not at work," she said, but Pete's jaw grew squarer in resolve. Rolling her eyes, Myka gave in. "Okay, let's step outside."

"Outside" was the sidewalk and a street still clogged with traffic and exhaust fumes. There was no fresh air to be found, anywhere. Pete completed a dramatic inhale. "Carbon dioxide. I can't get enough of it." As Myka's glower deepened, he said, "I gave her your number. I gave Helena Wells your number."

"You did what?" Myka felt her heart skip a beat and then beat much, much faster, but it wasn't because, or only because, Pete had given her personal phone number to a woman who couldn't seem to steer clear of securities scams.

"The only one who could've missed the looks you were throwing at each other was your dad – and maybe the kid." He said thoughtfully, "But she seemed a pretty sharp little kid, she sussed out the best place to get cookies at the fair. So I guess it's just your dad that was oblivious." He managed an expression that was both sheepish and defiant; his jaw was still in attack mode while his brown eyes shone with the unswerving devotion of a labrador retriever. "I've tried to fix you up how many times since you and Andi broke up for good, and you showed the most interest in the hot British mom you met at the fair. What's a 'gal's best friend' to do?"

"Ask me first before he gives my number out." Myka gave his shoulder a sisterly cuff. "And before he does something like that, he might want to ask himself if it's a good sign that the hot British mom started freezing up as soon as she learned we work for the FBI." Shrugging to emphasize that it didn't matter to her, Myka said, "Besides, she seemed to be with that guy Nate."

Pete was unconvinced by her display of indifference. "I don't think so. Definitely got the gut impression that Nate was 'friends only' material."

"The only thing that impresses your gut is an all-you-can-eat buffet . . . and, maybe, Kelly Hernandez." Myka couldn't resist the jab. Pete might send her blood pressure to unhealthy levels by his impulsive decisions (such as giving her phone number out to a woman who was likely to become the subject of their next investigation, although, in all fairness, he hadn't known it at the time), but he was also the one to bring it back down. She turned toward their office building, its entrance almost indistinguishable from the entrances to the office buildings on either side of it. Myka had had to learn to tell them apart, not by anything so helpful as an address stenciled on glass or stamped on a plate but by the color and texture of the stone. The building that housed the field office had walls that were a milkier, rougher gray than the others. It had taken her a few days and a few extra walks around the block to note the difference when she had first started with the Bureau, but ever since, she had always cast her eyes up briefly, confirming the color of the stone, before she went through the doors.

Pete tugged at her arm again, and Myka's eyes, which had automatically glanced up at walls that towered so high they seemed to end in a point, impatiently met his. What else hadn't he told her about Helena that he was 'remembering' to tell her now? "Two things you should know before we go back in. First of all, if Kelly dates like she throws a softball, which is totally off-target and hard enough to knock your head off, I'm not going to put myself in that kind of danger. Second of all, the funny business she and Martino are so sure Helena's involved in? The hot British mom isn't part of it. I know it, Mykes, I mean, I know it." He tapped his chest. The sudden seriousness had passed over his face like a cloud and then just as quickly, it was gone. Back was the dopily cocksure grin. "Just like I know she's the one, the one, for you. You can thank me in about," he made a show of checking his watch, "12 months or so, when you ask me to be your best man."

Myka might have been struck by his certainty because he often had an unerring instinct about people, except for the fact that Pete had tried to sell every one of those fix-ups as her chance to meet her soulmate, which would inevitably end in her thanking him by asking him to be her best man. She made a noise that was between a growl and a sigh, and, when she had the opportunity to close the elevator doors on him before he could stick an arm between them, she smirked at him.

Several hours, too many diet sodas, a vending machine sandwich, and a half-package of Twizzlers later, she was willing to concede that he might have a point about Helena Wells. Not about "the one" part, about the not being part of whatever was going on at Amundson Securities. She had read the documents in the file folder that Helena's photo had graced, the emails and memos discussing, albeit cryptically, the accuracy of information provided to investors about certain new energy firms, described as "promising start-ups" even in these internally-circulated documents. She was used to the hyperbole and, depending on the integrity of the firm, outright lies of the marketing materials provided to potential clients, but internal communications were usually more matter of fact about companies they had selected for investment. "Promising" was a little too gauzy. Helena was mentioned as the source of the reports, but there was no claim in any of the documents that she had doctored the information. No explicit claim, perhaps, but the implicit accusation was clear. The names of the authors and the recipients of the emails and memos had been removed from the copies delivered to the district attorney's office, the only name that hadn't been removed was Helena's. It smacked of staging, and Myka recalled Kelly saying that Helena had been named in the second anonymous call. Did their Deep Throat believe that the Amundsons were so tied to Helena or so afraid of an investigation that they would protect her at any cost? Or did he have his own reasons for focusing suspicion on Helena? She had then accessed, through a system-wide database, the case file on Stuart McKnight, and at 7:30 in the evening, she was still wading through its hundreds of pages.

Agents had interviewed Helena early and often. She had had a life before Stuart McKnight, before she shared his bed and gave birth to his child. She had been a sought-after financial analyst in her own right, with an almost intuitive feel for the unpredictability of markets. She had devised models for capturing the volatility of market movements that outperformed all but a few of her competitors'. Their relief when she decided to semi-retire to raise her daughter and to grace McKnight's arm at social galas and charity events had been almost palpable; several had remarked to the agents who interviewed them that "once she took herself out of the field, our investors finally quit coming to us asking 'Why can't you do what 'Wells Financial Management does?'" Myka was having a hard time believing the two Helenas were the same woman; the Helena in a one-of-a-kind designer dress sweeping into the Met bore no relationship to the Helena whom Myka had met at the fair, a distraught mother in a sundress that could have come from Kohl's. One was the wife in all but name of a Wall Street power, the other was a single mom.

She sensed rather than heard Irene's approach. Irene didn't so much sneak up on her staff as materialize in front of them, and Myka enviously wondered if it was an ability that you were granted when you became Special Agent in Charge. Perching on the far end of the workstation's desktop, a casual pose that belied the formality of her skirt suit, Irene looked over the top of her glasses at Myka. No "What are you still doing here?" or "It's time to go home," instead it was "What are your thoughts?" There were times Myka hadn't left the office until after 9:00, and the light in Irene's office was still on. In one of the city's distinguished older neighborhoods, there was a Dr. Frederic, an orthopedic surgeon, who was shooting hoops with his youngest son or tending the roses bordering the porch of their equally carefully tended Victorian as he waited for his wife to come home.

"About what's going on at Amundson Securities or Helena Wells?" Myka wanted to stretch but satisfied herself with rubbing her temple. Even after all these years, it was difficult, no, make that practically impossible, to betray in front of Irene how tired she was. Irene was never less than . . . crisp. And alert. She might be perching, but she was also leaning forward, her eyes questioning, intent.

"Either, both. Whatever you have to give me."

"I have a good chunk of the McKnight case file to get through yet, but there's nothing I've found in it so far to suggest they missed anything about her. Helena seems to have been telling the truth, she didn't know what her boyfriend was up to." Myka should have felt a sense of relief; her instincts weren't all wrong. Despite the fear that had overlaid them, the features of Helena's face had suggested strength, intelligence, and a spark of deviltry, not the narcissism and calculation of a con artist. The latter were what Myka had read in the face of Stuart McKnight. He was a good-looking man, or had been at the time, but his smile was too big, too winning in the photos of him and Helena together. Some might have found the smile dazzling, but Myka had been caught more by the look in McKnight's eyes. There was no friendliness in how those eyes stared at the cameras; there was a glint in them that seemed more than a reflection of the lights. He wanted to be seen in a tux with a beautiful woman at his side; he liked the flashes of dozens of cameras and phone cameras going off, he wanted the attention. How could Helena have not seen that in him? She could see it, and she was looking at a four- or five-year-old photo.

"Humor me. Walk me through how they came to that conclusion."

"Interviews of McKnight's staff, even those who were rolling over on him to get their charges dropped or reduced never claimed that Helena Wells was involved; forensic analyses of the bogus trades, audit logs of the company's computers, none of it shows any evidence that she had been tweaking any programs, whether proprietary or off the shelf, no anomalous access, no spurious IDs." Myka squinted at her notes in the borderline illegible handwriting she had developed to stymie other people's ability to read them. The unfortunate consequence was that sometimes she could barely read them. "There was that algorithm of hers, an equation or formula or whatever you want to call it, that they had found on a lot of the computers. But they couldn't find any proof that it had ever been used, and McKnight kept insisting that it was only a 'prototype.'".

"Makes you wonder what he meant by that, doesn't it?" Irene sardonically observed.

So had the agents interviewing Helena Wells. They were unconvinced by her explanation that McKnight had promised to test its accuracy only on proprietary investments, and they were unmoved by her horror that he might have had plans to blame her "faulty" formula for some of the losses suffered by his clients. Had his multiple offshore bank accounts not been discovered, such a plan might have possibly worked. Yet McKnight had had plenty of opportunities to implicate her, and he never had, so it was possible his calling her algorithm a "prototype" was a rare instance of him telling the truth. "We may never know," Myka said. "He's always maintained that Helena had no involvement, and if her past work for Wells Financial Management is any indication, she's clean. She was never the subject of an investigation by a regulatory agency, federal or state, and people were shocked, actually, when she became involved with McKnight. He was a guy who was rumored to have engaged in some questionable practices; she and her brother had good reputations."

Irene had crossed her arms over her chest and bent her head as Myka summarized her findings, her eyes almost closed as she sorted through the information. "But . . . I can hear you thinking it, Myka. You're wondering how someone so smart, so experienced could be so blind. Don't we see it all the time? Business partners duped by friends they've trusted for years, clients fleeced by financial advisors recommended by their pastors or their neighbors. She had built a life with this man, they were raising a family. We are very good at not listening to what we don't want to hear."

Myka couldn't deny the truth of what Irene said. She had spent the better part of four years with Andi telling herself every time she heard the words "This is it, the break I've been waiting for. It'll mean time apart, but I'll make it up to you, I promise" that it would be the last time, because surely Andi would realize that this bit part was just like all the others. It was a dead end, not another step up to that empyrean height in Andi's imagination from which she could choose her roles at will. Myka had also put her faith in Andi's assurances – when she admitted that the "real break" had turned to be, yes, another dead end – that the latest dead end was the last dead end. The awfulness of the shampoo commercial was surpassed only by the misery of the stitches she had to get when she was bit by a chimp on the set of a sitcom. Until they were both dwarfed by the moment when a director invited her back to his hotel room to discuss her future . . . .Myka understood all too well how you could keep believing in a lover or partner long past the time you should have stopped.

"But," she said impatiently, pushing herself away from her desk with enough force that her chair nearly rolled into the cabinet behind her, "how could she have turned her back on all of it, her company, her work, to consult with the nanny about her daughter's nap times and to lunch with a Z-list celebrity from a reality show?" At Irene's raised eyebrow, Myka said hastily, "Of course I'm not saying that raising a child isn't work or rewarding work, and I might have exaggerated the part about the celebrity, but still," her voice trailed off in frustration.

"But?" Irene pressed.

"She retreated." Myka said it more forcefully than she had intended, and she wiped at her cheek in an abysmal attempt to hide that she was blushing. "Helena moves in with him and she becomes someone else. Why?" She hurriedly followed it with "How did she get a job halfway across the country at Amundson Securities? What's here for her?" She wasn't sure she had really disguised "retreated." It was too personal a word, especially in front of Irene. The hot British mom, as Pete had called her, was no more; the woman with the hint of deviltry in her eyes and smile was the subject of a possible investigation, that was all.

"Do we know what her relationship to the Amundsons is?"

Myka shook her head. "I haven't found a connection yet. They stopped looking into Helena long before McKnight was sent to prison. Technically, the investigation may still be open since some of McKnight's employees have yet to go on trial, but no one's keeping tabs on her."

"Except us, perhaps." More awkwardly than Myka would have predicted, Irene stepped down and away from the desk. She automatically smoothed her skirt. "What information do we have on Amundson Securities and the troubled energy start-ups?"

"Pete's looking into them." When he left the office for the day and she was still buried in files in her cube, he never failed to say that an honest-to-God meal and eight hours of sleep were more useful to the FBI than her being chained to her desk. He had said that tonight as well, on his way to a night of pizza and video games with friends. Especially with the acid from the sodas burning a hole in her stomach lining, she might have left with him if he had been willing to stick around for a few minutes longer. Who was she kidding? He would still be waiting for her, hunched over – and attempting to soothe – his growling stomach in her desperately uncomfortable visitor's chair.

"Ah," Irene said, approval rather than its opposite coloring her voice, "he's wiser than we are, I'm afraid. I'll talk with him tomorrow." As Myka started to swing her chair back around to her monitor, Irene put a delaying hand on the back. "Go home. All of this can wait until tomorrow." The tone was almost maternal, but the eyes were no less intent. Irene might be saying "go home," but her thoughts weren't dwelling on dinner or the opportunity to sit on the porch swing with her husband. "Steve's back tomorrow, and I'd like to talk over with him what our friends from Justice and the DA's office have dropped into our laps. If we decide to recommend an investigation to Washington, I'd want you and Pete to lead it and Steve to oversee it." Irene hesitated in the cubicle's entry. "This is sensitive enough that I want to keep it between the three of us and Steve, at least for now. If it got out that we were investigating one of the Amundsons . . . "

Myka nodded. It wouldn't be a high profile case for the Bureau, necessarily, not like the McKnight investigation, but it would be very high profile for this city. Helena Wells had one hell of a bad angel looking over her shoulder. "Pete's gut is telling him that she's not involved – if there is something going on at Amundson Securities." Myka didn't volunteer opinions this early, her own or anyone else's, but tonight she had done it twice. And when it came to giving readings of Pete's gut, she usually let him do it. She needed to let the case shape her thoughts, not the other way around.

"Possibly or possibly she's cleverer than the rest of us put together." Irene cast a musing look at the institutionally tiled ceiling. If anyone could find an answer to a puzzle hidden in its blandness, it would be Irene. "I wonder if our colleagues left her with the impression that their investigation into her activities remained open. It would be nice to introduce some leverage into a conversation with her, such as a connection, unspecified of course, between Amundson and McKnight. A little something to keep her awake at night." The maternal warmth was gone, though Irene was talking about coercing a woman into cooperating with them with the same smoothness that she might ask after another's health or children. "I'll have to give some thought to the best way of approaching her, if we get authorization to move forward with this. We'll need to use her vulnerability to our advantage."

Inadvertently Myka glanced down at the smiling face in the photo, captured at a happier time in a happier place. If Helena Wells had thought this somewhat sleepy Midwestern city was a refuge, she was about to discover there would be no rest for her. The crazy thought of asking for a reprieve for her caused Myka to look up, almost pleadingly, but Irene was already gone.