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Ignoring Lucy’s attempt at chit-chat—how the hell would someone her age even know who Pucifer was?—TK hoisted her ruck and marched through the door without looking to see if Lucy followed. She jogged down the steps and over to where Wilson worked the speed bag.

“Watch my bike for me?” She tossed her keys so they landed beside his water bottle.

“Sure. Where you going?” He looked past her to where Lucy was emerging from TK’s cubbyhole of a room, pulling the door shut behind her. “Who’s your friend?”

“Texas. And she’s not my friend. She
might
be my new boss if I don’t fuck this up.”

Lucy’s gait down the steps was uneven; the problem appeared to be with her left foot. Great, that’s all TK needed. Bad enough Lucy would be dogging her heels, now she was going to have to slow down for the privilege.

“Good luck,” Wilson said.

“Thanks.” TK headed to the door, making it there at the same time as Lucy. She pulled it open and went through first then stuttered to a stop, uncertain if she should hold it for Lucy. Technically, Lucy outranked her, plus she was older and obviously somewhat disabled. It would have been the proper thing to do.

By the time she turned back, it was too late, Lucy was already through. She clicked a remote, popping the trunk on a bright blue Subaru. TK stowed her gear and climbed into the passenger seat, surprised by the music blasting when Lucy turned the engine on.

Pucifer. TK leaned back, taking a good look at her new boss. Lucy mouthed the words to “The Humbling River,” obviously familiar with them, not putting on a show for TK.

Maybe there was hope for this mission not to be a complete disaster.

All she had to do was pretend to be normal for a few days, try to act like she knew what the hell she was doing, and not let Lucy witness any of her almost-nightly freak-out sessions.

Piece of fucking cake.

LUCY TOOK ROUTE 60
, avoiding the congestion on the interstate. They were in no rush as their flight didn’t leave for another hour and a half. TK sat in silence beside her and Lucy wasn’t ready to push. Not yet.

She’d noticed from the schedule posted on the gym’s bulletin board that TK taught classes there: mixed martial arts fighting, self-defense, and parkour. Now there was a sport that Lucy wouldn’t dream of ever attempting. The thought made her feel old. She wasn’t sure if the feeling came from her age—although thirty-nine wasn’t that old, not really—or the fact that she’d retired from the one job she thought she’d never leave, or the pain tap-dancing along the frayed nerve endings in her foot.

TK’s living quarters had been...Spartan was the only word that fit. The room had obviously been repurposed from some kind of utility closet. But it was clean, neat; clearly its occupant craved simplicity. Monastic was another word that came to mind. A place of reflection.

The room wasn’t what bothered Lucy, made her wish she could call Nick to ask for his advice. It was the door’s clasp and stout padlock. Shiny and new. And on the inside.

From her interactions with the man in the gym, it was clear TK felt at home, wasn’t afraid of him. So who was she afraid of? Was she locking someone out? Or herself in?

“Valencia told me you were a Marine MP.” A neutral conversation starter, she hoped.

“Yeah, well obviously, we’re rank amateurs compared to the FBI.”

Okay, maybe not so neutral after all.

TK glanced into the back seat at Lucy’s cane. Lucy braced herself; she hated telling the story of the night she almost died, the night her family almost died, the night her mother had been killed. Somehow, almost losing a leg was the least important thing she’d lost that night.

“Hope you didn’t bring me along just to carry your bags.” TK clipped the last word short, obviously realizing she’d crossed a line. “I mean—”

“You mean it’s difficult to know what someone new whom you haven’t worked with before expects from you. Or what you can expect from them.” Lucy glanced at the younger woman, making it clear that the sentiment cut both ways.

She expected TK to meet her head-on, but to her surprise, TK fumbled with her seatbelt and looked away. “Just saying, that isn’t my job.”

“No, it isn’t.” Okay. Pretty clear that TK’s trust would need to be earned. Lucy had a feeling if she won over TK, the rest of the team would follow. “So, what is? How do you guys work at Beacon Group? Are there any established protocols?”

TK sat up and shifted in her seat, leaning toward Lucy as if finally interested in the conversation. “No protocols, and we sure do need them. I mean, you’d think it was a simple division of labor, right? I handle the interviews, Wash does all the computer shit, and Tommy takes care of the medical stuff. Simple, clean. But no, those two, they’ll do whatever they damn well please. Say Tommy finds something hinky in a pathologist report—that happened the first case we worked. He figured out some dental records had gotten switched, honest mistake, the patients were both named Jones. But instead of telling me so I could follow up with the dentist or the family, he goes and does it himself. Meanwhile, I figure out the same thing, that these two Jones maybe had their identities crisscrossed, I look the fool following behind him, asking the same questions.”

“You felt foolish.” Lucy borrowed one of Nick’s favorite counseling ploys and reflected TK’s words back to her.

“Yeah, of course. But that wasn’t what bothered me. Not really. It was that we got the family’s hopes up and we should have held back, not gotten them involved until we had the real story. Tommy felt awful about it. But that kind of thing happens all the time. I tried to establish some rules, but they never listen to me because I’m so new. Wash and Tommy, they’ve been working with Valencia for years.”

“Yet, they obviously respect you. Look to you for leadership.”

“More like they look to me to kiss their booboos when they screw up. I’m not there to be anyone’s mother. I don’t want to lead. I just want to get the job done and close cases.”

“Are Wash and Tommy the only other investigators you’ve partnered with?”

“No. I kind of float around, whoever needs boots on the ground. A lot of the people at the Beacon Group are part-time, like Tommy, or don’t like face-to-face interviews, like Wash. But I’ve worked with them a few times.”

“Do the other teams have the same problem with lack of discipline?”

“That’s the thing. There really are no teams. Valencia assigns cases as they come in—only if they look like they’ll need specific expertise like this one, does she have more than one person working it. But I wouldn’t call it a team.”

That had been Lucy’s impression as well. That Valencia, although she’d built the Beacon Group into an organization that was highly successful in many ways, she now needed more structure and organization to continue growing the Group’s effectiveness. Exactly why she’d hired Lucy for this new endeavor.

“If I form a field investigation team—a real team, with SOPs and a hierarchy—is that something you’d be interested in? Or would you rather pursue solo office-based investigations like the rest of the Group?” Lucy couldn’t bring herself to tell the younger woman that if TK didn’t work out, she’d probably lose her job.

TK was silent for several moments. She turned back in her seat, facing front once more as they turned into the airport. “Guess that all depends on how well you do on this case.”

Lucy chuckled, glanced at TK, and met her smile. “Touché.”

She navigated to the long-term parking. Since US Air pulled out, the airport was almost always empty—at least compared to the cavernous terminals and parking structures—so it made no sense to pay premium prices when it was just as easy to find a space in the cheaper garage. “What about this David Ruiz working for the Justice Project? Do you know him?”

TK shook her head. “I read his report summarizing the case this morning after Valencia gave us the assignment. Good writer—gets right to the point, but also makes you feel like you’re there with him. Never spoke with him, though.”

They grabbed their luggage. Lucy tucked her cane over the handle of her lightweight, carry-on-sized roller. She’d been tempted to leave the cane in the car, but since odds were that she would need it—her foot was already throbbing—it seemed best to bring it. She stopped TK as they entered the terminal, heading toward the ticket counter rather than the security line. “I have to check this bag.”

TK frowned. “I was kidding about not helping you—”

“No. My weapons are locked inside.” Lucy grabbed a sheaf of TSA paperwork from her computer bag. Traveling with weapons always meant paperwork, even when she was a FBI agent.

“You should have told me you were checking weapons through. I could have brought my own.”

Lucy said nothing. Bad enough to partner with someone she didn’t know or trust, but to have them armed? “Do you have a permit to carry across state lines?”

TK shrugged. “It’s Texas. They probably have vending machines at the airport. Or we can stop at a cash-and-carry gun show on our way.”

Right. Like that was a comforting thought. “Hopefully we won’t need them. After all, isn’t that Valencia’s whole point? That the Beacon Group doesn’t need trained law enforcement for its field team?”

“Don’t have to be law enforcement to know how to use a weapon. Besides, be honest. Don’t you feel kind of naked without one? After all, you’re retired and you still carry.”

“My husband says it’s hypervigilance. But he’s a psychologist. His specialty is PTSD, sees it everywhere. Just like I look around and see potential threats everywhere.”

“I say, better safe than sorry.”

Lucy couldn’t disagree. “More like, better safe than dead.”

“Hoo-rah.”

THE FLIGHT TO
Dallas wasn’t crowded, and they had relative privacy. Lucy gave TK the window, surprised to see the former Marine do a white-knuckle armrest clench during takeoff.

“Not a fan of flying?” she asked once TK’s jaws had relaxed enough to allow her to answer.

“Not in planes. Don’t mind helos much, which is strange since I’ve walked away from three hard landings. I think maybe it’s because I can see the pilot or something.” TK turned to Lucy. “What about you? Did you have to fly much in the FBI? Did you have a fancy Gulfstream like on TV?”

Lucy laughed. “No. We mostly drove wherever we needed to go. And when I was with the Critical Incident Response Group, working with the Hostage Rescue Team, we flew in the back of C-130s. Compared to them, I’m with you, would much rather be in a helicopter.”

TK nodded. The plane leveled off and she released her grip, took a breath. Lucy was surprised by how much more amiable the younger woman was now that they were alone. As if TK had let her guard down. A smidge.

“So,” Lucy said, wanting to continue the forward progress, “tell me about this Martin case.”

“Not sure there’s much to tell—Valencia only assigned us to it this morning. Home invasion gone wrong. Two brothers, both confessed, pled guilty to avoid the death penalty. Older one was high on PCP and peyote, put two cops in the hospital when they came to arrest him. The other apparently walked in on the homeowner confronting his big brother with a gun—there was a struggle and the man ended up dead. Cops had the gun with the younger brother’s bloody fingerprints, eyewitness saw them driving away from the scene, and like I said, they both confessed.” She flicked her hand in the air as if whisking a fly. “End of story.”

“Then why are we here? They must have some grounds for appeal, some reason they need us to re-investigate.”

TK rolled her eyes. “The guy working with the Justice Project, that David Ruiz, he says the confessions were coerced. That the public defender took the plea without even checking the evidence. The older brother—the druggie, the one supposedly too high to know what he was doing as he stabbed a woman and her seven-month-old baby girl to death and tried his best to kill her son—he died in prison last year. So now the younger brother, Michael Manning, he’s recanting his confession, asked the Justice Project to help him with a
habeas corpus
appeal.”

“Tough sell. Especially after this long.”

“Exactly. The Justice Project is handling the inadequate defense counsel part of the appeal, but they want us to re-examine everything, try to build a case for this guy’s innocence.”

“Which you don’t believe.” Hard to ignore the skepticism in her tone.

“Look. I like working for Valencia and her group. Love it when I can solve a puzzle no one else can. I’m not sure why she’s wasting our time on this one. Seems to me it was an open-and-shut case twenty-nine years ago and it’s an open-and-shut case now. But I want to go full-time with the Beacon Group, and the only way to do that is to go where Valencia tells me. And,” she glanced at Lucy, “I guess, impress you. How am I doing so far?”

“You’re honest, I’ll give you that.”

“Unbiased, too. I’ll give this job everything I have. If that means proving myself wrong about Manning and his brother, that’s cool. My ego isn’t tied to anything except finding the truth and knowing that if I can’t find any evidence to prove Manning’s innocence, then it simply does not exist.”

“Good to know,” Lucy said with a laugh. She had to admit TK was refreshing in her attitude—so different from the office politics that contaminated most cases over at the Bureau. “Did you work investigations while you with the Marines?”

TK shook her head. “No. I was a straight-up MP—pretty much busting up parties and fights, guard duty, maintaining discipline. Then I did FET deployments, two to Iraq and four to Afghanistan, and after that they sent me to work with Cultural Affairs.”

Lucy had no idea what FET or Cultural Affairs duties entailed—planning parties? No, TK had the body language and command presence of someone who’d seen real action. She’d have to ask Nick next time they talked; most of his patients were veterans. “Valencia said you were awarded a Bronze Star. What’s the story there?”