Gregg Hurwitz - Troubleshooter

"You gotta admit, we've done pretty well so far."

She broke eye contact, slumping back on the bench and blowing her bangs out of her eyes. The stretched collar of the jumpsuit dwarfed her delicate neck. "Sure, you got your news headlines. But a month from now, he'll just be another bad guy on another list. You'll forget all about him. He can live how he wants, even." Her eyes held a hope that was at once naive and affecting.

"He shot my wife," Tim said. "I'm not gonna forget about him."

She jerked her head back. Her voice came high with her surprise. "Who's your wife?"

"The sheriff's deputy."

"Right." She bit her lips. "Right. So, like, I'd believe you that you'd try to take him alive."

"You're the only one who can help us arrange a lower-risk take-down."

"And if I don't?"

"I don't want to kill him. But if I have to…"

"You will." She read his face. Her eyes teared up, and she lifted them to the ceiling. For the first time, her voice trembled. "He'll never come in alive. Never."

"You don't know that. I've seen things play out in ways I never would've predicted. You help us, we can work something out with the prosecutor. You don't want to be in a penitentiary for the rest of your life."

"You don't get it, asshole." Her sudden anger caught him off guard. She shoved back into the corner of the bench, hugging her knees to her chest. "I'm fucking done. That's the deal. And I honor my deals."

"What do you mean, you're done?"

"You think the Man's gonna talk to me now? Pop by for conjugal visits? You think he hasn't already changed all his numbers, ditched all his hideouts? Our hideouts. I'm in here-that means he's closed the book on me." Tears clung to her dark lashes. "If he walked by me on the street now, he'd keep walking. And I'm glad. Because that's what he needs to do to keep alive." She let the tears run, not bothering to wipe her cheeks. They slid down her neck and darkened the seam of her jump-suit. "Even if I wanted to help myself, I couldn't. He's too smart to trust me anymore."

Her face twisted, and she lowered her head into her arms and wept. Her cries were resonant and mournful, seeming to rise from deep within her. He could hear them even after he closed the steel door behind him, even after he reached the end of the cell-block corridor.

Already the other prisoners were screaming for her to shut the fuck up.

Thomas was cocked back in his chair, hands laced behind his head. Jim and Maybeck cleared the conference table, tossing crumpled papers at the corner trash can and mostly missing. Miller hauled out chairs, returning them to the surrounding offices. Bear and Guerrera pulled down the pictures from the wall, taking with them Scotch-tape patches of paint or leaving tacks behind. Bear had brought in his dogs, Boston, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, and Precious, the medically discharged star of the Explosive Detection Canine Team, named for Jame Gumb's companion in The Silence of the Lambs. Precious, whose nose had saved the life of virtually every deputy in the room, was greeted like the prodigal daughter, pulled from colleague to colleague to be scratched.

Tannino had dissolved the command post, which Tim grudgingly recognized was the right thing to do. It didn't take a command post to track a single fugitive. With the other nomads dead or in custody, the mother chapter crippled, the AT seized, and the distribution network disabled, the threat Den Laurey posed had been diminished, if not eliminated. The Escape Team could pursue him from the squad room, a priority among others, under Tim and Bear's direction. But Tim knew that the imperative dulled once the deputies went back to business and spread out among desks rather than gathering around a single table with a single objective.

He watched quietly from his chair as the post continued to be dismantled, trying to construct a strategy for the next phase and failing miserably. At this point Den was a cutout operative. The last series of arrests had severed all connective tissue; there were no links to trace back to girlfriends, fellow Sinners, or the mother chapter. Even the incipient drug operation had been rolled up. Den was accustomed to living in the shadows-it would take either a huge break or dumb luck to flush him out.

The others, heady from the series of busts, didn't seem to share Tim's despondency. Miller gestured at him apologetically, and Tim rose reluctantly so he could carry away his chair.

"Hey, girl," Jim said, guiding Precious to the end of the table. "Go on and eat a piece of Mrs. Tannino's fruitcake for us."

Precious sniffed the hardened crust, then backed up and sneezed violently.

The room erupted in laughter.

The scene triggered Tim's memory of the kitchen during Dana Lake's and the Prophet's arrests. A sudden uneasiness made itself known, a splinter working its way to the surface.

He thought of Babe lying in her cell. Aside from exercise breaks, that was about the most space she'd be permitted for the rest of her life. Her defiance had been undulled. Sinners don't take orders from no one. Least of all a bunch of ragheads.

He remembered his own words about the Sinners to Tannino and the mayor: Don't expect honor among thieves-they're famous for double crosses, drug burns, cop killings.

What had Smiles said about Allah's Tears? That's the beauty of it. They don't need a continuous pipeline, just a one-off-a single risk with a huge payday.

A chill washed through Tim. The German shepherd. At the Prophet's house. It had been sitting in front of the table holding Allah's Tears. The drug's powerful olfactory signature, even sealed inside the belly bags, should have drawn the dog's attention, not let it fix on a few stale pizza crusts across the room. Tim flashed on the extraction needle lying in the carpet near Al-Malik's head. Unused.

Tim gestured to Bear and Guerrera. They must have noted his intensity, for they came immediately, both dogs at their heels. Jim was gnawing his way through a slice of Mrs. Tannino's own, Miller making odds on his finishing it.

Tim, Bear, and Guerrera headed out of the evaporating command post, laughter trailing behind them.

Uncle Pete stared out through the bars of his holding cell at the three deputy marshals and the score of FBI agents. The cell was dimly lit, devouring his wide form, but his eyes floated in a band of light. Tim couldn't see his mouth but could tell from the crinkles at his temples that he was smiling.

A closer look at the down-payment bills-which totaled $7.5 million-had revealed them to be fake. Sweat beaded at Bear's hairline; he fanned himself with a packet of counterfeit hundreds. Malane was holding a test tube of the seized substance; minutes earlier, to emphasize his findings, the ERT agent had downed a shot of it. The Allah's Tears and Den Laurey were at large and, Tim was sure, enjoying each other's company.

Malane shook the test tube. "Sambuca."

Uncle Pete's voice emerged from the dark cell. "Is that so."

"You burned the Prophet. And al-Fath."

"I never heard of no prophet, friends, but I'll tell you this: We sure as shit ain't scared of a bunch of Allah-lovin' sweat monkeys hiding in caves halfway around the world." His eyes bunched with another smile. "In fact, it warms my heart to think you're fixin' a cot in Gitmo for another A-rab. We Sinners may be badass motherfuckers, but we ain't anti-Amurican. So if you think we burned al-Fath, then hell, you can hang a medal around my fat neck. I assume that's what you're all here for? To honor my supposed intelligence work?"

He enjoyed a good genuine laugh, his bulky shadow rippling like a cape.

The Operation Cleansweep task-force headquarters overlooked the VA cemetery. The government-issue headstones formed razor-straight lines on the lush green turf. A few durable Christmas wreaths provided splotches of color, but not enough to detract from the smog and granite.