HARD FAL Read online

  Most folks around here called her Lucy. She preferred it that way. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

  “No,” the woman, a blond in her thirties said, clipping the syllable short. “But we’ve spoken on the phone and you’ve ignored several appointments I scheduled.”

  Right. Who could forget a voice more irritating than pepper spray? “Ah…Ms. Carroll from Employee Assistance. I explained over the phone that I won’t be requiring your services. I’m returning to duty. Before my sixty days of medical leave is up—as you can see.”

  Because of the hazardous nature of the job, the FBI provided excellent health and disability benefits. Benefits Lucy was determined not to make further use of. It might take her a while to get back to full active duty, but she was determined to get there, right back where she was, leading her team from the front lines, just as she had fifty-nine days ago.

  Carroll’s smirk made Lucy itch to look over her shoulder, check her back for an ambush.

  Lucy went on the offensive. “I brought my doctor’s release for limited duty, my range qualification on both my service weapons, passed my psych eval, and a drug test showing that I’ve been off all narcotics for weeks.” Nineteen days to be exact. Her doctor told her it was too soon, but she was afraid that once she was placed on disability it would be far too easy for administrative busybodies like Carroll to bench her with a medical pension rather than accommodate her return to modified duty.

  She pulled the file from her bag and offered it to Carroll.

  “I’m afraid none of that matters, Agent Guardino,” Carroll said, making no move to accept the paperwork. “If you’d bothered to consult with me—”

  “All due respect, Ms. Carroll, but this has nothing to do with you. I’ve been cleared for modified duty. All that’s left is for me to speak with my supervisor about my squad’s open cases.” The administrator might be queen bee of her little cubicle hive, but Lucy had faced down serial killers, a vicious drug cartel, and even a psychotic bomber holding a hospital hostage. She turned the full weight of her glare onto the Employee Assistance functionary. Carroll looked away first.

  Before Lucy could savor her victory, minor as it might be, the side door opened and Greally rushed in. “Lucy, you’re here,” he exclaimed, folding her into a bear hug. “Security screwed up, they were supposed to have your pass waiting.” He handed her a new badge. Then he spotted Carroll standing behind his desk and his demeanor shifted from friend back to boss. “Why don’t you both take a seat? And I gather these are for me?”

  He slid the file from Lucy’s hand and moved around behind his desk, displacing Carroll. She approached the chair but waited for Lucy to sit down first. Greally also sat, putting him and Lucy on an even level but Carroll remained standing. Not hard to read the nonverbal power play there. Lucy shared a half-smile with Greally and was relieved when he returned it, obviously thinking the same thing.

  “Did you go over Lucy’s options with her?” he asked Carroll.

  “Option. Singular. At least according to the new personnel directives.” Carroll crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m afraid Supervisory Special Agent Guardino wasn’t very receptive.”

  “You’re talking about me walking out with a medical pension. Quitting. For good. Of course I’m not receptive.”

  Carroll stared down at Lucy. Lucy kept her focus on Greally. He broke the silence, clearing his throat. “Ms. Carroll, give us the room, if you please.”

  Carroll sniffed, nodded, and walked out, back stiff, heels thudding against the institutional carpet. She didn’t quite slam the door behind her, but it definitely closed with a pissed-off exclamation mark.

  “Sorry to have wasted her time,” Lucy said, edging forward in her seat. “I’ll go catch up with my team and their open cases.”

  “I wish it was that simple,” Greally said, his expression turning serious. “A lot has happened since you left,” he began. “With the new director in DC and his mandate to turn the Bureau into the world’s best counterterrorism investigative organization—”

  She’d seen the new director’s press conferences on CNN. Typical DC political posturing. “We’re already devoting 90% of our manpower and resources to counterterrorism. And Homeland Security Investigations was created to cover that territory, so why the pissing match? Ask me, we should be headed back to the reason why we were created in the first place: fighting crime.” Whoops. She hadn’t really meant to say that aloud. Two months off work and her diplomatic skills were rusty. Didn’t matter; Greally had heard it all from her before.

  Then the meaning behind his words sank in. Greally had warned her weeks ago that with a new Director came changes, but she’d never dreamed…She swallowed against the metallic taste that filled her mouth. “My team?”

  “The Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement squads were experimental to start with,” he reminded her. “The new director is dissolving the program.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Our unit alone has cleared over three hundred cases.”

  “The director is giving ICE control of the online child pornography mandate since they already have the Innocent Images program. They’ll continue to coordinate with local law enforcement and the non-government organizations in the coalition you created.”

  Just like that. The team, their entire reason for being—gone. Vanished in a political Ping-Pong game.

  “My people? Walden? Taylor?”

  Greally kept his face neutral—obviously this wasn’t the first of these kind of conversations he’d had recently. But damn it, this was her team they were talking about.

  “Reassigned. Taylor went back to computer crimes two weeks ago—the SAC felt he was much too valuable to be in the field.” Never mind that Taylor had originally left his job as an analyst with the High Tech Computer Crimes squad to endure the rigors of the FBI Academy because his dream was to be a Special Agent in the field.

  Greally continued, “Come Monday, Walden will report to the bank robbery desk.” Because the FDIC insured most bank deposits, the FBI was required to be involved in bank robberies, but local law enforcement usually handled all the heavy lifting, so it was more a question of shuffling files than real investigation.

  “Did he choose that or did you?” she asked, not bothering to filter the bitterness from her tone.

  He jerked his chin up at that, accepting her challenge. “He did. He only has three years before he has his thirty in, said it was easy time.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the Walden I know.” Except…it kind of did. Walden had been working crimes against children longer than any of them. The kind of cases that tended to consume most investigators, burn them out fast.

  “I didn’t tell you earlier because up until this morning I was still fighting to keep you on board as a task force coordinator or the like. Even the SAC tried, but Washington isn’t buying it.”

  Lucy’s chin sunk to her chest. The past two months only two things had kept her going: the fact that her family was safe and that she had her job to return to. Without her job, what was she?

  She knew the question was cliché, but that didn’t help her find an answer.

  Greally stood and came around the desk to take the chair beside her. Back to being her friend instead of her boss. “Look, I know this isn’t easy. Believe me, your squad isn’t the only one being overhauled. We’ve been mandated to cut eight percent of our workforce. But you have options, Lucy.”

  He glanced at the folder on his desk. “You can take a medical pension. I’ve read the reports. The doctors hold out very little hope that you’ll ever return to full active duty.”

  “I’ve the right to a modified duty assignment.” They both knew it wasn’t about her rights. This was about her family. Every few years she’d had to uproot her family, move to a new city, a new position. The one thing she hated about the paramilitary organization that was the FBI. Being promoted to lead the SAFE squad was supposed to end that.

  Only she hadn’t counted on what had happened two
months ago or on the political upheaval that came with a new director.

  “There’s so much more you could be doing outside the Bureau,” he said.

  Lucy shook off the idea of leaving the Bureau. “No. What are my choices if I decide to stay?”

  He frowned. “Not many if you’re restricted from the field. Maybe reviewing complaints for Employee Assistance—”

  She scoffed at that. “You mean working for Carroll? No way. There’s got to be something else.”

  “Not unless you’d consider moving. Maybe back to Quantico?”

  “No. We can’t. Megan—” Lucy couldn’t leave Pittsburgh. Not after Nick had worked so hard to build his psychology practice. He couldn’t abandon his patients. And Megan. Lucy didn’t understand why, but Megan wouldn’t even consider moving out of their house after Lucy’s mom had been killed there. Lucy couldn’t upset what little stability and security Megan had, not now.

  He frowned. “Then OPR. They’re always looking.”

  OPR. Office of Professional Responsibility. The Bureau’s equivalent of Internal Affairs—policing their own.

  “I’m not sure they’d consider you,” he continued. “You haven’t exactly made many friends over there these past few years.”

  Especially not two months ago. When she’d been forced to betray the FBI in order to save her family.

  “Would you have done anything different, John?” she asked. “If it’d been Natalie and Kate they threatened?”

  He glanced at his desk and the photo of his family. Shook his head. “I don’t think anyone faults you for what you did, Lucy. But that doesn’t make it the right thing, either. At least not in the mind of the Bureau.”

  One thing the Bureau hated: contradiction. Like an agent being forced to choose between the job and her family’s lives. Doing the right thing didn’t always mean following regulations.

  “When do you need to know?” she asked, masking her exhaustion. And her day hadn’t even started yet.

  “Take the weekend.”

  She planted her cane and heaved her weight up out of the seat—sitting felt good but getting up always hurt like a sonofabitch.

  Greally stood as well. “Lucy, I’ve been fighting like hell to make this all go away, wanted you to come back, and everything would be just the way it was.”

  Her body felt heavy, reluctant to move. To leave the one place she’d felt most at home, to leave the people she considered family, to leave the job she loved and felt was her destiny.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

  She nodded and shuffled out the door, wondering if she’d ever find her way back again.

  Chapter 2

  LUCY LEFT, GREALLY’S new secretary’s stare following her as she limped down to the elevator. More than the front office staff watching her, she felt as if the entire building was judging. They all knew what she’d done two months ago.

  To them, she’d betrayed the unspoken code, putting her family’s lives before the Bureau. Something the administrators and agents who worked OPR would never understand, or if they ever had, they’d forgotten once they moved into their sterile office suites here on the top floor. To them Lucy was an incalculable risk, a wildcard. Family didn’t fit into the FBI’s Bible of operating procedures.

  This was why she loved working down in the bowels of the building, side by side with men and women who really understood their mission. It had nothing to do with whatever the current administration wrote up in fancy press releases and everything to do with protecting and serving the innocent, anyway they could.

  She forced herself to limp a little less, placing more pressure on her bad leg, and instead of stopping and waiting for the elevator, enduring their stares, she continued to the stairwell. Stairs were the bane of Lucy’s new existence. Because of the damaged nerves, she could no longer tell when her foot was firmly planted on the ground, and so she had to look down, watching each step. Plus, it was difficult to maneuver the cane, so she usually ended up with more of her weight falling on her bad leg.

  But the world was built full of stairs, just as it was full of assholes like Carroll, so Lucy grit through the pain and made her way down to the floor that housed her office. At least for the next three days.

  Her new ID got her through the locked doors that stood between the unsecured common areas and the wing where criminal activity—like analyzing illegal pornography in order to identify victims and perpetrators—occurred.

  Lucy gazed out at the once wide-open space now transformed into a cubicle farm. “What the hell?”

  Her question was answered by a barrage of pistol fire—Nerf pistols equipped with harmless foam bullets. Taylor popped up from behind one of the cubicle walls, his forever bed-head sandy hair and blue eyes peeking over the top.

  “Hold fire,” he shouted, giving a pretty good impression of the range master at Quantico.

  He stood up, forsaking the cover of the cubicle wall, and the pistol wielding shooters turned their aim onto him. None of them had hit Lucy, but somehow they all nailed Taylor right in the face. Which told Lucy a lot about the shooters: her adorable analysts from the High Tech Computer Crime section. Geeks and proud of it. They’d been even more proud when Taylor, one of their own, became a full-fledged Special Agent, gun and all.

  “Sorry, Lucy,” Taylor said, dodging friendly fire as he skirted the cubicle maze to join her. “We’re working on modeling a fire fight where a Fish and Game officer was caught between Border Patrol and some traffickers. Guess we got a little carried away.”

  “What’s with the new decor?” she gestured to the cubicles. They made the space seem small and crowded, not at all conducive to the collaborative atmosphere she’d fostered.

  “SAC insisted. Said we were wasting too much time working together, so now we’re each assigned a separate, private workspace. First thing he made me do when he put me in charge.” He frowned at the memory then smiled impishly. “Of course, I told him each work station would need to be fully equipped and got a thirty percent increase in my equipment budget.”

  “Which you have spent wisely, I see.” She nodded to the bright pink pistol dangling from his hand. Taylor, a thirty-five-year old wiz kid and certified genius, was irrepressible—not even the new administration would be able to shackle his enthusiasm.

  “Where’s Walden?” she asked, looking around the maze of cubicles for her second in command.

  “Waiting in your office.” Taylor glanced over his shoulder and dropped his voice. “With a case.”

  One of the techs called him away. Lucy made her way around the cubicles. When the squad had originally been established, the floor plans called for a large executive corner office but no private conference area. An oversight she’d corrected by shoving her desk into the back corner to make room for a conference table and chairs.

  The two interior walls were glass, enabling her to see that seated around the table were Walden as well as a man and woman with their backs to Lucy. Walden was a decade older than her, a solemn black man, but with a surprising sense of humor that showed itself at unexpected times. Good money that he was the one who’d outfitted the High Tech Crimes guys with their pistols and ammo.

  She was lucky to have him as her second in command; their strengths and weaknesses nicely complemented each other. In addition to the trio at the table, prowling the area around her desk was a thirty-something year old man who would have been at home on the Steeler’s offensive line.

  Oshiro. What was a US Deputy Marshal from the Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team doing here?

  Before she made it to the door, Oshiro swung his shaved head her way, spotted her, and with a grace and speed that defied the laws of physics for such a large man, rushed out and had her in a crushing hug.

  “Sweet Lucy Mae! How are you?” He raised her off her feet with the hug but deposited her oh-so-gently back down so that only the slightest twinge of pain rang out from her foot.

  “Little Timmy Oshiro.” She couldn’t help but smi
le. Oshiro had the reputation as one of the toughest bad-ass deputies the Marshal’s Service had ever produced—even the hot-shot Homeland Security guys moved out of his way when he came barreling down a hall—but he didn’t intimidate her. She’d seen first hand how gentle and kind he could be with her victims. That more than made up for any other shortcomings. “How’s the only federal agent in Western Pennsylvania who’s been hauled in front of OPR more than I have?”

  His grin would have scared little kids into eating their broccoli. “Actually, I think you’re one up on me there.” He jerked his chin toward her leg. “Guess they didn’t charge you with treason like the rumors said.”

  “They tried.” Tried to charge her with several offenses, mainly for the crime of surviving the attack on her and her family. To save her family, she’d been forced to give her FBI administrative password to her attacker. That security breach could have been disastrous for the DOJ, but thanks to Lucy escaping and Taylor’s computer wizardry, they’d not only caught everyone involved, they’d been able to expose and repair a hidden security flaw in the DOJ computer system.

  Unfortunately, not before the man sent after Lucy had gone to Lucy’s home and found her mother there. A few hours difference and the man would have found Megan home as well. That thought was what kept Lucy up at night…until she finally would drift to sleep, only to wake in terror, panicked that she hadn’t reached her family in time, that she’d lost them all.

  Lucy glanced down at her foot. If you did the math, her ordeal translated to a win for the good guys. Except Lucy had almost lost her leg, her daughter had been traumatized, and her mother had been killed.

  Oshiro gave her another hug, this one less effusive and more consoling. “Sorry. Heard about your mom. You doing okay?”

  She nodded then looked up to meet his gaze. “Just want to get back to work. Of course, that was before I learned I don’t have a job any more.”