Because of who her father was, there wasn’t any shortage of people who wanted to do him harm—including people who would try to get at him by doing something to her. That was why he always had somebody shadowing her. Most kids would resent it, and it did sometimes bother Ashley, but she understood it was just part of her life and had learned to accept it. Instead of trying to slip her bodyguard like most kids would, she just rolled with it. But the constant presence that was always around was sometimes smothering. It was why she enjoyed this short time off her leash. More than that, she loved her time in the studio.

Aurelio was tough. Strict. Demanding. Ashley knew she was lucky to be getting lessons from a pianist of such renown, and he expected perfection from her. It didn’t help that she herself was a perfectionist, sometimes heaping such pressure on herself to get it right that tears of frustration still stung her eyes when she got home.

Aurelio had helped improve her craft, and the satisfaction when she nailed a piece and earned one of his smiles of approval outweighed the frustration she often felt. All her frustrations aside, Ashley loved her piano lessons. Music was one of her biggest passions in life; when she played, she could sometimes forget the gilded cage she lived in. Performing made her feel free. Playing music helped her forget her troubles and escape that bubble she lived in, if only for a little while. It was time she cherished.

Ashley turned down a narrow side street and passed by the shops she loved to browse in, but unfortunately didn’t have time for today. She was running later than usual thanks to Nicole taking up so much of her time trying to badger her into going to the party. She contented herself with gazing through the shop windows as she passed. It was a warm, beautiful day out. There wasn’t much foot traffic on the street, nor many cars passing by, and all her irritation with her friend aside, Ashley felt good. Happy.

But when she passed by the entrance to an alley set between two shops, her heart stopped dead in her chest as a hand shot out and grabbed hold of her. His grip was like iron as his fingers pressed deep into her arm. Fear crackling like electricity pumped through her veins as she struggled to break free. She screamed and twisted her body, using all the strength she could muster to throw herself to the side. She broke his hold on her but stumbled and hit the concrete sidewalk hip first, the impact so hard, her jaws clacked together, making her bite her tongue.

She scrambled away from the grasping hand that reached for her as the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. Ashley winced in pain but knew she had to move—had to get away. She quickly clambered back to her feet, knowing if she didn’t, she was going to die. A tall and lean man wearing black jeans, black boots, and a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head stepped out of the alley and advanced toward her. But it was his face that captivated Ashley. There was something not right about it, but she was too panicked to focus on it.

A hard popping sound rang in her ears, and two fangs bit painfully into her stomach. A split-second later, Ashley’s body locked up, and she was gripped by a searing pain. She began to shake wildly, her skin burning as if on fire. She jerked and spasmed like she was holding on to a live wire with ten thousand volts being pumped into her. She tried to scream but couldn’t, her voice bursting from her throat in sputtering gasps instead. A sharp crackling noise filled her ears, then stopped, plunging her into a sudden silence so profound it was as if she’d been dropped into a vacuum.

The pain lingered, though, making her body twitch and convulse. Ashley trembled and felt weak. Her legs buckled, and it felt as if every muscle in her body, rigid and tense just a moment before, went slack without warning. A wave of nausea churned in Ashley’s belly, and she tasted hot, acidic bile in the back of her throat. Her vision began to waver, and the shapes of the buildings around her blurred, turning into little more than ambiguously fuzzy shapes.

As her field of vision narrowed to a single point of light in the darkness, Ashley felt weightless, as if she were falling from a great height. She knew she’d hit the ground again only because she felt the back of her head bounce off the concrete. Ashley lay still, staring up at the blue sky overhead. But then the man with the strange face filled her narrow field of vision, and she struggled to comprehend why it looked so odd.

“Wh—who are you?” she asked, her voice weak and raspy.

The last thing Ashley saw was a pair of hands reaching for her.

Office of Professional Responsibility, US Department of Justice; Washington, DC

“Chief Wilder, how can you sit there and, with a straight face, say your team was successful in Atlanta?” the woman asks. “Your suspect is dead—killed in a firefight with your team.”

As expected, a few days after closing the case in Atlanta, I was summoned to DC for a hearing with OPR. SAC Ayad had warned me to walk lightly and avoid ruffling any feathers, but the nature of the case didn’t lend itself to me being able to do that. The fact that high-powered, politically connected people were involved in a massacre made it impossible for me to tread lightly and handle things with a velvet glove. Powerful people with powerful friends went down because of our investigation, and now I’m reaping the whirlwind of doing my job well.

“That’s factually incorrect, Deputy Inspector. My team did not engage in a firefight. You can check the forensics reports I included with my written report, and you can see for yourself that my team, though present at the scene, did not discharge our weapons,” I state forcefully.

With dark blue carpeting, dark wood-paneled walls polished to a glossy sheen, and a gallery of two dozen chairs set behind the waist-high wall behind me, the OPR hearing room looks a lot like a formal courtroom. That’s not an accident. It’s intended to subconsciously lend the room a certain gravitas and give the proceedings that take place within its walls a psychological weight that can’t be had in a regular conference room. It’s an intimidation tactic that I find as pathetic as it is transparent.

Seated at a table in an uncomfortable chair, I’m facing a long desk that matches the walls and sits perched upon a raised dais. It’s a reminder to those of us who are unlucky enough to find ourselves sitting at this table that we’re in a subordinate position to the three people sitting behind the desk—the OPR review board. That they’re our judge, jury, and executioners. The FBI crest, etched out of burnished steel, hangs on the wall behind them—a not-so-subtle reminder to the people who find themselves in my current position of the sanctity of our oaths—and is flanked by an American flag and the flag of DC.

The two men and one woman at the raised desk before me are the ones who have been tasked with questioning my every thought and action. They’re here to judge me and then recommend an appropriate punishment, if warranted, to the Inspector General. The woman sitting in the center of the table—Deputy Inspector Lydia Graves—is staring at me the way a hungry owl eyes a plump field mouse, which makes me reasonably sure no matter what I say here today, she’s going to find punishment warranted. And she seems the type who’d say the more draconian and medieval the punishment levied, the better. The rack? The wheel? The Judas Cradle? I’m sure in her mind they’re all in play.

I adjust the microphone on the table in front of me and lean forward. “Ma’am, as I said before, Camden Snyder’s death is not my team’s responsibility. It was not my team who stormed the house and initiated the firefight,” I tell her. “As for how I characterize my team’s actions as a success in that operation, it’s because we arrested the people who actually put the mass shooting in motion that brought us to Atlanta in the first place—”

Graves cuts me off with a dismissive wave of her hand, then quietly confers with the two men on the panel with her. The hearing room is empty, save for the four of us. Clearly, they don’t want eyes or ears on what’s taking place inside our session. It’s something I find exceedingly odd and ominous since the case itself was so high profile. Given that my team’s investigation into the mass shooting in Atlanta a few weeks ago led to the arrest of almost every member of the executive board of a major international pharmaceuticals company, there’s intense public interest in what was one of the toughest, most convoluted cases of my career.

“Chief Wilder,” Graves begins again. “Walk us through the events that led up to the firefight at the cabin that took Mr. Snyder’s life.”

I clamp my jaws shut to keep the snarky response that’s sitting on the tip of my tongue from flying out. I’ve related this story half a dozen times already. It’s all in my report. There is no need to make me repeat it yet again unless it’s to annoy me—which seems to be her intent. Quietly drawing a breath, I hold it for a five count, then let it out silently as I try to clear my thoughts. I know what she’s doing. She’s searching for inconsistencies—searching for anything that will allow her to call me a liar. But my recounting of what happened hasn’t changed one iota in all the different versions of it that I’ve told.

I want to tear this woman a new one, but I hold my tongue and don’t give in to my childish, petty desire to verbally devastate Lydia Graves. After all my years on the job, I’m finally learning how to politic like Astra said I needed to. She’d be so proud of me.

“Chief Wilder? We’re waiting,” Graves presses.

“As I stated in my report, as well as in oral testimony, several times already, my team arrived on scene with a SWAT team in a complementary capacity. We surrounded the cabin, and I engaged Mr. Snyder verbally. I was attempting to end the standoff without bloodshed—”

“It would appear your efforts were unsuccessful,” Graves says, her voice thick with sarcasm and scorn.

“Yes. They were. And that is because Vincent DeClerk, the former ASAC of the Atlanta field office, charged in with a SWAT team behind him without warning and opened fire,” I tell her. “The former ASAC disregarded my calls to cease fire. He had no regard for the safety of my team and blew up any chance of resolving the situation peacefully.”

“ASAC DeClerk—”

“Former ASAC DeClerk,” I say, cutting her off.

“Pardon me?”

“It’s former ASAC DeClerk, actually. My understanding is that after the fiasco at the cabin, he was demoted and sent to another field office,” I say, quietly high-fiving myself for getting that in on the official record.

Graves’s face darkens, and her eyes narrow as she icily glares at me. I’m doing my best to keep from poking the bear too hard, but I know on some level, it doesn’t really matter. Graves is quite obviously a friend and ally of DeClerk and clearly has a bias, which should have made her unfit to sit on this panel in the first place. Even though DeClerk has been demoted and reassigned to somewhere in Outer Mongolia, the fact that his friend can sit here in judgment of me shows he still wields some bit of power and influence. My only hope right now is that Deputy Inspector Graves doesn’t have the final say over the proceedings here, or I may be joining DeClerk in Outer Mongolia. And that would surely make for an awkward reunion.

“As I was saying, Chief Wilder, former ASAC DeClerk’s accounting of the events at the cabin that night differs wildly from yours,” Graves said sourly.

“That’s not surprising given that his actions were reckless and—”

“Thank you, Chief. But we don’t need your conjecture.”

“That’s an absolute load of crap, Deputy Inspector. And you know that.”

My face grows hot, and a sneer curls my lips. I’ve been trying as hard as I can, but something inside of me finally snaps. This woman’s ignorance and obvious agenda have finally worn me down, and the words flew out before I could stop them. For a brief moment, Graves looks stunned, and she recoils like I just slapped her across the face. She quickly regains her equilibrium, though, and levels a harsh look at me. Eyes narrowed and jaw muscles flexing, she leans forward, her gaze fixed on mine as if she’s trying to burn holes straight through me.

She seems to think she can intimidate me, but I’ve been face to face with some of the worst killers this country has ever seen and never flinched. I’m certainly not going to let some pencil pushing bureaucrat with an ax to grind scare me—especially not when I’m fighting for my career. This is the time I shouldn’t be afraid to speak up and not worry about being politically correct. Okay, so maybe Astra wouldn’t be as proud of me as I thought. But I’m not going to sit back and let this woman drag me or my team through the mud.

“Chief Wilder—”

“Conjecture, Deputy Inspector? Tell me something: Were you there?”

“Frankly, I don’t appreciate your attitude or your tone, Chief Wilder.”

“Frankly, Deputy Inspector, I don’t care,” I fire back. “You weren’t there that night. I was. And so were a lot of other decorated agents whose reputations are above reproach. Former ASAC DeClerk came storming onto the scene and immediately initiated the firefight. There was nothing I could do, so I removed my agents and the SWAT team who came to back us up from the scene. DeClerk was reckless and violent. His only goal that night was to kill Camden Snyder, and if you doubt my version of events, speak with the others who were at the scene, all of whom have extensively documented this on their reports as well.”

As my voice tapers off, the silence that descends over the hearing room is deafening. The two men flanking Graves glance at her, then look away, making me think maybe it isn’t such a united front after all. Maybe I do stand a chance of surviving.

“Chief Wilder, how do you account for the discrepancies between your story and former ASAC DeClerk’s story?” Graves says, trying to recover.

“The former ASAC knew what he did was reckless and put a lot of lives in danger,” I reply. “He’s obviously doing damage control by downplaying his actions.”

“That’s a very serious charge you’re making.”

“I wouldn’t be making it if it weren’t true.”

“Do you have any proof to back up these claims?”