CHAPTER ONE
The conference room at the Washington field office had no windows and too much polished glass for her liking. It was meant to project seriousness. All it really did was make everybody sitting around the table look flatter and more tired than they were.
Selena Raven stood at the front of the room with a remote in one hand, her blond hair tied back and as pristinely managed as her black suit. A row of unhappy men in pressed shirts stared back at her across a table.
Nobody bothered pretending they were pleased.
That suited her fine. This was an uphill fight. The kind she liked.
A screen behind her showed three headshots arranged side by side.
Three dead men. All mid-career political aides, all with access to information that had sent half the city into a low-grade panic for six months.
In the early days the case had drawn briefings, committees, whispered warnings, and a lot of people who suddenly wanted face time with the FBI.
Now it had drawn disappointment. Not because it had ended, but because Selena hadn’t followed the party line.
She clicked the remote.
The next image filled the screen. A fourth face. Male. Late forties. Hollow cheeks. Sallow skin. Close-cropped gray hair that looked self-inflicted rather than barbered.
“James Leroy,” Selena said. “Currently in custody in Fairfax County. Based on physical evidence, timeline correlation, digital records, and his own inconsistencies under interview, we are confident he is responsible for the murders of all three men.”
The men at the table exchanged looks. One of them, broad through the chest with a flag pin on his lapel, leaned back in his chair as if distance might improve the answer.
“But this goes against the entire thrust of the case for the last six months.”
“It does,” Selena said. “But it’s my job to follow the truth, not expectations.”
Another man tapped a pen against a legal pad he had not written on once. “That theory existed for a reason.”
Selena let the silence sit for a second before continuing, trying her best not to fold her arms. “As you know, at the outset, investigators believed the victims had been targeted as part of an espionage pipeline. Three political aides with overlapping access, no obvious personal connection, bodies left in ways that suggested intention rather than impulse. There was concern that sensitive political information had been extracted from each victim before they were murdered and was being prepared for sale or transfer to a foreign entity.”
The man with the pen gave a short nod. “Exactly. We had good intel that whatever was taken was going to be sent to our enemies.”
“Unfortunately,” Selena said, “sometimes a case isn’t as complicated as it first appears.”
That caused discomfort. Selena could see it in their faces.
A third man, silver-haired and careful with his diction, folded his hands on the table. “Agent Raven, with respect, simple explanations are usually simple because somebody hasn’t dug deeply enough. It doesn’t look good to throw out everyone else’s work like that.”
“I dug,” Selena said. “And I believe I found the truth. Isn’t that more important than something that looks good politically?”
The man shook his head and side-glanced at one of his colleagues.
Behind the men, the conference room door opened.
Meg Calloway stepped in without apology for the interruption.
Dark suit, neat silver hair, expression that rarely shifted enough to be called an expression at all.
Meg knew how to play a proceeding like this.
Selena met her eyes for half a second. Meg gave the smallest nod and moved to the back wall to observe.
The silver-haired man noticed her but kept his attention on Selena. “Then, Agent Raven, explain why three political aides with access to national security information ended up dead, if this was only a personal matter.”
Selena clicked back to the first slide. Three dead men again. “Because James Leroy only had one target.”
Another click.
The photo on the left enlarged to fill the screen. Peter Behar. Forty-two. Smart tie, practiced smile, official portrait lighting.
Selena turned slightly toward the image. “This man. Peter Behar.”
A sigh came almost collectively from the committee. The silver-haired man moved uncomfortably in his seat and then responded. “What about him? Behar was one of three. But he was no more important than the other two victims.”
“He was the reason for all three,” Selena said.
“The killer, Leroy, was involved in a relationship with him. We recovered messages, location overlap, burner phone contact, hotel receipts, and partial surveillance confirmation. Leroy believed the relationship was going to come out. More importantly, he believed it was going to reach his wife. This information only came to light when I took on the case, as Behar and Leroy had taken extraordinary steps to conceal their affair.”
For the first time, one of the men looked embarrassed instead of irritated. It passed quickly.
The pen-tapper recovered first. “That still leaves two other dead aides.”
“That was the cover,” Selena said. “Once Behar was killed, Leroy understood what a single murdered political aide would suggest. Personal scandal. Affairs. Secrets of the usual kind. He didn’t want us looking in that direction.
He wanted a broader pattern. He wanted us chasing espionage, hired operators, foreign leverage, professional tradecraft. ”
Silence settled over the room.
Selena let it.
Nobody at the table liked hearing that months of anxiety, inter-agency pressure, and private briefings had boiled down to one frightened man trying to bury his own life under something grander.
Washington liked motives with architecture.
The city respected schemes more than weakness.
Selena cared for none of it. She loved the thrill of working on top cases for the FBI, especially out of Washington, DC, but she did not care for the politics of it all.
In fact, she detested that one aspect, letting Meg Calloway know it quite regularly.
The silver-haired man sat back. “You’re asking us to believe two additional murders were committed only to camouflage the first?”
“I’m not asking you to believe it,” Selena said. “I’m telling you that’s what happened. Leroy left a trail of breadcrumbs to make us think it was something more. It almost worked.”
Selena caught Meg’s gaze. One corner of Meg’s mouth almost moved. Almost.
The man with a lapel pin exhaled through his nose.
“You do understand the implications of reducing this case to a closeted affair and a desperate man? Months of work was carried out on this. Inter-agency. It was in the press. The public will see this as some sort of cover-up if there’s no political involvement. ”
Selena looked at him. “Three men are dead. They and their families deserve answers. I’m not reducing anything. If it causes problems with optics or people on the committee don’t like my methods, well, that should be secondary. We caught the killer.”
The room went quiet again.
A younger aide near the end of the table, the only one who had stayed silent so far, finally spoke. “So, there’s no national security compromise? No foreign channel? No larger network?”
“Not from anything we found,” Selena said. “We examined devices, finance records, contacts, work product, off-site storage, travel, and known touchpoints. Nothing supports the theory you wanted.”
The pen stopped tapping.
One of the men rubbed a hand over his mouth. Another closed his folder without looking down at it first.
At last, the silver-haired one said, “We’ll look over your case notes and have a team carry out an investigation into how this all came undone. Keep your nose clean while we do that.”
Selena gave a single nod. “Thank you for your time.”
Chairs shifted. Papers were collected. Nobody rushed, but nobody lingered either. As they filed out, their faces carried the same pinched dissatisfaction they’d brought in, only now it had nowhere useful to go.
The door shut behind them.
Selena set the remote on the table and let out a sigh. Something felt off about this one. Like she’d stepped on one too many toes.
Meg pushed off the wall and came forward. “They wanted it to have a political angle. It’s all the national press has been talking about for months.”
“Well,” Selena said, “they can’t have one. Their previous team got nowhere. I went over everything and identified how the killer and Behar were communicating and that’s led to what really happened. If they don’t like that, that’s not my problem. I’m here to do a job, Meg.”
Meg stopped across from her. “And you did great work. But, Selena, try not to ruffle too many feathers.”
Selena collected the case file into a neat stack. “I won’t. You know I love working out of Washington. It’s a buzz getting important cases, not something I want to lose. But I just wish people were more straight-talking out here. Sometimes I wish we had an occasional quiet case to take a breath.”
Meg’s gaze stayed on her face a beat too long. “Be careful what you wish for.”
Selena looked up. She felt disappointment coming.
That tone meant trouble.
Not disaster. Meg never sounded dramatic. Disaster came out of her in the same voice she used to request coffee. But there was something in the set of her shoulders that made Selena put the papers down again.
A small sigh escaped her. “I know that look, boss. What is it?”
Meg drew a manila folder from under her arm and slid it across the table.
Selena rested her fingertips on it without opening it. “That bad you needed a folder?”
“There’s been a murder close to where you grew up.”
A short laugh left Selena before she could stop it. Not amused. More disbelief finding the nearest exit. “Is that policy now? Sending agents to places where they were born if there’s a federal crime?”
“This isn’t a federal crime.”
That got Selena’s full attention.