19. Leah
NINETEEN
LEAH
I was in the car with the keys still in my hand and Harlow's voice still in my ear.
The passport flag was a decoy. Conrad never left the city. Surveillance just picked up activity at a shell-company address six blocks from Cross's apartment.
I dialed Julian.
It rang.
It rang.
It rang.
His voicemail. The greeting was recorded on a Tuesday morning in March in his office while I had been sitting at my desk pretending not to listen. "You've reached Julian. Leave a message."
I dialed again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Voicemail.
I had pulled out of my building's garage and turned south on the avenue without deciding to. My hands were tight on the wheel. I was breathing too fast. I had the windows up, and I was driving down Sixth at a speed that was not legal in a residential area.
I forced myself to pull over at Twenty-Second.
I put the car in park. I put my hands flat on the wheel and I made my breathing slow. I made it slow.
I was not the woman whose boyfriend was not picking up his phone.
I was the agent.
The agent did not drive into a hot perimeter alone.
I dialed Harlow.
She picked up on the first ring.
"Calder."
"He's not picking up."
"How many tries."
"Four."
"Where are you?"
"Twenty-Second and Sixth. Driving south."
"Stop driving."
I stopped.
"Where is the field team?"
"Thirty-eight minutes out. We're staging at the intersection of Twelfth and Fifth and moving on the apartment when we have full strike posture."
"That's too long, Harlow."
"That is the timeline, Calder. We do not send agents alone without backup."
"I'm not asking to go in alone. I am asking you to move faster."
"We are moving as fast as protocol allows."
Protocol.
The word sat in my mouth like something rotten.
I hung up. I sat in the parked car on a dark street with my forehead against the rim of the wheel and the engine idling under me.
I picked up the phone.
I dialed.
It rang.
Voicemail.
The screen of my phone was bright in the dark interior of the car.
His name was on the display. The contact photo I had taken of him at the gala — half-laughing at something Declan had said, his hazel eyes crinkled at the corners, his face open and real in a way I had not yet learned how to look at.
I dialed Torres.
He picked up on the first ring.
"Leah."
"Conrad is still in the city. The passport was a decoy. Bureau surveillance picked up activity at a shell address six blocks from Julian's apartment. He's not answering his phone. The field team is thirty-six minutes out."
He was quiet for one second.
"Where are you?"
"Twenty-Second and Sixth."
"I am twenty minutes from you. Don't go in alone, Cal."
"I'm not going in."
"Leah."
"I am following the protocol, Rafael."
I hung up.
I sat in the car. I dialed Julian.
Voicemail.
I sat in the parked car at Twenty-Second and Sixth and I fought myself.
Every minute that passed was a minute Julian was alone in an apartment six blocks from a man who had already put a bullet into a wall three feet from his head. A man who ran cartel money and bribed federal judges and did not leave loose threads.
I dialed Harlow.
"How long."
"Thirty-two minutes."
"Patch me into the surveillance team monitoring the shell company address."
"Hold on."
A click. A second click. Another voice came on the line — male, mid-30s, the flat dispatcher cadence of a field agent on a stationary post.
"Sloan, mobile two."
"Calder. What's your status on the shell address."
"Two vehicles departed eighteen minutes ago, eastbound on Twelfth. Black SUV and a dark sedan. Two occupants in the lead vehicle, three in the trail. We're tracking via traffic cameras but we don't have visual on a destination yet."
My chest went cold.
"They're going to Cross's building. West Eleventh."
"That's not confirmed, ma'am."
"Two vehicles left a known Conrad location heading directly toward the principal's apartment and the principal isn't answering his phone."
Harlow's voice came back on.
"I hear you, Calder. I hear you. The team is moving. We are accelerating the staging. Twenty-nine minutes."
Twenty-nine minutes.
I dialed Julian.
Voicemail.
I sat with the phone in my hand.
I thought about Torres on the concrete in a parking garage in Bethesda three years ago. Eleven minutes. The blood under my fingers. His hand on my cheek. Leah.
I had broken protocol that day. I had vouched for a witness who was a professional liar. I had gone around my handler. I had moved the operation on a feeling, and the feeling had been wrong, and Torres had been on the concrete for eleven minutes because of it.
I had rebuilt my entire life on the principle that the system knew better than I did.
The system had said Conrad left the country. The system was wrong.
The system said wait for backup. The system was twenty-nine minutes away.
I dialed Julian.
Voicemail.
I thought about what Torres had said outside the safehouse this morning.
Be brave, Leah. Not careful. Brave.
I thought about Julian on the safehouse couch, my head on his thigh. His thumb tracing the line of my jaw. How he'd said Leah into the kitchen counter.
I dialed Julian one more time.
It rang.
It rang.
Voicemail.
I leaned across the seat. I opened the glove compartment.
My Bureau-issued weapon was inside the small lockbox in the back.
I unlocked it with the key on my keychain.
I took the weapon out. I checked the magazine.
I chambered a round. The slide racked back and forward in my hand with the small clean sound it always made when I was about to do something I had been trained to do.
I slid the weapon into the holster at the small of my back.
I put the car in drive.
I called Harlow on speaker as I pulled back onto Sixth.
"I'm going in."
"Calder. You do not have authorization. Do not enter the building until — "
"Conrad's men are inside that apartment. Or they're about to be. I am not waiting twenty-seven minutes."
"If you go in without backup you are in direct violation of — "
"Then put it in my file."
I hung up.
I drove. My hands were steady on the wheel.
I had made them steady three years ago and they had never failed me on a job.
The difference was that three years ago they had been steady because I was following training.
Right now they were steady because the training had run out, and what was underneath the training was a voice in my chest that had been there for fifteen years before I had ever set foot in Quantico.
The last time I had broken the rules for a man I loved, he had ended up on the concrete.
This time I had followed the rules and the man I loved was alone with a gun pointed at his face.
The rules had never been the point. Torres had tried to tell me. Harlow had told me. The answer was not protocol and it was not instinct.
The answer was me.
My judgment.
The thing I had stopped trusting three years ago because trusting it once had cost a man I loved an eleven-minute bleed on a concrete floor.
I parked across the street. The lobby was lit through the glass. Reggie at the security desk with his head in a paperback. The elevator panel above his shoulder showed the indicator at the twelfth floor and stationary.
I looked up.
The lights were on in Julian's apartment.
I checked the weapon at my back. I got out of the car.
I crossed the street at the curb and went around to the service entrance on the side. I had a key card from the Bureau-issued credentials kit and I used it. The door clicked open.
I took the stairs.
Elevators announced you. Elevators put you in a metal box. Elevators opened on a floor at a fixed point that the people on that floor could see coming.
Twelve flights. I took them at the pace I had drilled at Quantico — quiet, fast, controlled. My breathing did not change. My weapon stayed at my hip.
I came off the stairwell on twelve.
The hallway was empty. The carpet was the same carpet I had walked across this afternoon with a bottle of wine in my hand, and at 6:00 a.m. when I had walked back out of his apartment with my hair a mess and his shirt under my jacket.
His door was closed.
I crossed to it. I put my ear against the wood.
Voices.
More than one.
A man's voice — calm, patient. I heard fragments. "Your partners will understand... The alternative is a public version of this conversation in eight days... your architecture... your name on every document..."
Another voice. Julian. Tight. Strained.
I tried the handle and the door was unlocked.
But Julian had locked the door behind me this morning and said, "Yes, Agent Calder."
I drew the weapon. I put my left hand flat against the door. I pushed it open one inch. Two.
Through the gap, I saw the living room.
Julian was standing at the corner of the kitchen counter with his back to the cabinet behind him. His sandy hair was a mess. His white shirt was untucked at the front. His hands were at his sides. From eight feet away, his hands were shaking.
Conrad was on the couch.
The gray suit. The signet ring. A glass of whiskey by his side.
A woman in a navy suit beside him with a leather portfolio open on her lap. A stack of papers I assumed were documents lay on the coffee table.
The man by the window had a gun in his right hand.
Aimed at Julian.
Not lowered. Not resting.
Aimed.
I pushed the door open.
I stepped inside.
I brought the weapon up at a two-handed grip.
"FBI. Put the weapon down. Now."
The room froze.
The man by the window did not lower the gun. He did the thing trained men did when a second weapon entered a room with the wrong number of people in it. He swung the muzzle a quarter-arc to his right and the gun was on me and the gun was no longer on Julian.
Conrad turned his head a half-inch toward me.
He smiled.
The same warm pale-blue eyes. The same small fond smile he had given me from the middle of a ballroom on Saturday night with his glass of amber in his hand.
"Agent Calder."
Julian moved.
His head snapped toward the man by the window and his hand went up in front of him in the small useless gesture of a man trying to stop a thing that had already started.
"Leah, don't — "
The gunshot filled the apartment.
"Leah — "