Edge

were operational rules.”
    Her sister broke in. “I don’t understand any of this, Jo. You’re talking like you were in the army. Like Dad used to talk.”
    Joanne surprised me, at least, by laughing. “Dad . . . funny you should mention him. He’s the one who helped me get into my organization. Right after college.”
    “But you backpacked through Europe.”
    “No, Mar. The postcards were fake. I went to a training center in the States. I can’t say anything more about it.”
    As often happened in this line of work, I realized that one of my principals was speaking to someone else in the room through a third party. Doing this seems easier. It was safer for Joanne to confess toher sister than to her husband—the person she was really communicating with. I’d learned that when it comes to deception, we believe that the gravity of the sin depends not on the nature of the lie but on the person lied to.
    But Ryan asked directly, “Projects, Jo? National security projects?”
    She finally turned to face him, held his eyes. “We did risk assessment.” Then she took a deep breath and I knew that the complete truth was about to come out. She added in a voice that was barely audible, “And we did risk elimination.”
    “You and your partner?”
    “Partners,” she corrected. “I was active for eight years. I had a number of partners.”
    Maree said, “For God’s sake, Jo, tell me in English what you mean. Risk assessment, risk elimination?”
    Ryan Kessler said evenly, “Maree, your sister killed people.”

Chapter 45
    “ RYAN, DON’T BE crazy. That’s bullshit. Of course she didn’t. Jo, tell us. What were you really doing?”
    But it was the truth, I understood.
    Joanne’s federal government employment history had been hidden very efficiently, of course. DuBois hadn’t found anything specific about what the woman or her coworkers did. But you could deduce their mission from what my protégée did uncover: the group’s funding (lavish and murkily channeled through nonexistent government agencies) and jurisdiction—in the U.S. only (office leasing and travel authorizations). Its history was enlightening too. The organization was created two weeks after the first Trade Towers bombing in New York in the 1990s, and their budget and personnel were doubled after the African embassy bombings and tripled after the attack on the Cole.
    After 9/11 the budget increased ten times.
    But the real key was that in the archives duBois had found unsigned legal opinion letters from government attorneys. They discussed at length the standards for justifiable homicide in all states and the District of Columbia. And general guidelines for deciding when to refer a death to the prosecutor’soffice and when not to. There were also memos about procedures at hundreds of coroners’ and medical examiners’ offices around the country.
    Joanne’s operations would have involved staging deaths to appear to be suicides, accidents, random crimes of violence and self-defense.
    I thought back to what Ryan had told me when I’d first arrived at their house on Saturday morning.
    You know, Corte, this world . . . what you and I do? Joanne can’t handle it well. Things freak her out, things we don’t even think about. . . .
    Ryan whispered, “Did you . . . did you do it yourself?”
    “No.” Shaking her head, Joanne sucked in a great breath. She started to speak and her voice caught. Then she started again. “We were anchors—two-person teams. We ran a third-party contractor. He was the . . . active party. But I was on site. I gave the order.”
    “Jo,” her sister gasped. “You didn’t. You couldn’t have.”
    “Yes, I did, Mar. Yes, I did. I was there when it happened. A dozen times, more. I was there.”
    Absolute silence. Ryan seemed paralyzed. It was Maree who moved closer and took her sister’s arm. “It’s all right, it’s okay. You didn’t want to do it. You got sucked in. They do that. See, businesses and government—what I tell you all the time. They suck you right in. Get you to do things you don’t want to do.”
    Joanne was looking at her sister’s hand as it kneaded her forearm. She said, “Oh, but I did want to do it, Mar. It’s what Dad wanted me to do, and what I wanted. Be a patriot, doing something good.”
    Ryan asked, “A dozen times? More?”
    “I ran twenty-two assignments.”
    “You killed twenty-two people?”
    “Some were multiple target assignments but some were