Edge

show up, he’ll be worried.”
    Joanne asked, “Mar, don’t you think it’s better if you don’t? Andrew’ll figure it out. I mean, Agent Corte didn’t want you to call from that pay phone.”
    “No,” I said, “that was just because I didn’t want to spend any time there. But if you want to call, go ahead. It’s not a bad idea. We don’t want him getting curious and coming to the house, now that Loving knows where it is.”
    I handed her my cold phone. “Just keep it short. Don’t say anything at all about where we are or what’s happened. Understand?”
    “Sure.”
    With that, Maree dropped the giddy persona and suddenly grew reluctant—because, I guessed, she realized the conversation would be overheard by us all. Or maybe she just really didn’t want to change plans. Finally she called. I glanced into the mirror and saw that her shoulders were knotted with tension. After a moment, though, her body language changed—she relaxed—and I deduced she’d got Andrew’s voice mail. Her voice became that of a teenager again: “Hey, it’s me . . . Um, I feel so bad. I really, really want to see you but I can’t come over after all. . . . Like, something’s come up. Kind of serious. With the family. It’s totally important, so I can’t make it tonight. I’ll call you as soon as I can. Okay, have a good day. I’m sorry.”
    She disconnected and handed the phone back to me. Her hand seemed to be trembling. She asked Joanne something about plans for Thanksgiving, a non sequitur, and they had a conversation that I stopped listening to.
    Traffic thinned and I sped up—but now that we weren’t being pursued I kept the needle no more than six miles an hour over the limit. My organization doesn’t use government license plates—all the vehicles were registered to one of a dozen corporations, commercial and nonprofit—so if a cop were to speed-gun us, he’d pull us over, which could be inconvenient and dangerous.
    A whisper from Ryan: “Ask you a question?”
    “Sure.”
    “It was two of them there at the house? Loving and his partner?”
    “Probably. Could have been three or even more but Loving’s profile is working mostly with one partner.”
    “Well, it’s just that . . . there were five agents there, plus me. We could’ve taken him.”
    He was thinking of the plan I’d laid out earlier, to nail Loving.
    I gave him a knowing look, then back to the road. “The agents in the car? They were out of commission.”
    “True. But . . .”
    I continued, “I considered a takedown but it wasn’t an advantageous playing field. I was worried he’d involve Mrs. Knox or maybe some other hostages from the neighborhood. He puts innocents into play all the time. It’s one of his trademarks.”
    He said slowly, “I guess. I didn’t think about that.”
    Ryan went back to riding shotgun. I glanced his way and concluded that he had no clue he was being conned.
    As my mentor taught me and I teach duBois, you always ask yourself: What’s my goal and what’s the most efficient way to achieve it? Nothing else matters. That’s the rule in the business world, medicine, science, academia. And it’s the rule in the protection field, which is a business like any other, Abe Fallow regularly had said. Frustration, hurt feelings, vindictiveness, elation, pride . . . they’re all irrelevant.
    You disappear. You don’t have feelings, you don’t have lust, you don’t get insulted. You’re nothing. You’re vapor.
    Part of being efficient as a shepherd was calmly picking the best strategy to get your principals to do what you wanted. Some you have to order around; they’re more comfortable that way. Some you reason with.
    Others you just plain trick.
    The story I’d given Ryan Kessler about having him help me capture Henry Loving was nonsense. Though rooted in the truth—of course, I wanted Loving collared—it was just a strategy I was playing to win Ryan over. I’d decided on my approach after meeting him and learning, from duBois, details of the incident at the deli, from which he’d emerged a hero. The rescue of the customers and the ensuing love story were in themselves irrelevant to me; what was important was how the event had affected Ryan. A formerly active man, he was now off the street he loved, with a bad leg and relegated to investigating financial crimes, mostly from a desk, I supposed, and poring over balance sheets. I needed to play to where his heart was: his macho,