Edge

car and drove out of the compound,cruising through the tunnel of leaves and branches glowing in the sun.
    I was about ten minutes from the safe house when the phone buzzed. I recognized Westerfield’s number. I’d forgotten my promise to Aaron about keeping the prosecutor up to speed.
    So I answered.
    I shouldn’t have.

Chapter 22
    “ CORTE, YOU’RE ON speaker here with me and Chris Teasley.”
    “Okay.”
    “I’ve talked to the attorney general and he’s agreed to move the Kesslers into a slammer in the District—Hansen Detention.”
    All because I hadn’t returned his call? Seemed a little excessive. “I see. Why?”
    Chris Teasley came on. She said, “Um, Agent Corte.”
    “Officer Corte,” I corrected. My organization is an office, not a bureau or an agency. When Congress gave Abe the money that’s what he created.
    “Officer Corte,” she continued. “I backgrounded you.” She sounded uneasy; I was close to twice her age.
    I concentrated on driving and looking for a tail, which shepherds do automatically, all the time. Even when we go grocery shopping. But I didn’t expect to be followed and I saw nothing. “Go on.”
    “It’s routine in cases like this,” she said quickly. So I wouldn’t think I was being persecuted. “One thing that came up: an operation you ran in Newport, Rhode Island. Two years ago.”
    Ah, so that was it.
    “I have the whole report of the investigation here.”
    She kept pausing, as if giving me the chance to confirm or deny. I remained silent.
    “The assignment involved you and two associates from your organization guarding several witnesses from the same man involved in this case, Henry Loving.”
    She paused again. I wondered if Westerfield was testing her the way I test duBois and Ahmad and my other protégés. It’s easy to do research. It’s hard to aim it at somebody and pull the trigger.
    Apparently Teasley wasn’t firing fast enough. Her boss took over. “Corte, let me read this: ‘It was alleged that Agent Corte—’ ”
    The Justice Department’s Internal Affairs Division had gotten the job title wrong too. Not many people know about our organization.
    “ ‘—had a conflict of interest in running the Kowalski protection assignment, endangering the two witnesses in his care. Although a half dozen personal security professionals within three government agencies stated that standard procedure would have been to secrete the two witnesses in protective custody in the Providence, Rhode Island, federal penitentiary, Agent Corte chose not to do so but to keep the witnesses first in a motel and then to transfer them to a safe house outside of Newport, Rhode Island.’ ”
    “I’m familiar with the report,” I told him, braking hard for a lazy deer.
    But he continued to read, “‘The result was that Henry Jonathan Loving, who’d been hired to kidnap and extract information from the witnesses,injured a local police officer and a bystander. He came close to successfully kidnapping at least one of the witnesses in question.
    “ ‘During the investigation into the handling of said matter, it came to light that Loving was the same individual who had murdered Agent Corte’s superior, Abraham Fallow, the director of . . .’ It’s redacted. ‘And a personal friend of Agent Corte’s. The conclusion of the investigating panel was that Agent Corte, motivated by personal revenge, chose not to put the witnesses in question into the federal detention center but rather kept them in public, with full knowledge that Loving would attempt to kidnap them there.
    “ ‘He in effect used the witnesses as bait to capture or kill Loving. This is supported by the fact that the witnesses were convicted felons and, accordingly, Agent Corte would feel more at liberty to imperil them.’ ”
    He concluded, “‘It was only through good fortune that the witnesses were not lost and the trial proceeded on schedule.’ ”
    “Good fortune,” I repeated softly. Something I absolutely do not believe in.
    “Well?”
    The penitentiary in Providence was more dangerous than the worst parts of the city itself and that was saying something. My protégé at the time had learned that Henry Loving had done business with at least two people inside the slammer. As for the principals, yes, they were felons. But we shepherds never make moral judgments about the people we protect. The only quality in a principal that matters is a beating heart. Our job is to keep it that