The Heist

was standing at the sink in her gray Ann Taylor pantsuit and white blouse, her face freshly scrubbed, her sleeves pushed up, her hands resting on the counter.
    “Jeez Louise, get a grip!” she said to herself in the mirror. “This is supposed to be your finest hour. This is what you’ve worked for: to put him away. So do it. Finish the job.” She popped open the third button of her blouse, applied fresh lipstick, and gave her lashes a swipe of mascara. “Eat your heart out, Nick Fox,” she whispered to the mirror. “It’ll be decades before you get up close and personal with a woman. Only one of many life experiences you can kiss goodbye.”
    Okay, so she felt a little stupid talking to herself like that, but she was getting into a frame of mind, right? She’d gotten rid of her breakfast burrito, and now she was going to walk into that interrogation room, and she’d own it. Nick Fox was a beaten man, and she’d remind him with every look, with every gesture, with every inflection of her voice, that she was the one who’d beaten him. She wouldn’t let herself be manipulated by his charm. Nothing woulddistract her from her goal. It wasn’t enough to get a conviction. There were millions of dollars in cash, jewelry, and art that he’d swindled and stolen that had never been recovered. He knew where it all was and she’d make him give it up. Without cleavage. She closed the third button of her blouse. She didn’t need to use even a hint of her sexuality to crack him. That would be cheating. Not to mention, she wasn’t down with the whole seduction thing. Truth is, it had been a while since she’d used her feminine charms. Maybe never.
    She sucked in her stomach and stood military straight. She was ready to go. She had her mission. Time to go accomplish it.
    The door opened and Agent in Charge Carl Jessup walked in. Jessup was her boss, up from Los Angeles just for the occasion. Jessup was a lean and sinewy Kentuckian in his fifties with a craggy face that looked like a crumpled road map, each line a rough road taken, or a detour that went nowhere, or a wrong turn that had sent him over a cliff. And from the looks of it, he’d been over a lot of cliffs.
    “This is the women’s room,” Kate said. “You can’t come in here.”
    “I infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and lived with them for three years,” he said. “I think I can walk through a door marked ‘Women’ and come out unscathed.”
    “It’s a question of decency and respect for a woman’s privacy.”
    “You hit Nick Fox with a bus.”
    “He was fleeing,” she said.
    “He wasn’t being chased,” Jessup said.
    “He and another member of his crew had guns and therefore presented a credible threat to the safety and lives of others.”
    “The guns weren’t loaded,” he said. “There wasn’t a single bullet in their possession.”
    “We didn’t know that at the time,” she said.
    “Sounds to me like you’re rehearsing your defense for a board of inquiry. Do I look like a board of inquiry?”
    “Yes, in that they are typically made up entirely of men over the age of forty, even though nineteen percent of FBI special agents are women. But the board rarely convenes in women’s bathrooms, so I’d have to go with no.”
    “Let me repeat myself. You hit Nick Fox with a bus!”
    “I got a lot of flack from you and everybody else for letting him get away in Vegas, remember?”
    “And that made you so angry, you wanted to hit him with a bus,” Jessup said. “So you did.”
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Just so we’re clear, you and I.”
    “We’re clear,” she said.
    He nodded, satisfied. “How did it feel?”
    “Great,” she said, breaking into a smile. “
Unbelievably
great.”
    “I’d leave that part out when you meet with all those men on the board of inquiry,” Jessup said. “But don’t worry, I’ll handle them. It took five long years of dogged pursuit and investigation, but you got your man. That’s what the FBI is all about. Now put him away and claw back what he stole.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Sometime today would be nice.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Got some butterflies in your stomach?”
    “Butterflies are awfully girlie for a woman who carries a Glock, don’t you think?”
    “Okay. African killer bees.”
    “That’s more like it.”
    “Don’t sweat it, O’Hare. I’ve stared into the eye of the porcelain god a few times after a big arrest. You’re feeling the adrenaline, that’s all.” He looked