The Kill Room

of making a name for herself too. Amelia had nailed it right when she’d sussed out the political career track. The ambition remained even if her name ultimately decorated no ballot.
    Yet even a loss at the Metzger trial would have succeeded in a way. NIOS’s Kill Room would have been exposed. That might have been enough to sink the assassination program forever. The hungry media and more-starved congressmen would have been all over NIOS like flies.
    She’d have been sacrificed—her career would have ended—but at least she would have made sure the truth of Metzger’s crimes came out.
    But now, this? Her boss pulling the case? No, there was nothing good to come of that.
    She supposed the whistleblower had vanished and there would be no more identification of other victims in the queue. Sorry, Mr. Rashid.
    What was in her future? Laurel laughed at the question. Returned to the kitchen and this time actually brewed a cup of tea. Adding two sugars on the grounds that rose hips were tart. The future, right: an unemployment period she’d spend with Seinfeld reruns and dining on one then what the hell a second Lean Cuisine. One glass of Kendall-Jackson too many. Computer chess. Then interviews. Then a job at a big Wall Street firm.
    Her heart sank.
    She now thought of David, as she often did. Always did. “The thing is, look, you’re pushing me for an answer, Nance. Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s you’re kind of a schoolmarm. You know what I mean? I can’t live up to that. You want everything perfect, everything right. You correct, you find fault. There, sorry. I didn’t want to say it. You made me.”
    Forget him.
    You’ve got your career.
    Except you don’t.
    On her bookshelf—half law books, half novels, one cookbook—was a picture of her and David. Both smiling.
    Below that was a boxed chess set, wood, not plastic.
    Throw it out, she told herself.
    I will.
    Not yet.
    All right. Enough of that. Self-pity was what she saw in the most depraved of sex perverts and murderers and she wasn’t going to allow it to seep into her soul. You’ve still got your caseload. Get to work. She—
    A noise in the hallway.
    A tap, a click, a faint thud.
    Then nothing.
    Mrs. Parsons dropping her shopping bag. Mr. Lefkowitz juggling toy poodle and cane.
    She stared at the TV, then at the microwave, then at the bedroom.
    Get out the fucking brief in State v. Gonzalez and start editing.
    Laurel jumped when the doorbell rang.
    She walked to the door. “Who is it?”
    “Detective Flaherty, NYPD.”
    Never heard of him but Manhattan boasted a cop population in the thousands. Laurel peered through the peephole. A white guy, thirties, slim, a suit. He was holding his ID open, though all she could see was a glint of badge.
    “How’d you get inside?” she called.
    “Somebody was leaving. I rang your buzzer but nobody answered. I was going to leave a note but thought I’d try anyway.”
    So the bell was out again.
    “Okay, just a minute.” She opened the chain and the dead-bolt latch, pulling open the door.
    And only then did Nance Laurel think, as the man stepped forward, that she probably should have had him slip his ID under the door so she could read it.
    But why worry? The case is over with. I’m no threat to anyone.

CHAPTER 75
    B ARRY SHALES WASN’T A LARGE MAN.
    “Compact” was how he was often described.
    And his job was sedentary, sitting before flat-screen panels, hands on the joysticks of UAVs, the computer keyboard before him.
    But he lifted free weights—because he enjoyed working out.
    He jogged—because he enjoyed jogging.
    And the former air force captain held the opinion, wholly unsupported, that the more you liked working out the better your muscles responded.
    So when he pushed past an alarmed Ruth, the guard dog of a personal assistant, into Shreve Metzger’s office and drew back an arm and slugged his boss, the skinny man stumbled and went down hard.
    The head of NIOS dropped to one knee, arms flailing. Files slid off the desk from trying to catch himself.
    Shales strode forward, arm drawn back again, but hesitated. The one blow was enough to deflate the anger that had been growing since he’d seen the impromptu soccer match between the task he’d been ordered to blast into molecules and a teenage boy in the courtyard of the safe house in a dingy Mexican suburb.
    He lowered his fist, stepped back. But he felt no inclination to help Metzge r up and he crossed his arms and watched coldly as the