“No, you don’t understand.
“Look, Officer Kelly-”
“I’m not ‘Officer’ anymore. That’s effective immediately, right now.”
“You’re not listening. You can’t just quit.”
“Yes, I can. You can send your goons to follow me if you want to, if they can keep up with me. But I’ve had enough. I watched almost everything I care about be destroyed in the last few weeks.”
“But Smith is gone.” Yorkton was beginning to sound desperate. “That should give you some closure.”
“Goddammit, it’s not about closure!” Faith shouted. Tourists below them on the Memorial turned to look. Faith backed away from the wall a few steps, hobbling on the crutches. “I’m simply not going to do it anymore, and that’s that.”
They were both quiet for a long time. “No one has ever walked away from the department,” Yorkton finally said. “Never.”
“First time for everything,” Faith said. It was getting harder and harder to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
“We
Faith shrugged.
“I think you’re about to be a very lonely young woman, Faith,” Yorkton said.
“I already am,” Faith said.
Yorkton tried one more time. “You can
“Watch me,” Faith said, turned the crutches around, and hobbled away.
David Kent
David Kent is the author of four Department Thirty thrillers. His acclaimed debut novel, Department Thirty, was also one of the bestselling eBooks of 2003; other novels in the series include The Mesa Conspiracy, The Black Jack Conspiracy, which won the 2006 Oklahoma Book Award for Fiction and The Triangle Conspiracy. He grew up in Madill, Oklahoma, and is a former press secretary and media adviser to several congressional candidates. Under his real name of Kent Anderson, he worked as a broadcaster for twenty-seven years, and is now in marketing with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra. He has three sons, and lives in Oklahoma City.
