let’s hear it, because otherwise I expect you to get your act together and start behaving like a professional.” Silver was using her mommy tone automatically, and Sam had stiffened as she spoke.
“I…I’m sorry, Silver. I didn’t realize I was pushing the limits. I…”
“Sam. You’re a talented agent. I understand you may think you know a better way to do things than I do. And I don’t mind hearing about it. What I’m telling you is that your attitude needs adjusting. I don’t want to make this into a huge deal, but over the last few weeks you’ve become increasingly adversarial. So consider this fair warning. I don’t want to get into it with you, but if I have to make a formal request to get you off this team, I will. I think we would both be poorer for that so I’m approaching you unofficially. We have a killer who’s out there planning another murder, and we need to work together or he’s going to keep killing. Am I clear?”
Sam looked shaken. He’d obviously believed he could keep needling her and get away with it. She knew his type. The Bureau was full of them. Men who resented working for a woman, or who believed that they could do things better. She’d dealt with that attitude throughout her training and career, so she recognized it a mile away. She just wasn’t going to tolerate it on her task force.
“I…I get it. Again, it wasn’t intentional.”
Of course it was intentional. If she’d been a male supervisor, he wouldn’t have dared to pull these stunts.
None of which she said. The message had been delivered, and hopefully, received. It was actually harder to transfer an agent than she’d made it seem — there would be messy interviews, and she would be suspect for having been too sensitive or judgmental. She knew how things worked. She would be on the defensive because the system would assume that she had over-reacted and couldn’t handle a little criticism or healthy dissention.
Sam stood and Silver nodded. The meeting was at an end.
“One more thing. How’s the traffic cam study coming? That’s about all we have in terms of promising leads. It’s one of the reasons I gave it to you — I need it done thoroughly and correctly the first time.” It wouldn’t hurt to praise him a little now. A slap on the face followed by a pat on the head usually worked wonders.
“It’s going well. I’m hopeful we have it finished within twenty-four hours. The facial recognition software is next, but it can be buggy. I’m going over every match personally. There are a lot of them. It’s a busy area.”
“Let’s hope we get a hit. Thanks for putting in the time, Sam.” She studied him. “Are we good?”
He shrugged again, but this time with no attitude. “Sure. No problem.”
Sam opened the door and went back to his area. Silver groaned; she hated that kind of confrontation, but it had to be done.
Returning to the reporter’s call, she logged the discussion and typed in a few quick notes, then picked up a stack of paperwork from her inbox that she’d been delaying dealing with.
Silver took a sip of water and put the call and her run-in with Sam out of her head, trying to focus on the job at hand. It was hard after her meeting with Ben. She looked at the wall clock and noted that she had four hours of work to fit into another two hours.
It was going to be a frantic afternoon.
Richard ducked his head into Silver’s office at just before five o’clock and asked if she was doing anything. She waved at the paperwork covering her desk and offered a wan smile.
“Nothing more than usual. What’s up?”
“I’ve spent more time on the partner, and it looks like he’s quite a character. Sits on the board of a number of technology companies, all of which have something to do with the brokerage industry. It’s amazing to me how plugged-in he is to big names — I mean, I’ve never heard of him, and yet he’s peripherally associated with just about everyone who matters in the clearance and settlement system on Wall Street.” He entered her office and sat down at her conference table with his iPad.
“The what?” Silver rounded her desk and sat across from him.
“It’s the plumbing that makes everything work. The back office, where all the accounting takes place. Everywhere you look the victim and his partner show up.”
“But that’s their business, right? Is it really so surprising?”
“Yes, it kind of is. Think about it logically. The markets are vast, and tens of thousands of people work in the industry — maybe more, for all I know, if you take all the peripheral functions. To have two guys so connected to everything that has to do with one area is unusual, to say the least. There are a lot of people out there trying to invent better mousetraps — competition for everything in the industry is fierce, and to have two virtual unknowns so entwined with the guts of the trading machinery is, well, for lack of a better word, remarkable. And for one of the two to be so close to some of the biggest terrorist financiers in the world is beyond worrisome.”
Silver shifted. “I get that you’re troubled by it.”
Richard nodded. “It’s like finding out that the brother of a guy who used to hang out with Osama Bin Laden is involved with virtually every company that makes the guidance systems for nuclear warheads. No, I take that back. A better example would be that he wrote the software for, or had a hand in founding, every company responsible for controlling the nation’s nuclear power plants. It’s that weird. Think about it for a second. If you just removed the words financial industry and replaced them with nuclear industry, there would be investigations mounted before I could put down the phone. And yet here we have nothing.”
“Right. But it’s not the same, Richard.”
“No, but the financial system has the same capacity to cripple us, if not more so. We’re so used to anticipating risks in a conventional sense — planes flying into buildings or bombs strapped to people’s chests — but the truth is that’s all completely obsolete. If you want to wage war these days there’s no need to drop bombs or invade. You just attack the target’s economy and pretty soon your enemy is begging for a loan.”
“But you’ve found no evidence of any foul play, right?”
“Not so far, but how long have I been looking into this? I have a good nose for crookery, and I’ve never seen a scenario that demands a task force more than this one. Yet nobody seems worried but me. My boss was polite, but I could tell he isn’t going to push it.”
“That’s probably because nobody understands it like you do. This is pretty complex and arcane stuff, Richard. It sounds like he doesn’t have a clue what’s really at stake here.”
“I know. It’s one of the many curses of being a numbers geek.”
During the next half an hour, Richard painstakingly walked her through his research until Silver realized that her eyes were starting to glaze over. He was so passionate about the topic you could feel the electricity coming off him, like an engine revving at ten thousand RPM. But in the end, for all the intrigue, it wasn’t getting them any closer to catching the killer — which was her primary directive.
“I agree this is alarming, but frankly, Richard, I don’t see what we can do about it. I don’t mean to be small-minded, but I’m going to stay focused on the task force and try to avoid getting sucked into tangents — as fascinating as they are.” She stifled a yawn.
“Saving the financial system from itself is definitely not in our job description.” Richard shook his head and looked at his watch. “It’s just depressing that you can have a hole this big, with such profound implications, and nobody wants to know about it.”
“We can add it to the list of unfair things in the world,” she agreed.
He stretched his arms over his head and sighed, then gave her a look of frustration and…something else. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.” He paused, as if mulling over a difficult decision, then leaned back in his chair and fixed her with an intense gaze. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Silver. I completely respect your position of authority and the fact that you’re the task force leader on this case…but would you like to have a cocktail with me? Maybe grab dinner?”
Silver’s breath caught in her throat, and she felt herself flushing.
She hesitated for a few seconds before speaking. “Are you asking me out?”
Richard appeared to consider her question, and then nodded. “You know what? I am.”
A cascade of mixed emotions came crashing in at once.
