Duff watched them all closely as they walked by. The senator had been receiving death threats for the last two weeks, and although the vast majority of such threats were harmless, the FBI profilers had been alarmed by the frequency and specificity of these angry missives.

One of the so-called news crewmen was actually an FBI agent who was recording everyone who had any contact with the senator in public. Each of the images was fed into facial recognition software and compared to the federal databases. So far, none of those scanned since her agents had come on board had come up with even a single flag of potential trouble.

The senator was not without his enemies, which made this particular hunt even more difficult. His stance on abortion angered the right-to-lifers, while his recent negative comments about the state's gay community had gotten him into even more hot water. Can't please the right or the left, Duff thought. McNeil is perfect water-cooler discussion material. Everyone has an opinion about him.

Personally, Duff didn't particularly like McNeil. Certainly, he had treated her with respect when she and her staff had interviewed him about the threat-letters, but she had expected that. She wondered what he would feel about her privately… and what he might say publicly… if he knew the truth about her. He could see that she was African-American and a woman easily enough, but he wouldn't have known she was a lesbian just by looking at her. The trijecta for bigots, she thought with a rueful smile. A black gay woman. She suspected that McNeil would have rather had a married white male agent heading up his case. Fortunately for Duff, one didn't always get to pick one's protectors.

As McNeil neared the elevator, Duff felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Directing her voice down to her collar microphone, she said, "Watch the woman in the blue coat approaching to the senator's left. She's got something in her hand. Doesn't feel… “

Before she had finished, the woman made her move. Her hand flashed out, crimson liquid spraying outward from it all over the senator, his aide, and a reporter from Channel 6 news.

The woman started to yell, "This is the blood of the unborn…," but in less than a second, two FBI agents had tackled her. The Secret Service men drew their guns and stepped in front of McNeil, forming a human shield around him.

"Step back! Everybody step back!" Duff yelled, pushing the reporters and everyone else away from the immediate vicinity. Amazingly, they obeyed her. Perhaps it was because of the already-drawn guns that backed up Duff's warning, or maybe in the shock of the moment they were merely happy to be told what to do.

The woman was screaming as the agents held her down. One had drawn her hands up behind her back and was kneeling on her neck, while the other was efficiently frisking her. Duff knelt to retrieve the item the woman had dropped, being careful to grab it with a handkerchief so as not to disturb any fingerprints. The item was a large coffee cup, its insides coated in a viscous red liquid. Blood. Or something like it. She sniffed it. No, not blood.

She stood and faced McNeil, whose aide was busy wiping the spatters off the senators face. "Are you all right, sir?" Duff asked.

"Yeah, just a little red in the face," McNeil said, cracking a weak smile. Duff knew that the self-deprecating sense of humor had gone far in getting him votes, further proof that theater was as important on the Beltway as were political platforms.

"It smells like syrup of some sort," Duff said, keeping her voice low enough that the press couldn't hear her across the foyer. "Probably watered down. “

"Hmmm, well, it's going to stain this marvelous suit," McNeil's aide said.

"It's all right, Delroy. Quit fussing," McNeil said. "So, you think this is my stalker? “

Duff shook her head. "We won't really know for a while yet. She could be the one, or she could be just a random member of the unhappy public. “

McNeil grunted and nodded. As the elevator door opened in front of him, he looked back toward Duff. "Yes, well, I'll expect a report soon." It wasn't a question.

It took almost an hour to process the woman to the point where Duff could take a break from the thick of things. She sat down with a thump into the chair behind her temporary desk and toggled the computer on.

A flashing icon told her she had new mail, and she clicked on it to initiate the program. Once there, she entered her federal I.D. number, her password, and a secondary password.

She scanned the subject headings, then clicked on one that said "XMA94… Cheyenne, Wyoming." XMA- 94 was the code for unusual altercations, often related to suspected homeland terrorist cells, white supremacist splinter factions, or other armed groups.

Duff read through the file quickly, noting the amount of information that wasn't included in it. Something's being covered up here, she thought. There were too many nonspecific terms, and the clearance codes for the initial strike orders were high-level ones. She had seen this kind of thing before.

Scrolling down, Duff stopped on multiple photos taken by security cameras at the scenes of the Cheyenne confrontation. They had yet to be enhanced, but it didn't matter. Duff recognized the kids in the photos.

Hell, they aren't exactly kids anymore. Kyle Valenti she recognized best. She had met the ex-sheriff's son in May of 2001, while working on her second case. The assignment had gotten her involved with finding a missing girl named Laurie Dupree. As the case unfolded, Dupree's abduction was linked to an archaeologist named Grant Sorenson, a group of teens in Roswell, New Mexico, and the town's half-crazed sheriff.

At least, Jim Valenti had seemed to be half crazed when she met him. He had been caught up in an expanding web of lies that ultimately cost him his job. Yet Duff could sense that deep down, Valenti had believed he was doing the right thing.

By the end of the case, Duff had seen things she wouldn't have thought possible. She had been forced to shoot Sorenson after he threatened her and Valenti with a gun. Afterward, he had kidnapped a Roswell teenager named Isabel Evans, taking her to Tucson, Arizona, where some kind of green jellyfish emerged from emerald crystals that were embedded in Sorenson's chest. Another Roswell teen, Michael Guerin, had somehow psychically sucked all the oxygen out of the room containing Sorenson's corpse and the jellyfish, killing the creature that had possessed him.

Later Valenti had counseled her to doctor her official report about the incident. And although Duff didn't feel good about it, she had done so. She wasn't sure what special psychic powers Isabel Evans or Michael Guerin had, nor did she know exactly what it was that had inhabited the body of Grant Sorenson. But she knew that her FBI superiors would not have looked kindly on her reports if she had put in all the incredible details.

Everyone knew about the other FBI agents who chased aliens and spooks; they had been relegated to the basement. Duff didn't want to end up in the basement. She told Valenti she wanted to make assistant director by the time she reached thirty-five, and though she suspected it might take a few more years than that, the AD job was still her goal.

Duff had been extensively interviewed after the incidents in Roswell and Arizona, not just by her superiors, and not only about the justifiable shooting of Sorenson. Some other governmental agency had also been involved in debriefing her, but their questions were more about her interaction with the sheriff and the Roswell teens than about the abduction and shooting. They'd been interested essentially in hearing about anything "unusual" that may have occurred, apart from the case itself. For some reason, their probing made her dig her mental heels in deeper, increasing her determination not to tell them about the odd powers the Roswell kids had apparently manifested.