Another silence.

“He must be quite a guy, this homicide detective of yours.”

“He is, Connor.”

“Then tell him if he needs anything, if he has any questions, to talk to me.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks.”

“Listen, I have to run. You take care, Annie, and remember, if you need anything…”

“I will. It was great talking to you, great seeing you on Friday.” Her emotions unexpectedly got the better of her and she felt her throat tighten. “You take care, Connor, wherever you are, whatever it is you’re doing. You take care of yourself.”

“Will do. See you, Annie…”

She dropped the phone into her purse and bit her bottom lip. She couldn’t help but worry about him. She always did. For men like Connor Shields, there was no telling where or when-or from whom-the danger might come.

A finger of cold crawled up her neck, and she shivered, then shook it off. Connor had faced a thousand dangers during the ten years he’d been with the Bureau. Surely he’d emerge from whatever obscure corner of the world he was now in, unscathed as always. She wondered what it was that made him thrive on the danger, that kept him accepting the most perilous assignments.

That well’s too deep for me, she told herself as she passed a tractor trailer when the road expanded from two lanes to four. Leaving Connor’s psyche for another day, she slipped a cassette into the dash to play back a taped session of a lecture she’d given to the last group of agents-in-training to refresh her memory. She had less than an hour before she was to speak, and needed to focus now on her speech.

Annie tucked away all thoughts of Connor and Dylan and even of Evan. She had work to do.

Luther Blue checked his Rolex and decided that it was none too early to make a call. If he was up, everyone should be up.

He dialed and waited.

“Shields.”

“I know who I called, thank you,” Luther said dryly.

“What’s up?”

“You tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me what I want to hear.”

“It’s too early to play games, man.”

“Tell me if I’m going to run into your cousin Connor when I arrive at headquarters this morning.”

“No. No, you definitely will not run into Connor.”

“So you are telling me you took care of the problem?”

The pause was just a beat or two too long.

“You didn’t do it, did you?” Luther tried to keep his temper under control.

“I honest to God haven’t had an opportunity.”

“A good agent doesn’t wait for opportunities. He makes them.”

“Look, he was around this weekend, but the entire family was there. My dad, his dad, my brothers, my sister. He was never alone. There was just no chance to-”

“This is just more of the same to me, Shields. I’m really tired of hearing it. As far as I’m concerned, you created this problem, one, by bumbling into him in that alley down in Santa Estela-what, two fucking years ago? And two, by not taking care of him right then and there.” The anger began to build. “You’re telling me in two fucking years, there wasn’t one time you could have taken him out?”

Silence.

“Shields?”

“I heard you, man, I-”

“You’re just so much bullshit, you know that? Do I need to remind you who works for who here?”

“No. No reminder necessary.”

“Then tell me how you’re so certain I won’t be coming face-to-face with him at any time soon?”

“He’s out of the country.”

“Where?”

“No one knows, except maybe the guy he reports directly to, and the Director.”

“So how do you know he won’t be around?”

“I talked to him yesterday. He said he’ll be gone for at least three, probably closer to four, weeks.”

“Did he say anything about that deal in Santa Estela?”

Another pause.

“Shields?”

“Not recently.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“He asked about it when I saw him the first time, maybe a month, two months after that night. The night he saw you. I told him it had been taken care of. That everyone had been arrested and the authorities were ID’ing all the kids to send them home. He was concerned about that.”

“He never followed up?”

“Why would he?”

“Oh, maybe if he saw me walking through the office, it might shake his memory.”

“I told you. You’re not going to run into him. He’s gone for probably a month.”

“You don’t seem to understand my situation here, Shields. I am at a real disadvantage. I don’t know what this guy looks like. I could be standing next to him in an elevator, or passing him in the hall, and he could be remembering me, and I won’t even know it. You have any idea of how vulnerable that makes me?”

“He’s never seen you at HQ, he’d have said something to me, but-”

“I’m tired of looking over my shoulder, you understand me? I’ve spent the last two years looking over my shoulder, and I’m goddamn tired of it. Every new assignment here in the States, I’m holding my breath, wondering who I’m going to be working with, who I’m going to run into. Well, I’ve been reassigned back here for a while. I do not want to have to be concerned about this again.” Luther took a deep breath, tried to calm himself. He knew that when he got really upset, his voice had a tendency to grow shrill. He hated when that happened. “When he gets back here, I want him taken out. No ifs, ands, or buts, you hear me? No excuses. Take care of him. I’m done with this shit, Shields.”

“Okay, I hear you.”

Luther checked the date on his watch. August 9.

“I want him gone within a week of his stepping foot off the plane, hear?”

“I heard you.”

“Hear this.” In spite of his best effort to maintain control, Luther could feel the anger, the need for control, rising in him rapidly. “By the fifteenth of September, one way or another, there will be one less Shields on the federal payroll, and frankly, at this point, I don’t care which of you it is.”

He hung up before the agent could respond.

Dumb son of a bitch. It’s that old, blood-is-thicker-than-water crap. Connor Shields was lucky he was out of reach right now. For two cents, Luther would take care of him himself. If he knew where he was, and what he looked like.

Luther had connections everywhere. Unfortunately, he didn’t know where Connor was. He’d just have to be patient and wait for Connor to come to him.

Patience was not one of Luther’s virtues.

He sipped at his coffee, then put the cup down slowly and forced himself to concentrate on the breathing exercises they taught him in anger-management class. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn’t.

Today it did. When the waitress returned to ask him if he’d like another cup, he smiled and declined like a gentleman.

A gentleman who, at midnight tonight, would receive a fresh shipment from a very small, very poor Central American country where the chief export was its children, and its import was the money sent back by the workers who had fled illegally to the United States to work as laborers.

Luther took out the wish list he’d compiled from his roster of usual clients and studied it carefully.

Four of the older girls, between the ages of ten and twelve, were to go directly to a lovely Tudor-style house in a northern New Jersey suburb. At this most unlikely-looking brothel, they would replace four girls who were being sent to a house outside of Philadelphia, where they would be traded for four girls who would move on to D.C.

“Keep ’em moving, keep ’em confused,” he told the owners of the houses. “And keep the product fresh. Make sure there’s always something new. That’s the way to build up that repeat business.”

And when the girls reached their midteens, worn out in mind, spirit, and body?

“You just dispose of them. You can’t send them back to their families.” He’d given this speech to all of his customers at one time or another. “Look, you got a cop or two on your payroll, right? Of course you do. Now, if I were you, when the girls just don’t have it anymore, when they start losing that fight, I’d give ’em to the cops, a little reward for their loyalty. When they’re done with the girls, they can take care of them. Trust me, no one knows how to get away with murder better than a cop.”