The embassy was right in the heart of a neighborhood, with alleys snaking behind the back wall of the compound. It made me cringe wondering how easy it would be to obliterate, but my mission was in the Internet café tucked next to the east wall, underneath a bar called, appropriately enough, the American Bar.

It was going to be hard keeping surveillance on Rashid, because the embassy had traded standoff distance for uniformed officers of Albania. They were everywhere.

But clearly, that wasn’t why Jennifer had dragged Knuckles to my room. She had something more important in mind.

She said, “I went through the Taskforce reports.”

I countered, “Are Shoshana and Aaron back yet? I need some input on bumper locations. And we need to develop a schedule. We’re easy, but they’re going to get smoked doing a fifty-fifty stakeout.”

Jennifer crossed her arms and gave me the death stare, knowing I was trying to get her off whatever subject was coming. Knuckles said, “They haven’t come back. I think you should hear Jennifer out. She’s on to something.”

Jennifer gave him a grateful nod, and, because he couldn’t stand to back her up with me in the room, he said, “I mean, she appears to be thinking with something other than her dick.” He glanced at the connecting door and said, “Unlike you. Although, after that last punch, I’m not so sure she isn’t hiding a penis.”

She whirled to him, shouting, “Do you constantly have to fight me because I’m female? Do I threaten you that much?”

The tone of her voice broke me away from my computer. Only half listening earlier, I was all ears now. It was beyond sharp. She’d always been good-natured about the ribbing before, but today, she was out for blood.

I saw Knuckles with a look of shock on his face, his hands in the air. He said, “Whoa, whoa . . . calm down. Jesus, Jennifer, what’s up with you lately?”

She stopped and glared at him, but I could see the embarrassment coming through at her outburst.

I said, “Hey.”

She flicked her eyes to me.

“What is up with you?”

She stomped away, getting a bottle of water from the small desk below the television. She unscrewed the cap, then sat down. She said, “You guys have been second-guessing me since al-Britani was killed. I had nothing to do with that. I am not Shoshana.”

And I saw what was happening. It wasn’t us second-guessing. It was her. Which made all the difference.

51

Nobody blamed Jennifer for what had happened. Every single one of us had been in her shoes at one time or another and made a decision that had ended badly. We’d dealt with it by talking to the team, and she felt she couldn’t, because she believed she was unique. A female. She regretted the outcome of the mission in Jordan and was internalizing it.

I leaned forward, the team leader wanting to say something profound and uplifting, but before I could, Knuckles took a different tack.

He spit fire at her.

“Are you shitting me? Cut that crybaby crap. Is that why you’ve been acting like you’re on your period? Fuck, girl, I was almost good to go with a female on the team. Now I have to deal with this hormonal bullshit?”

Her eyes flew open at his words. She leapt to her feet, fists clenched. He stood firm and said, “What? You want a piece of this? Bring it on. I’m sick of Pike protecting you all the time.”

He looked at me, and I gave a slight nod, letting him know I was good with it. Showing him I understood where he was going.

He advanced on her and said, “You think you made a bad call, and you very well might have, but we all do. We all do. You want to talk about it, I’m all ears, but spare me the song and dance that I don’t trust you anymore.”

I saw confusion, then suspicion. She said, “You don’t mean that.”

He smiled, looked at me, and said, “You want to tell her about Sudan?”

I said, “No. I’d rather leave that fuckup in the classified dictionary of what not to do.”

He returned to her and said, “That’s my dictionary, by the way. You want to tell lover boy here what you found? Or just keep pining away because you don’t actually have a penis?”

Her face grew red at the insults, stiffening her will to resist. I halfway stood, knowing what was about to happen, because she was one bullheaded woman . . . person . . . whatever.

Then I saw her reflect on what he’d said. Like in Nairobi, she realized he was actually patting her on the back and giving her an out.

She sat back into the chair and said, “I don’t need to know what he screwed up. I see it on a daily basis.”

Knuckles grinned and said, “Offer still stands. You want to talk about what happened in Jordan, I’m willing to listen. But I’d hate to waste Pike’s time, since his attention span is so short. Show him what you have.”

She opened her purse, withdrawing some computer printouts.

I said, “Okay, what the hell is the big deal? We have an operation starting tomorrow, and I have a couple of loony Israelis to deal with. Conspiracy theories are taking a backseat.”

The next words out of her mouth made me second-guess who was loony.

“Pike, I read through all of the reports on Hussein, both open-source, and our own analysis. They missed something. The Lost Boys are real, and I think they’re on the hunt.”

I rolled my eyes and said, “We don’t have time for this shit. We have a mission. Feed your suspicions into the system. We take orders. We don’t make them.”

She pursed her lips, glancing at Knuckles for backup. He said, “That’s it? That’s all you got?”

I returned to my computer, mapping out my surveillance strategy. Jennifer pushed the lid down, causing a spike of anger in me. She held a finger to my lips and said, “Hussein recruited the Lost Boys. I don’t know why, but he did. Hear me out.”

I started to bark at her and Knuckles leaned in. “For once, assume you’re not the smartest in the room.”

I gritted my teeth for a moment, then spit out, “Well?”

Jennifer said, “Remember the video? Of the guy saying he was doing it for the White House?”

I nodded. She placed a digital recorder on the table. “This is the last thing Hussein said before he died.”

Hussein’s disembodied voice floated in the room, chilling because we knew it was real. And he was dead.

“It’s because of the white house. I never wanted to go there. Nobody wanted to go there. They did this. Ask Jacob. He’ll tell you about the white house.”

We sat in silence for a moment, then Jennifer said, “That’s been pinging in my head for days, because it just didn’t make any sense. His final words didn’t match what the Taskforce assessed about the Lost Boys. So I asked you for the reports.”

She laid an official Taskforce transcript in front of me.

“Hussein was incarcerated at a Christian reform school in Florida. The one that’s now closed down. Remember you told me that? Well, the chief reason it was shuttered was because of horrific abuse, and that cruelty was primarily conducted in a building on the center of the campus. Called the ‘white house.’ They weren’t talking about attacking America on that video. They were talking about something they’d all experienced. Together.”

She let that sink in, then continued, “The murder of the guard that drew the attention to the place occurred during a breakout. Three men escaped. Three. They disappeared without a trace.”

I went from her to Knuckles. “And?”

She slapped a cushion and said, “And they’re the damn Lost Boys! The ones in the video. One of the boys who escaped is named Jacob, for God’s sake. They’re tied to Hussein. It isn’t just a nickname given by the Islamic State. It’s a group, and they’re working together.”