“No.”
“How about you keep it that way?”
“I plan to try.” She liked this officer. He had a calming way about him. He gave her a small salute, then tapped on the door.
A nurse opened it. “Yes?”
“Is Agent Thacker up for a quick visit?” Faith held her badge aloft.
The nurse scowled but opened the door. “Five minutes. I’ll be back.” She stepped into the hall, and Faith stepped into the room.
Zane Thacker was as opposite Luke Powell as any two people could be. While Luke’s complexion leaned toward olive tones, Zane’s pale skin accentuated eyes that were the deep blue of the ocean right at the horizon, his hair was a mass of wavy dark-blond curls, and his stubble was ... red?
He gave her a confused smile. “Faith? What brings you here? I mean, I appreciate the concern for your favorite golf partner, but I didn’t realize we’d reached the point in our relationship where you’d come visit me in the hospital. Oh. Wait.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “You came to visit Luke, didn’t you? That explains it.”
Zane was a bit loopy from the anesthesia, but he didn’t have the haunted look so evident in Luke’s expression. He was confused by her presence, but not concerned.
Realization hit her hard. Zane didn’t know. And she did not want to be the one to tell him.
A soft knock on the door gave her a momentary reprieve. The woman who entered was without question the most gorgeous woman Faith had ever seen in real life. She was at least five foot ten, and as she approached, she made Faith feel every one of her five feet, five short inches. And that hair. Cascades of flowing dark-brown curls shot through with highlights that probably weren’t natural but sure looked like it.
“You must be Special Agent Malone,” she said. “Special Agent Tessa Reed.”
This was the mysterious Agent Reed. She’d been in the Raleigh office for close to a year, but their paths had yet to cross. Faith guessed that she was of Indian or Pakistani descent, but with her accent, she’d probably been raised in the South.
“Yes.” They shook hands. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, although I wish it were under different circumstances.”
Agent Reed’s eyes, upon closer inspection, were red-rimmed. She knew. With crushing certainty, Faith understood. Agent Reed had been sent to tell Zane.
Faith tried to convey her sympathies, both for what Tessa had lost and for the task that had befallen her. “I’ll come back later.”
As she exited the room, she heard Zane. “What’s going on, Tess? Why did she leave?”
Fifteen minutes later, Faith twisted the lid off a bottle of water and drank a third of it without pausing. Ugh. Water was so ... boring.
She settled into a waiting room chair and tapped her iPad, changing the notes she’d written into typed text. Reading over them, she edited as she went along. She needed to get back to the office and analyze every word of the case file on Thad Baker’s death.
There was a connection. There had to be. Three dead and two wounded US Secret Service agents in eleven weeks. All from the Raleigh RAIC.
Raleigh, North Carolina, was probably the most dangerous posting in the entire Secret Service now. How crazy was that?
Three dead agents—all of whom had already finished their protective detail and were now on the backside of their careers. The side that shouldn’t involve a great deal of risk.
The career path for a Secret Service agent was as varied as the agents themselves, but typically they spent the first phase of their career in a resident office or field office. There they worked mostly on the investigative side of things, primarily related to counterfeit currency and electronic crimes. Anytime a protectee came through the area, everything stopped in order to protect the president, vice president, foreign dignitary, or whoever else it had been determined needed Secret Service protective services. Phase 1 for most agentsran somewhere in the three-to-five-year range. Which meant Luke was a year or two away from Phase 2, and Zane ... he could go to Phase 2 at any time.
Phase 2 for an agent was the protective detail. This was what the general public thought everyone in the Secret Service did. Agents could be assigned to the presidential detail, the vice-presidential detail, or the details of their spouses, children, or other high-ranking officials. Some agents were the public face of the Secret Service. The suits, the earpieces, the “running alongside the car during the parade” agents. Some worked protective intelligence and did the legwork before, during, and after a visit to ensure all threats were chased down and neutralized before the protectee arrived. Most agents worked a protective detail for no more than five years, and then it was on to Phase 3.
By Phase 3, the agents had a decade of experience and had earned their place as the leaders of the resident and field offices where they were assigned. Some took a management path and climbed the supervisory ladder. Others took the lead on investigations and protective details whenever they arose.
All three agents who were killed had been in Phase 3. Was that significant? Or coincidence? Faith added the question to her notes.
Could the three agents have all touched the same case during their Phase 2 assignments? She’d chase down the idea, but it didn’t strike her as the most likely scenario. In big cities, especially cities like New York, the agents did protective work year-round. But in a place like Raleigh, protective details occurred far less often. The Raleigh agents spent the vast majority of their days working on electronic crimes and counterfeiting cases, so while it was possible the connection was political or based on something the agents might have seen or heard during their protective details, that didn’t strike her as the most likely angle.
Especially considering that neither Luke nor Zane had gone to Phase 2 yet.
Which pulled her attention right back to Raleigh-specific cases. She needed to see every one they’d worked on lately. Especially cases Thad Baker, Jared Smith, and Michael Weaver had been involved in.
She was going to have to get all up in the business of every single agent in the Raleigh RAIC.
