A door opened down the hall.
A man stepped out of one of the other suites—the one closest to the elevator, two doors down. Silver at the temples. Suit cut clean enough to tell you what he was before he opened his mouth. He moved with the gravity of a man who was used to other men moving out of his way.
He gave Mendez a look. Mendez stepped back like he'd been pulled.
The man stepped into the hallway. Looked at me. He had the eyes of a man who'd spent thirty years deciding which truths to bury and which to use. They were keen eyes. Patient.
"My name is Dominic Craine, Mr. Dane. I'm a deputy director at the FBI. I'd like five minutes of your time."
I broke into the biggest grin I had.
"Deputy Director. Why didn't you say so in the first place?" I reached one arm through the gap and clapped Mendez on the shoulder, friendly as a lab. "Buddy, you're burying the lede. You don't open withFBIwith a guy at six in the morning. You open with the title. That's how you get him to come over."
Mendez did not look amused.
"Five minutes," I said to Craine. "Give me long enough to get cleaned up and find some pants and I'll come over. Your suite?"
"Two doors down."
"On my way."
I closed the door.
I leaned my back against it and looked at the ceiling.
The smart thing to do was call Grant.
That's what a normal man would do.Big brother, the FBI just knocked on my door at six in the morning, what is happening, who is this guy, what do I say.That was the move. Read me in, brief me, give me my talking points. That was how families with lawyers handled this kind of thing.
I wasn't a normal man.
I was a guy who got dropped into rooms without briefings for a living. I was a guy whose entire professional value sat in the gap betweenhere is the situationandhere is what Tommy Dane decides to do about it.A wizard in chaos, my first sergeant had once called me, and I'd liked that enough to let it stick. Wizards in chaos didn't call their big brothers from hotel suites. They put on pants.
I dressed fast. Jeans. T-shirt. Boots. I tucked the pistol in the small of my back, untucked the shirt over it, ran a hand through my hair, and was out the door in under two minutes.
I knocked on Craine's suite. Mendez opened it.
"Special Agent." I patted his shoulder again, lightly, on my way past. "Tell your barber I said good work."
The suite was the same layout as mine, mirrored. Craine had repurposed the sitting area into something that looked like a hotel-room version of his office—a leather portfolio on the coffee table, a phone, a cup of coffee on a saucer.
Just one cup of coffee.
He didn't offer.
He gestured to the chair across from him. I sat.
"Wait outside, Mendez," he said.
The door clicked shut.
Craine took a sip of his coffee. Took his time about it. The kind of pause that was supposed to make me nervous. I crossed an ankle over my knee and waited it out.
"What's it you want, Mr. Craine?"
He nodded slightly, the approving nod of a man whose witness had asked the question he'd wanted asked.
"I'll keep it brief, Mr. Dane. Your family is under federal investigation. Specifically, your brothers. Wyatt and Grant Dane."
