"Real badges?"
"Real badges. Real jackets. Best read we have is that someone inside the Bureau is moving credentials to private operators on contract."
"Rogue?"
"Rogue."
"Where are my brothers now?"
"Off the board. They'll surface when it’s safe."
I didn't push it. I'd worked with men who saidoff the boardthe way Lucas said it, and the men who said it that way had earned it.
"Craine?"
He winced. The smallest one. Recovery, immediate.
"Craine's a wrinkle. We don't have his motive yet. We don't know how dirty he is on the spectrum. Could be legit. Could be opportunist. Could be both."
"He came to my hotel suite this morning."
"I heard."
"You let him?"
A flicker. He weighed it. Decided to give me the answer.
"Yeah."
"All right."
"We had a team a floor below. If it had moved an inch toward bad, we'd have been in your hallway in five seconds. We needed to see what he opened with. We got it."
"He opened with friendly. Tried Plan B halfway through. Settled for warning me out of town."
"That's about what we expected."
"How deep do you think it goes?"
He took his time. Looked at his glass. Looked at me.
"If a deputy director of the FBI is making house calls on a guy he's never met, in a hotel he didn't book, in a city he doesn’t own," he said, "the shit goes pretty deep."
It was the right answer. The honest one. The kind a man gave when he'd decided to be useful instead of impressive. I drank to it.
"What do we do?"
"You stay close. Dominion Hall's safe. Palmetto Rose is safe—we own it. Either bed has your name on it tonight. Your call. Past that, we work."
"You let him get to me on purpose?"
"We let him try. He didn't get to you."
"Mm."
"Did he?"
"No."
