Page 1 of The Wild Card

Chapter One

The Situation

Crew

I have a routine.

Wake at five. Run three-miles through the quiet Dallas streets before the rest of the world drags itself out of bed—four if I need to outrun my own head. Home by six. Shower. Four eggs scrambled, a protein shake with almond milk.

Work, where I stop the bad guys. Or try to, anyway.

Ninety minutes in the gym after my shift ends to decompress from thinking about said bad guys all day. Home. Shower again. Eat. Bed.

Then I do the same thing the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that.

Some people would call it boring. My therapist calls it a coping mechanism, which is a polite way of saying your brain is wired differently, and this is how you keep it from shorting out.

I call it survival.

It took two years of therapy and eight months of medication adjustments to get here. Two years of learning that the way my brain works isn’t a character flaw. It’s just how I’m built. And now I’ve finally found a balance—this fragile, hard-won equilibrium that depends entirely on everything staying exactly the same.

Which is why any disruption—any crack in the foundation—sends my brain straight into free fall. Which means days like today, with rumors circulating, are the last thing I need.

The FBI field office weight room is nearly empty at six PM, most of the day shift having already headed home to their families. Their normal lives. Their golden retrievers and backyard barbecues. I’m loading plates onto the bench press when my partner Foster drops his gym bag on the floor with a thud.

“Thought you were skipping today,” he says.

“When have I ever skipped?”

“Fair point.” He stretches his shoulders, all six-foot-four of him blocking the mirror. “You’re disturbingly consistent.”

I don’t tell him that consistency is the only thing standing between me and the void. That if I start skipping workouts, I’ll start skipping other things, and then the whole carefully constructed house of cards comes toppling down.

I just grunt and finish loading the bar.

There’s a new guy at the cable machine. Josh something. Fresh out of Quantico, eager as hell, still has that shine in his eyes that says he hasn’t seen anything yet. Foster waves him over, and Josh jogs toward us like he’s been offered a puppy.

“Agent Jensen.” He practically vibrates. “It’s an honor. To meet you, I mean. Everyone talks about the Meridian takedown. The cartel bust. How you never crack under pressure.”

I stare at him.

The silence stretches. Foster does nothing to help.

“They showed your tactical assessment scores during training,” Josh continues, undeterred. “You’re like a machine.”

A machine.

The word burrows under my skin and settles in my chest. That’s what they said about me in the Army too. Right before everything went sideways. Right before I stopped being a machine and became something broken instead.

“Don’t believe everything you hear.” I keep my voice even. “Half of it’s exaggerated.”

“And the other half?”

“Classified.”

I start my first set. The familiar rhythm helps quiet the noise. Lift. Lower. Breathe. My brain wants to remind me of all the ways today could go wrong, wants to catalog every disaster waiting around every corner, but I focus on the burn in my muscles instead. The weight in my hands. Something I can control.

“So, Jensen.” Foster’s doing curls now, watching me in the mirror with that look he gets when he’s about to say something I won’t like. “Hear anything about the Anchorage position?”