home. A nice and friendly smile. Always joking. He’d been in the Army before joining the FBI at the age of thirty. Griff, on the other hand, was what she called career-FBI. A rarity, like her. Joining straight out of grad school. Minimum age to join the Bureau was twenty-three, but most joined around thirty. The max age to become an agent was thirty-seven.
Griff was harder around the edges than Dean. Guarded. Not prepared to accept Ana as a new member on the team, given the loss of the man she replaced, as well as the manner in which he died—kidnapped, tortured, and brutally murdered. She wasn’t looking to fill someone’s shoes, or to get overly friendly with anyone in the unit, but she understood the hesitation by a few on her task force to welcome her with open arms.
Halle, who sat across from her, had been a bit cautious toward her when Ana first joined, but she’d started to open up within the last few weeks or so.
Halle was also the only other female on the team. The Bureau was doing its best to become more diverse, but the men-to-women ratio was still skewed toward men.
A smile played across Halle’s lips, her way of saying good morning to Ana. Halle resembled the actress who, ironically, shared the same first name with her. Well, back when the movie star was in her thirties with shorter hair. Dean, of course, had nicknamed her Hollywood because of it.
Hollywood. Red. Yeah, Dean wasn’t very original even though he worked for an elite task force to help bring down spies. But when it came to UC work or dealing with sources, Dean had proven himself highly capable.
The other three team members at the table were studying the chicken scratch notes they’d taken over the weekend during the brainstorming sessions to determine “what the fuck” went wrong, as Griff had so eloquently put it. It’d been his mantra since Friday, sounding like a broken record over the weekend.
Their unit chief, Gray, entered the room a moment later, and Ana was grateful she’d arrived before him. Tom Gray was basically every screenwriter’s vision when creating his type of character for TV.
Gray wore a crisp black suit and navy tie. He switched back and forth between what Dean joked as democrat blue and republican red. From what Ana could tell, Gray did his best to act politically neutral, which was her preference as well, especially now that she was in the beating heart of the nation, the nerve center of the country where there was a political tug-of-war going on, even with the newly elected President Bennett.
Knox’s dad.
Knox is A.J.’s teammate.
And here I am thinking about that man again when I shouldn’t be. Repeatedly listening to his voicemail wasn’t going to help get A.J. out of her head, either. Maybe if she deleted the message, the distraction would disappear?
Gray’s lips twitched, barely noticeable beneath his thick, black mustache. “Deputy Winters will be here shortly with an agent joining the unit on special assignment.”
Special assignment? Kyle’s words replayed in her mind from Saturday. Double shit.
“Let’s recap before Deputy Winters gets here.” Gray unbuttoned his jacket and worked his hands into the pockets of his slacks.
Ana much preferred Deputy Assistant Director Winters to Director Mendez. Mendez, who’d stayed on after Bennett won the election last November, wasn’t Ana’s biggest fan. The only reason the man even knew of her existence was because she worked with him on the attempted assassination case during the election last year. She’d also teamed up with Scott & Scott Securities, per Bennett’s direction, and Mendez had blown a fuse at the idea of working with them.
“An accountant cooking books for an Albanian criminal organization in Boston has disappeared. Some of the money he was laundering went to acquire tech to help build dirty bombs for Hamas,” Dean spoke up. “We haven’t been able to reach him since Wednesday. Voicemail box full. We sent agents to the address where he lives, and no one was there.”
The Albanians could’ve killed him for any number of reasons, right? Made an accounting mistake? she rationalized.
“A research scientist we’d turned, who’d been stealing proprietary secrets and selling them to the Chinese, is missing as well,” Halle began. “We’ve been trying to contact him since Friday morning.”
Maybe the scientist left? Abandoned his agreement with the FBI. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened.
It was Ana’s turn to share what Gray already knew but wanted to hear again like they