Hill, resulting in the Bureau going against its own rules and reinstating the agent despite his being a convicted felon. The man had gone on to head up an FBI office in the Midwest and his career had been full of accolades and achievements.
The agent’s name was Frank Kelly and a desperate Mace had written to him from prison and explained her situation. Kelly had actually come to West Virginia to see her. He was a big, solid fellow with a no-nonsense attitude. He’d read up on her case and told her he believed her to be innocent. But while commiserating with her situation he’d been blunt. “You’re never going to get your record clean. Too many obstacles and crap in the way. Even if you do find out some stuff, proving it to the level necessary will be pretty much impossible. There will always be people aligned against you, people who don’t want to believe you. But what you can do is get back in the saddle when you get out. You go out on your dime and nerve, no cop shop backing you up, and lay your ass on the line like I did. Then you have a shot at being able to clean your record de facto, in the court of public opinion. There are no guarantees,” Kelly had added. “And I have to tell you I got real lucky. But at least this way you can control your own destiny a little. You at least have a shot. Otherwise, you’ll never be a cop again.”
“That’s all I ever asked for,” Mace had told him. “A shot.”
He’d shaken her hand and wished her luck.
That’s all I want, a shot to be a true blue again.
There were those on the police force who believed that because she was Beth Perry’s sister Mace received preferential treatment, when actually the reverse was true. Beth had gone out of her way not to show favoritism and had actually driven Mace harder than anyone else under her. Mace had earned every promotion, every commendation, and every scar, including those hidden and those in plain sight. She’d graduated from the Metropolitan Police Academy with some demerits but a far greater number of superlatives. Instructors who’d handed out these black marks also thought she was, hands down, the best police recruit to join the capital city’s thin blue line since, well, since her sister had graduated at the top of her class years earlier.
In record time she’d gone from rookie beat cop to sergeant, and then made the leap to CID, or the Criminal Investigations Division where she’d been assigned to the Homicide and Sex Offenses Branch. She’d cut her teeth on stacks of gruesome murders, sex assaults, and cases so cold the files had turned blue along with the bodies. She’d made up procedures on her own, and while she’d sometimes been dressed down for doing so, many of these same methods were now part of the investigative techniques curriculum taught at the police academy.
During her career she’d made friends because she was loyal and had never rolled on any of them even if they deserved it. And she’d made enemies that she would keep until the day she or they croaked. But Mace had also made enemies who could be convinced that they owed her. That was why she was here.
Mace parked her Ducati in front of the shop with the fancy red awning over the top of which was the name of the establishment: Citizen Soldier, Ltd.
Cute.
She tugged open the door and walked in.
Shelves lined the walls and were filled with pretty much every conceivable personal defense item on the market. Behind barred wall cabinets were shotguns, rifles, and assault weapons just waiting for itchy trigger fingers to set them free. Inside belly-button-high locked display consoles were a wide variety of auto and semi-auto pistols and old-fashioned wheel guns.
“Hey, Binder,” she called out to the man in the back near the cash register. “Still selling whack jobs SBRs built from reconfigured AR-15 pistols without getting ATF approval and paying the appropriate taxes?”
Binder wore cammie pants and a tight-fitting black muscle shirt that showed off his buffed pecs, delts, and biceps. Military boots were on his feet. They were worn down and looked like the real deal. That’s because they were, she knew. He’d pulled years in the uniform of Uncle Sam but also had some stockade time and a dishonorable discharge because of a little drug dealing on the side that