and locked at all times. And we brought you on board to do a job, whatever job you were told to do. There is nothing nice or neat about our line of work. It is invariably messy, dirty, and ever-changing. You do deals with one devil because he’s slightly better than the next devil. If it were otherwise we wouldn’t need you. But we do need you to clean up your mess.”
“Look, they found nothing in the office, and the spyware surveillance established through Tolliver’s computer has already been severed. I don’t see what the problem is.”
“Then let me show you.” Burns clicked a button on his keyboard and spun the screen around to reveal a photo of Mace Perry. “This is the problem.”
Reiger threw up his hands in frustration. “Come on, she’s not even a cop anymore. She’s on probation. Her options are limited. She’s operating completely outside her sister’s authority. I see her as a total non-issue.”
“Really? Have you by chance read Perry’s psych evaluation?”
“Her psych evaluation?” Reiger said curiously.
Burns rose from behind his desk and limped toward them. “The psych evaluation they did on the woman when she wanted to move to undercover. It’s very interesting reading. She never gives up, Reiger. She never walks away. Her father was the U.S. attorney for D.C. I actually knew the man. He was murdered when she was twelve. She has never gotten over that. It burns in her belly with the potential explosive power of a mountain of C-4. She would rather die than be told she was wrong.”
“If you’re going to worry about someone, I think it should be the police chief. She’s a block of granite with a very big brain.”
Burns perched on the edge of his desk. “I’ve known Beth Perry for years. She is a formidable adversary. But she tends to operate within strict parameters. However, her sister does not and never will. Quite frankly, Mace Perry scares the crap out of me. And if she is allowed to screw this entire thing up, then none of us are safe.” He eyed each man with studied deliberation. “None of us. What we are doing here is right and good for the country but not something the public would approve of once they became aware of it.”
Hope said, “But she can’t even legally carry a weapon.”
Burns smacked his palm against the top of the desk. “Which begs the question of why it is so hard for us to eliminate her. Tonight at the law firm was a golden opportunity missed. I sent in a hand-picked team to get it done while you were occupied with Beth Perry, and it turned out like the Keystone Cops.”
“But if she goes down you know her sister will move heaven and earth to find out who did it,” Reiger pointed out.
Burns nodded. “It’s clear the two sisters would each die for the other.”
“See, that’s my point.”
“But I only need one of them to die. And we will help Beth Perry conclude quite clearly that it was the result of one of the many enemies her sister accumulated when she was a cop. A bullet to the head is a damn bullet to the head.”
“This is stupid whack-a-mole,” barked Reiger. “We pop one person but he or she talked to another person. Then we do that person, but turns out they sent a damn letter to someone else and we have to go after them. Where the hell does it stop, Burns?”
“Hopefully, with the intelligence sources and safety of this country still intact,” Burns said as his gaze bore into Reiger. “And watch your tone. Or did you forget the concept of chain of command?”
Reiger let his own stare burn into the man for another moment and then he looked away.
Hope sat back in his chair. “Fine. Then let’s do it the right way. We stop chasing her. We lead her down the path right to the target zone. Then we do it. Clean and quick.”
“To add some urgency to your mission, we all feel the layers of the onion being peeled away.”
“Resources?”
“You have preauthorization for the max push. You don’t have to pull the trigger. We have others who will do it. People who will fit the right description, if you get my drift.”
Reiger said, “We need to see these new orders in writing, with the proper chain of signatures before we do anything.”
Burns didn’t look pleased by this. “The elimination order was a standing one. You know that.”