All three had their coats undone over the telltale lumps and wrinkles of concealed pistols. I thought I’d seen damn near every variation and rip-off of this group that existed, but never one headed by a grand-old-lady type before.

The disconnect between the woman’s appearance and her energy bugged me—not to mention the gun. I didn’t bother asking if I could help them and stayed put behind my desk where my own pistol and the panic button on the alarm were a handbreadth away.

“Are you Harper Blaine?” the woman asked. Her tone was bored, as if she really didn’t need my answer but she would stick to the form.

I didn’t see a point in skirmishing over it. I gave her a bland look back as her attack dogs stationed themselves on each side of my door. “Yes, I am. And who are you?”

She didn’t carry a purse, so she brought a leather ID folder from her coat pocket. She flipped the folder open, saying, “I’m Fern Laguire. I’m with the NSA.” She closed the distance between the door and the desk and stood so close she loomed over me as if it was just an accident of my cramped office space.

Then she flapped the folder closed before I could read it properly. I’d done that a few times myself, so I looked up at her and put out my hand.

“May I see that again, please—a bit slower? I don’t speed-read.”

Laguire clucked her tongue and showed me the ID again, not releasing the folder but just holding it open in front of me, as if I was kid with ADD and she a harried teacher. She did seem a little teacherlike, in a smile-and-yardstick sort of way, but I noticed she narrowed her eyes as she held the folder for me. The washed-blue irises gleamed like ice chips.

The ID wasn’t helpful. It did have her name and the agency name, seal—an eagle standing on a key—and office address in Maryland, but it didn’t have any indication of rank or deployment beyond the words “Field Liaison.” She could have been a secretary or the director for all the card said, though I guessed she was probably as close to an actual spook as “No Such Agency” had. The great mystery of intelligence agencies: a cryptology unit with more tentacles than a school of squid and more pull than anyone wants to admit. I’d have bet even money that the backup were on loan from the CIA or FBI because they certainly didn’t look like mathematicians or computer geeks.

I let the card go and Laguire flipped it closed, dropping it back into her pocket. Her New England schoolmarm personality seemed a perversely appropriate choice for an NSA field operative, but it didn’t really go with the glacial eyes and the disturbing energy cloud around her—the effect was creepy, like seeing your grandmother whip out a flick knife and dispatch the cat for spitting up a hairball.

“I don’t do wiretaps or foreign data transmissions,” I said, “so I doubt I’m going to be much use to you.”

“We’re not interested in you, dear. Not in any professional capacity, at least,”

Laguire replied. “We want James Jason Purlis.”

“Who?” I wasn’t faking ignorance; I’d never heard the name before in my life.

Her voice was soft and refined, but it left a hard wake in the Grey that would have caused most people to toe her line. “Oh, but you do know him, Ms. Blaine. You were in his company yesterday. Caucasian, brown hair, brown eyes, thirty-five years old.”

I’d been in a lot of people’s company Sunday and about half answered that description. “You have a photo?” I asked.

Laguire pulled a five-by-seven black-and-white from her pocket and put it on my desk, pushing it across the blotter to me with both index fingers. It was a blowup of an ID photo, grainy and bland. Judging by the clothes, it was about ten years old. The young man in the photo was a generic white-bread nerd—as if he’d tried to be unmemorable—short hair, clean shaven, overweight, slightly sullen or just bored. Aside from everyone else, I’d talked to Fish, Quinton, and the Danzigers, as well as a few waitstaff, librarians, and a gas station attendant yesterday, and many of them could have been the man in that photo, given different hair, weight, glasses, whatever. I knew who she wanted, but I wasn’t going to turn.

I shoved the photo back across my desk. “I spent all day tracking witnesses and evidence for investigations and for cases going to trial. I spent a lot of that time with some homeless people who don’t exactly hand over their business cards, and the rest of it in a glorified trash dump. Which one of the hundred or so people I talked to or stood next to do you think I should recognize from that picture?”

“Only JJ. Purlis. He went to ground years ago and we’ve been waiting patiently for him to show up on our radar ever since. Yesterday he did. Now he’s vanished again, but you were ID’ed and here you are.” She seemed to imply I soon might not be.

“Who told you I was with this Purlis, and where?” I asked. “You give me a clue and I might give you your man.”

She shook her head with a disappointed smile. “I won’t name our source. That would be ill-advised. Purlis is a danger to national security and to the health and safety of people like you. He has knowledge, skills, and the mind to cause harm. You have a duty to turn him over.”

“You make this guy sound like a terrorist,” I said, flipping my hand to dismiss her drama.

“As information is the real source of power and since crypto systems are now defined as matériel, he well could be. I imagine you think you’re protecting a witness or an informant, but all you are doing is standing between us and a fugitive.”

“Fugitives are the purview of the federal marshals’ office and law enforcement. Not Fort Meade’s carnivores.”

A palpable hit. Laguires mouth tightened at the reference, but her voice stayed calm, if a bit chillier. “Mr. Purlis is our asset. We will reacquire him. You will not stand in our way.” She leaned in a little. “I don’t need to play games with you. I can get what I want other ways, but you won’t like them, Ms. Blaine. It’s very simple. All I want is Purlis’s location.”

I stood up and Laguire had to tilt her head up to meet my scrutiny. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t want to step back and even the distance—it might look like retreat. “I don’t have your mystery man’s location, Ms. Laguire. I don’t know a J.J. Purlis and your photo is worthless. You can—”

My suggestion was cut off by my cell phone—lucky for both of us.

“Excuse me. I need to answer my phone, but since the nature of my work is confidential, I’m sure you understand my asking you and your associates to leave now.” Then I shut up and gazed at her without blinking or hostility, just blank and expectant.

Her smoky aura flared with frustrated explosions of orange and red, but she laid her card on my desk, turned silently on her heel, and strode out of my office.

Her bodyguards followed her.

It was possible she’d left a bug or had some kind of tap on my cell phone or something, but I doubted she’d set up any such thing. If she’d caught a latenight flight, she’d have been on me, I agreed I’d be seeing him and paged Quinton. Then I went out to find a noisy place to grab some lunch I could wolf down in twenty minutes. The drive to Montlake was usually fifteen minutes from my office, but it sounded like a long day ahead and I both needed food and wanted to minimize Laguire’s chance of picking up any of my conversations. Some things are worthy of paranoia, and she and her agency gave me the chills.

My phone rang again as I was crossing the Square. In the frosted cold, the area was mostly deserted except for the snow drifts and ghosts, and I glanced around for any sign of surveillance or monitoring. Not even the phantoms were interested in me.

Spotting nothing, I still answered the phone in a sharp bark unlike my usual tone. “Blaine.”

There was a pause. “Um, this is your alarm company,” Quinton said. “You left a message for us to return your call…”