Fletcher and Hart took off. Sam was right behind them, up and running hard. The smell of gas reached her nostrils as she skidded to a stop next to the car. She saw someone bolt from the passenger seat. Hart saw him, too, took off running after him.

Fletcher shouted at her to get back and yanked the driver from the car. The man flopped from the driver’s seat onto the pavement. She heard the shouts and screams of the people around, blocked it all out.

The driver’s head was ruined. He’d taken one of their bullets to the back of his skull, but he wasn’t dead yet. She pushed Fletcher to the side, pressed her fingers into the man’s neck, felt the feeble pulse starting to skip. There was nothing to be done, nothing at least that she could do. The bullet had decimated his brain; his heart was just waiting for its last signal to stop pumping.

Fletcher was rolling the body, slapping the man’s pockets, looking for ID and other weapons, getting blood on the pavement and his pants. There was brass all over the car, and thick red blood, and Sam sighed heavily as the man died with her hand on his neck.

She sat down on the curb. Her knees and her palms were skinned from landing hard on the concrete sidewalk. Fletcher saw her, his face filled with concern, and more—anger, frustration, an almost feral gleam from the adrenaline she knew was punching through his system. Killing was hard, but the first rush was impossible to avoid. It was the power of taking a life, of being the stronger creature, that drove the limbic system into overdrive. It didn’t care about morality, it simply was.

He shook himself a little, trying to get back to normal. “Are you okay? You’re not hit?”

She shook her head. “He’s gone,” she said unnecessarily, gesturing to the man at her feet.

The adrenaline was fleeting, and now Fletcher was starting to freak out. Sam didn’t blame him a bit. She was feeling quite rattled herself.

“Holy shit, holy shit. Do you know who it is?” He wasn’t asking, he wasn’t looking at the body. He was walking in circles, letting his body and mind get back onto the same plane.

Hart came back, panting, shaking his head, talking a mile a minute. “He got away. Bastard got away. I lost him in the crowd on M Street. What the hell was that about? Who’d we shoot?”

He grabbed the wallet Fletcher had stripped from the pants pocket, opened it. “Jesus, he’s one of ours.”

Sam nodded. She’d recognized the man from their meeting earlier in the day. As she’d stood over him, a finger on his erratic pulse, her mind tried to reconcile the situation—an ally turned enemy. And there was going to be hell to pay.

The man who’d tried to kill them was Jason Kruger, head of the Africa desk, from the State Department.

And now they had to figure out who had been in the car with him.

* * *

Sam watched Kruger’s body being loaded into the blue morgue van. The sun was setting in earnest, night coming on fast. The lights of Foggy Bottom were ringed in haze, leftover precipitation from the afternoon rains. Small wisps of fog drifted up from the Potomac, and Sam listened to the conversation taking place beside her with half an ear.

She’d just received a text from Daniels. He was in Robin Souleyret’s world; they were crashing her email. He hadn’t found anything yet, but he’d only gotten started five minutes earlier. She texted him back an OK, then tuned in to Fletcher and Hart’s hushed tête-à-tête.

“It was a man who fled the scene, right, Lonnie? I wasn’t imaging that?”

“Looked like a dude to me. Moved like one, too. Big, wearing a baseball cap. Yes, I’m pretty sure it was a guy. Why?”

“Just wanted to be sure we weren’t dealing with Robin Souleyret face-to-face. We keep finding evidence that points in her direction.”

“Media’s here. You want to make a statement?” Hart asked.

Fletcher shook his head. “Hell, no. What I want is to get in Regina Girabaldi’s face, find out what the fuck her acolyte was doing shooting at us.”

Sam saw a large black man making his way toward them, and pointed him out to Fletcher. “Isn’t that your big boss?”

Fletcher groaned slightly, stood to meet the man. “Chief, I can explain—”

Fred Roosevelt, the D.C. chief of police, held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. There are cameras and reporters thick as lice on the street behind me, and who knows who’s managed to point a boom mike in our direction.”

Fletcher nodded. “I’ll save it, then. You’re up to speed?”

“I am. You’re all okay?”

“We are.”

Roosevelt glanced over his shoulder. Sam saw a reporter staring their way. He didn’t mince words. “Captain Armstrong’s here. He’s going to have to take your guns. Let’s do that quietly, inside, with a crime scene tech. Then you and Hart need to go home.”

“Sir, I can’t—”

Roosevelt shook his head. “Not now, and not here. Go surrender your weapon, then go home. You’re off the case, effective immediately. We’ll hand it over to Woolrich—he’ll do it right.”

Fletcher nodded, red-faced, swallowing down his anger, and turned, signaling to Hart. There was no fighting this; it was how things had to be. There were some protocols even Fletcher couldn’t outmaneuver.

Roosevelt turned his attention to Sam. He gave her a long, lingering, thoughtful look. She knew he had never liked her, not since he was the captain running Homicide and Fletcher and Hart got involved in a shooting trying to protect her. She’d just moved to D.C.; she barely knew any of them. Hart hadn’t even held it against her, and he was the one who’d been shot. Roosevelt always had it in for her after that. The higher he rose on the food chain, the more difficult it became. She knew Fletcher had been shielding her from Roosevelt’s animosity, but there were no barriers to entry now.

His eyes were appraising and unfriendly. “Trouble follows you, doesn’t it, lady?”

She squared her shoulders. “We—”

He bent closer, voice low. “Get off my scene. You may have Lieutenant Fletcher wound around your little finger, but you’re going to end his career one of these days, whether you mean to or not. I’d prefer you not end it with a bullet. Now, go play with your FBI friends and leave my boys alone. You hear me?”

She opened her mouth to retort, then closed it. He was right. Any time she got involved, things went from bad to worse. Instead, she decided to play it cool. She nodded, turned and started to walk away. There were muffled words, then she clearly heard him mutter, “Bitch,” under his breath.

She turned around and stepped to his side.

“That is entirely uncalled for. Fletcher originally brought me into this case, yes, but I was assigned to work it by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I don’t care if you have a problem with me. I intend to help Lieutenant Fletcher and Detective Hart solve this case, and finish it, whether you want me involved or not. As a matter of fact, Chief Roosevelt, the FBI should probably take over the investigation from here. I’ll send a liaison with official instructions.”

His mouth dropped open. “You can’t do that. This is my case, my jurisdiction.”

“I can’t take you over, no, but I am already conducting an investigation, and I am going to make an official request for jurisdiction. I’m a federal officer, and I’ve been shot at. The suspect in question is a government official. This should be our case, and I’m going to make sure it is. You’re welcome to continue working it—your team is a great asset. But the FBI is officially in the mix.” She gave him a smile. “Now you can call me a bitch to my face, because I’ve earned it.”

His eyes bugged out and a vein popped up in his forehead. He started to sputter, but before he had a chance to form words, she went up the stairs toward Fletcher, who was staring at her narrow-eyed. She didn’t bother to look back.

“What was that all about?” he asked.