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  Jack held the bartender in front of him as a shield and Jose fired again, the round going into the bartender’s chest as Jack blocked and parried the woman’s blows. She was screaming with each blow, her form perfect as she thrust lightning fast kick after kick.

  Jack let go of the bartender and brushed aside a kick as he spun heel first into the woman’s leg, a bit of bone forcing its way out of the back of her knee.

  She crumpled to the ground, and Jack lifted the bartender and pushed him into Jose as he sprinted behind him and got ahold of Jose’s firing arm. He twisted the gun upward while Jose’s finger was still in the trigger guard. The finger broke, nearly tearing away from the hand. Jose screamed and Jack thrust his palm into his chin, causing him to fly back into the wall as the woman was on her feet.

  She went to the desk and pulled out a machete. She screamed like a banshee as she hobbled toward him, dragging her useless leg behind her, swinging wildly with the blade, missing him by inches. He brushed the blade aside and punched her throat before hooking into her jaw and thrusting the fingers of his other hand into her eye. Her head snapped back and he stomped on the instep of her foot, breaking it and holding her in place. Jack punched her again and again with short, quick rabbit punches until her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed. He turned and looked at his partner, who had pulled out the revolver he kept in a holster on his ankle. The gun he had walked in with had flown out of his hand and lay on the floor between them.

  “Money?” Jack said. “You did this for money?”

  “You’re rich, Jack. Money doesn’t mean to you what it does to the rest of us. I wasn’t born into wealth so I gotta scrape and fight for every penny. How much you worth, Jack? A hundred million? Two? Three? Do you even know how much money you have?”

  “You’ve betrayed everything we’ve ever done. Everything we bled for.”

  “What have we bled for?” Jose said, his voice rising. “Getting some meth and pot off the streets? Who gives a shit, Jack? Every junkie in every city in America knows where to score. We bust one distributor and ten more come up to take his place. What we do doesn’t matter. I can’t believe you’ve never seen that.”

  “You’re coming back with me,” Jack said. “You’re coming back with me and you’re turning yourself in. I’m not looking courts and jail, Jose. But you can’t carry a badge anymore.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, lifting the revolver.

  “It doesn’t need to end like this.”

  “We’re useless, Jack. We’re cogs in a system that’s trying to outlaw something that people want. It’s never worked. It can’t work. One day all the drugs anybody wants are going to be legal and they’ll look back and laugh at us, Jack. They’ll look at us like they look at Prohibition agents. They’ll laugh.”

  “Who cares if they laugh? It’s our job.”

  “Not anymore it’s not.” He aimed the revolver at Jack’s head.

  “No, please. Don’t do this.”

  “Goodbye, Jack.”

  “Jose, no. No!”

  The revolver fired but Jack wasn’t in front of it anymore. He was rolling on the ground toward the 9mm lying five feet away from him. He rolled over the weapon, picking it up with his right hand and fired before he had even straightened out. He came up on one knee, the weapon in front of him aimed at Jose’s heart.

  Jose didn’t move. He looked at Jack, a slight smile on his lips as the small trail of blood flowed out of the hole in his forehead and down his nose, dripping onto the floor. He fell to his knees and then forward onto his face.

  Jack checked the man’s pulse though he already knew it was too late. He tucked the gun away and stood, looking at the drugs and cash piled on the desk. With the gold lighter on the desk next to a package of imported cigarettes Jack lit the bills on fire. The flames quickly devoured the money and the gym bag and spread to the wooden desk and carpet.

  Jack lifted his partner as flames engulfed the room. He walked him out and up the stairs leading outside.

  The bar’s patrons stayed where they were but looked at him and the body he was carrying. “This place is going to burn down,” he said. “Este lugar se va a quemar.” The men snapped out of their stupors and collected their beers before running outside. Jack followed when they were all out.

  He found a spot a few dozen feet away from the bar and dug a hole with his hands in the soft dirt. It was only a foot or so deep but he got it wide and placed Jose’s body inside. He covered him with dirt as he looked over and saw the flames licking the walls of the bar, sliding up to the roof. The bureau would never learn of his betrayal. He’d be given the honors of a fallen hero and his family wouldn’t know any different. Jack owed him at least that.

  He got into his car, and drove off, glancing only once in his rearview to see the bar was now nothing more than a pillar of smoke and fire.

  CHAPTER 2

  Jack Kane sat in the waiting room just outside the Administrator for Special Operations’ Office at the Drug Enforcement Agency’s bureau in Washington, DC. The office was plush but the furniture’s imitation leather had been marked up by a pen or pencil; something a child might do. The secretary was an older woman who spoke to Jack like he was her employee. Every time he was here, she would make him wait longer that was actually necessary. He thought it was because he once knocked over a wand she had on her desk. Some memento from a Harry Potter convention.

  After a half hour she told him the administrator was ready for him.

  Behind his desk, Mathew Kolburg laughed on the phone. Jack sat down across from him and waited patiently until he finished speaking.

  “Yeah,” Kolburg laughed, “yeah I knew she was good to go. No she came over once when I threw that pool party. Katherine nearly shit herself when she found out. Yeah…” He looked up at Jack like he was just noticing him. “I got someone here. Lemme call you back in a minute…uh huh…uh huh…okay, just gimme five. All right, bye.” Kolburg hung up and leaned back in his seat.

  “Special Agent Kane, it’s good to see you back. That was some fine work south of the border.”

  Jack couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. “Are you being serious, Matt?”

  “Hell yes I’m being serious. That sonofabitch Emilio was smuggling anything he could get his hands on and his network was growing. Taking him out saved us some serious headache.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Yeah,” he said unconvincingly.

  “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t come here to discuss that. I came to tell you I quit.”

  Kolburg leaned forward now, the grin gone from him face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m not going to be doing this anymore. I quit, Matt.”

  “You can’t quit. You know how much training and expense goes into a covert operative? We need you here. Besides, you’ve been doing this too long. You wouldn’t know what to do in polite society anymore.”

  “So I hang with gangsters and now I’m a gangster, is that it?”

  “You’re twisting my words.”

  “No, I don’t think so. But like I said, it doesn’t matter. I’ve made up my mind.”

  Panic gripped Kolburg’s face. “Jack, we’re making progress.”

  “Progress? Progress for what? Busting cancer patients at medicinal marijuana clinics? Arresting drug dealers that the Mexican government lets free the next day? If this is a war, Matt, we’re losing. We may have already lost.”

  Kolburg slammed his fist into the desk. “You sonofabitch, you can’t quit! You’ll never work here again, you hear me? You think ‘cause you’re rich, the world owes you something, Kane? The world don’t owe you anything.”

  Jack stood up. “Take care of yourself.”

  As he walked out of the office, he heard a string of profanities behind him. The secretary looked at him but didn’t say anything as he walked up to her desk. He stared down at her and she swallowed hard, seeing the malicious grin he had on his face.r />
  Jack reached down and took the wand off her desk. He snapped it in half and then calmly placed it back on the desk before walking out of the building.

  CHAPTER 3

  William Yates pulled up in his Lincoln and parked just outside the yellow police tape. He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror and noticed the gray on his temples. He was old enough now that he was feeling the tug of the way things used to be.

  The bank appeared normal from the outside and it always struck him how routine a place could look after going through something evil. He thought that somehow its appearance should change too.

  He stepped out of the cruiser and walked over. A uniformed officer stood there, keeping the crowd of onlookers at bay, and he nodded to William as he ducked under the tape.

  “Morning, Detective,” the officer said.

  “Morning.”

  William walked around toward the entrance. When he got there, he froze. What he saw reminded him of a war zone, something you’d see in a market in Iraq or Afghanistan after a suicide bombing. Police cruisers were smashed and overturned. The body of one of their own lay on the pavement of the parking lot, his head crushed to a pulp. Bits of displaced pavement surrounded everything.

  He walked to the front and nodded to some of the other officers before entering the bank. The first thing he noticed was that the doorway had been bent on the sides, as if a car had driven through the entrance.

  William’s partner, Heather Glazer, was speaking to a man that appeared to be management. He held a paper cup filled with water and his hand shook so badly water was spilling out onto the floor. William came up next to them but didn’t say anything.

  “Agamemnon,” the banker said, “that’s what he said his name was. Agamemnon.”

  “You’re sure?” Heather said.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. You don’t forget someone like him.”

  “Thank you for time, Mr. Norton. Please have a seat. You’ll be released shortly.”

  The man nodded and walked away, glancing once to William.

  “Agamemnon, huh?” William said. “That’s cute.”

  “I think you better watch the footage, Will.”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  In the back room, William saw some forensic techs making copies of the surveillance videos on a portable digital recorder.

  “Show him,” Heather said.

  William stood behind everyone else and looked around the room as they cued the video. The room was bare except for a desk, a chair, and a computer. There were no decorations.

  “Here it is,” one of the techs said.

  William watched the monitor. Though it was in black and white, the picture was clear. It opened to the bank going about the business that a bank does. Customers waited in line, bankers in the side offices gabbed into phones, tellers concentrated on counting out cash.

  And then, the screen went gray.

  “What happened?” William said.

  “That’s not the video,” the tech said, “that’s smoke.”

  It took nearly two minutes to clear and every once in a while small, bright flashes would cut through the haze. Gunfire.

  Once the smoke cleared William could see several men running around the bank, neutralizing everyone inside and gathering them together. The men were dressed in regular clothing and had dreadlocks. Myrs, William guessed. One of the most violent gangs in the city. But they weren’t into bank robberies; they were into selling dope. What were they doing here?

  “This is it,” Heather said.

  The doors bent as a figure walked through them. It didn’t register to William that it was human. But as it came into view, William could see the eyes and the nose, though the jaw was covered by a hunk of metal that would flash intermittently. The muscles were enormous, almost comical. But the metal suit caught his attention above everything else. It looked solid, like a steel door, but it moved with the figure. It was flexible. William had never seen a metal capable of doing that.

  “What the hell is that?” William mumbled.

  Heather shook her head. “Whatever it is, I think we’re going to need more men.”

  William flinched as the man broke the neck of a teller and flung the body on the floor like a wet towel. The figure then went outside where the cameras didn’t have a good view, but at one point he could see a police cruiser flipping over and over until it was out of the frame.

  The video ended and William asked to watch it again. He pushed past Heather and stood no more than a couple of feet from the monitor as he watched the figure terrorize and kill. When it was over, he stood up straight and shook his head.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Terrorist groups?” Heather asked.

  “Don’t even say that. Just mentioning it will make Homeland Security appear, and the last thing I need are a bunch of arrogant pricks running around messing with my witnesses and crime scene. But I don’t think that’s what this is. They would’ve tried to kill everyone. And they usually don’t care about the money. It’s a statement with them. This ain’t a statement.”

  Heather took a deep breath. “Well, we better start talking to everybody. Looks like an even split. You want the men?”

  “Sure. And I saw a news chopper up there. Get some uniforms to make sure we don’t have any reporters in here.”

  “I’m on it.”

  William stood a while and then asked the tech to play the video again. He told him to pause it when the figure pushed apart the metal doorframe. William glanced around, making sure no one was watching, and pulled the glasses out of the breast pocket of his button-up shirt. He put them on and leaned forward.

  The figure’s face was wide and appeared hard. The eyes were set far apart and the forehead protruded. Clearly, the eyes had no pupils: just a ghostly whiteness. The man appeared like he had some sort of disorder. But as far as what it was, William hadn’t a clue.

  “Would you like to watch it again, Detective?” the tech said.

  “No, thanks. I think I’ve had my fill of him for now. I have a feeling I’m gonna be seeing more of him soon anyway.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Jack Kane pulled his Dodge Viper to a stop in front of the two-story home with the white picket fence. It appeared like something out of a movie. The perfect couple gets together and buys the perfect house. It even had a red wagon on the lawn.

  He took a deep breath and stepped out of the car. The last time he was here, it hadn’t ended well. But that was nearly six years ago and he was a different man then.

  Jack walked to the front door and went to knock but instead rang the doorbell. Something seemed too casual about knocking for him. He waited a few moments until he heard the door unlock and open.

  A young girl stood there. She looked up at him, curiosity in her eyes, and none of the fear that children her age usually had upon seeing a stranger.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  Jack couldn’t suppress a smile. He crouched down to eye level. “Now you’re Autumn, aren’t you? Autumn, I remember when you were born. I was there in the hospital. See your daddy was fighting in Iraq and so I was who the nurses gave you too when you first came into this world. You weren’t any bigger than a football. You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

  She looked confused. “Who are you again?”

  “Jack!” his sister yelled. She ran up from inside and threw her arms around his neck. She kissed him on the cheek and wouldn’t let go of him.

  “How are you, Nic?”

  “How am I?” she said, finally pulling away. “How am I?” She punched him in the shoulder. “Not even a call in over a year?”

  “I was on a project I couldn’t call out on.”

  A male voice from inside shouted, “Is that Jack?” A man with orange hair and a matching beard came out, his shirt tucked into some Dockers. He thrust out his hand and Jack shook it. “You look skinny.”

  “Haven’t been eating well.”

>   “We’re gonna change that,” his sister said. “Come on, come in.”

  Jack walked into the family home he grew up in and a sudden sense of peace and sadness filled him. Peace because there was nowhere in the world he felt more at ease, and sadness because, after eleven years, he was a stranger here.

  “Autumn,” his sister said as she led Jack by the arm into the living room, “this is your uncle Jack. You used to call him Unkie ack. Do you remember that?”

  The child smiled but looked confused, unable to pull up the memory.

  His sister sat down next to him and Hank and Autumn sat on the sofa across from them. Jack noticed that Hank had gained at least thirty pounds, and the beard was new. He looked old and Jack wondered if time had aged him too but he just hadn’t noticed.

  “So tell us everything,” Nicole said.

  He smirked, tousling her hair. “You know I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “How long are you here for?”

  “This is it. I’m done.”

  “What’dya mean?”

  “I mean I’m done. I resigned from the DEA.”

  She threw her arms around his neck again. “You mean you’re home for good?”

  “As long as the city’ll have me.”

  Hank smiled. “It’s good to see you, Jack. To be honest, I was forgetting what you looked like.”

  “I know,” he said, smiling to Autumn. “I’ve neglected what’s important for what’s trivial. It was a mistake. I’m not going to be making that mistake again.”

  “Does Mom know?” Nicole interrupted.

  “No, I came straight here. Well, after the car dealership.”

  “Don’t tell me that red penis mobile at the curb is your car.”

  “Hank,” Nicole said, laughing.

  “Just kidding. I’m mostly jealous.”

  “I bled for that thing, Hank. I don’t think it was a fair trade. How’s my room?”