Checkmate Read Free

in the fall to start her campaign for Virginia’s First District congressional seat.
    Ralph and I walked side by side down the hall, my friend’s hulking frame filling the space beside me. Even though I was a little taller than he was, he probably had me by fifty pounds. Solid muscle. Before joining the Bureau, he had served a stint as an Army Ranger and before that he’d been a high school All-American wrestler. Not a guy you’d want to mess with.
    Glad he was on our side.
    We arrived at the elevators.
    â€œSo.” I pressed the Up button. “It’s what, five days, now?”
    â€œSix and counting. She was way early with Tony—course, that was twelve years ago. So who knows? She’s all into this natural-childbirth deal: doesn’t want to be induced—any of that. And so we wait.” He sighed and rubbed his hand across his shaved head. “I’m getting too old for this.”
    â€œYou’re only forty-one, my friend.”
    He grunted in vague acknowledgment. “Just wait till you hit forty.”
    I still had three years to look forward to that milestone.
    The elevator doors opened and we entered.
    â€œYou still thinking Shanelle?” I asked him.
    â€œBrin’s going back and forth between that and Tryphena.”
    â€œTryphena?”
    â€œIt’s Greek. Means ‘delicate.’ Brin came across it the other day somewhere in the Bible, thought it was pretty.”
    â€œIt is. It’s nice.”
    â€œIt’s growing on me.”
    As the NCAVC director, he had an office on the third floor. He punched the 3 button and the doors closed.
    I had a workspace set up just down the hall from him, but my actual office was at the FBI Academy, where I taught environmental criminology and geospatial investigation. It wasn’t easy, but I tried my hardest not to undermine the material taught in the other classes, where the instructors covered the importance of searching for means, motive, and opportunity, none of which I was a big fan of.
    Or the focus on DNA—which recent studies had shown could be faked with a little know-how andingenuity, not to mention the existence of multiple genomes in the same person, which, as it turns out, is much more common than we used to think.
    Or profiling—and that always promised a spirited conversation when I brought it up with my wife of two months, who was one of the Bureau’s top profilers.
    The elevator doors slid apart, and we found our way to Ralph’s office at the end of the hall.
    He had his own unique, personalized “filing system” and his desk contained countless stacks of papers strewn in an array of meticulously organized clutter. Ever since being appointed to this position a year ago, he’d shown an astonishing ability to find anything he needed when he needed it, a chore that might have taken someone else hours. “Added security,” he told me once with a hint of pride, “and it doesn’t cost the Bureau a dime.”
    Added security.
    I liked that.
    Maybe I could use that line to explain the condition of my side of the bedroom closet at home.
    A photo of Ralph’s family floated across his computer’s screen. Brineesha—his diminutive, pretty, no-nonsense African-American wife and Tony, their twelve-year-old video game–playing, skateboarder son. Ralph had tried to get him interested in wrestling, but Tony preferred soccer, a sport Ralph complained reminded him of France.
    Ralph did not like France.
    He shuffled through the sheaves of paper and retrieved the file on a missing-persons case the NCAVC was consulting on.
    I had taken my rain jacket off and was situating myself in the chair facing his desk when I received a text from Jerome Cole.
    Jerome was one of the agents responsible for drivingthe eighteen-wheelers that delivered the lawnmowers to the back of the building. His text: He wanted me to meet with him in the lobby.
    When I looked up, I