Page 11 of So Smitten

She sighed. “I just wish we could meet for reasons other than the brutal deaths of innocents.”

“Well, Wal-Mart’s hiring,” he said, “from what I understand, the job of greeter is marginally less traumatizing than the job of Special Agent.”

Faith chuckled. “I’d be fired within a week for chasing someone down over a shoplifted candy bar.”

“That’s your problem,” he said, “I will have no problem looking the other way and letting the twenty-year-old security agent tackle them.”

She grinned at him. “Feeling our age a little bit, are we?”

Michael was five months away from his fortieth birthday and had made no secret of his displeasure about that fact. “I’ve been feeling my age since I was twenty-five,” he replied. “It just gets worse and worse every year.”

“Well, maybe you’ll get to do Gordon’s job soon,” Faith suggested. “Then you can sit behind a desk and listen to all the agents grouse about funding and authority in the field.”

He chuckled without humor. "I won't be SSA as long as you're my partner." Faith's smile faded, and he clarified, "Joking, Faith. That was a joke. If I wanted to be SSA, I would have applied. Desrouleaux turned it down, too, and no one else is qualified. It's just the Boss for now."

They got in line for coffee, and Faith asked, “How long do you think the Boss has?”

“‘Til what?”

“Until he retires?”

He smiled wryly at her. "Why are you gunning for the job?"

She laughed aloud at that, “Me? Hell no. Even if someone in Washington got stupid and offered me the job, I wouldn't want it. Me as a bureaucrat? No, thank you."

“I think you’d be a good SAC,” Michael said.

She stared frankly at him, and he chuckled. “Okay, I was just being polite.”

“Don’t bother,” she said, “I know what my limits are. Maybe I’ll train one day. Even I’ll have to admit to being too old to keep wrestling mutants in caves eventually.”

“You’d be a good trainer,” Michael offered. “No joke. You’re a damned good detective, and even if you can’t train that, you’re also a damned good K9 handler. Firearms need a little work, but if you had nothing to do but practice—”

She shoved him playfully and said, “Well, I have a while before I have to worry about that, at least.”

They reached the front of the line and placed their orders: coffee for Faith—“black like your soul,” Michael joked—and a doppio macchiato—a “dopey Mac,” Faith retorted with a grin—for Michael. They received their coffees and sat at a table near the back of the café where they could keep an eye on the front door and the bathroom doors. Faith wondered when that instinct developed in law enforcement to always have eyes on the entrances and exits. It wasn’t something she had been taught. It was just something she did now.

“Desrouleaux and Chavez talked to Ellie yesterday,” Michael said.

“Oh yeah?” Faith replied. “How’d she take it?”

When Faith gave Desrouleaux the list of names mentioned in her sessions with West, he had decided to petition for the FBI to offer surveillance to every potential victim. Since the people in question were in danger due indirectly to their association with an active-duty agent, they had agreed readily. Now, agents across the country were breaking the news to everyone Faith had known since high school. None of them had sent angry and panicked letters or emails to Faith yet, but she was pretty sure that once someone figured out her contact info, she would get a lot of hate from people whose entire lives had suddenly been upended.

More fun to look forward to.

“Not so well,” Michael replied, answering Faith’s question. “She made it clear that she was staying put.”

The look on Michael’s face suggested she had said more than just that. “Was that all?” she prompted.

He sighed. “Well, she offered some suggestions. Most of them had to do with relieving you of duty. A few had to do with shooting West on sight.”

“I like that one,” Faith said. “She has my full support there.”

He chuckled briefly, then said, "They offered her surveillance.”

Faith hadn’t mentioned the surveillance to David, and she didn’t plan to. If he wouldn’t take himself somewhere safe, then maybe she could force at least a little safety on him. “Which one did she choose?”

“Neither,” Michael replied. “She said that she was staying put, and if she saw a damned FBI van outside of her house, she’d report the Bureau for harassment.”

---