Reckless

School counselor?

Principal?

Irate mother of an eighth grade cheerleader?

Sheriff?

Oh God, please not the Sheriff. Blake would hit the roof if Nick had been running one of his scams again. Last time he’d managed to reprogram the school library computers to show that half of the middle-school students were entitled to rebates. The school had erroneously paid out more than two thousand dollars to Nick’s buddies before the head librarian got wise and called the cops.

Sheriff Reeves had gone easy on Nick that time. But one more screw up and he’d have to make an example of him.

Tracy put on her most gracious smile and opened the door.

A waft of freezing air hit her. Tracy shivered.

Two men were standing on her porch. Both wore long cashmere coats, trilby hats and scarves. One of the men she didn’t recognize. The other, very unfortunately, she did.

“Hello, Tracy.”

Agent Milton Buck of the FBI attempted a smile, but was so out of practice it came off as a leer.

“This is my colleague, Mr. Gregory Walton of the CIA.” Buck gestured to the much shorter man standing next to him, hopping from foot to foot against the cold. “May we come in?”

FIVE MINUTES LATER, TRACY and the two agents stood awkwardly around the kitchen table. Tracy had offered them each a cup of coffee. Coats had been removed, pleasantries dispensed with. It soon became apparent that the shorter man, from the CIA, was in charge of proceedings.

“Thank you for letting us in, Miss Whitney.”

Bald, softly spoken and scrupulously polite, Tracy immediately liked Agent Walton a lot more than Agent Buck. Then again there were tapeworms that Tracy Whitney liked more than Agent Buck. The two of them had history together, none of it good.

“It’s Mrs. Schmidt here,” Tracy said. “And I wouldn’t leave a man to freeze to death on my doorstep, Mr. Walton. However much I didn’t want to see him,” she added pointedly, looking directly at Milton Buck.

“Please. Call me Greg.”

“OK.” Tracy smiled. “Greg. Let’s skip the pleasantries. Why are you here?”

Walton opened his mouth to say something, but Tracy wasn’t finished.

“I had a cast-iron guarantee from the Bureau, after I helped them neutralize Daniel Cooper and arrest Rebecca Mortimer three years ago, that my family and I would be left in peace.”

“I understand that,” Greg Walton said reassuringly. “And you will be. You have my word on that.”

“And yet here you are in my kitchen.” Tracy raised an eyebrow archly and crossed one long, slender leg over another.

Greg Walton thought this lady’s quite something. Not for the first time in the presence of a very beautiful woman, he felt relieved he was gay.

“What we need to talk to you about today, Miss Whitney, has nothing to do with that case or with your past. It’s a matter of national security.”

Tracy looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

“Perhaps if you listened, you would,” Milton Buck snapped. He was still handsome in a brutish, arrogant way, Tracy noticed. And every bit as charmless as she remembered.

“What Mr. Walton is saying is that we’re not here to prosecute you for your crimes as a jewel and art thief.”

Tracy said, “I should think not as I haven’t committed any.”

“We’re here to demand that you do your duty for your country.”

“Is that so?” Tracy’s eyes narrowed. As far as she was concerned Milton Buck could stick his demands where the sun didn’t shine. Three years ago the bastard would have left Jeff to die, strung up on a cross by that maniac Cooper in the hills above Plovdiv, Bulgaria. It was only Tracy, and her friend Jean Rizzo from Interpol, who had saved Jeff and brought Daniel Cooper to justice. Although of course the FBI had basked in the credit, no one more so than Agent Buck.