CHAPTER THREE

Riley smiled when she recognized Special Agent Jake Crivaro. She had spent her morning among strangers and she was especially glad to see this familiar face.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, she thought.

After all, she remembered what he’d told her back in Lanton, when he’d handed her papers for the Honors Program …

“I’m eligible for retirement, but I might stay on for a while to help someone like you get started.”

He must have specifically requested to be Riley’s mentor for her internship.

But Riley’s smile quickly faded when she realized …

He isn’t smiling back.

In fact, Agent Crivaro didn’t look the least bit happy to see her.

Still sitting on the table, he crossed his arms and nodded toward a nondescript but amiable-looking man in his twenties who was standing nearby. Crivaro said …

“Riley Sweeney, I want you to meet Special Agent Mark McCune, from right here in DC. He’s my partner on a case I’m working on today.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Agent McCune said with a smile.

“Likewise,” Riley said.

McCune seemed markedly more friendly than Crivaro did.

Crivaro stood up from the table. “Consider yourself lucky, Sweeney. While the other interns are stuck indoors learning how to use filing cabinets and paper clips, you’ll be heading right out into the field. I just came up here from Quantico to work on a drug case. You’ll be joining Agent McCune and me—we’re headed to the scene right now.”

Agent Crivaro strode out of the room.

As Riley and Agent McCune followed him, Riley thought …

He called me “Sweeney.”

Back in Lanton, she’d gotten used to him calling her “Riley.”

Riley whispered to McCune, “Is Agent Crivaro upset about something?”

McCune shrugged and whispered back, “I was hoping you could tell me. This is my first day working with him, but I hear you already got to work on a case with him. They say he was pretty impressed by you. He’s got a reputation for being kind of brusque. His last partner got fired, you know.”

Riley almost said …

Actually, I didn’t know.

She’d never heard Crivaro mention a partner back in Lanton.

Although Crivaro had been tough, she’d never thought of him as “brusque.” In fact, she’d come to think of him as a kindly father figure—quite unlike her actual father.

Riley and McCune followed Crivaro to a car in the FBI building’s parking level. Nobody spoke as Crivaro drove them out of the building and continued north through the streets of DC.

Riley began to wonder whether Crivaro was ever going to explain what they were supposed to do whenever they got wherever they were going.

They eventually reached a seedy-looking neighborhood. The streets were lined with row houses that looked to Riley like they must have once been pleasant homes but had become awfully rundown.

Still driving, Agent Crivaro finally spoke to her.

“A couple of brothers, Jaden and Malik Madison, have been running a drug operation in this neighborhood for a couple of years now. They and their gang have been brazen about it—selling right on the street, like it was some kind of outdoor market. The local cops couldn’t do anything to stop them.”

“Why not?” Riley asked.

Crivaro said, “The gang kept careful watch for cops. Also, they had the whole neighborhood scared stiff—drive-by shootings, that kind of thing. A couple of kids got shot for just standing around where they weren’t supposed to be. Nobody dared talk to the cops about what was going on.”

Looking along the rows of houses, Crivaro continued.

“The FBI got called in to help a few days ago. Just this morning, one of our undercover guys managed to arrest Jaden. His brother, Malik, is still at large, and the gang has scattered. They won’t be easy to catch. But because of the arrest, we were able to get a warrant to search the house they’ve been working out of.”

Riley asked, “If the gang is still out there, won’t they just start all over again?”

McCune said, “That’s where the local cops can really get something done. They’ll set up a ‘mini station’ right out on the sidewalk—just a picnic table and chairs manned by a couple of uniformed officers. They’ll work with the locals to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen here again.”

Riley almost asked …

Won’t they just start up in another neighborhood?

But she knew it was a stupid question. Of course the gang would start up somewhere else—at least if they weren’t caught. And then the cops and the FBI would have to get to work all over again wherever that happened. That was just the nature of this kind of work.

Crivaro stopped the car and pointed to the nearest house.

“The search is already underway in that one,” he said. “And we’re here to help.”

As they got out of the car, Crivaro wagged his finger at Riley sternly.

“By ‘we,’ I mean Agent McCune and myself. You’re here to watch and learn. So stay the hell out of the way. And don’t touch anything.”

Riley felt a chill at his words. But she nodded obediently.

A uniformed cop standing in the open doorway led them inside. Riley immediately saw that a big operation was already in progress. The narrow hallway was bustling with local cops and agents wearing FBI jackets. They were piling up weapons and bags of drugs in the middle of the floor.

Crivaro looked pleased. He said to one of the FBI men, “Looks like you folks have hit a real gold mine here.”

The FBI man laughed and said, “We’re pretty sure this is only the start of it. There’s got to be a lot of cash around here someplace, but we haven’t found it yet. There are plenty of places to hide stuff in a house like this. Our guys are going over every square inch.”

Riley followed Crivaro and McCune up a flight of stairs to the second floor.

She could now see that the house, and apparently the others surrounding it, was larger than it looked outside. Although it was narrow, it was also deep, with a good many rooms along the hallways. In addition to the two floors in ready view, Riley guessed that the house also had an attic and a basement.

At the top of the stairs, four agents almost collided with Crivaro as they came out of one of the rooms.

“Nothing in there,” one of the agents said.

“Are you sure?” Crivaro asked.

“We searched it top to bottom,” the other agent said.

Then a voice called out from inside the room directly across the hall …

“Hey, I think we’ve really got something here!”

Riley trailed Crivaro and McCune across the hall. Before she could follow them into the room, Crivaro held out his hand and stopped her.

“Huh-uh,” he told her. “You can watch from right here in the hallway.”

Riley stood just outside the door and saw five men searching the room. The one who had called out to Jake was standing beside a rectangular shape on the wall.

He said, “This looks like it used to be a dumbwaiter. What do you want to bet we’ll find something inside?”

“Bust it open,” Crivaro said.

Riley took a step forward to see what they were doing.

Jake looked up at her and yelled …

“Hey, Sweeney. What did I just tell you?”

Riley was about to explain that she didn’t actually intend to come inside when Jake ordered a cop …

“Shut that goddamn door.”

The door slammed shut in Riley’s face. Riley stood in the hallway feeling shocked and embarrassed.

Why is Agent Crivaro so angry with me? she wondered.

A lot of noise was coming from inside the room now. It sounded like somebody was taking a crowbar to the place in the wall where the dumbwaiter had once been. Riley wished she could see what was going on, but opening the door again was out of the question.

She walked across the hallway and into the room on the other side, the one the agents had said was already searched. Chairs and furniture were overturned, and a rug was crumpled from having been pulled up and thrown back down again.

Alone there, Riley walked over to the window that overlooked the street.

Outside she saw a few scattered people moving briskly as if in a hurry to get wherever they were going.

They don’t feel safe outside, she realized. It struck her as incredibly sad.

She wondered how long it had been since this neighborhood had been a pleasant place to live.

She also wondered …

Are we really making a difference?

Riley tried to imagine what life might be like here after the “mini station” Agent McCune mentioned was in place. Would neighbors really feel safer because of a couple of cops posted at a picnic table?

Riley sighed as the handful of people on the street continued hurrying to their separate destinations.

She realized she was asking herself the wrong question.

There’s no “we”—at least not yet.

She wasn’t involved in this operation at all. And Agent Crivaro certainly wasn’t showing any confidence in her.

She turned away from the window and headed back toward the door. As she crossed the rumpled rug, she noticed an odd sound under her feet. She stopped in her tracks and stood there for a moment. Then she tapped her heel against the floor.

It sounded oddly hollow where she was standing.

She walked over to the edge of the rug and pulled it off that patch of the floor.

She didn’t see anything unusual, just an ordinary hardwood floor.

I guess I was just imagining things, she thought.

She remembered what one of the agents had said coming out of this room.

“We searched it top to bottom.”

Surely she wasn’t going to find something that four FBI agents had missed.

And yet, she was sure she had heard something odd. She wouldn’t have noticed it if anybody else had been moving around the room. She’d only noticed it because it was quiet in here.

She took a couple of steps to the side and tapped her heel against the floor. The floor sound solid again. Then she stooped down and rapped on the spot she’d noticed before with her knuckles.

Sure enough, it did sound hollow there. She still didn’t see any sign of an opening but …

I wonder.

She could see that one length of board was shorter than the others. It had a dark spot on one end that looked like an ordinary knot.

Riley pressed the knot with her finger.

She almost jumped out of her skin as the board sprang up a little at that end.

I’ve found something! she thought.

I’ve really found something!