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his suspension. Paid suspension. It was protocol anytime an agent used deadly force. Less than two months ago Tully had shot dead a man he had once considered a friend. The agency would find it justified. Maggie knew Tully would, too…eventually. Just not yet.
    “Okay, so Kunze needs a profiler on the scene. That doesn’t answer why it has to be Maggie.” Gwen fidgeted with the knife that had recently been chopping vegetables. Maggie watched her friend stab the knife’s tip into the wooden cutting board, then pull it out and stab it again like a person tapping a pen out of nervous energy. “Are you sure you should even be flying?”
    This made Maggie smile. There was a fifteen-year age difference between the two women and sometimes Gwen found it difficult to hide her maternal instinct. Although it made Maggie smile, all the others were looking at her now with concern. The same case that had garnered Tully a suspension had landed Maggie in an isolation ward at USAMRIID (the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) under the care of Colonel Benjamin Platt.
    “I’m fine,” Maggie said. “Ask my doctor if you don’t believe me,” and she pointed at Ben who remained serious, not ready to agree just yet.
    “Kunze could send someone else,” Gwen insisted.
    “You know why he’s sending you.”
    Maggie could hear the anger edging around the concern in her friend’s voice. Evidently so could everyone else. Harvey even looked up from his corner, dog bone gripped between big paws. The silence was made more awkward by the oven timer that reminded them of what the day had started out to be.
    Maggie reached over and tapped several of the oven’s digital buttons, shutting off heat and sound.
    More silence.
    “Okay,” Racine finally broke in. “I give up. I seem to be the only one who hasn’t gotten the latest news alert. Why is the new assistant director—”
    “Interim director,” Gwen interrupted to correct. “Yeah right. Whatever. Why’s he sending O’Dell? You make it sound like it’s something personal. What have I missed?”
    Maggie held Gwen’s eyes. She wanted her to see the impatience. This was bordering on embarrassing. People in Minnesota may have lost their lives and Gwen was worried about department politics and imagined grudges.
    Tully was the one who finally answered Racine. “Assistant Director Ray Kunze told Maggie and me that we were both negligent on the George Sloane case.”
    “Negligent?”
    “He blames them,” Gwen blurted out.
    “He didn’t say that,” Maggie insisted although she remembered the sting of the words he did use.
    “He insinuated,” Gwen corrected herself. “He insinuated that Maggie and Tully, quote, ‘contributed to Cunningham’s death.’”
    “He told us we have some proving to do,” Tully added.
    Maggie couldn’t believe how calm he was, explaining it over his shoulder as he kept an eye on the TV, as if he was simply updating the scores of the day. The subject did not have the same effect on Maggie and Gwen knew that. Perhaps Gwen had even picked up Maggie’s initial anger and carried it for her when Maggie had become weary of the burden. It wouldn’t have been so bad had Kunze not triggered a guilt Maggie had already saddled herself with. Some days she still blamed herself for Cunningham’s death even without Kunze’s accusations of contributable negligence.
    Her psychology background should have reassured her that she was experiencing a simple case of survivor’s guilt. But sometimes, usually late at night, alone and staring up at her bedroom ceiling, she’d think about Cunningham getting infected, both of them exposed to the same virus. Just the image of his deteriorating body and how quickly he had gone from strong and vital to helpless, caused a sinking hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, an ache accompanied by nausea. That feeling was very real, physically real. Cunningham was dead. She was alive. How was that