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dearly all those years ago could have become such a cold-blooded killer.

Chapter 3
    “Hey, it’s me. Are you there?” Roc’s husky voice drifted into my living room, reminding me of all the things I loved about him. I knew every pitch. Every enunciation. Every intonation. And the edge to it now told me something big had happened.
    I prayed this wouldn’t mean yet another assignment abroad. In light of what I’d uncovered recently and with the current unstable environment overseas, I wanted Roc close to me.
    I grabbed the receiver. “Yes, I’m here. What’s wrong?”
    “I can’t discuss it now. Your line may not be secure. We’re meeting tonight, okay? You know where. Don’t be late, Rainie. And for God’s sake, don’t pull another stunt like last night. I’m not sure my heart can survive another one, especially not with all the uneasiness going around.”
    Two weeks earlier, I’d been busily reading through the latest chatter streaming across a website innocently entitled ‘Free America.’
    The website initially came to The Agency’s attention when someone on the site referred to recent attacks believed to be associated with the FLA.
    This was what we did best. The Agency had been established as part of our government’s response to attacks of terrorism against its own citizens.
    Each member of our team had been recruited for our various talents to head up our areas of expertise. We had all the resources of the Bureau at our disposal. We could deploy agents anywhere within U.S. borders at a second’s notice if necessary.
    We were the first line of defense for our country against all domestic terror threats. While technically we fell under the FBI’s umbrella, we didn’t follow all their rules of procedure. We were the elite. The best the Bureau had to offer.
    My official title with The Agency was linguistics specialist. It was my responsibility to figure out all the obscure codes and languages terrorist cells used as a means of communicating with each other.
    On this particular night, I’d been at it for hours. This type of work could be tedious at the best of times, but most of the languages used by the FLA were particularly difficult to translate because the group had come up with their own version of two languages. I’d spent almost a month trying to pin down the two specific languages. They were versions of Arabic and Hebrew, an odd combination considering those two languages represented people who had been at odds with each other almost from the beginning of civilization. Even odder considering the two languages in question were being used by an extremist group to plan precision attacks within the U.S.
    I’d gotten about halfway through translating a post by an individual calling himself Legion, whom I believed was a FLA subordinate, when the content of the message became startlingly clear.
    To anyone reading the message, the reference would seem innocent enough. But not to me. My heart kicked into overdrive the second I saw the word Anchor . It might mean nothing more than what it appeared to mean on the surface, or it might mean everything. You see, Anchor was Roc’s code name. As I continued reading the context of the note, I found references to each of the five team members of The Agency.
    Roc had been away on assignment at the time, which was probably why I was working alone on a Friday at three in the morning. Of course, I had no idea where it was or what type of danger Ed might have placed Roc in, but the reference to our code names sent up all sorts of red flags.
    I picked up the phone and called Mark right away. He arrived soon after we hung up. Once we’d managed to reach Roc on his secure cell phone, he immediately flew back to D.C. and out of harm’s way.
    But if those references meant what none of us wanted to believe they meant, then the implication was clear. Someone had managed to access top-level security documents. Information that put all of our lives in jeopardy.
    We were