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the psychologist, but he wanted to find a way back to Colombia, locate Raul, and kill him, for what he had done to Paloma and their unborn child.
    The psychologist had confirmed that the baby had not survived its mother’s death. Only sophisticated methods in a hospital setting would have saved the baby after its mother was shot. That had been Raul’s whole purpose, to kill them both, taking away everything Pablo loved. And now Marshall knew that Pablo Echeverría was as dead as Paloma and their child. He had been destroyed. All that was left was the shell of the man he was now: Special Agent Marshall Everett of the DEA.
    After he heard the shattering news about Paloma, he spent another week in Quantico being debriefed, but he had already told them everything he knew. He felt empty and hollowed out, and after a night of sobbing over Paloma, he had not cried again and felt nothing. He was released at the end of the third week. He was given the keys to a furnished apartment in Georgetown, in a building reserved for returning undercover agents, and was assigned to a job at the South American desk at the Pentagon. It felt like a death sentence to him, and he could barely make himself go to work on the first day.
    It was snowing, on a bitter cold day the last week in February, and his new office was as barren as his life. He had grown up in Seattle, but after his parents’ death while he was in college, he had left and never returned. He had entered DEA training as the youngest member of his class, and had gone into undercover work, shortly after he graduated. Now after six years of it, he had no close friends, no family, no hometown or base, no one he wanted to resume contact with, nothing to do when he left work, and nothing to say when he was there. He analyzed the reports that were given to him, and handed in meticulous in-depth memos that showed how well he knew his subject, the area, the people involved, and their activities. He knew everything about the drug trade in Colombia and the countries he had dealt with for Raul. He inquired occasionally, but there had been no word of Raul, since he escaped while they raided the camp. And by the spring, Marshall felt as though he had been at his desk at the Pentagon for a hundred years. He turned twenty-nine and didn’t care. He spent his birthday alone in front of the TV, as he did every night.
    There was a Colombian restaurant he went to occasionally to eat the familiar food, and after bantering with the waiters in Spanish, when they asked him where he was from, he would say Bogotá. It was easier than explaining why he spoke Spanish the way he did. Anyone would have taken him for a native, which was how he felt. He had more in common with Latin Americans than with North Americans now.
    Bill Carter checked on him from time to time, and knew he was doing extraordinary work, but talking to Marshall always unnerved him. There was something dead about him, as though his soul were gone. A part of him had died with Paloma, as Marshall knew only too well. The only thing Marshall wanted to know was when he could return to some kind of undercover work, anywhere in South America where he would not be remembered or associated with Raul. And Bill had the uncomfortable feeling that he wanted to go back for revenge. Marshall couldn’t imagine spending the rest of his life at a desk. Undercover work was in his blood—he couldn’t seem to get back to real life, whatever that was for an undercover agent who was expected to take on all the traits and habits and customs of a country and become a native in every way, then, when ordered to do so, forget all of it and come home again and turn into someone he could barely even remember. “Real life” was so much less interesting than the dangerous and exciting life he had led undercover.
    The DEA was determined to keep him home for a year and reevaluate his situation then. They had no idea what to do with him after that, although Marshall had