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breath of relief.
    “Jesus, God. Are you hit?”
    I tried to take mental stock of my state, but my mind got stuck on Shooter. Gun. Kill.
    “Maggie?”
    “No. I don’t think so.”
    He eased off and rolled me over, pushing at my clothes to check for bullet holes. He stopped and stared at the top of my head. “Your forehead.”
    I reached up to feel and my hand came away red. “I’m bleeding.”
    He examined the wound. “Do you have a tissue or something?”
    “In my purse.” I looked around and spied it up against the mausoleum. “Over there.”
    He got up to retrieve it and that’s when I saw the keychain in the dirt next to me. Broken. I sat up and picked up the pieces.
    “Here.” He crouched down next to me and handed me my purse. “What’s that?”
    “What’s left of my tribute.”
    “Your…are you sure you didn’t hit your head?”
    “I’m fine.” Sort of. I glanced up at the chunk of stone missing from where Chuck Puckett’s permanent nameplate would eventually go. “That could have been me.”
    Super Agent’s mouth flattened into a bleak frown. “Yeah.”
    “Thai Dinh?”
    “You can say his name?”
    “Not saying his name would be running from what happened. I can’t do that anymore.”
    He gave me a small smile and lifted a lock of hair away from my face. “Good for you.”
    “Did they catch him?”
    “No.”
    “You’re the freakin’ FBI, for crying out loud. You know what brand of tampons I buy, but you let a murderer get away from you twice?”
    “We’ll get him.” He was all defensive about it, as though I’d questioned his manhood or something.
    I shoved what was left of the keychain in my pocket and got to my feet. A little shaky and lightheaded, I swayed, catching myself on the half wall.
    Super Agent was at my side faster than you could say “murder attempt”. “I think you should get checked out.” He started to call for an ambulance.
    “Don’t. I’m fine. It’s just the adrenaline.” Mostly.
    I spotted a figure jogging toward us and ducked back behind the wall.
    “Come on up. It’s just one of my guys.”
    He walked over and met the man. I could tell something was up by the way Super Agent kept looking back at me, his expression growing darker as the other man spoke. By the time he returned to me, he looked downright dangerous.
    “We need to move you. Now.” He took me by the elbow and hustled me to where we’d parked the car. The other FBI dude was gone.
    “How’d he do that?”
    “What?”
    “Disappear like that?”
    He bundled me into the car without answering. As we pulled away from the curb, an ominous feeling came over me, and I shuddered.
    “That wasn’t Thai Dinh who shot at me, was it?”
    “No.”
    “Who was it?”
    “We don’t know. It seems there’s a new player in the game.”

Chapter Nine
    I’d lived my whole life on the principle I won’t pee in your pool and you don’t pee in mine .
    Somebody was not only pissing in my pool, they were defecating in it.
    I couldn’t go back to my apartment, because as Super Agent had put it — it had been compromised. Compromised. A stupid word with a double meaning, neither of which were of any use to me at the moment. So there I sat in an impersonal apartment somewhere “safe”, surreptitiously listening in on Super Agent’s cell phone conversation with his superior. So far I hadn’t been very impressed by this other agent’s superiority, as it was his foul-up that had landed me here.
    Super Agent ended the call and let out a frustrated sigh. “They were able to salvage a few things from your apartment. The rest is a total loss.”
    Total loss as in fire . Fire as in firebombed . Firebombed as in a total and complete fuck-up .
    “Fantastic.”
    “Insurance should cover most of it.”
    “Yeah, if I had any.”
    He stared at me as if I’d broken out my rusty Greek. “You don’t have insurance?”
    “Oh, gee. Did we just stumble on the only thing you didn’t already know about