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think there’s a group whose funding he hasn’t cut. The young, the old, highway funding, the whole concept of foreign aid….You can go on and on with him.”
    “We’d have a long list of people who’d love to see him die in a plane crash,” Storm acknowledged.
    “There were others, too. Some more famous than others. And I guess it depends on your definition of famous. One of the people on the first plane down was Rachel McCord.”
    “The porn star?” Storm burst.
    Rodriguez arched an eyebrow. “Gee, Storm, how did you know about her?”
    “I…I…read about her in a magazine once,” Storm said. “Anyhow, what’s my job in all this? Why does Jones want me here?”
    As if he had the room bugged—and, really, he probably did—a trim man of about sixty with buzz-cut iron-gray hair and steely blue eyes walked through the door.
    JEDEDIAH JONES’S TITLE WAS Head of Internal Division Enforcement. Its acronym was no accident, given that it neatly described his prevailing modus operandi.
    Storm owed his existence to Jones in more ways than one. While it was Clara Strike who first discovered Derrick Storm—then a struggling private investigator who was considering changing his name to Derrick Aarons just to move it up a few notches in the Yellow Pages—it was Jones who took Storm’s raw abilities and honed them into polished proficiencies, turning Storm into a rare asset.
    Their long association had been mutually beneficial in other ways as well. It had made Storm a rich man, one with a contact list of friends and sources that was even more invaluable than all the money he had amassed. And the missions that Storm had been able to complete—often against impossible odds—had been an invaluable boost to Jones’s career.
    And yet there was always tension between the men. Jones knew he could never fully command Storm, who prioritized many things—his own moral code, his sense of patriotism, the welfare of his friends and family—over his orders from Jones.
    And Storm, likewise, knew where Jones’s loyalties lay. And it wasn’t in their tenuous relationship. For all Storm had helped him achieve, for all the times Jones had deployed substantial resources to save Storm, Jones lacked sentimentality toward him. After a botched mission in Tangier, Morocco, Jones had faked Storm’s death, leading the world to think he had perished for four long years, not caring about the impact it had on Storm’s loved ones. What’s more, Storm knew that if it ever became expedient to have his death become real, Jones wouldn’t hesitate. He would leave Storm bleeding in a river full of piranhas if it benefited CIA goals or Jones’s sometimes-warped ideas about what was best for the country.
    “Is he up to speed?” Jones asked, not bothering to immediately acknowledge Storm.
    “As up to speed as any of us are at this point, sir,” Bryan said.
    “Excellent,” Jones said, finally turning to his protégé. “Do you have a vehicle here?”
    “Yes.”
    “Great. We’re going to ask you to ditch it for the time being. Where you’re going, you’re not going to be Derrick Storm, and I don’t want you driving some souped-up hot rod, even if it is wrapped in a bland coating.”
    “All right. Who am I and where am I going?”
    “Not far. To Glen Rock, Pennsylvania.”
    “That’s the Flight 76 crash site.”
    “Correct. And it’s also where the National Transportation Safety Board has set up its investigation into what took that plane down. The NTSB will take its sweet time figuring it out, following all their policies and procedures and then coming out with a report in a couple of months outlining what they think might have happened. We don’t have a couple of months. I want to know what they know before they know it.”
    “Why Flight 76?”
    “One, because it’s as good a place to start as any figuring out what happened up there,” Jones said. “Those flatfoots from the FBI allowed this to happen on their turf and