Page 104 of Into the Fire

She occupied her seat at the table’s head and observed them. A group of men with similar proclivities. She’d painstakingly assembled them through a byzantine process heavy on allusions and reliant on introductions made by like-minded souls. The departments and agencies in which they operated were by and large clean. In each one she required only a single well-placed worker with flexible standards. They were the clockwork to her grand design, able to operate the levers of power without leaving any fingerprints. Investigations were steered, cases misfiled, dockets shuffled.

Their role was simply to stay out of her way and reap the benefits.

But tonight she required something more. That was the reason for the late-night confabulation.

She cleared her throat.

The boys fell silent.

She rested her elbows on the walnut slab of the conference table, the chill rising through the Armani featherweight virgin wool of her thin sleeves. The air conditioner, pegged at a steady sixty-five, kept the room pleasingly refrigerated. She found that the cold generally clarified her thinking.

“Whoever this man is,” she said, “it’s clear by now that he’s a friend to Grant Merriweather’s cousin. Which makes him an enemy to us.”

“Grant didn’t have everything,” one of the men said.

“No,” Stella said. “But what he did have could lead to everything.”

Another chimed in, “From what we know, it seems highly unlikely anything can be traced to us.”

“I’m rarely content with what I know,” she said. “I prefer to know what I don’t know.”

She let them grapple with that for a moment.

“We’ve insulated ourselves rather magnificently,” she said. Even though she’d been the one to arrange all the insulating, she flattered them with the first-person plural because: men. “But our buffer is growing thinner.”

The first speaker waved her off. “Hiccups,” he said. “Nothing more than a few hiccups.”

“The good thing about working with low-level scumbags,” another weighed in, “is how replaceable they are.”

Several chuckles picked up steam, confidence growing.

Stella spread a smile across her face. “And the two LAPD detectives?” she said. “Are they readily replaceable as well?”

This was greeted by silence and throat clearing as they waited for the heavyset gentleman on the left side of the table to chime in.

“Well, yes,” Fitz said carefully. “But it’ll take some time.”

“And in that time, as we function without the benefit of their assistance, would you consider us stronger or weaker?” she asked.

She preferred not to dominate the committee members but to wear them out. They were strong. But they were men. They didn’t have a woman’s endurance. They’d rehash their arguments again and again and finally fold.

Fitz mumbled the appropriate response.

“But we have Bedrosov,” another said. “As long as we have Bedrosov, everything stays intact. And there’s no way in hell anyone’s getting to him.”

“One thing you’ve all been masterful at,” she told the circle of men, “has been arranging for the unexpected.”

A soothing current circled the table, the faces changing from sheepish to proud.

Until now she’d resisted making any arrangements of a muscular nature from inside the conference room of the climate-controlled seventh floor. However, circumstances had changed, and it was time to take a more active role in the steering.

Desperate times and whatnot.

“As long as we have inconvenient material floating around out there…” She waved a manicured hand to the glass wall, the city beyond. “We need to continue to arrange for the unexpected. Since the unexpected seems to keep coming for us, we require contingency plans—”

“Those are in place,” Fitz said.

She pressed her crimson lips together in something like a grin. “And contingency plans to our contingency plans.”