Die Trying by Lee Child

popular. In the past the Bureau would have taken no pleasure at all in

busting the sort of businessmen that Holly was employed to chase down,

but times had changed and the Chicago office had gotten quite a taste

for it. The businessmen now looked like scumbags, not solid citizens,

and the agents were sick and tired of looking at them as they rode the

commuter trains home. The agents would be getting off the train miles

before the bankers and the stockbrokers were anywhere near their

expensive suburbs. They would be thinking about second mortgages and

even second jobs, and they’d be thinking about the years of

private-detective work they were going to have to put in to boost up

the mean government pension. And the executives would be sitting there

with smug smiles. So when one or two of them started to take a fall,

the Bureau was happy enough about it. When the ones and twos turned

into tens and twenties, and then hundreds, it became a blood sport.

The only drawback was that it was hard work. Probably more difficult

to nail than anything else. That was where Holly Johnson’s arrival had

made things easier. She had the talent. She could look at a balance

sheet and just know if anything was wrong with it. It was like she

could smell it. She’d sit at her desk and look at the papers, cock her

head slightly to one side, and think. Sometimes she’d think for hours,

but when she stopped thinking, she’d know what the hell was going on.

Then she’d explain it all in the case conference. She’d make it all

sound easy and logical, like there was no way anybody could be in any

kind of doubt about it. She was a woman who made progress. She was a

woman who made her fellow agents feel better on those commuter trains

at night. That’s what was making her popular.

Fourth person into the third-floor meeting room was the agent assigned

to help Holly out with the fetching and carrying until she recovered

from her soccer injury. His name was Milosevic. A slight frame, a

slight West Coast accent. Less than forty, casually dressed in

expensive designer khaki, gold at his neck and on his wrist. He was

also a new arrival, recently transferred in to the Chicago office,

because that was where the Bureau found it needed its financial people.

He joined the line for coffee and looked around the room.

“She’s late?” he said.

The lawyer shrugged at him and Milosevic shrugged back. He liked Holly

Johnson. He had worked with her five weeks, since the accident on the

soccer field, and he had enjoyed every minute of it.

“She’s not usually late for anything,” he said.

Fifth person in was Brogan, Holly’s section head. Irish, from Boston

via California. The young side of middle age. Dark hair, red Irish

face. A tough guy, handsomely dressed in an expensive silk jacket,

ambitious. He’d come to Chicago the same time as Milosevic, and he was

pissed it wasn’t New York. He was looking for the advancement he was

sure he deserved. There was a theory that Holly’s arrival in his

section was enhancing his chances of getting it.

“She not here yet?” he said.

The other four shrugged at him.

“I’ll kick her ass,” Brogan said.

Holly had been a stock analyst on Wall Street before applying to join

the FBI. Nobody was clear why she’d made the change.

She had some kind of exalted connections, and some kind of an

illustrious father, and the easy guess was she wanted to impress him

somehow. Nobody knew for sure whether the old guy was impressed or

not, but the feeling was he damn well ought to be. Holly had been one

of ten thousand applicants in her year, and she’d passed right at the

top of the four hundred who made it. She’d creamed the recruitment

criteria. The Bureau had been looking for college graduates in law or

accountancy, or else graduates in flimsier disciplines who’d then

worked somewhere for three years at least. Holly had qualified in

every way. She had an accountancy degree from Yale, and a Master’s