Die Trying by Lee Child

from Harvard, and three years on Wall Street on top of all that. She’d

blitzed the intelligence tests and the aptitude assessments. She’d

charmed the three serving agents who’d grilled her at her main

interview.

She’d sailed through the background checks, which was understandable on

account of her connections, and she’d been sent to the FBI Academy at

Quantico. Then she’d really started to get serious. She was fit and

strong, she learned to shoot, she murdered the leadership reaction

course, she scored outstanding in the simulated shootouts in Hogan’s

Alley. But her major success was her attitude. She did two things at

once. First she bought into the whole Bureau ethic in the biggest way

possible. It was totally clear to everybody that here was a woman who

was going to live and die for the FBI. But second, she did it in a way

which avoided the slightest trace of bullshit. She tinged her attitude

with a gentle mocking humor which saved people from hating her. It

made them love her instead. There was no doubt the Bureau had signed a

major new asset. They sent her to Chicago and sat back to reap the

benefits.

Last into the third-floor conference room was a bunch of men who came

in together. Thirteen agents and the agent-in-charge, McGrath. The

thirteen agents were clustered around their boss, who was conducting a

sort of rolling policy review as he walked. The thirteen agents were

hanging onto every word. McGrath had every advantage in the book. He

was a man who’d been to the top, and then come back down again into the

field. He’d spent three years in the Hoover Building as an assistant

director of the FBI, and then he’d applied for a demotion and a pay cut

to take him back to a Field Office. The decision had cost him ten

thousand dollars a year in income, but it had bought him back his

sanity, and it had bought him undying respect and blind affection from

the agents he worked with.

An agent-in-charge in a Field Office like Chicago is like the captain

on a great warship. Theoretically there are people above him, but

they’re all a couple of thousand miles away in Washington. They’re

theoretical. The agent-in-charge is real. He runs his command like

the hand of God. That’s how the Chicago office looked at McGrath. He

did nothing to undermine the feeling. He was remote, but he was

approachable. He was private, but he made his people feel he’d do

anything at all for them. He was a short, stocky man, burning with

energy, the sort of tireless guy who radiates total confidence. The

sort of guy who makes a crew better just by leading it. His first name

was Paul, but he was called Mack, like the truck.

He let his thirteen agents sit down, ten of them backs to the window

and three of them with the sun in their eyes. Then he hauled a chair

around and stuck it at the head of the table ready for Holly. He

walked down to the other end and hauled another chair around for

himself. Sat sideways on to the sun. Started getting worried.

“Where is she?” he said. “Brogan?”

The section head shrugged, palms up.

“She should be here, far as I know,” he said.

“She leave a message with anybody?” McGrath asked. “Milosevic?”

Milosevic and the other fifteen agents and the Bureau lawyer all

shrugged and shook their heads. McGrath started worrying more. People

have a pattern, a rhythm, like a behavioral fingerprint. Holly was

only a minute or two late, but that was so far from normal that it was

setting the bells ringing. In eight months he had never known her be

late. It had never happened. Other people could be five minutes late

into the meeting room and it would seem normal. Because of their

pattern. But not Holly. At three minutes past five in the afternoon,

McGrath stared at her empty chair and knew there was a problem. He

stood up again in the quiet room and walked to the credenza on the

opposite wall. There was a phone next to the coffee machine. He