Page 9 of Beyond Redemption

“Fantastic.” I rubbed my jaw. “Denver just has to keep doing what they’re doing and keep eyes on it. We can’t move until the roaches come out of the shadows.”

“You mean again?”

“Those bugs are dead. We need new bugs—next-gen bugs. Anything else?”

“Your nine o’clock briefing has been bumped to nine-fifteen. The Deputy Director wants ten minutes with you beforehand.”

“About?”

“He didn’t say. Which means it’s either nothing or a catastrophe.”

“Accurate.”

She flicked to another screen. “Also, I adjusted your calendar to prevent overlap with the case coordination from New York.Don’t thank me. I did it because watching you exist in two meetings at once is stressful, and I’m not paid enough to suffer unnecessarily.”

“You’re paid exceptionally well.”

“Yes, but I’ve checked, they’ve phased out the martyrdom bonus.” She gave me a sharp, knowing look over the top of the tablet, reminding me that she was one of only two people in this building who could speak to me that way without risking spontaneous combustion. “Now, do you want the small annoyance or the large annoyance next?”

I blinked at her. “You categorize by annoyance level?”

“How else?”

“Large.”

She nodded. “The Bureau of Prisons emailed again. They want you to weigh in on the interagency tasking for next quarter. I told them you’d review their request by Friday, which of course means I’ll review their request by Friday.”

“That’s not annoying, that’s boring.”

“I never said my categories were based on your annoyance.”

I let that go. “Give me the small annoyance.”

“One of the newer agents, Carson, wants five minutes. He declined to specify why. He’s very… millennial. I told him to send his questions to me or his allotted time drops to zero.”

“I imagine he didn’t like that.”

“I don’t care. If we gave everyone five minutes when they wanted it, you wouldn’t do anything else.”

I couldn’t argue.

She paused, tablet lowering a fraction. “How’s Liis this morning?”

“Sharp. Focused. Beautiful.” A corner of my mouth pulled upward. “Disagreeable in the way I appreciate.”

Constance huffed a laugh. “She’s too good for you.”

I couldn’t help but grimace. “Everyone says that.”

“Because it’s true.” She reached for her mug on the edge of my desk. “Anything else?”

I let my eyes scan the office, the muted light from the high windows, the framed commendations on the far wall, the stack of files on the corner of my desk waiting to be cut down, redirected, solved, eliminated.

“Nothing else,” I said.

“I’ll leave you to it, Chief.”

I lifted a brow.