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to his full potential, but Marina had trained and worked with him and thought he was one of the best field agents in the agency. Another was gay but suppressing it. Marina believed he would be her best asset, because she could channel that suppression into action. The last man was completely asexual, his only passion the destruction of others, and he was a potent if unpredictable weapon. Some of them would require shorter leashes than others, and the men might even become problems if their lust got control of them. Marina would have to keep a close eye on the blonde, too, because Corn-Fed wanted to fuck her as much as any of the guys did, and Marina thought that just might turn out to be an enjoyable idea, at the right time.
    At the moment, instead of being out with her team, she was stuck in a conference room with no windows and pale green concrete block walls and a bunch of bland bureaucrats trying to make her think their jobs were important. It was everything she hated about DC closed up in a single stuffy space.
    “… facility has been completely inventoried,” one of them was saying. His name was Zachary Kleefeld.
    His head was bald, except for a fringe of curly gray hair that cupped the back of his head. He was Acting Director of Operation Red-Blooded, the Director of National Security having removed the last director immediately upon receiving news of the devastating Nevada assault. But he was a numbers man, all about facts and figures but with no passion or real sense of the mission, and Marina doubted he would last a month in that position. “All assets are accounted for except one.”
    “That’s what you call counting the corpses of our coworkers?” Marina asked. “Taking inventory?”
    “With all due respect, Ms. Tanaka-Dunn, the task is much larger than that. Yes, our people on the scene had the unenviable job of counting corpses, as you so inelegantly put it. But they also performed heroically, rescuing sixty-four survivors. There were hard assets to be inventoried, equipment and experimental subjects—”
    “You mean the vampires,” Marina interrupted.
    “Well, among other things, yes. Vampires, and the remains of vampires. The Nevada plant was a biological research facility first and foremost and had to have specimens to study. As I was saying, the team brought out survivors and prepared a thorough report of hard and soft assets, of which you’ve all been given a summary.”
    “But you said something’s missing, Zach? What is that?” The questioner was Lowell Rudin, a pale man with spidery limbs, lank dark hair, and a pinched face. He managed the agency’s relationship with the restof the national security apparatus, and as a result was barely trusted by many, who saw him as a sort of spy in their midst.
    “Not a what, but a who,” Kleefeld said. “One of our top researchers. I think some of you have met Dr. Lawrence Greenbarger.”
    “Good old Larry,” Natalie Kakonis said. She represented Human Resources, or something like that, but the department had some other name Marina could never keep straight. Marina was brilliant, but preferred not to use precious brain cells memorizing stupid government acronyms. There were three other agency drones in the room, keeping silent for the most part. “I always thought he was …”
    “Crazy?” Marina asked. She had met Greenbarger, and that had been her initial estimation of him. Something was not quite right about him, but she hadn’t had an extended enough time with him to narrow it down further.
    “Let’s just say he’s very smart, but he’s lacking in certain social abilities.”
    “The question is,” Rudin said, “is he a traitor? Did he leave with the attackers, and if so, was it willingly? Have there been any ransom demands made?”
    “I don’t think he left with them,” Kleefeld said. “After the alarm was raised, we repurposed a satellite and we had eyes on the base within the hour. Several hours after the assault force left,