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kid.”
    “She’s thirty-five, Peep.”
    “Yeah, well, we aren’t.”
    They entered an elevator.
    Sloan said, “I’ve talked you up around her, gramps. She thinks you’re John Wayne.”
    “Please.”
    On the top floor, Reeder followed Sloan down a typically anonymous corridor. At the AD’s office, they entered a reception area larger than Reeder’s office.
    A redhead in wire-framed glasses and a dark gray suit said to Sloan, “Go right in, Agent Sloan—the Assistant Director is expecting you.” Despite her businesslike appearance, she looked barely older than Amy. She did not acknowledge Reeder in any way.
    Sloan went in first, pausing to close the door behind them. The office was spacious, dark-paneled, wall-to-wall-carpeted, with a mini conference area and framed wall hangings ranging from diplomas and citations to photos of the last several presidents, including the one whose life Reeder had saved.
    Assistant Director Margery Fisk rose from behind her aircraft carrier of a desk but did not come around to greet them; she just gestured toward waiting chairs and offered a slice of a smile before returning to her swivel chair. Tall, slender, in a navy business suit, her dark straight hair a lacquered helmet, Fisk had the high cheekbones of a model and the hard dark eyes of a cheetah about to spring.
    Reeder had never met Fisk, who’d been AD for less than a year, but he knew her by reputation, all right. She was tough and smart and, it was said, a little bit ruthless. Cross her and she would smile and nod even as she began to plot your career’s demise.
    “Mr. Reeder,” she said, extending her hand and requiring him to lean in over her work-stacked desk to accept, “I’ve heard so much about you.”
    He retrieved his hand, smiled at the ambiguity of that, and took his chair—Sloan already had taken his. “I’ve heard enough about you, Director Fisk, to know not to rise to that bait.”
    She seemed to like the sound of that—an unintimidated response but not a disrespectful one.
    In an alto with no music in it, Fisk said, “Special Agent Sloan has already made a case for putting you on this task force. Part of that was showing me—and walking me through—the security footage . . . with your kinesics read on Justice Venter’s behavior.” She gestured to the monitor of the computer that was to her left on the endless desktop. She had no framed family photos on display, Reeder noted.
    He said, “Kinesics is as much an art as a science. What it comes down to, Director, is my opinion.”
    “Understood. And I respect that opinion. But you’ve been a player in the DC game long enough to know that there’s no way I can put a private citizen on an FBI task force, regardless of his background.”
    “I do,” Reeder said. “And I agree with you. Anyway, the ill will toward me could hamper the investigation. I’ve given you a nudge in the right direction, and I’m sure the Bureau can run with it.”
    He gave her another smile and a respectful nod and was getting up when she raised a hand that was halfway between traffic cop and pope.
    Reeder sat back down.
    “Joe,” she began, then politely, pleasantly asked, “May I call you Joe?”
    “Certainly, Director.” He wasn’t about to ask if he could call her Margery.
    “I agree,” she said, “that you’re on to something here. And I’m not inclined to send a first-team player back to the bench who may have turned this investigation around before it even began. You’re not just a citizen with impressive credentials in federal law enforcement. You’re head of a prestigious and well-respected security company.”
    “Well . . . thank you.”
    “So . . . what I can offer you is an advisory position. Given that you’ve provided advice to us already, I need hardly justify to anyone adding you to the task force as a consultant.”
    Reeder glanced at Sloan, who gave him nothing.
    She was saying, “You’ll have no real authority, which is the bad