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sister. “No, you don’t, and you should. So what aren’t you telling me?”
    Jack Russell suddenly lifted his head and perked up his ears. An instant later Kate heard the front door open, and the dog launched himself off the chair and ran skittering across the tile floor to greet Kate’s dad.
    “What a terrific guard dog we have,” Megan said. “He doesn’t bark until the intruder is already in the house hacking us to pieces.”
    Jake O’Hare was a stocky, square-shouldered man in his sixties who’d retired from the military years ago but still kept his gray hair buzz-cut to army regs and did a hundred push-ups every morning.
    “You don’t need a guard dog,” Kate said. “You’ve got Dad living in the garage.”
    “
Casita
,” Jake said. “This is a classy neighborhood.” He looked down at the empty pie pan. “Looks like I’m late to the party.”
    “You’re just in time,” Kate said. “I need to talk to you.”
    “If this is going to be gun talk you have to take it outside,” Megan said. “We don’t allow gun talk in the house. We’re a hundred percent PC.”
    “Sad and pathetic,” Jake said. “This country was founded on guns.”
    Kate dropped her fork into the empty pie pan and stood. “We can talk in your
casita
.”

Megan had two detached garages, and she’d turned one of them into an apartment for Jake. The apartment still had faux garage doors in front to conform to the gated community’s rigid architectural guidelines, and while they called it a
casita
, the interior was more Embassy Suites.
    Kate sat on her dad’s Naugahyde sofa in his
casita
and told him about the Smithsonian, the bronze rooster, and Carter Grove. She could talk to her father about her secret life because he’d had one, too. Most of his missions for the military were still classified.
    “How much do you know about Carter Grove?” Jake asked.
    “Just what I read in the newspapers. Plus the scuttlebutt I heard around the FBI water cooler.”
    She knew that Carter Grove had been a hatchet man. His relationship with the former president went back to their wildcatting days in the Texas oil fields. Back then, the president was the “vision guy,” the smooth talker who made the big deals. CarterGrove was the iron fist who hired thugs to blackmail politicians, to strong-arm stubborn landowners into selling their mineral rights, and to silence any discontent among the underpaid workforce. He employed those same techniques in D.C. and used the FBI and the CIA as his thugs. Agents who chafed at doing his dirty work were fired, blackballed in law enforcement, and, if they were lucky, found jobs in shopping mall security.
    “Then you know only half the story,” Jake said. “Carter almost single-handedly made BlackRhino the elite international army-for-hire that it is today. While he was chief of staff he threw lucrative defense contracts their way and encouraged the president to wage wars. BlackRhino paid Carter back handsomely by making him their CEO ten minutes after he left the White House.”
    “Did you ever work with BlackRhino in your military days?”
    “Not directly. I saw them on the fringes, training rebels in countries where the U.S. wasn’t supposed to be involved but had an active interest in the outcome of events.”
    “So the Pentagon had BlackRhino do their dirty work.”
    “It gave them deniability.”
    “With your covert experience, you’d seem like a perfect pick for BlackRhino. Did they try to hire you after you left the military?”
    “No, and do you want to know why?”
    “Because you don’t play well with others.”
    “Because it’s not enough for BlackRhino that you know how to kill. It’s important that you like to do it. If you do, you’re not going to care who lives or who dies as a consequence of your actions. That’s not me. You don’t want to mess with these guys, Kate.”
    “I don’t plan to. Whatever plan Nick comes up with to get the rooster, I’m sure it’s going