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Investigation for Hunter’s criminal record when she glanced at the clock. “Crud!”
    She grabbed her notepad and pencil and hurried down the hallway to the conference room, where the rest of the I-Team sat around the table waiting for her.
    Tom sat at the head of the table, notepad and a stack of newspapers in front of him, one pencil behind his right ear and another in his hand. More than six feet tall and built like a linebacker, he was an intimidating man. If he hadn’t been such a brilliant journalist, Sophie might have left the I-Team a long time ago. Tom had hired her from the News , where she’d worked boring GA—general assignment—and had taught her more about journalism in a month than she’d learned in four years of J-school.
    And if he was sometimes a jerk and ran the newsroom as if it were a sweatshop?
    Well, she didn’t always have to like him to respect him.
    He looked up at her and frowned, a shock of gray curls half covering his eyes. “Glad you could make the time, Alton. Harker, what’s the latest?”
    Matt Harker, the city reporter, sat to Tom’s left. Freckle-faced with short reddish hair, he always looked like he’d dressed out of his laundry basket, wearing the same wrinkled tie every day with a different wrinkled shirt. He glanced up from his notes. “The mayor and city council are going at it again—this time over the fire department budget. Council wants to freeze it, but the mayor is holding with the union and wants a substantial increase. Can you tell we have a municipal election coming in the fall?”
    Syd Wilson, the managing editor, looked at Matt over her new reading glasses—the reading glasses no one was supposed to notice. Small and wiry, she wore her salt-and-pepper hair short and spiked and didn’t like to think of herself as nearing fifty. “How much?”
    Matt shrugged. “Probably no more than ten inches.”
    Tom nodded, glanced at Joaquin. “I’m sick of the mayor’s mug shot. Get something fresh from one of the fire stations. Benoit?”
    Natalie Benoit was the newest member of the I-Team, hired to take Tessa’s place on cops and courts. From an old Cajun family, she had relocated to Denver after her family lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. Tom had hired her on the spot when he’d learned she was the journalist who’d stayed in Community Medical Center rather than evacuating, helping to care for the sick and dying. Her coverage of the tragedy there had made her a Pulitzer finalist.
    With long dark hair, big aqua eyes, and a charming New Orleans accent, she’d put the libido of every heterosexual man at the paper into overdrive but rarely seemed to date or socialize. She never talked about her ordeal during Katrina, and no one dared to pry.
    “I can probably do with ten inches, as well. A couple of animal rights activists claim they were beaten up by police at last week’s antifur protest. An observer has come forward with a digital recording that seems to support their allegations—pretty rough stuff. They’ve lawyered up and are seeking damages. Chief Irving has promised an internal investigation.”
    “Oh, good.” Tom sounded anything but impressed. “Another one.”
    Syd punched numbers into her calculator. “Any chance we can get stills off the recording?”
    Natalie smiled. “I’ve already turned it over to production.”
    “What’s on your plate, James?”
    Kat kept her gaze on her notes. She rarely looked anyone in the eyes, something Sophie had come to understand was cultural. “I got a tip that someone in the Department of Wildlife has been distributing eagle parts illegally.”
    “Eagle parts?” the room said in unison.
    Kat nodded. “When an eagle is accidentally killed or found dead, there’s a process wildlife officials are supposed to follow for distributing feathers, claws, and other ceremonial body parts to Indian spiritual leaders. Apparently, someone has been selling parts off to non-Indians. I’m meeting with the