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his covert op business off the ground. Zack was one of his first agents. That had to count for something, didn’t it?
    At last, Alex lifted his eyes. Icy blues speared Zack clean through. A full on body-slam could not have hurt worse. He wilted. He’d disappointed the one man left in the world he truly respected.
    “How is she?” Alex got right to the point.
    “Dehydrated, malnourished, and frightened.” Zack spoke right up, ready to give his boss every last bit of information in his head. “She’s at Children’s National Medical Center in D.C. Boss, I didn’t have a choice. I–I—”
    Alex waved the explanation off with a look of total irritation before turning to David. “What do we know about her?”
    Zack clamped his mouth shut. Good. Talking about the girl was a positive sign. Alex had a daughter once. He cared about kids. Good.
    “Child Protective Services has taken custody until Immigration and Customs can locate her parents. She’s Chinese, so I was able to talk with her a little, but she’s only around five years old, maybe younger. It’s hard to know for sure.” David pushed several photos across the table as he calmly explained. “She’s very afraid. I couldn’t get much out of her. Different dialects, you understand. I’d be glad to spend more time with her when we’re through here.”
    Alex studied the photos David had taken at the hospital. Zack had been there when the poor little gal came to. By then, she was wrapped in heated blankets, had an IV line in her skinny little arm, and Child Services had been called. The pictures showed everything. They also portrayed a lost child with dark, scared eyes.
    “Boss, I—”
    “Knock it off,” Alex hissed. If looks could kill.
    Zack took a deep breath, shut up, and waited.
    “So, we’ve got an endangered child on our hands who doesn’t speak English, two gangbangers in a blue cargo van full of bullet holes, and—”
    “I’ve got the van on the surveillance video, Boss, and—”
    Another scorching look and Zack’s throat squeezed shut. There was no sense in speaking. He was dead. His stupid brain just didn’t understand it yet.
    “And we’ve got the duffle bags they carried into the apartment,” Alex snapped at him even as he turned to face David again. “Do we know what’s in those bags?”
    “Fur coats. I ran some preliminary numbers. Street value is close to half a million.”
    “Furs?” Alex’s nose wrinkled. “That’s an odd commodity for gangbangers.”
    “Mother and Ember are working to identify the gang members from the video surveillance Zack mentioned. Metro PD thinks they’re 4 th Street Tigers. I’ve got an all-points bulletin out for the van. We’re also checking the local precinct’s theft divisions to see if they’ve got anything on stolen furs or vans.” David’s gaze was as steady as Alex’s.
    Zack took another deep breath. He hadn’t expected to still be here, so all the talk about the little girl and the van had to be a good sign. He rolled the knot out of one shoulder. Maybe he wasn’t going to get fired after all.
    Alex turned to him. Icy blue had changed to gunmetal gray. Sharp. Cold. Deadly.
    “Size it up for me, Lennox.”
    Zack swallowed hard. Size it up for me? What does he mean? What’s he really asking?
    “Ah,” he stalled, his mind racing over all possible answers. David had just summed up the whole debacle. What did Alex want, the damned mess tied up with a blood red bow?
    “I guess what we’ve got here is a little girl who needed help.” Zack calmed the moment he opened his mouth to speak. This was that rubber to the road moment when a man stood up and took the blame, right or wrong. “If you want someone’s head, it would be mine. I made the call. It’s on me. Yeah, David was senior agent, and he backed me up, but I’m the one who screwed the op. If you’re here to fire someone, I’m your man.”
    He blew out a deep breath. These past couple of years would definitely go