Chapter 72

There were too many fucking “ifs.” I began to gather myself together to make my move.

“Yes, I’m quite aware that on your next birthday, you will turn thirty-six.”

Unobtrusively, I relaxed my muscles. He didn’t know I was actually forty. I still faced being a pencil-pusher, riding a desk. But maybe—

I decided to see how this hand played out. “May I ask what my options are, sir?”

“Option, singular, Mr. Vincent. I’m assigning you to work in Interior Affairs as Mr. Sperling’s deputy director. Bob needs someone to take up some of his workload. He has become—” The Boss didn’t look happy.

Yeah, I knew what Sperling had become—the same thing he’d always been: a fucking waste of space.

Interior Affairs was the worst-run department in the WBIS. It dealt with anything going on within the forty-eight contiguous states and had the highest attrition rate of any in the WBIS, mostly because agents who had any experience managed to find ways not to work for him.