“Not a secretary.”
The front door opened.
Silas jerked so hard that the pistol slipped away from my head.
He had forgotten something basic in his panic: he had never locked the door.
Two members of the protective detail appeared at the end of the hallway, weapons trained safely but decisively on him.
“Drop the firearm.”
Silas swung me sideways, trying to use my body as cover.
The movement exposed his wrist.
I acted.
Years of training collapsed into less than a second.
I trapped his gun hand against my shoulder, stepped across his balance, and drove my weight downward.
Because my wrists were still cuffed, I could not use the technique exactly as I normally would.
I did not need to.
Silas stumbled.
The pistol struck the tile.
One of the operators kicked it away.
Three people were on Silas before he could recover.
He hit the floor shouting.
“I’m police! I’m police!”
Nobody seemed impressed.
An operator knelt beside me and unlocked Silas’s cuffs with a universal key from his kit.
Blood rushed painfully back into my hands.
“You injured, General?”
“Bruised.
Nothing urgent.”
Linda stared at him.
Then at me.
“General?” she repeated.
The operator looked toward her, confused that the question even needed answering.
“Yes, ma’am.
General Thorne.”
Linda sat perfectly still.
For once, she had no dismissive joke ready.
Silas was pulled upright and searched.
His badge, spare magazines, radio, keys, and department identification were removed and catalogued on the kitchen table.
The sight of his badge sitting there apart from him seemed to break something inside him.
“You can’t arrest me,” he said.
“This is local jurisdiction.”
The tactical commander entered behind the team.
He was a colonel I knew well, a careful man named Warren Pike whose calm voice had steadied operations far more dangerous than this one.
“Your department has already been notified,” Pike said.
“So have federal authorities.
Nobody here is improvising, Officer Vane.”
Silas looked at me with naked hatred.
“She provoked me.”
Pike’s expression did not change.
“We have the recording.”
“She threatened me.”
“We have the recording.”
“She reached for my weapon.”
“We have the recording.”
Each repetition seemed to make Silas smaller.
Linda suddenly stood.
“I recorded it too,” she said.
Silas snapped his head toward her.
“You deleted it.”
