Page 126 of Denied Access

Stansfield leaned back in his chair, confused by the question. “What about it?”

“Who is going to run the program?”

“You mean who is going to run Rapp?”

Irene nodded.

Stansfield sighed. “I’m not sure. Stan will need a strong hand, and Rapp will require someone he trusts. In an agency that preaches a truism that the mark of a good handler is the ability to pass an asset off to another handler, I’ve managed to create the opposite of that in the Orion team. Don’t worry—I’ll use Dr. Lewis as an unbiased arbitrator. He might just have some ideas about who we should look at to replace you.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Stansfield raised both eyebrows. “You already have someone in mind?”

“No. It won’t be necessary because I’m not going anywhere. You said that I was at a fork in the road. Maybe so. But I’m not ready to take either of those paths. Not yet. I lobbied you to implement the Orion program and put me in charge. I lobbied even harder to be allowed to run Rapp the way I saw fit. Now that Stan is finally on board with me and Rapp, and the program is bearing fruit, you want me to move to something else? I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t do that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Irene didn’t answer. At least not right away. To the casual observer, she was completely unfazed. No flushed face or aggressive posture andno anger sparking from her eyes. Just an intelligence professional dispassionately stating her case.

Stansfield was not a casual observer.

As someone who’d known Irene her entire life, the set of her jaw said volumes.

“I’m not saying no, sir. I’m just saying not now. Please.”

Stansfield turned from his protégée to the expansive window. He spent a long moment surveying the grounds of the agency to which he’d devoted his adult life. An agency full of people who accomplished the impossible while navigating the unthinkable on a daily basis. People like the case officer sitting across from him.

His decision made, Stansfield turned back to his surrogate daughter.

“This office really does have quite the view. I think you’d like it.”

“Maybe so,” Irene said, getting to her feet, “but I’ll stick with the view from mine for now. Good day, Director.”

Her words hung in the air long after she’d left, and Stansfield couldn’t shake the notion that they had a familiar ring.

Perhaps because he’d once said the very same thing.

EPILOGUE

LAKEANNA, VIRGINIA

DR.Thomas Lewis stared at his patient, waiting for the man to speak.

As a psychologist, Lewis’s job was to help people see the parts of themselves they would rather keep hidden. While pop culture had propagated the stereotype of an all-knowing therapist who deftly guided patients on journeys of self-discovery, this did not match his experience. It was true that he began each session with the broad strokes of what he thought a patient needed to confront in order to make progress, but these notions served more like a compass rather than a road map.

A directional azimuth for his opening questions, not a detailed script.

Lewis knew that most of his patients ranked coming to see him only slightly higher than a visit to the dentist. As such, he’d found it instructional to allow the patient to make small talk in the beginning of the session, since these seemingly throwaway comments sometimes hinted at deeper issues.

Not this patient.

The man seated on the other side of his office possessed almost a preternatural ability for stillness. He was barely out of college and his shaggy hair and scruffy beard should have brought to mind a beatnik poet or maybe a fraternity brother just back from a spring-break jaunt to Mexico. His lax grooming standards should have dulled the man’s edges or added some warmth to his unnerving black eyes the way a pink dog collar might soften a German shepherd’s appearance.

They did not.

Instead, the intensity radiating from the man elicited a different response.

Fight or flight.