"Holy sh—! Ambrose! You’re actually calling me? You finally remembered I exist!"
The voice that crackled through the smartphone’s speaker was a startling transformation. Gone was the icy, bureaucratic precision of Gavin Monroe, the high-ranking official of the Federal Bureau of Public Safety. In its place was a frantic, ecstatic explosion of energy—the voice of a young man who sounded like he’d just won the lottery.
"Is this your real number? Hold on, let me save this. Man, you are something else! You really just cut us all off, didn't you? Not a word for two years! Do you have any idea how much heat I took for not knowing where you’d vanished to?"
Ambrose Ward couldn't help but let a genuine smile soften the hard lines of his face. The tension that had been coiling in his chest for the
