Austin, Texas
Day Two
Why was someone planning to kill the president?
Assistant Director St. James sailed through the white metal door whose opaque window was labeled “Finance” in boring block font. Her team’s headquarters were buried in the basement recesses of the Futures Command office building in Austin, Texas. Not that she wanted the limelight. She’d grown up gay in a time before it was hip, and had learned how to hide in plain sight decades ago.
Her new right hand, Ace, sat at a desk, typing.
“Please come inside my office,” St. James said. “We need to call Stryker.”
An excellent linguist, Stryker was one of her best officers. Like the entire team, he was whip-smart. After escaping the nightmare that had been his murderous father, he had grown up with an aunt, hunting deer on an
