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“Because I’m mixed race?”

Galloway seems surprised that I would bring that up.

“I know you’re half Latina, but the way you present is ethnically ambiguous. You could be white, or something more exotic.”

“And that’s supposedly good?”

“Might be an asset.”

I have always found my heritage a puzzle. I was raised in whiteness by my grandfather “Poppy” Everett Morgan Grey a relentless racist, who tried to bury the El Salvadoran side of me. He did such a thorough job of biasing me against my own tradition that whenever I manage to dig it out, I find something tarnished by his scorn.

“Actually,” says Galloway, “I was talking about your skills as a profiler and background in crisis negotiation. It’s a deep-cover operation, six months to a year. Interested?”

Shocked. It is like going up in a helicopter and being handed the controls.

I say, “Yes.”

There is a pause.

“Anything that would keep you in Los Angeles?” he asks.

“Nothing but regret.” I smile poorly.

Galloway holds my gaze. “How are you around the incident?”

He means the shooting incident.

“It doesn’t get easier.”

It is coming on again, the sour tightening of the throat.

He is watching me.

“I’ve been approved for duty. Or I wouldn’t be here. But you know that.”

“Undercover is different. It’s about developing relationships and then betraying them.”

“Which makes me perfect for the job?”

“I know it’s been hard, but the way you’ve come back from the incident makes me think you have the personality type that would be resilient to the stress of working undercover.”

“What’s the real reason?” I joke. “You want me out of L.A.?”

“On a personal level, I think it would be very good for you to get out of L.A.”

Supervisors don’t often admit to thinking about you on a personal level, or having your best interests at heart. I blush with gratitude.

“The director has formed a multiagency task force that will function here and in Portland, Oregon.” Galloway nods sagely. “A major undertaking. We’re calling it ‘Operation Wildcat.’ What do you think?”

“It sells.”

“All you have to do is go through undercover school at the Academy and get certified.”

All I have to do is swim to Alcatraz and back.

“It’s the toughest training in the Bureau, am I right?”

“Brutal.” Galloway smiles. “Two weeks, twenty-four/seven, designed to stress you out emotionally and physically and put you in intensive role-play operations to simulate realism. Remember the ‘agony tree’?”

The agony tree is a big old pine at the start of the running course at the Academy. Over the years, folks have covered it with signs like SUCK IT IN; HURT; LOVE IT; PAIN; 110%.

“In undercover school maybe one in five makes the cut,” he informs me. “The rest are still hanging from the tree.”

Galloway opens the door and the world of the FBI comes back—the talk, the hustle of important work, sunshine falling across the bright maroon-and-navy furniture that has recently sprung up around the office.

“Thank you for this,” I tell him.

“Don’t thank me. There are grander themes to respond to.”

I grin, amused by Galloway’s quirky philosophizing. “What are the grander themes?”

“I want the idiots who killed Steve Crawford to cry on the stand,” my boss says softly. “I want them to roll on the floor like pill bugs.”

I stop grinning. “What if I don’t pass undercover school?”

“It won’t affect your job, or the operation. Someone else will qualify. And you’ll come back and go on being Ana.”

He pats my arm reassuringly, as if that would be perfectly okay.

Three

The road to undercover school cuts a straight line through a hundred square miles of dense Virginia forest. The raw-faced young Marines who stand in the rain, M16s over their shoulders, have zero tolerance for speeding, so I keep the rental car to thirty-five miles per hour—although my heartbeat is racing with the same giddy excitement as the first time I made this drive, when I arrived for training as a new agent, twelve years before.

This is everything I’ve ever wanted! That’s how I was thinking way back then, until the road went on and on at the same monotonous