by Alex Irvine

MONDAY

Feet up on his desk, browsing through his next client’s file, Kyle McCarty bullshits with his colleague Jay about the Tigers. Jay’s into the conversation, wants to complain about pitching changes and baserunning mistakes, but Kyle doesn’t really have time. He’s got clients stacked up and he wants to get out the door on time today for his daughter Madison’s lacrosse game.

Eventually Jay starts in on the Tigers’ failures at the minor league level, and that’s more than Kyle can stand. “Got a nine o’clock,” he says, kicking back from the desk. “Catch you in the break room.”

“Roger that,” Jay says, and beats him to the door because that’s the kind of guy Jay is.

Kyle’s nine o’clock is in B building, where most of the interview rooms are located. RJX Data Services has three buildings—A, B, and C—in a nondescript industrial park in the nondescript suburb of Livonia, Michigan. Everything is painted in neutral colors. The employee parking lot runs around the outside of the U formed by the three buildings, but client-facing staff have the option of parking inside the U. More secure. Kyle doesn’t always do this, but he has today. The new ding in the left rear quarter panel bugs him all over again. When I am king, he thinks, people will need licenses to operate shopping carts.

He badges himself through the door. “Hey, Jamal,” he says to the guard on duty. “Here for 1387.”

Jamal glances down at the appointment sheet. “He’s in 24B.”

Before entering 24B, Kyle uses the bathroom and takes a long drink of water. He doesn’t like having to think about the needs of his body while he’s conducting an interview.

• • •

1387 is twenty-six years old, born in Pakistan. Parents deceased, no other family. Computer geek, gamer, the kind of alienated smart kid bad people find useful. Captured during a Ranger mission in Whereverabad, Kyle doesn’t have to know where and doesn’t care. Reason for interview, information regarding Dark Web transactions related to pursuit of fissionable material. Pretty serious, maybe time-sensitive, so Kyle has instructed support staff to do some prep work.

Inside interview room 24B, the thermostat is set at thirty-eight degrees, the same temperature inside Kyle’s refrigerator at home. 1387 sits naked in a large steel tub filled with eighteen inches of water, his hands manacled behind his back to a ring set in the wall. He shivers and his lips are purple. “Salaam aleikum,” Kyle says.

1387 glares at him, but he’s got that sick, pouchy look around the eyes that means he’s going to crack. Kyle waits. Eventually 1387 moves his lips. Kyle can’t really tell what he said. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that 1387 felt like he had to say something. He’s playing by Kyle’s rules.

A trapped organism experiences fear. As the fear escalates, the organism begins to countenance actions once considered disgusting or hateful.

Kyle’s Arabic, Punjabi, and Pashto range from decent to barely comprehensible, depending on the dialect of the client. Also, a fair number of them speak some English—including 1387. Kyle introduces himself and sits in a chair near the tub. He’s wearing a heavy coat and hat. He looks up at the clock, and sees 1387 follow the direction of his gaze. “You’ve got another five minutes or so,” he says. “Then you’re going to fall over. You might be too weak to get back up.”

1387 registers what Kyle isn’t saying.

“So that’s how much time we have,” Kyle goes on. “Now from what I understand, you got caught up in some bad stuff. Probably you got in over your head. You’re just a code guy, right? You like computers?”

1387 says nothing.

“I mean, you must, because you had some pretty high-end gear when you were caught. Somebody gave you that stuff, and you’re probably scared to tell me who. I get it. So I won’t ask. Okay?”

1387 still says nothing. He has stopped shivering. That tells Kyle he’s edging into hypothermia territory. “Hey, buddy. Say okay.”

“O … okay.”

“There we go. So I won’t ask who you were working for because I don’t want you to get in trouble with them. But there is something I need to know. Simple. I’ll just lay it out. Give me the passwords you used and tell me where the back door is in that VPN you built.”

Ordinarily 1387 would see right through this ruse and clam up, but hypothermia and sleep deprivation remove the mind’s ability to see anything but straight lines of cause and effect. Kyle can see him considering.

“I mean, we can put our own hackers to work and figure it all out, but it’ll be a lot faster if you help us out. Plus, and I hate to bring this up, if our guys go to work and they’re not fast enough … and all those passwords get changed, they’re not using that VPN anymore … I mean, the people who brought you here might not have any reason to keep you around anymore.”

1387 mumbles something, but he’s so deep into hypothermia that Kyle can’t even make out what language it’s supposed to be in. Then he slumps to his left. The chain holding his hands draws taut and he slides down until his face is half in the water. He thrashes, but he’s too weak to pull himself up.

Kyle bears 1387 no ill will. In fact, he wishes him well. In the preferred future where 1387 has given useful intel, perhaps he will one day be free again. This would be fine with Kyle. His goal is to do his job. The ultimate disposition of clients is something over which he has no control and in which he has little interest. He has these thoughts as he counts slowly to ten. Then he gets up and pulls 1387 back upright, cradling his head as he pulls the plug to drain the tub. 1387’s eyes are unfocused, his mouth hanging open. Kyle unlocks 1387’s manacles and sits him in Kyle’s chair. He puts his coat around 1387’s shoulders and his hat on 1387’s head. He reaches over to the wall and flips a switch to activate a heating vent. By the time 1387 is coherent again, shivering and throwing wild-eyed looks in every direction, it’s seventy degrees in the room and the tub is empty.

“You were saying something before you fell,” Kyle says. “Would you like to finish now?”

1387 sees Kyle’s hand on the tub faucet. He registers Kyle’s coat wrapped around him. He looks up at the heating vent high on the wall.

Kyle reaches toward 1387, who flinches away—but Kyle is only taking a notebook and pen from the pocket of his coat. He opens the notebook and clicks the pen. “I’d hate to have to start all over again,” Kyle says. “I don’t always get the timing right.”

• • •

Easy one, Kyle thinks as he fills out the report. 1387 gave up everything, more than enough to make him useful. So he was going into a different program, and Kyle has a good start to the week. Win-win.

Jay pops into Kyle’s office doorway. “You fuck him up?”

“Didn’t have to,” Kyle says.

“Uh huh.” Jay sounds doubtful. “Don’t leave intel on the table, man. Give it 110% and make sure.”

Kyle disagrees. Error rates and noise increase with the amount of pressure put on a client, wasting time down the road. As a professional, Kyle believes his job is to return useful intel, not send analysts and field operatives chasing down a dozen dead ends. Part of the job is recognizing when a client has begun telling the interviewer what he thinks the interviewer wants to hear. Ideally, part of the job is conducting each interview so it never gets to that point.

This is a conservative perspective, not shared by RJX management or other client-facing personnel like Jay, but Jay is a sadist and Kyle doesn’t like sadists. They’re not good colleagues. They don’t deliver reliable results. Plus they’re always in hur-hur locker-room mode, and Kyle isn’t that kind of guy. Nor does he view himself as an angel of retribution for 9/11, another common view at RJX. Jay likes fear, he likes it when clients get incoherent because that gives him an excuse to escalate and then write in the disposition report that the client remained uncooperative until final disposition. The job encourages it. All the videos RJX staff has to watch from Syria and Saudi Arabia, people begging for their lives over the sounds of power drills and blowtorches … RJX calls those Professional Development Intelligence Materials but they’re just porn for violent misanthropes. The people in those videos are monsters. Kyle suspects there’s a bit of the monster in Jay, too. He might have had good motivations once, but they curdled into an addiction years ago.

The upshot is that Kyle tries to keep his distance from Jay, although that’s hard because he and Jay are the two main interviewers at RJX Livonia. Also, there’s a big office push for employee sociability. RJX’s division manager, Phil Drake, encourages office outings. He calls meetings at least once a week to stress the importance of esprit de corps. The walls of the common area are festooned with motivational posters of kittens and inspiring memes.

All this goes through Kyle’s mind as he looks up from the report. Something in his expression alarms Jay, who backs out the door holding up both hands, palms out. “Not telling you how to do your job. Just, you know … hey, we still on for this weekend?”

Kyle is hosting a barbecue this Sunday. Phil’s idea. “Weather permitting,” he says.

“Got it. Catch you later.”

Kyle finishes his report, glances over the schedule for tomorrow, then leaves the office. Jay has gotten under his skin, and his focus is shot. Before heading home, he sits in his car for ten minutes. NPR has stories on dying bees, a kid in Malawi who designed a windmill, a new movie Kyle has no interest in seeing but Maddie mght. As Kyle drives out of the parking lot, he sheds work like a dead skin he’ll wriggle back into tomorrow morning.

• • •

The game has already started when he gets there. He kisses Rachel and asks how Maddie is doing. “She should be playing more,” Rachel says, keeping her eyes on the field.

“Ahh, she’s a freshman. Give it time,” Kyle says. Maddie’s a good athlete, works hard. Her time will come.

Home after the game, a 17-11 win for the good guys, Kyle digs around in the fridge for leftovers. They never cook on game nights. So it’s lasagna from last Saturday, then they indulge Maddie by watching her latest TV obsession, reruns of Brooklyn 99. It’s funny and Kyle likes watching Maddie laugh. He also likes the fantasy of trusting authority. She goes up to her room to Snapchat with friends or whatever she does up there, and Kyle has a few minutes alone with Rachel. She talks about work: planning open houses, quirky clients, the back-and-forth of buyer and seller. Kyle wouldn’t survive a week in real estate. Rachel doesn’t ask about his work. She knows what he does is classified, and long ago made her peace with not knowing any more.

Around ten she goes upstairs to bed. Kyle flips through the channels, lands on the Tigers. They’re losing. This is comforting in its familiarity, and he takes a few minutes to sit by himself, letting go of the day.

He’s grateful. After years of learning the trade in shitholes like Uzbekistan and Yemen, Kyle made the jump to private work and never looked back. The intelligence services saw which way the wind was blowing and shut down most of their black sites overseas. Then they hid the new ones right here at home, in places like Livonia, Michigan. Homeland Security contracts used terms like data recovery and intelligence analysis. Guys like Kyle got phone calls. Now he has a regular nine-to-five job, a reasonable commute, a nice house with a creek in the backyard.

His only current irritant is Jay. You fuck him up?

No, Jay, I’m not here to fuck people up, Kyle imagines himself answering.

Now his mood has shifted. He’s angry that he’s let work follow him home. Jay has him thinking about things he ordinarily doesn’t permit himself to think about outside work. That barrier is what keeps his whole life on track.

To recover his equilibrium, Kyle cleans the kitchen and sorts through the mail. He writes checks to the children he sponsors in Malaysia and the Philippines. He renews his membership in the Natural Resources Defense Council and writes a letter to his congressman about a Great Lakes water quality study. By the time all that’s done, he’s feeling better. He locks the doors, peeks in on sleeping Maddie, and heads for bed.

TUESDAY

Tuesday dawns humid, still, and threatening, the kind of Michigan summer morning that leaves you praying for an afternoon thunderstorm. Kyle’s glad to get inside, glad for the simple routine of boring cases.

4406, human trafficker

8072, ISIS bombmaker

5597, Chinese double agent

He’s got what he needs out of each of them inside an hour, no fuss no muss. Rapport established with minimal pressure, verifiable intel gathered. Post-interview assessment and completed, client moved along, file off his desk. Time for lunch.

He hasn’t packed anything, so he’s at the mercy of the RJX break room, which is stocked with various instant foods. Kyle selects some noodles, adds water to the specified line, puts them in the microwave. Other RJX employees come and go. Jamal’s finishing a tuna sandwich and doing some kind of puzzle on his phone.

Jay appears in the break-room doorway just as the microwave dings. “Kyle, my man, can you cover one for me?” Kyle stirs his noodles. “I gotta go to the dentist, forgot until I got the confirmation text this morning.” Everyone in the room knows the old joke, but Jay says it anyway. “RJX karma, my man. I gotta pay my debt. I’ll bring the file to your office.”

Kyle gestures at his noodles.

“Dude, you can eat noodles anywhere.” Jay disappears. Kyle debates. These little power plays are part of life at RJX. It’s true. He can eat noodles anywhere.

Jay’s in his office moving stuff around on his desk. “While you’re at the dentist I’m going to go rearrange all your shit,” Kyle says.

“Ha, like I would notice.” Jay spins the file over to Kyle. “Appreciate you doing this. It’s a juicy one.”

Kyle opens the file and scans the executive summary. 3961 is suspected of orchestrating a multinational child-pornography ring, but that’s not why he’s visiting RJX. The higher-ups have detailed 3961 to Kyle because 3961 is also suspected of knowing something about funneling cryptocurrency to terrorist groups.

“Like I said, juicy. Hate to miss out,” Jay says. He heads for the door, trailing a fist Kyle dutifully bumps. “Thanks, man.”

Then he’s gone. Kyle goes back to reviewing the file.

Shit.

Phil has added a note that the client is afraid of knives. In Phil-speak, this is a directive. Now Kyle understands a couple of things. One, why Jay was so reluctant to give this up. Two, that Jay had figured out how to include Kyle in his misfortune; if Jay couldn’t go at 3961, he would make sure Kyle had to do it. Jay’s power play takes on a new dimension.

“Fuck,” Kyle says, quietly because Phil is a regular churchgoer who dislikes profanity.

Kyle hates it when management gets involved. They always fuck everything up, the outcomes are worse, the intel is worse … but there it is in black and white.

No, Kyle thinks. I can figure this out. He takes a deep, centering breath and heads over to Building C. Kyle’s already in a bad frame of mind. Nothing good ever happens in Building C.

• • •

He’s read all the manuals, done all the training courses. Learned all the jargon, the euphemisms. To Kyle’s mind, unless you’ve been instructed to reach an LTR outcome, the whole trick of a successful interview boils down to one thing:

Making sure they still have hope.

The minute a client thinks he’s going to die, the chances of getting anything useful out of him get close to zero. You could apply some quite extreme pressure to a client and still get viable results if the client always believed he was going to get out—but physical disfigurements tended to make clients believe their life’s blood was going down those drains set in the floors of the interview rooms. That’s why Kyle stayed away from them. He was a big believer in conversation, alternated with moderate discomfort—cold, some sleep deprivation maybe, if there was a big hurry to get a result maybe posture modifications. But even there, you already had some clients thinking that some kind of rubicon had been crossed, like RJX was one of those places where someone was going to crush their nuts in a vise or saw their nipples off or drill holes in their kneecaps, all of which happened once in a while at RJX, sure, but not with anything like the regularity you saw at the real high-pressure places in Syria or Saudi or Uzbekistan.

In short, the problem with actual physical changes—Alterations in Bodily Topography is the category in the interview report Kyle fills out after every session—is that they tend to induce panic.

Kyle dislikes panic. In an informational interview, panic responses introduce noise into the results, which wastes analysts’ time. Compliance interviews are a different story. Panic can be useful there. Even so, Kyle believes a steady mixture of pressure and encouragement is the best way to reach a satisfactory result for all parties.

Fear can be useful, but like any other tool it’s only effective when used at the right time. Better to let the client’s own imagination do the work while you kept him wondering what was going to happen. A lot of clients did all the work themselves, if you knew how to pace the interview. Balance threat and rapport, pressure and release. It was like anything else. In storytelling, action and then a breather before the next action. In music, the quiet verse and the loud chorus. In sex, build to a climax, then take it slow and start building again. Maybe. Anyway, the pattern held.

• • •

It’s not working. 3961 is by turns evasive and insulting, sarcastic and cynical. They’re three hours in and Kyle has nothing. Ordinarily that wouldn’t be a big deal—some interviews take place over the course of days or weeks. But 3961 is a priority case, the file initialed with some very highly placed initials, one of which has added Today! and underlined it three times.

But there’s no indication in the file what specific information Kyle is looking for.

This happens sometimes. It’s pointless and stupid, but it happens. Usually it’s because a client comes to RJX as a result of a personal thing, and guys like Kyle are made the instrument of whims and vendettas held by people they will never meet.

Kyle goes so far as to explain this to 3961. 3961 does not change his demeanor or offer any way to continue the conversation.

Kyle sighs. “Okay, I tried,” he says, and goes back to his office for his knives. They’re in a drawer somewhere, he’s not sure where. On the way he passes George, one of the support staff. He and George bowl together on Wednesdays. “Move 3691 to the surgical suite, okay?”

George nods without breaking stride. “You got it.”

Kyle’s already dissociating. He can’t be present for what he’s about to do.

• • •

The organism experiences fear and pain. It emits noises whose purpose exists at a pre-conscious level, to alert other organisms to the presence of danger.

An organism in extreme pain has a limited number of responses.

Control of an organism through application of pain is not difficult, but the presence of pain can interfere with the understanding of the organism’s responses in controlled circumstances.

Supplication is the mode of an organism that senses an imminent threat of death.

• • •

After just about everyone else has gone home—RJX contractors are punctual in, punctual out—Kyle works on his disposition report for 3691, adding a final notation for him to be added to the LTR list. Long-Term Relocation is another euphemism, but that’s not a problem Kyle’s ever going to be able to solve. The world gave forth an endless supply of men who were willing to stomp children to death in front of their parents or use rape or throw babies on a bonfire. Kyle’s not one of those people. Kyle does what he has to do. He produces intelligence in intelligent ways. Maybe he minimizes the pain. Whatever Phil’s misgivings, RJX higher-ups like Kyle because he’s productive without cluttering up the LTR list.

Well, except today. It’s almost seven o’clock. At least the traffic has probably cleared up. Won’t take him more than twenty minutes to get home.

It doesn’t pay to think too much about pain. It’s just a signal from the body that something has gone wrong. It can cause different reactions including vocalizations, aggressive movements, psychological escalations. But in and of itself, it’s a natural part of what they do. Kyle doesn’t think about pain the way a logger doesn’t think about baby birds, this analogy helpfully suggested by Phil one day when talk turned to environmental issues and jobs people had to do. Many RJX consultants drive pickups. With few exceptions, the bed liners of those trucks are unscratched and the mudflaps free of mud. Environmental conversations go in predictable directions. Kyle drives a Honda Passport he has had since Maddie was a baby. He’s got an order in on one of the new electric Mustangs because he’s wanted a Mustang since he was a kid. His grandfather Jim worked at the River Rouge plant back in the ‘60s when they were building Mustangs there.

Factory work runs in the family. What Kyle does at RJX is factory work, really. The clients are raw material, to which Kyle applies his professional skills, and the product is information.

Kyle closes 3691’s file. He looks at his hands to make sure they’re clean. Nothing from inside RJX’s walls can come home with him … but Jay’s voice is in his head all the way across the parking lot. You fuck him up?

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday morning Jay’s all over him, wanting to know about 3961. “How’d it go, man? You get good stuff?”

Kyle’s angry, which puts him in detached-but-cooperative mode, at least at work. “The report’s on the server. Take a look and let me know what you think.”

“I will, I will, but I want to get your take first. You and I both know everything doesn’t,” Jay breaks off and looks around to see if Phil’s within earshot, “you know, doesn’t get in the reports.” His voice drops another few decibels. “Especially when you get old-fashioned.”

“Jay, I get what you’re doing, man, team unity and cohesion, sense of mission and purpose, I get it. Just … take a look at the report and let me get a cup of coffee, and then let me know what you think.”

Jay gives him precisely an hour, during which time Kyle clears up a bunch of administrative emails and comes up with various small tasks to avoid commencing his first interview of the day. “So,” Jay says, talking before he’s even all the way into the room, a little power play designed to convey his sense that whatever he’s saying is obviously more important than whatever else Kyle might have been doing. “You did get some good stuff. A little noisy, but good.”

It’s 10:18 in the morning. Kyle’s already had about enough for today. “Noisy,” he repeats. Of course it was noisy. Certain methods produced pure signal. Other methods produced noise. The knives are in the bottom right drawer of Kyle’s desk, but he can feel them in his hands.

“Not a criticism. It was in the memo from Phil,” Jay says. “Above our pay grade.” All this delivered with transparently insincere bonhomie. Kyle sips his coffee, plays a mental game of eenie-meenie-minie-moe with the four case files on his desk. Selects one. 7809.

“I should probably get to work,” he says.

“Yeah, me too. Hey, listen. You’re a talent,” Jay says, leaning hard on the last word. “Problem is, you hold yourself back. That’s why I made sure you got 3961, so I could bring you along a little, get you on board with the rest of the team.”

Bringing him along a little. Jay knows Kyle’s methods, and his distaste for permanent alterations. Kyle tries not to resent this, fails, then realizes Jay wants him to resent it because Jay is the kind of guy who believes resentment makes for better motivation. “Gotta stop getting in your own way,” Jay adds with a clap on the shoulder, then he’s gone. Kyle considers a career change. Real estate, maybe. In the UP, or South Dakota, Montana, somewhere a long way from all this shit …

He remembers RJX runs a facility just outside Bozeman. There’s no escape.

4467, drug cartel accountant
5013, human trafficker
8881, foreign intelligence asset
2677, terrorist courier

Five sharp, Kyle’s out the door. He wonders what burnout feels like. Is this it? On the way home he stops to get Indian takeout and they eat it in front of the TV. Once, when Maddie was little, Kyle cracked that this was called “eating like Americans,” and now they always call it that. Later, he watches the Tigers pull out an improbable win on the West Coast. It’s after one by the time he goes to bed, and he’s already decided he’s going to take tomorrow off.

THURSDAY

RJX is pretty good about personal time, because, as Phil is fond of saying, it’s not easy to find people with both the right skill set and the right attitude. Kyle scrambles eggs in the morning so Maddie will have something in her stomach other than a quick banana on her way out the door. Rachel eats the rest when Kyle is helping Maddie look for a book she swears she was reading in the living room just the other day, but which turns out to be in the garage. When Maddie’s gone, Kyle sits across from Rachel and her empty plate. “Guess I should have made more,” he says.

“Oh no, were you going to eat these?” She’s sorry but not too sorry, which to Kyle’s mind is the correct approach. He laughs and puts a hand over hers.

“It’s fine. I’m glad you found them irresistible.”

Rachel’s off to work soon after that, and Kyle sits on the back deck with a cup of coffee. A yellowjacket hovers near the cup. Kyle bats it away, not trying to hurt it but already figuring he’ll have to kill it because it’s late in the summer and the bees are restless.

When he was younger, at church camp, Kyle had come upon a friend of his drowning a bee in the woods. Steve. He had the bee in a little net like you’d use to scoop guppies out of a tank. He lowered the net slowly until the bee had just the final half inch of air in the last little bulge of the net.

Then Kyle slapped the net out of Steve’s hand. He remembered Steve being pissed, but also confused. It was just a bee, he said. Who cares.

Kyle thinks of that bee often. To him that moment speaks to a truth that inheres in all people. There are lives anyone would end, and lives anyone would confront great risk to save. Every other life is in the balance.

Sometimes when he’s at work, Kyle thinks about Steve. He wonders how many times Steve slowly ended a tiny life before Kyle stopped him, and how many more times since. Is it something he does furtively, occasionally, when the wife and kids aren’t looking? Or is it a family thing now? Trapping raccoons for recreational drowning, shooting turtles in the mill pond. Or more refined expressions of sadism like trophy hunting. Jay is a trophy hunter. His basement is full of heads. Same with Phil. Kyle’s basement is full of laundry and boxes containing stuff Rachel doesn’t want to throw away or donate.

His mind slips a gear, to another basement. He’s maybe ten years old, watching the Lions lose to someone on his uncle Stan’s big TV. His uncle and two other men, both a little older than Kyle’s father, are swapping Vietnam stories over Bud Lites. It starts off with place names, jokes about being on leave in Saigon or Tokyo, then the real stories start to come out as the game enters the fourth quarter and the dead soldiers line up in ranks on the coffee table. One of the men mimics kicking a Viet Cong prisoner out a helicopter door, then pulls a face and mimes playing dumb. They all laugh until they remember Kyle is there and fall silent for a moment. Then his uncle says, Fuckin’ Lions, man. Hey, Kyle, run upstairs and get us some beers. Kyle is glad to be gone.

• • •

A flush of anger rolls through Kyle’s body, starting in his hands. Jay. Jay has gotten him thinking like this. Unspeakable things have forced their way into Kyle’s mind because of Jay.

Maybe he needs a vacation.

Maybe a career change. Lots of guys in Kyle’s line of work make a lateral move into policing, or private security. But Kyle doesn’t want the day-to-day grind of patrolling, wrestling with hapless dirtbags whose lives have been one long attempt to hold onto the shitty end of the stick. Their crimes mostly don’t matter, and their imprisonment solves nothing. Private security … maybe. If the client was the right kind of person.

Jesus, he says to himself, it’s your day off. Can’t let this shit stay with you. He tosses the coffee and goes inside.

• • •

To keep his mind empty, he keeps his hands busy puttering around the house all day. He fixes a leaky faucet in the downstairs bathroom, takes a couple of screens in to be repaired, does a dozen other little things he’s always meaning to do on weekends but never does. A guy’s got to sit around doing nothing sometimes. The day passes. Kyle’s feeling pretty good about himself. It’s always nice to see Rachel react when he’s done stuff in the house. He wants her to know he can take care of things. Old-fashioned, maybe, but that’s how he feels. Kyle values competence, in himself and others.

Then it’s time to meet Maddie, a standard feature of his days off since she was in elementary school. He walks down the street, cuts across the soccer fields to the high school. He likes to see her, carefree with her friends, growing into herself, her future bright. But he also likes that she’s still happy to see him. She has informed him that this is a rarity among her friends. Hey, Dad, she’ll say, and they’ll go fishing, maybe. Or head over to a bookstore in a little strip mall a mile or so from the school. Maddie’s still a kid, but Kyle can begin to see the woman she is becoming, and he’s looking forward to knowing that woman and seeing what she does in the world.

The youngest LTR Kyle ever did was fifteen. Maddie is fifteen.

He veers away from the school, around the edge of the woods behind the fields. He’s not going to bring that thought close to his daughter. He’s got lots of different categories of Things That Fucked Him Up A Little, and he knows how they all come together, but this is new. Jay’s gotten into his head, made him bring work home. This is a serious problem. The compartmentalization between work and home must be absolute, or home will be corrupted.

That night, lying in bed flipping through the channels with Rachel, he lingers on a news story about a drone strike. Rachel, with her typically acute spousal telepathy, or maybe empathy, asks, “Do you ever see something on the news and know you had something to do with it?”

He frames a number of different answers in his head before saying, “Yeah. It’s happened.”

She rests a hand on his forearm. “Whatever it is you’re doing, you know you don’t have to do it, right?”

But Kyle thinks he does, because if he didn’t, somebody worse would.

When he wakes up the next morning, he pretends to himself that he doesn’t remember his dreams.

FRIDAY

Friday, Kyle pulls into the parking lot, singing along with Stevie Wonder on the oldies station, and clocks Jay coming toward him before he’s even out of his car. “What’s up, brother man?” Jay calls out. “Synchronicity, us pulling in at the same time.”

It’s not that uncommon. They’re both supposed to be at work at the same time, after all.“Hey, man, can you give me a hand?” Jay asks. “I need to bring something in from my car.”

Kyle notices that Jay’s car is nowhere in sight. Jay notices him noticing. “It’s heavy, I parked close to where we’re going. Come on.” He heads around behind Building B, to the inside of the U. Nobody parks back here because this is the route they use to move clients between buildings and nobody wants clients seeing their license plate numbers if somebody fucks up and forgets to hood them. But there’s Jay’s truck, its bed cover stretched tight. Jay drops the gate. Just inside is a tarp loosely draped over something bundled in plastic sheeting. Kyle knows what it is before he even has a chance to remember the last time he’s seen something like this. Thailand. “Jay, man, what,” he says.

Jay already has the feet end of the bundle. “We’re going to write him into the logs somehow. Or he can stow away on the LTR, whatever.” On Tuesdays and Fridays a truck swings by RJX to pick up LTR clients. In between, they stay in the Waiting Room, a refrigerated trailer that sits purring in the corner where Building B meets Building C.

The dead man’s head is heavy in Kyle’s hands. He gets a better grip on the sheeting. He knows he ought to be saying something but he’s not sure what, so he falls back on the familiar routine of making a dumb joke. “Taking clients home?”

“Call it generating leads outside the office,” Jay says. He’s got that look on his face that he usually gets after a long interview. A smile without happiness.

They get to the Waiting Room. Jay looks at Kyle and Kyle realizes Jay is expecting him to use his ID to open the cooler. Kyle pretends that something else is catching his attention. No way is he going to put up with Phil asking him why he was in the Waiting Room first thing in the morning, especially when Kyle’s only filed one LTR in the last six months. After a moment Jay drops the dead man’s legs and uses his own ID. They slide the stowaway into a berth and go back outside.

“Appreciate you, Kyle,” Jay says.

A long time ago, in a patch of woods outside Sarajevo, a high-ranking American diplomat—not the kind you saw on TV, but the right-hand man to the ones you saw on TV—had handed Kyle a gun. In front of them, a man knelt on the ground, his hands tied. Kyle, then fresh from his first tour in Afghanistan, knew he had a choice. He could refuse, and that would be it for his military career and any chance of a private-sector security career. The kneeling man would die anyway. Kyle remembered reading about the Plains Indians in elementary school, how they believed that when they killed an animal, they had an obligation to make its death count. If someone else killed the kneeling man, his death would not count. Whereas if Kyle killed him, his death would mean Kyle could someday be successful, support a family. Kyle whispered Thank you at the exact moment he pulled the trigger, so nobody would hear.

“Who is it, Jay?” He has to know what he’s part of. But by asking, he’s given Jay a tacit message that he’ll cover him, that he has Jay’s back. Fucking Jay.

“I got a buddy who’s a cop,” Jays says, which of course he does. “He likes to talk when he’s had a couple beers and there’s nobody else around.” Which, again, of course. “This guy here,” Jay inclines his head toward the Waiting Room, “was selling oxy and fentanyl around the school. Maddie’s school. Luke and Silas’ school.” Those are Jay’s boys. Maddie says they’re generally decent human beings, but she doesn’t like to be around them because in her words they’re way too into being masculine even though she suspects both of them are gay.

If the guy in the Waiting Room was selling drugs into a high school, then sure, Kyle has no philosophical opposition to putting him in the dirt. Or more likely the incinerator. The problem is moonlighting. Look, Jay, he’s saying in his head, rehearsing objections and rationales, but Jay is already talking again.

“Other people aren’t like us, you know. We recognize each other. We keep them safe even though most of them never know it. Fat dumb happy fuckers.” He leans closer to Kyle, comradely and domineering, getting an arm around Kyle’s shoulders. “We need a guy like you around here. Someone who sticks to the rules. Reminds the rest of us where the lines are … so we don’t, you know, cross too far over them.” Jay laughs at himself. “Even a place like this needs a moral center, Kyle. You are it. Appreciate you.” That’s the third time Jay has said Appreciate you and it’s making Kyle homicidal. “We still on for Sunday?” Jay adds, out of the blue.

“Lions kick off at four,” Kyle says, trying to shift gears as nimbly as Jay. “Grill’s gonna be hot by two or so.”

• • •

At some point during the day, Kyle puts it all together. This is all of a piece with the way he maneuvered Kyle into working on 3961. Jay is gathering a group. A posse, a team. Grooming them, initiating them. But it’s not just a work thing anymore. Kyle wonders how often this has happened, who else might be helping Jay slip unknowns onto the LTR truck. Is he the first?

If so, there might be a chance to nip the whole thing in the bud.

He could tell Phil. That would get Jay in some hot water, but it would also destroy Kyle’s relationship with everyone else in the office. He might get reassigned. Jay wouldn’t stop what he’s doing, because Phil loves Jay and the higher-ups love Phil. RJX nurtures a corporate culture that worships at the altar of results. Not necessarily good results; results. Results keep analysts busy and Defense Department contracts renewing. Good results solve problems. RJX doesn’t mind the second outcome every so often, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the first.

Kyle checks himself. He’s awfully cynical for a Friday. Must be thinking about the Lions too much, ha ha.

How much paranoia, he wonders, is useful?

SUNDAY

That Sunday, Kyle stands on his deck grilling kebabs and watching Maddie quarterback a back yard football game with a bunch of the neighbor kids. Jay is at the other end of the deck with a group of neighbor parents, anatomizing the problems with the Tigers’ roster construction, which are many. Kyle studies Jay in short intervals, not wanting him to think anything is amiss. The appearance of normality. Kyle cherishes the separation he has long maintained between work and home, and now he is terrified to see it weakening. So many people go their whole lives without ever thinking people like Kyle exist. How do they do that? He grins at a neighbor who has just made a joke, shrugs, makes a casual gesture with his grill tongs. There’s a membrane between him and all these other people.

Except Jay. Every time Jay catches Kyle’s eye, it’s direct. Immediate. They recognize each other, but the look of recognition they exchange would never be understood as such by anyone else.

Kyle permits himself to consider similarities between himself and Jay, but the topic is disturbing. Whatever similarities might exist, they’re eclipsed by profound difference such as Kyle not fucking moonlighting and getting Jay tied up in it by asking him to move a fucking stowaway into the Waiting Room.

He gets a grip on himself and considers the problem.

Jay is taking the work home. He’s moonlighting. Psychological mission creep. So: possible solutions.

Calling the police won’t work. Jay is protected by status and his own skill. He won’t have left usable evidence at the scene. Plus, he’s already boasted about his connections on the force.

Also, now that Kyle thinks about it, the nature of their work has essentially put them beyond law. Since nobody can know about it beyond RJX managers and their intelligence service clients, there’s no external mechanism for correction or accountability.

Internal whistleblowing is also a non-starter. Phil would not only ignore it, but start maneuvering Kyle out of his job.

He could quit. The complication here is that Kyle’s skill set is not easily transferable to other lines of work—at least not in the US. He knows plenty of former colleagues making good money overseas. But outside of his interview skills, all Kyle has going for him is an associate’s degree in marketing. At forty-four years old, he’s not about to take a job at a call center for twelve bucks an hour.

Running through various possibilities, he’s gone so far as to consider selling cars when the smell of burning meat directed his attention back to the grill. “Kyle, my man,” Jay calls out. “The kebab requires a light touch.”

Kebab has another meaning at work, having to do with problematic clients and the use of fire. Kyle laughs because the occasion demands it, but Jay’s starting to scare him. How many classes does it take to get into real estate? Maybe he’ll talk to Rachel about it.

He glances at his watch. Thirty minutes until kickoff. He’s looking forward to losing himself in the game.

MONDAY

On his way to work Monday morning, Kyle has a fantasy of violence. He gives himself up to it willingly, knowing that’s the only way to let it go once it’s over. It involves Jay, and treating Jay like a client and just waiting for the inevitable result of a prolonged compliance interview, but that would be an unseemly mixture of professional conduct and personal motivation, so he rejects it. Also, there are questions of siting and security. So he has to come up with a plan for a single action yielding the desired result.

But he can’t really do that.

Sitting in his car in the parking lot, Jay thankfully nowhere in sight, Kyle looks at job websites on his phone for a few minutes before going into Building A. What’s it like to live as if all of this doesn’t exist?

• • •

6194, offense unspecified. A referral directly from (with report to be sent directly to) RJX Board of Directors. Note attached specified preferred topics: Financial records, disposition of funds. Apply pressure as necessary to maximize raw intel.

LTR.

Money, Kyle thinks. Now I know what I am.

He walks into the interview room. “Money?” he says. He hears rage in his voice and wonders where it came from, what he should do about it. “You ended up here … you’re making me do this … because of money?”

• • •

The organism experiences fear.

When experiencing fear or pain, the organism emits sounds calibrated to alert other organisms to danger.

In certain cases of extreme pain, the organism will emit sounds that replicate the sounds of the young of its species.

• • •

He has considered talking to Jay so Jay will understand. He would say:

Jay. What we are can’t be let out into the world, man. It has to stay inside the walls. It has to go down the drains with the piss and the blood, has to be forgotten when we knock off at the end of the day to go to Little League and dance recitals and parent-teacher conferences. Because the world out there depends on that, and if we’re not doing this for them, what are we? Just monsters. You can’t bring that out there. You can’t bring that to your family, to mine. You can’t decide, you can’t just—what, snatch people off the street, this is fucking Livonia, man, there can’t be desaparecidos here. You went too far, man, I’m sorry, it’s just, we can’t let this happen.

But who is we?

Something is scratching at the back of Kyle’s mind, wanting to get out.

• • •

The organism experiences a shock response at certain sensory or psychological stimuli. During a shock response, the organism’s actions become less predictable. The organism’s signals become less coherent. Organisms experiencing shock demonstrate an attenuation in the vigor of their responses to perceived threats.

• • •

All of this will interfere with the completion of the task. Kyle is task-oriented, it’s what makes him good at his job. If he talks to Jay, he runs the risk of being distracted or having his certainty undermined. After all, Jay will understand the situation right away and start to deploy his own interrogator’s resources—which, though less refined than Kyle’s, are still professionally certified. The outcome would be uncertain, and there would be tensions at work.

His equilibrium is disturbed. He must find a way to restore it, within himself and at work. Jay isn’t going anywhere.

• • •

Supplication is the mode of an organism that senses an imminent threat of death.

• • •

He comes out of the interview room to find Jay and a couple of the other guys in the hall.

“That was, how you say, the shit, Kyle,” Jay says. “Seriously. Artistic. I’m … I’m fucking humbled, man.” Another guy, one of the support staff, gives him a slow clap. “Possessed,” he says.

“I’ll get him to the Waiting Room, my man,” Jay goes on. “You look wiped out. Shit, I would be too, after a performance like that. Some god-tier shit. You feel it?” He looks intently into Kyle’s eyes. “You feel what you could really become? There’s something inside you, man. You got a talent. More than I ever had, more than any of us here. You just needed someone to bring it out.”

Kyle starts to panic, gets a grip, realizes the problem isn’t Jay. It’s him. Wherever he goes, there’s going to be a Jay. He has to figure out a way to get along in a world full of Jays without completely losing himself.

“How about you get cleaned up and take the day?” Jay suggests. Kyle nods, mutters something. He means to say thanks, but as he weaves down the hall he hears someone ask Jay, “He say what I think he said?”

“Sounded to me like ‘real estate,’” Jay says. “He’s pretty tired.”

TUESDAY

All day Tuesday he’s sorting through 6194’s records.

6194’s raw intel is full of noise. It takes Kyle a full day to boil it down to anything he can send up the chain with any degree of confidence. He’s angry at himself for dissociating. Garbage work. He would fire himself if he could.

But he understands what has happened in the office. There’s a new dynamic. People treat him differently. It’s going to be okay.

WEDNESDAY

On Wednesday Jay has another bundle in the bed of his truck. “Jay,” Kyle says. “Come on, man.”

“I know, I know, but you gotta understand, this guy—”

“Yes. I’ll help you. No, don’t tell me anything about him. I shouldn’t have asked last time.” Jay looks suspicious, angry. Then Kyle adds, “Bad opsec, my fault,” and that mollifies Jay right away because he’s one of those guys who likes to think about everything from grocery shopping to nuclear policy in terms of opsec. They get the new stowaway settled in the Waiting Room and Kyle says, “You know you can’t do this often. Somebody’s gonna notice.”

“Yeah,” Jay says. He seems bummed about it. “Shouldn’t have done this one, really. You’re right. But it was …” He catches Kyle’s look. “Okay, yeah. I get it. Won’t happen again. Appreciate you, Kyle. You’re a standup guy.”

• • •

Won’t happen again, Kyle’s thinking as he works through the morning’s interviews. Nothing special, nothing interesting. Case numbers forgotten by the time he submits the reports. Factory work.

Except it will happen again. Jay’s like a cat peering at a nest full of baby birds.

Maybe I should transfer somewhere, Kyle thinks. It’d be tough on Maddie to move during high school, but we could work it out. The names of RJX branches scroll through his head as he does his last interview report, on 7716, bomb-maker for a separatist group in the Philippines: King of Prussia, Pikesville, Chagrin Falls, Slidell, Arvada. Would anything be different in any of them? Probably not. If life has taught Kyle anything, the lesson is that every office has a Jay. In Livonia, at least Jay wasn’t running the show—although Phil’s relentless born-again positivity is in some ways more corrosive to Kyle’s soul than Jay’s ordinary sadism.

Real estate, he thinks. Or maybe I could take some classes, go into mortgages or something.

But no. Kyle makes very good money, with superb benefits. And he’s helping to make the world a better place. Jay doesn’t change that.

Kyle isn’t going to let Jay fuck things up for him. Sooner or later Jay will get caught, and either RJX will hang him out to dry or they will whisk him away never to be seen again in Livonia. Either outcome is fine with Kyle. All he has to do is wait. Do his job and wait.

• • •

At lunch Phil comes into the break room, followed by most of the other Building A staff, along with a few others who rarely make the trek over from B and C. Kyle sees Jamal and George, Raynelle the office manager, some other client-facing consultants like him. They crowd into the break room and Kyle starts to feel conspicuous with his noodles and his lack of visible team spirit. Phil walks up to his table. “Congratulations, bud,” he says.

Kyle feels like he should stand, so he does. “Um, for what?”

“For being …” Phil turns to everyone else and raises his arms.

“Employee of the month!” they all shout. Kyle takes it all in, thinking I’m a standup guy.

There’s a little celebration, bad grocery store cake on paper plates, Kyle’s photo goes up in the break room—there are no photos of RJX employees in any public-facing area—Phil’s routine joke about Kyle bucking for his job. “Maybe I’ll just retire Up North and go fishing,” Phil says, like he does every month.

“Speaking of fishing,” Jay says when the little celebration is over, “we haven’t been all summer.”

This is true. Usually Kyle and Jay go fishing once or twice a summer. Jay likes the atavistic man-versus-nature part of it, and Kyle likes the peace and quiet. Plus, he used to go fishing with his dad and other male relatives. They’re gone now, so fishing is what he has to remember them by. Anyway, fishing is one of the ways Kyle has found he and Jay can get along.

“Sure,” he says. “Where you want to go?”

“Well, I can’t get my cousin’s boat this weekend, so we can’t get out on the lake. How about the quarry?”

Kyle decides that Jay’s problems don’t have to be his problems. He’s going to stay professional. He’s going to keep work at work. Recommitting. Only a narcissist or a sociopath thinks he’s got no room for growth. Fishing will be a good start. “Quarry it is. Saturday?”

Jay extends a fist. “Saturday.” Kyle bumps it. “Meet me there, I don’t want to give you a ride all the way back to fucking Lapeer.”

“Don’t blame you,” Jay says. His ex-wife Melinda lives in the next development over from Kyle, but after their divorce Jay moved to a place out in the country. Melinda won’t let their boys visit him there because she suspects he has it booby-trapped, and Kyle considers this a rational worry. But it’s hard on Jay not seeing his sons, so they meet at Kyle’s house. Maddie threw touchdowns to both of them this past Sunday.

Empathy, Kyle thinks. It’s all about empathy.

• • •

“Employee of the month, huh?” Rachel gives him a little elbow jab. “Don’t go getting a big head.”

“Like winning a tallest leprechaun contest,” Kyle cracks. They’re on the sideline at another lacrosse game. “Hey, how hard is it to get into real estate?”

“To get into it? Easy. To make money at it? Not so easy. To make money at it without becoming the kind of person your wife would hate? Very, very hard. Whatever you’re doing, it can’t be as bad as real estate.” She catches herself, realizing it might not be true. “I know you, Kyle. You wouldn’t do something that you knew was wrong.”

He leans into her, kisses her temple. Right where an electrode would go.

“I’m going fishing with Jay on Saturday morning,” he says, because every intrusion of work into life makes him think of Jay now.

“Fishing for bass, or for a fish we can eat?” Rachel and Maddie are big fans of perch, bass not so much.

“He can’t get his cousin’s boat, so we’re going to the quarry.”

“Poor Jay,” Rachel says. “Maybe you can bring him by after and I’ll get Melinda to lend me the boys for a while.”

“That’s a good idea,” Kyle says. Maddie nearly scores. One of her teammates taps her on the helmet as she angles back to take up her defensive position. It’s all about empathy, Kyle thinks again.

SATURDAY

Kyle’s been catching bass in this quarry since he was a kid. At one end, sheer stone cliffs drop straight down into the water. At the other, there’s a shelf of waist- to chest-deep water that runs out about thirty yards from the curve of the shore. Then your next step, bam, you’re in a hundred feet of water. Generations of fishermen have learned where that dropoff is. Kyle remembers his father and grandfather hammering a metal pole into the bottom near the edge. Every spring his dad would tie a new cloth to it. The pipe’s been gone for years but Kyle still knows where the dropoff is. He stepped off it once when he was maybe eleven, slid down the sheer rock face for a long, panicked moment before he remembered to kick his legs. Kyle’s always been a good swimmer, so he popped right back to the surface. He dropped his rod, though—a Shakespeare they’d gotten at K-Mart just a week before. His dad started to be angry, but when he saw how scared Kyle was, he eased up. Kyle remembers that about his dad. The things you thought might make him mad usually didn’t, and then he would freak out about things that anyone else would shrug off.

His mind wanders over those memories as he tinkers with his rod, chooses a lure, starts casually flipping casts out along the edge of the weeds that grow right up to the shelf. Big bass hang around there, usually right over the dropoff. Kyle imagines them looking up at the littler fish, waiting for the right one to venture out of the weeds …

Jay talks constantly. While he’s putting on his water shoes. While he’s getting his expensive St. Croix rod out of its case and putting on his expensive Shimano reel with its expensive line and the lure he heard from the guy at Cabela’s no bass can resist. Kyle, who fishes with an Ugly Stik that he thinks might have belonged to his grandfather, nods in what he hopes is an appreciative manner. Then Jay keeps talking. While he’s casting, while he’s picking weeds off the twin treble hooks on the popper he insists on using even though Kyle already told him a Mepps will keep you busy all day, while he’s wondering where the fuck all the seagulls come from or digging in his pocket for beef jerky or lighting a cigar. Kyle has no idea what he’s saying most of the time. He’s never understood why people feel the need to talk while they fish.

Kyle’s whole life is a series of returns to this place. He’s caught hundreds of fish in his life, released most of them, always felt a twinge of regret when he gilled one or it swallowed the hook too deep. Today’s different. He drifts, his mind slips, he’s in a world of dark green shading to brightness above and darkness below. A flicker of motion and he instinctively strikes, mouth wide and water rushing through his gills. A sharp tug and tearing sensation inside his jaw. He moves, but he cannot go the way he wants. The world goes brighter around him, then disintegrates into emptiness, he cannot breathe, cannot feel around him. What world is this—

Jay has hooked a fish. He’s got his drag set pretty high, but line growls out anyway as he leans back, putting all his weight on one leg and lifting his other knee as he hauls on the rod, veins popping out in his gym-sculpted biceps and forearms, the whole tableau putting Kyle in mind of the Heisman Trophy. “Big fucker,” Jay grunts around his cigar. Tension sings in the line. It occurs to Kyle that Jay is fishing like he expects someone to be admiring him while he does it. He steps in behind Jay, kicks that weight-bearing leg out from under him, and holds him face-down until Jay stops moving. “I’m not here to fuck anyone up, Jay,” he says through gritted teeth. Then he holds Jay in place for another minute or so. After that, to be more certain, he gives Jay’s body a little push out over the dropoff, where the negative buoyancy of Jay’s assiduously toned lean muscle mass draws his body down into the brown water.

Somewhere down there, a prize largemouth bass drags an expensive St. Croix and Shimano setup from the popper hooked into the corner of its mouth. It’ll snag on a waterlogged tree, or the rusting remains of a gravel crusher or a backhoe. The line will snap, the hook will rust away, the fish will be good as new.

Or it will be dead.

So that’s all it is, Kyle thinks.

The cigar bothers him because it’s ugly in the water, but he’s going to have to live with it. He feels around with his feet and finds his Ugly Stik. He walks to the shore, scanning the other parts of the quarry where people might have line of sight to his location. When he was a kid, there was nothing out here. Now he can see roofs through the trees. Not many of them, though. And there were no other cars at the turnoff.

It’s all going to be okay.

But something has broken loose inside him. He’s kept it caged inside RJX, but now he’s brought it out into the world. No, Jay did that. If Jay had never …

Well.

What difference did it make?

Kyle’s angry at Jay for putting him in this position. He could have gone his whole life just doing his job and leaving it at the office. But Jay is dead. Doesn’t do any good to be angry at dead people. They can’t tell you anything you can use.

Kyle’s stomach is upset. He walks a ways down the shore and empties his bowels in the brush. He wipes himself with leaves. It occurs to him this will make a good alibi. Had to attend to a need, officer, and when I came back …

That internal rehearsal, along with his empty bowel and recovering physical equilibrium, puts Kyle in a better frame of mind, like he’s getting on top of the situation, adapting to circumstances. He’s been thinking about this all wrong. Until this moment, Kyle’s been dividing himself. He’s been two people. One at the office, inside the pastel-painted walls of RJX Data Services, and one out in the world of lacrosse practices and backyard cookouts.

Not anymore.

Now he is whole. He can’t wait to tell Rachel and Maddie.