Fear No Evil

Chapter 1

Washington, DC

Late June

Matthew Butler cocked his head to one side, considering the big-boned blonde in front of him. She was handcuffed and shackled to a heavy oak chair bolted into the concrete floor beneath bright fluorescent lights.

If the woman was anxious about her predicament, she wasn’t showing it in the least. She was as chill as the yoga outfit she wore. No sweat on her pale brow. Beneath her warm-up hoodie, her chest rose and fell calmly, each breath measured. Her shoulders were relaxed. Even her eyes looked soft.

Butler adjusted the strap of his shoulder holster.

“I know they’ve trained you for this sort of thing,” he said in a voice with the slightest of Western twangs. “But your training won’t work against me, Catherine. It never does.”

A fit, balding man with a hawkish nose, Butler had workman’s hands and wore black jeans, Nike running shoes, and a dark blue polo shirt. He crossed his thick forearms when she smiled back at him with brilliant white teeth.

“Whoever you are, you are going to be destroyed for what you’re doing,” Catherine Hingham said. “When they find out—”

Butler cut her off. “You know, in my many years as a professional, Catherine, I have come to rather enjoy the delicate process of breaking into hearts and minds. They are very much interlinked, you know — hearts and minds — and I have found that one is almost always the key to the other.”

“Langley will annihilate you,” Hingham said, studying Butler as if she wanted to remember every line in his face.

“Your operators won’t help you today,” Butler said, gesturing at a pile of blank paper and a pen on the table before her. “Tell me the truth and we can all move on with our lives.”

“I’ll say it again: You have no jurisdiction over me.”

Butler chuckled, gestured around the room. “Oh, but in here, I do.”

“I want to see a lawyer, then.”

“I’m sure,” he said, sobering. “But we’re talking about a serious threat to our national security, Catherine. A few rules of engagement can and will be broken in order to thwart that threat.”

“I am not a national security threat,” she said evenly. “I work for the Central Intelligence Agency, with the highest clearances, in support of my country’s freedoms. Your freedoms as well.”

“That’s what makes your traitorous actions so hard to understand, Catherine.”

Her face reddened and she shifted in her chair. “I am no traitor.”

Butler took a step toward her. “The hell you’re not. We know about the Maldives.”

Hingham blinked, furrowed her brow. “The Maldives? Like, the islands in the Indian Ocean?”

“The same.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never been to the Maldives. I’ve never even been to India.”

“No?”

“Never. You can talk to my case officers about it.”

“I plan to at some point,” Butler said, taking another step toward her. He reached down to touch the back of her left hand before letting his finger trail across her wedding band and modest engagement ring. “Does he know? Your husband?”

“That I work for the CIA?” she said. “Yes. But he has zero idea what I actually do. Those are the rules. We play by them.”

Butler sighed as he gently took hold of her left pinkie with his leathery hand, thumb on top.

“Do you know the surest way to sever the connection between the body and mind, and therefore the heart?”

“No,” she said.

“Pain,” Butler said. He gripped her little finger tight and levered his thumb sharply downward until he heard a bone snap.