Cutter leaned the sledge hammer against the side of the shed that housed the generator. This was really starting to get ridiculous. Here he was exhausted, physically and mentally, and instead of storing up his energy so he could do his job, he was wasting time checking on something that didn’t need it. He leaned against the edge of the old generator and gave into the feeling of incompetency he always felt when he remembered how his wife had died. He told himself remembering didn’t do any good. Remembering wouldn’t change the fact when he, once the shining star of the U.S. Marshals Service, had desperately needed to be the hero everyone claimed him to be, when they, the team voted most likely to move up to the highest echelons of service, needed to work like the well-oiled machine they were, everything had gone wrong in a way that could never be righted. And it had all started out on a late-summer day not much different than this one had been. *** “Are you sure you’re going to be okay on this op?”
