King’s internal clock told them they were down to less that eighteen hours before Amanda drowned. Mundie had one hand on King’s back to guide him. In his other hand, Mundie held a cloth bag with a drawstring. A silent, square-jawed FBI agent—thanks to Mundie’s earlier description, King now couldn’t help but think of the man as a Feeb—escorted them to the elevator and, once inside, used a key to access the fifth-floor button. When the elevator stopped and the door opened, Mundie said to the Feeb, “We’ll take it from here. All I need is the magnetic swipe.” “Not a chance,” the Feeb answered. “SOP makes that impossible.” “This is not a standard operation,” Mundie snapped. “My direct boss reports directly to the president on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. Your direct boss is a lot lower down the food chain. Don’t make me flex my muscles here, or you’ll be spending a couple years in an office in the middle of Kansas.” They traded stares until the Feeb blinked first.
