“Is it always like this?”“Yes and no,” Maline answered, the sides of her mouth kicking up in the first full, genuine smile he’d seen from the woman. “One of our teams sent back some new evidence on a trail that had gone cold and the operations people—that’s our main room for coordinating missions and the like out there—are trying to verify its authenticity before we allow the team in the field to act on the intelligence they were given. Sometimes it’s a trap, so we don’t make a move until we’ve checked them out. We’ve been working on this one for a long time, and we want to get this guy.”“I don’t suppose you can give me any details about it so I can get an idea of how you work and what type of cases you take on?”Maline cocked her head. “I can tell you a little. It’s actually quite the news story, but you won’t see any reports about it since the government of the United States is squelching it.”“They actually do that? Tell the media what they can and can’t report on?”Smiling with an expression of indulgence that managed not to appear insulting, she said, “Not all the time, obviously, but yes.
