He froze a snapshot of the couple and sent it to the face recognition program, but he didn’t have much hope.

The senior agent was Rick Cotton; he’d been with the Bureau almost twenty-eight years, had gone gray in its service. He was a quiet man, competent in his work, but neither talented enough at what he did nor politically savvy enough to rise any higher than his present position. He would retire in another year or so, collect his pension, and his absence wouldn’t leave a gap, but at the same time the people who had worked with him would remember him as a solid agent.

In his own six years with the Bureau, Jackson had worked with some brilliant people who were also assholes, or, worse, slackers who were brilliant at ass-kissing, so he had no complaints about Cotton. There were a lot worse things in the world than working with a decent, competent man.

“This might be our break,” Cotton said as they waited to see if the computer program could put a name to the unknown man’s face. Until now, they hadn’t found a chink in Salinas ’s wall of security, but filming the girlfriend getting it on with some other dude was leverage they could use against her. Getting to someone on the inside would be an unbelievable break-not that it would shine up Cotton’s reputation any, because some slick and savvy operator sitting in an office would find a way to take credit for it, and Cotton wouldn’t protest, just plod on in his dependable way.

Jackson thought that he himself just might be that slick and savvy operator, because damned if he’d let someone else take all the credit after the insufferably long, boring hours he and Cotton had put in on this assignment. He wouldn’t leave Cotton behind, though; the man deserved better than that.

Jackson kept an eye on the split screen, looking for a better angle, but it was as if the bastard knew exactly where they were, because not once did he reveal more than a partial view of his face. His right ear, though- Jackson froze a very good image of the ear. Ears were good; they varied from person to person in shape, size, the way they were positioned on the head, and the interior whorls. People who disguised themselves often completely forgot about the ears.