Montgomery leaned back.

“Her magic talent is in her hand-to-eye coordination,” I continued. “She can shoot people in the head from very far away, which will do absolutely nothing, since you want Pierce alive. And my own magic . . .”

Montgomery focused on me. “Your magic?”

Crap. Their records said I was a dud. “. . . is nonexistent. This is suicide. You have twenty times the resources and manpower we do. Why are you doing this to us? Do you think we have any chance at all?”

“Yes.”

My magic buzzed. He just lied. The realization hit me like a load of bricks dumped on my head.

“That’s it, isn’t it? You know bringing Pierce in will be expensive and difficult. You’ll lose people, trained, skilled personnel in whom you’ve invested time and money, and in the end it will cost more than whatever the family is paying you. But you probably can’t turn House Pierce down, so you’re going to give this to us, and when it ends in disaster, you can show them our records. You can tell the Pierces that you assigned it to your best outfit with six employees and a ninety percent success rate. You’ve done all you can. You expect us to fail and possibly die to preserve your bottom line and save face.”

“There is no need to be dramatic.”

“I won’t do it.” I couldn’t. It was impossible.

Montgomery clicked a couple of keys and turned his computer monitor toward me. A document with a section highlighted in yellow filled the screen.

“This is your contract. The highlighted section states that turning down an assignment from MII constitutes a breach of contract, with the payment due in full.”

I clenched my teeth.

“Can you pay the balance of the loan in full?”

I wished I could reach across the table and strangle him.

“Ms. Baylor.” He spoke slowly, as if I were hard of hearing. “Can you pay the balance in full?”

I unlocked my jaws. “No.”

Montgomery spread his arms. “Let me be perfectly clear: you do this or we will take your business.”

“You’re not giving me a choice.”

“Of course you have a choice. You can take the assignment or vacate your premises.”

We’d lose everything. The warehouse was owned by the business. The cars were owned by the business. We’d be homeless. “We’ve always been on time with payments. We never caused you any trouble.” I pulled my wallet out of my purse, slid out the picture of my family, and put it on the desk. It was taken a couple of months ago, and all of us barely crowded into the shot. “I’m all they have. Our father is dead, our mother is disabled. If something happens to me, they have no means of support.”

He glanced at it. A shadow of something crossed his face, then it went blank again. “I require an answer, Ms. Baylor.”

Maybe I could just half-ass it. It went against the grain, but I had to do what I could to survive. “What if the cops catch him first?”

“Your business is forfeit. You have to bring him in, alive and before the authorities get their hands on him.”

Damn it. “What happens if I die?”

Augustine raised his hand, moving the text up on his screen. “You’re the licensed investigator in the firm. When we purchased the firm, we invested in your ability to earn. Without you, we have no interest in your enterprise. Under the terms of your contract, your assets will be written off as a loss. We’ll confiscate any cash and liquid assets, those would be stocks, money market instruments, and so on that the business holds, and write off the loan.”

“What about the agency’s name?”

He shrugged. “I’m sure we can come to an agreement.”

I was carrying a million dollars in personal insurance. I paid for it out of my own paycheck, because I was paranoid that if something happened to me, the family would end up destitute. Short term, I was worth more dead than alive. With a million dollars, Bern could stay in school, nobody would be evicted, and if they were, there was enough money to keep the family afloat. Mom could buy out the name and hire an investigator.

“Yes or no?” Augustine asked.

On one end of the seesaw my family, on the other, possibly my life.

“Yes,” I said. “You’re a terrible person.”

“I’ll just have to live with myself.”

“Yes, you will. Write an addendum to the contract that in the event of my death, my family can buy out the agency’s name for a dollar, and I will go after Pierce.”

“A dollar?”

“If I die, my family gets the firm back. Take it or leave it.”

“Very well.” Montgomery’s fingers flew over the keyboard. A piece of paper slid out of the printer. I read it, signed on the line, and watched him write his name in an elegant cursive.

Montgomery tapped his tablet. “I’ve emailed Pierce’s background file to you. Once again: you must apprehend Adam Pierce before the police take him into custody or your loan is forfeit.”

I got up and walked, leaving the picture of the family on his desk. He should have to look at it. My hands shook. I wanted to turn around, march back, and punch him.

I kept walking until I was out of the building. Outside the wind fanned me, pulling at my clothes. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Bern.

“Drop whatever you’re doing. I need everything on Adam Pierce.”

“We’re going after Pierce? Are you serious?”

“Look in our inbox.”

“Holy shit.”

“I need his lineage, his full background, his criminal record, who he went to school with—everything. Every scrap of information you can find. The more we know the better.”

“Do you want me to tell Aunt Pen?”

Oh, Mom would just love this development. “No. I’ll do it. Call Mateus for me.”

When I said that all of our part-time employees were children, I didn’t lie. But occasionally, when we needed muscle, we hired free agents on a one-job basis. I had a feeling none of them would touch any job involving Pierce with a ten-foot pole, but it was worth a try.

“How much should I offer?” Bern said into my ear.

“Ten grand.” It was about three times what we normally offered. It was also the entirety of our rainy day fund. We could take a loan if we had to.

“We can’t pay that much.”

“We can if we apprehend Pierce. Tell him payment on delivery.”

The phone clicked as Bern put me on hold. I walked to my car.