Killing The Rat (An Organized Crime Thriller) by Dani Amore Read Free Book Online

remind you of a certain expression that seems appropriate.”
    “What would that be, sir?” she said, the sarcasm in her voice matching that of her supervisor’s.
    Vawter sighed. “What the Bureau giveth, the Bureau can take away.”
    He turned from her, not bothering to wait for a reply. Amanda watched him go. A mediocre bureaucrat with nothing important behind him and even less in front of him. She would be very, very happy to see him go.
    Maybe she would have the opportunity to fire him.
    And when she figured out a way to deny him his pension, she would remind him of that very same expression.

10.
     
    Amanda Rierdon’s office was small, or at least it seemed small to her. The physical dimensions of the room didn’t seem to be so confining, but the architects who did the floor plan had no idea that a woman would be inhabiting the space. Even if she knocked down the wall and converted the office next to it, it still wouldn’t have been enough to give her the room she needed.
    Rierdon’s desk, as well as her file cabinets, her phone and her bookshelves, were all standard issue, circa 1990 particleboard. Big, heavy and horribly outdated. The bookshelf was jammed with FBI literature on procedures, case histories and various analyses. The file cabinets were packed with neatly organized, highly detailed notes of every case Amanda Rierdon had ever worked on, from her days as a junior agent in the Detroit office to her new, hotly contested position.
    The walls held no artwork or pictures of family. She had been an only child, raised all around the world. Her parents had both been very bright, very driven people. Her mother had been a professor of French literature before marrying her father, a colonel in the Army. They had died in a car accident in Paris shortly after Amanda had graduated from college.
    There were seven neatly framed newspaper articles, four of which showed the photograph of Amanda Rierdon taken at her first promotion. The headline read, “A very special Special Agent.” The other stories featured headlines a lot less saccharine, but with similar details. Together, they chronicled the rise of a woman who lived for the job. A woman who focused her enormous energy on bringing the targets of her investigations to justice.
    Currently, her target was Vincenzo Romano.
    Her path to Romano was Tommy Abrocci.
    And now, Tommy Abrocci had disappeared.
    Rierdon fought down the anger inside. She had deserved the promotion. She’d worked hard. She’d had the best clearance rate of any case worker in the Detroit bureau.
    But no one would cut her any slack. In fact, there were a great many people, like Vawter, who would jump for joy if she failed. Who would happily call up the very same reporter from the Free Press and “leak” a story about a mistake Rierdon had made.
    It wasn’t a game, but there were stakes.  
    For Amanda Rierdon, the stakes had never been higher.

11.
     
    It was clearly a “Rierdon Red Alert.”
    Amanda knew of the term, had overheard it on several occasions. She was aware that it was a direct label for her angry outbursts, for her refusal to accept the lazy, sloppy work of her subordinates.
    It didn’t matter to her what they called it. All she knew was that she was pissed, and it was up to her and her lackluster team to take care of the situation.
    She could feel her face burn with the fury inside her. She could feel it build and did nothing to stop it. Her long, lithe body moved with abrupt, violent motions, her hostility working its way out of every pore of her skin.
    Amanda looked at the other agents in the room. Junior agents. Working for her now. Or more accurately, not working for her. Not taking the initiative. Not being responsible. In short, being the lazy bureaucrats they would all wind up being. They all looked like men whose sphincters were puckered in anticipation of the firestorm about to erupt.
    Amanda felt like she knew what it was like to be the coach of a basketball team