But federal jurisdiction does not care about her gate; it flows over the whole board at once, and the moment I named it, her map of the situation became worthless.

Then Damien reached for the old reliable weapon, unstable wife, the word that had worked on everyone for two years — and it broke against a federal indictment like a wave against a seawall, because a magistrate does not read a signed intercept and wonder whether the victim was hysterical.

And then they had nothing.

Their power had only ever been one kind of power: influence, favors, the ability to make a local problem disappear through people who owed them.

It was real power, in its domain.

But I had spent thirty years learning that there are domains their kind of power cannot reach, rooms where a judge who owes you a favor cannot help you because the case is federal and the evidence is signed and the officer who built it cannot be bought or frightened or sued into silence.