Chapter 49. Letting Go.

Gary Wolfe had once been a ghost in the system, an operative who wore both the FBI and CIA badges at different points in his career. He walked away from federal corridors of power to run his own investigations. He is independent, untouchable, and loyal only to the truth he dug up. Truth, however, had a price, and Gary worked only for those who could afford his strange fees.

Almost never seen in his true form, he favored disguises: sometimes a middle-aged woman in a thrift-store coat, other times a nurse with tired eyes, a church matron clutching rosary beads, a street vendor hawking roasted nuts on a corner on the rare occasion he appeared as himself, it was always in shadows, his presence fleeting, like a rumor given shape. Those who had crossed his path said the same thing: “You don’t find Gary! Gary finds you.”

Yet for all his masks, Gary himself had none. He was a man without attachments, not in college or in the Bureau, even in the hollow years when whiskey was next to none to hi