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    “You, bitch, damned near cost me my job,” he muttered as he walked toward the museum.
    And being Colonel Stan MacFarlane’s right-hand man at Rosemont Security Consultants was a job he took real seriously. Just like he’d taken his stint in the Marine Corps real seriously. A former jarhead, he still wore his hair high and tight, having served fifteen years in the Green Machine. Now he served Stan MacFarlane. If it hadn’t been for the colonel, he’d be eating institutional slop and lifting weights alongside the brothers in the state penitentiary. No chance of parole.
    Juries didn’t look kindly upon gunnery sergeants who’d murdered their wife and child.
    A lot like that dark day four years ago, he’d fucked up royally today at the Hopkins Museum.
    But soon enough, he’d make it right, proving to the colonel that he was still a hard charger. That he was still worthy of his trust. That he was still a holy warrior.
    Swinging open the glass door that fronted the Fourth Street Entrance, Boyd entered the National Gallery of Art.
    Beautiful. Not a metal detector in sight. The Ka-Bar knife and Mark 23 pistol would pass undetected.
    Like he was a cop on official business, he strode over to the guard station. Which was a joke because the guard station didn’t amount to much more than a cloth-covered table manned by a pair of rent-a-pogues. Opening the flap of his leather coat, he removed a very official-looking Metropolitan Police badge.
    “Is there a problem, Detective Wilson?” the gray-haired guard inquired, straightening his shoulders as he spoke.
    “I’m looking for someone. Have you seen this woman?” Boyd held up a photograph of one Eloise Darlene Miller.
    The guard reached for the pair of reading glasses hanging from his neck. After several seconds of careful scrutiny, he said, “Yeah, not too long ago, as a matter of fact. If I’m not mistaken, she headed down to the concourse.”
    Never having been inside the National Gallery of Art, Boyd glanced around the cavernous marble-walled lobby. “Where’s the concourse?”
    “At the bottom of the escalator,” the guard said, pointing to the other side of the hall. “You want me to alert the museum security team?”
    “No need. She’s not dangerous,” he assured the guard. “We just need to ask her a few questions.” Returning the photo to his coat pocket, Boyd headed toward the escalator.
    At the bottom of the escalator, he took note of the white sculpture, unimpressed.
    “If that’s art, I’m Pablo Pick-my-ass Picasso,” he muttered. The sculpture looked a lot like the molar he’d once knocked out of a drunken swabbie’s head. For years he’d kept that tooth as a good-luck charm, a souvenir of his first bar fight of any real note.
    Entering a dimly lit gift shop, Boyd saw that the place was overrun with people pushing wheelchairs, people dragging toddlers, and people yakking on cell phones. Everyone he looked, people were mindlessly meandering about, like so many lost sheep. Perfect. No one would later be able to recall who did what when; large crowds were the best camouflage a hunter could have.
    As he passed a stack of cards with a Nativity scene, he made a mental note that this might be a classy place to do his Christmas shopping. Not that these godless people would even know the meaning of Christmas. Or any other event described in the Bible. Nowadays people put a popular spin on the Word of God, forgetting that biblical text was not subject to New Age feel-good interpretations.
    Only a deluded fool would paraphrase the Word of God.
    The colonel had taught him that. The colonel had taught him a lot of things since that day four years ago when he’d ordered him to get down on his knees before the Almighty. Never having prayed before, Boyd had been wary, but once he got over the initial embarrassment, he discovered it was an easy thing to beg God’s forgiveness. And just like that, in one life-altering moment, he was forgiven all