The debriefing, or, How to not quite get fired

"Are you _trying_ to provoke me?"

"Hmm?" I said, carefully keeping a smile from my face.

Eldridge turned from the window. Pale eyes in a face gone red: I didn't need to read his mind to know he was mad as hell. "Al Fahid," he said. "Chang. Gosse."

"Not following you," I said, taking a sip of scotch. Eldridge only ever bought the best. Somehow even in Cairo he'd managed to find the best.

"All your targets," he said. "All dead."

"You _said_ dead or alive."

"I meant alive." His eyes flicked to my forehead, where that Harry Potter lightning scar shines. He thinks it's what makes me psychic. I think he's wrong. "You _know_ that."

"Al Fahid was fat, a stroke waiting to happen. Chang drank. A _lot_."

"And Gosse?"

Now I smiled. "Undiagnosed heart defect. Congenital." I set the crystal tumbler down, ice clinking, and spread my hands. "There really was nothing anyone could have done."

He glared at me.

"Am I fired?" I said.

"No," he said. "At least they're off the map now." He tossed me a folder. "_Alive_."