The light from Monica's phone lit her face like a halo. In its blue glow she saw Avril curling toward her on the bed. He rubbed his finger against the skin above her hip, where the tattoo that said "a pelear la muerte" was drawn in ink. She slapped his wrist. "I told you no nookie."

Avril flipped on his back. His enormous pecs looked like bone-in ribeyes covered with a mossy tuft as soft as crabgrass. He resembled a 1970's Playgirl version of Clark Kent, Monica thought. Sure, he was attractive, but she wasn't desperate enough to give him the ego boost he wanted. Not yet, at least.

He huffed. "What kind of woman invites a man to a sleepover in a hotel room just to sleep?"

"A direct woman, a woman of her word. A literal-ass woman. If you wanted panky you should have stayed down at the bar. There was a 50 year old divorcee who looked like your type," Monica said. She ran her finger across her phone's surface, scrolling to the next headline in her daily briefing digest.

Turning his head toward her on the pillow, Avril asked, "What was with the jalapeno flicking tonight?"

She saw a headline that the WHO had declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. She reminded herself to thank Agent LeGrande for the early notice. It had made booking the rooms that morning easier. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"The jalapeno that you threw into that Indian boy's eye. Not Ankur, the other one."

"Viral?"

"Yeah, that one," Avril said. He turned his eyes back to the ceiling. "What kind of name is that anyway?"

Monica ignored him. She hoped he'd talk himself to sleep so she could have a few minutes of silence before she called it a night. Glancing at the clock at the top of her phone, she noticed that it was technically already morning. March 12th, my how the year was unspooling.

Beneath a headline tallying the number of worldwide Covid cases at 300,000 and 16 fatalities in the States, she saw a mention of a nursing home in her mother's town.

"Monica," the voice beside her said. She looked at Avril as if she'd forgotten he was there. "The jalapeno?" He asked.

Monica let out a deep breath and put her phone down. Turning toward Avril she tucked her right leg beneath her left. She could see Avril stealing a look down the front of her tank-top. With a slap she fluffed the comforter; Avril's eyes met hers. "I couldn't let him see the news cast," she said.

"The one playing in the bar?"

"I need them focused on their assignment."

"Seems to me like knowing the stakes would be an incentive to try harder." Avril smirked, pleased with himself. For good measure, he scratched his nipple.

"Yeah, and that's why you're a Statey for Delaware and not in the FBI," Monica said. She reached for her phone, but Avril grabbed her wrist.

"Hey, don't do that," he said, holding himself up on his elbow."

"You're grabbing now?"

He let go, and his eyes softened. "You may fool those kids, but I know when someone's in over their head."

"Oh they taught you that at the local academy, did they?" Monica snapped.

Avril threw his shoulders back into the sheets. "Whatever, Treyna. I'm just trying to help," he said.

Monica chewed her lip. "Fine," she said, "Maybe I didn't think this through all the way."

Propping the pillow against the headboard, Avril scooched himself upright. Monica couldn't help but steal a glance toward the waistband on his Jockeys. The beat her pulse skipped told her to stay wary. "What exactly did you say to Harper?" Avril asked.

Darnel Harper was the Lieutenant to whom Monica reported. Avril's uncle had served in the Army police unit during the American skirmish in Kosovo. His platoon mate on reconnoiters of the Bosnian Serb strongholds had been Harper, 35 years younger. Now, Avril's uncle was dead of cardiac arrest and Harper was on the eve of retirement from the Federal force. "I asked him to give me one last favor as a going away present," Monica said.

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And bestow a favor he had done. Monica knew in her heart that when Harper left the next man in his position, and it would be a man, wouldn't know the history of how hard Monica busted her butt to climb from public relations attache in the Baghdad Green Zone to Sargent in the FBI. The thesis she wrote on information sharing at Quantico caught the eye of Harper, who at the time was coming up through a stint with personnel. Cyber wasn't yet a priority for the bureau in 2008; they were still sack deep in NSA wiretaps and percolating sleeper cells.

When Harper accepted the position as Lieutenant of Cyber Crime he didn't have to ask how many they'd approached before coming to him. He was quiet and orderly; he didn't rock the boat. That's what the top brass looked for in leadership. He picked Monica's application from a pile of castoffs from the intelligence beat. Her physicals were off the charts, but her boards were mediocre. When he read her thesis, though, Harper knew Monica Treyna was one of those special kind of specimens that the Bureau tended to attract but managed to spit out poorly tapped. He'd started her at a desk, but by 2012 she'd convinced him that she belonged in the field.

Avril stirred creamer into a paper cup of coffee from the hotel room's machine. "You want?" he offered, but Monica declined.

"I actually want to sleep," she said.

"Decaf," Avril answered.

She shrugged, and he started another cup brewing. "So that was it, huh?" He asked. "You wanted to prove that sharing really was caring?"

"It's not a joke."

Looking over his shoulder, Avril saw how serious Monica had become. He dropped his smile quick.

"A lotta people died in those towers because some guys couldn't get over the size of their dicks. If the CIA and FBI had talked a little in the months before 9/11 then maybe some of those people who died wouldn't have."

"You're right, T. I'm sorry," Avril said. He brought the cup he'd brewed and sat next to her on the bed. She hung her feet over the edge and rubbed her toes against the carpet. Avril pointed and laughed at the My Little Pony pajama pants they'd found for her at the Salvation Army. Monica felt relieved that Avril had put on a t-shirt and track pants.

The cup was warm in her hands. She blew on it. Avril slurped. "Who's Agency on this?"

"You know I can't tell you," Monica said.

"Even after I made you that cup?"

Monica made to pour its contents on his lap, and Avril jumped. He spilled what was left of his decaf on his t-shirt. The two of them laughed.

"You're gonna pay for this one, Treyna," he said, pointing at her like a professional wrestler making a heel-turn on Raw. But he smiled, and she did, too.

"Where you going?" Monica asked.

"Bathroom. I got creamer on my chest hair."

Monica grimaced and Avril shut the bathroom door behind him. Placing her cafe on the nightstand and kicking her feet back up on the bed, she studied the state of her pedicure. The time was coming up that she'd have to reapply. She heard the shower running. Though she wanted anything else to occupy her mind, she couldn't resist returning to the story about the nursing home in Queens that she'd seen in her digest.

Unlocking her phone she opened her email. Clicking on the story took her to a secure page online that laid out the plain text from an AP wire. Monica was grateful to be spared any images of the old and feeble. The story was what she'd read earlier in a bulletin from Washington state. Nursing homes were turning out to be disproportionately hit by the virus. LeGrande's paperwork on the numbers out of Italy underscored as much. The real news that shook her was one the Bureau hadn't flagged; it was linked beneath the AP story.

Following the URL Monica opened a page with a byline out of New York. The lede read:

NEW YORK -- Officials from the state speaking on behalf of Gov. Cuomo (D-NY) refused to comment Tuesday on leaked reports that city hospitals have issued orders for physicians to ration the use of ventilators in the wards most heavily hit by the coronavirus.

Monica sat up straight and put her feet on the ground. Opening the top drawer in the nightstand beside her she removed the dark red copy of the Gideon Bible. Inside she turned to the book of Jeremiah where she had hidden a SIM card. Sliding it into the side of her iPhone with the alacrity of a versed traveller, she sent a text message to one of her contacts.

Within seconds she saw the three dots of a pending response appear at the bottom of her screen. Her knees shook uncontrollably as she waited.

When the response came it wasn't what she wanted. The message simply read: Acela at 5:05.

Avril opened the door wrapped only in a towel. His wet, black hair hung over the side of his temple like a 1950's raconteur. His smile was almost enough to make Monica reconsider.

Looking at the puffy, green jacket laid over her arms, Avril asked Monica where she was going.

"I gotta see the boss man running the operation," she said.

"Harper?"

"The other one."

Avril's mouth made an o-shape. "The Agency?"

Sliding her thumb out from between her boot and her heel, Monica put her hand on the doorknob. "You gotta take 'em to the mall tomorrow," she said.

"I didn't sign up to babysit," said Avril, crossing his arms across his bone-in pecs.

Monica couldn't help it; she licked her lips. She'd have plenty of time to feel ashamed about it on the ride to DC. "As one last favor for a going away present," she said.

Avril broke, smiling. "No wonder you got Harper wrapped around your finger."

She blew him a kiss, shot him the bird, stuck her tongue out and shut the door. Alone in the hallway she let her mask fall. Ventilators were running low in New York, she'd just read. Her father-in-law was in a two bedroom with her mom, her sister, and her niece. He'd been sick for a week, and he was refusing to go to the hospital. They hadn't been able to get a test, but Monica feared the worst. So that's what she had to prepare for. Before she could rest easy she had to make the pilgrimage to the District with hat in hand. It was time to kiss the ring.