other agents discussing the previous day's events and Ed Cade's name came up. "That cop Avery was stunned," said one guy. "He actually used the word 'stunned'. He said Cade popped that guy twice before he could get his gun out. Said he only barely had his own gun out when the guy went through the window." The woman snickered and said, "I'll bet he was gonna yell 'freeze!' or something like that. He'd have been dead meat." "Yeah, but some hindsight-quarterbacks with the PD are asking if Cade shot before he'd validated his target." "No-fucking-way," said the woman. "Cade's never called it bad yet and he had over twenty kills on the books before he retired. If he'd screwed up even once, some political buttmonkey would have been all over it in a flash." 'Twenty kills?' thought Mandi. She turned to face the woman and asked, "Twenty kills? How many arrests?" The three agents blinked at her for a moment, then the woman looked at one of the guys and asked, "Two, is it? The kids he busted for car theft in Miami six years ago?" Nodding, the guy said, "Yeah. Sounds right. I've never heard of any others." "Car theft?" asked Mandi, "Was he working with the police?" The woman shook her head. "No, he just happened to walk out of a building while two kids were trying to jack a Mercedes. One of them pulled a knife on him, so he showed them the antique .45 he carried when he wasn't on duty and turned them over to the cops." "I see. So he's never taken any prisoners when he's been doing agency work?" The guy shrugged and said, "If he has, I've never heard about them." "Wait a minute, Jerry," said the woman, "I think she's getting the wrong idea, here. Ma'am, Cade's no 'Dirty Harry'; he just seems to have an absolute knack for being right where the shit hits the fan. To the best of my knowledge, he's never had a really decent opportunity to take a prisoner, you know what I mean? When it goes down, you do what you have to and hope you're making the best decision." "Still... You really think that not one of those twenty kills could have been arrested instead?" "Maybe," said the guy, "If they'd have run out of ammo or volunteered to stop shooting. In the only case I know about personally -- I was there -- the guy went down shooting at us with an AK. Didn't stop firing until he ran the clip dry. By then Cade had returned fire and put four rounds in him. It was a clean shoot, ma'am. The guy died pulling the trigger. As far as I know, all his kills have been like that. Nasty to the end." "One thing, ma'am," said the woman, "Cade doesn't shoot to wound or incapacitate. If he shoots at all, he shoots to kill. That's what some of the flak's been about in his records, but the fact is, we all do the same thing. This outfit doesn't deal with muggers and burglars. We mostly get the diehards and psychos. At our end of things, if you pop a guy in the leg and yell 'drop