The Killer Collective (John Rain, #10; Ben Treven, #4; Livia Lone, #3)

by Barry Eisler

The insult was calculated. Whether this guy was an amateur or a professional, he would perceive himself as the latter, and would now be invested in proving it to me. Interrogators call the technique ego down.

Strangeland listened intently, as she always did, sometimes grunting or nodding in encouragement, occasionally requesting an additional fact or a clarification. So much of being a good interrogator was just knowing how to actively listen to someone, and Strangeland was among the best.

Strangeland gave her a tight smile, maybe in recognition that Livia was using open-ended questions and subtly appealing to Strangeland’s ego—techniques she had learned from the lieutenant herself.

fait accompli

One of the things Livia pounded home with her students was the dictum Trust your gut. When you felt something was off, you had to believe that feeling, even if you couldn’t articulate the basis. Gavin de Becker had written a great book on the topic—The Gift of

Fear. And

Sudecon, a commercial pepper-spray antidote. She tore the package open with her teeth and blotted her burning eyes. Almost immediately, the pain became more tolerable. She did her nose and mouth and tongue, too, careful only to blot, resisting the urge to wipe, which would rub the capsicum irritant more deeply into her skin and capillaries.

Emerson Commander folder and the nasty little Fred Perrin La Griffe he wore on a lanyard as backup.

He’d almost forgotten how beautiful she was, he supposed because he’d been trying to. No makeup, hair back in a ponytail, jeans and a fleece—not working it at all, and still, there was just something about her that could make his head spin.

eponymous

“Hang on, everyone, hang on. Let’s not start throwing down and fucking up our teamwork before it even gets started. We all have the same problem and the same objectives. But being different people, we’ll occasionally differ on tactics. That’s not a bad thing—it’s good. It means we can put our heads together, pressure check each other’s ideas, and do things smarter together than we could alone.”

ersatz

The Cloths of Heaven’?” She shook her head. “I don’t.”

“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light; I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

taciturn

Parallel construction referred to the law-enforcement technique of reverse engineering a case to conceal the true origin of the investigation behind