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Officers and agents crowded around, welcoming her back, while she tried to explain she wasn’t really back. Promoted to Superintendent, she was in the building for meetings to discuss the timing and conditions of her return to active duty.

But it was no coincidence, everyone in that room knew, that she was there this Monday. Not just any old day. Not just any old meeting.

She took a chair by the head of the table and nodded to the others to retake their seats. Then she looked at the young agent who’d made the comment about Chief Inspector Beauvoir.

“What did you mean by that?”

Her voice was calm, but she sat unnaturally still. Veteran homicide agents who’d served under Chief Inspector Lacoste recognized the look. And almost pitied the foolish young agent who found himself in her crosshairs.

“I mean that we all know Chief Inspector Beauvoir is leaving the Sûreté,” he said. “Moving to Paris. But not for another couple of weeks. What happens before then? With Gamache coming back. I’d rather be in a firefight than be Chief Inspector Beauvoir walking into this meeting today. I bet he feels the same way.”

“You’d lose,” said Lacoste.

The room grew quiet.

He’s young and foolish, Lacoste thought. Probably longing for some desperate glory.

She knew this agent had never been in a so-called firefight. Even using the ridiculous phrase gave him away. Anyone who’d actually raised a weapon, sighted another human, and shot. Again, and again. And been shot at. Would never consider that glory, nor call it a firefight.

And would never, ever wish to be there again.

Those in the room who’d been on that last raid were looking at the agent. Some with outrage. But some almost wistfully. Remembering when they’d been that young. That naïve. That immortal.

Nine months ago.

They thought back to the summer afternoon. In the pretty forest by the Vermont border. How the sun broke through the trees and they could feel the warmth on their faces.

That moment that seemed to hang in midair before all hell broke loose.

As weapons were raised and fired. And fired. Cutting down the saplings. Cutting down the people.

The screams. The chocking, acrid stench of smoke from the weapons. Of wood and flesh burned by bullets.

Chief Inspector Lacoste was one of the first to fall. Her actions giving Chief Superintendent Gamache that one moment he needed to act. And act he had.

Isabelle Lacoste hadn’t seen what Chief Superintendent Gamache had done. By then she was unconscious. But she’d heard about it. She’d read the transcripts of the investigation, after he’d been suspended.

Gamache had survived the events that day.

Only to be cut down by his own people.

And the attacks were continuing, even as he returned to work.

Isabelle Lacoste, and every veteran officer in that room, knew that the decisions Chief Superintendent Gamache had made were audacious. Daring. Unconventional. And, unlike what the tweets claimed, hugely effective.

But it could very well have gone the other way.

It had been a coup de grâce. The last desperate act of the most senior officer in Québec, who felt there was no other option.

Had Gamache failed, and for a while it appeared he would, the Sûreté would have been crippled, leaving Québec defenseless against an onslaught of gang violence, trafficking, organized crime.

Gamache had prevailed. But just barely, and at a cost.

Any reasonable person making those decisions would expect a consequence, no matter the outcome. The Chief Superintendent was reasonable. He must’ve expected to be suspended. Investigated.

But had he expected to be humiliated?

In their own coup de grâce, the political leadership had decided to save their own skins by putting Gamache’s career out of its misery. Though vindicated in the investigation, he would be offered a job he could not possibly accept. Chief Inspector of homicide. A position he’d held for many years. One he’d handed over to Lacoste when he’d been promoted to head of the Sûreté. After she’d been wounded, it was a job now filled by Jean-Guy Beauvoir.