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“Great. Everybody got the gear?”

The others held up the loot sacks they’d smuggled from home: garbage bags, milk crates, pillowcases. This was going to be their most ambitious job yet. Now they just needed to pull it off.

• • •

Jack straightened the tartan skirt, pulling it just a little higher on Margaret’s waist so that the hemline scandalously grazed the seam of her knee-high compression socks. He wiggled down the stairs into the archives, willing his stiff hips to sway as he entered the gaping beige room and made his way to the desk at the far end. He’d spent the weekend practicing his elderly lady flirting skills on Dale, which neither found a particularly enjoyable pursuit, but it had definitely taught him what not to do. Lip pursing resulted in a look of distressing constipation. Arm touching only worked on days when Margaret’s arthritis wasn’t acting up, otherwise it looked like his flirtee was about to be the victim of a talon swipe. Girlish giggles only served to make Margaret look possessed, and since she was, they were best avoided. Instead, Jack had settled on pigeon-related innuendo and the eyelash batting that had been so successful last time.

But when he’d made it to the desk, it wasn’t Gerard waiting for him. Instead, a woman stood in his place, hair pulled tight into a severe bun at the nape of her neck, a black turtleneck taut against sharp shoulders. She was the human equivalent of an exclamation point, all harsh lines and intensity.

Jack stopped wiggling.

“Where’s Gerard?” He could have started with a “hi,” perhaps, but he was too thrown off-balance to remember the word.

“Dead,” the woman said as though stating he had gone to the bathroom.

“Oh,” said Jack. “What?”

“Last night, I’m told. They brought me in from another branch as an emergency replacement.”

“Oh,” Jack said again, because what else was he supposed to say? His only date in years was dead, and with him went the key card to Section 301 D. Still, this wasn’t the first time his plans had been stymied. He’d had to think on his feet before. After blinking a moment, he found a few other words. “I’m sad.” Then some better words. “What I mean is, that’s very unfortunate news. He was in the middle of helping me with a work assignment, actually. I know he’d want me to complete it. It was probably even his final wish. I’m wondering if you could help me.”

The woman studied him from under sharply arched brows. “And how would I do that?”

“There’s something I need from Section 301 D,” he said as casually as possible. For a moment he wondered if he should try batting his eyelashes, but something told him that would be less effective on her than it had been on Gerard.

“Very well. I’ll need to see your ID, of course, to confirm you have access.”

“About that,” said Jack. “I’m not a manager. But this is a very special case.”

“Do you have written permission to access a prohibited section?”

“Not exactly, but—”

“Then I can’t help.”

Jack stood there in silence for a long moment. Finally he said, “How do you feel about pigeons?”

Nothing. This was not the audience he’d prepared for. Fuck it, what else did he have to lose? Jack gave his eyelashes a hearty bat. The woman managed to refrain from swooning.

“Are you unwell?” she asked instead.

“No,” Jack said. “Just…grieving.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” said the exclamation point, her tone the very antithesis of the punctuation.

“Thanks,” said Jack. He glanced down the middle row of metal shelves, somewhere beyond which stood the door to Section 301 D. And behind it, the information he needed to complete his heist.

He was slipping. There was a time when he’d have been able to weasel his way out of a situation like this. To sweet-talk or bribe or gently manipulate. But in becoming Margaret Chen, it seemed he’d lost a bit of Jack McCoy. With this woman guarding the restricted section of the archives and his skills rusty and dulled by his host, he’d have to find another way.

• • •

At some point, Jack would have to call Greer and tell her he’d failed. Great. Just what he needed, to look like a fool in her eyes. He’d always been the competent one, the man with the plan. A plan he’d always aced. He hadn’t expected it all to start going downhill as soon as he hit his midthirties. Or his early eighties, which he had the unusual opportunity to experience simultaneously. He was on Margaret’s white leather couch, feet through Dale’s thighs, head propped on three pillows. This was not the way things were supposed to go today.

He’d spent the rest of his workday ruminating over this exotic taste of failure, his focus only occasionally returning to the tasks he was being paid for. By the time he’d returned home, all he wanted was to curl up with some comfort food and a good book. Which was definitely Margaret’s influence. When he was fully Jack, he’d have licked his wounds with some beer and a round of pool. Sharing himself like this was not what he’d expected when he body-hopped, but at least it was better than the alternative.

Said alternative was sitting on the other end of the couch, hands awkwardly in his lap, apparently unsure of what to say. Then something like a thought seemed to come over him.

“Hey, Jackie,” he said. “What about Carter?”