Every year, the top graduates from the FBI Academy move from their classrooms at Quantico to their first assignments in the real world. For Agent Mike Warren, the dream has always been a post in Washington D.C. But the powers that be have other plans, and the young rookie is soon packing his bags for Graceland, a palatial beachfront mansion in Southern California that has become a cross-departmental boarding house for top undercover agents in the FBI, DEA and ICE.

With Briggs's gun trained on Mike's head, it would appear the meet with Bello has gotten off to a bad start. Yet the move turns out to be a feint; Briggs has intuited that Bello smells a rat, and with some canny improvisation he and Mike manage to deflect suspicion from themselves to Bello's second in command. The brush with death leaves the young agent at once shaken, exhilarated, and more conflicted about his secret mission than before.