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.

Briggs and Charlie slip back into former aliases for a meet with a mid level heroin dealer who has connections to a major trafficker known as Odin Rossi, but when Whistler makes a surprise appearance the agents worry that their cover may be compromised. The only way to be sure will be for Charlie to pay a visit to her former CI, but using Whistler leaves her with a guilty conscience.