Page 1 of The Agent’s Curvy Seduction

prologue

. . .

Rhys Kane

The file lands on my desk at six a.m., and I know before I open it that it's going to take a year off my life.

Michaelson Strategic Logistics. Government contractor. Two hundred million dollars in active federal contracts—military resupply, disaster relief, emergency medical shipments. The kind of company that gets a plaque at the Pentagon and a table at every charity gala in the city. Adrian Michaelson himself is the kind of man senators call by his first name.

Which is exactly why my task force has spent two weeks building a case nobody wants us to build.

"Walk me through it again," I say to Dash, who's got six monitors of shipping manifests spread across the conference room like a crime scene.

"Invoices don't match manifests," he says. "Not by a little. By a lot. Trucks logged as carrying emergency medical supplies to hurricane zones that are documented taking routes two hundred miles in the wrong direction. Millions moving into shell companies with no employees, no offices, nothing but a mailing address and a bank account."

"Weapons?"

"That's my read. No hard proof yet. But somebody's moving something they don't want manifested, and they're using taxpayer-funded humanitarian contracts to do it."

Finn leans back in his chair. "And Michaelson's protected. Two deputy directors have blocked subpoena requests in the last year. Every time we get close to pulling banking records, something stalls."

"Somebody's greasing wheels," I say.

"Somebody's greasing a lot of wheels."

I look at the org chart on the wall—Michaelson at the top, a web of shell companies underneath, a head of security named Nolan Voss whose background reads more like a mercenary's resume than a corporate employee's. This isn't going to be a paperwork case. Men like this don't go down quiet.

I don't know it yet, but somewhere inside that company, an accountant named Daniel Thompson has already started asking the wrong questions.

The call comes in five days later, routed through three layers of anonymity before it hits my desk.

"I think someone's stealing from my company," the voice says. Male, calm, trying hard to sound calmer than he is. "I found discrepancies in the shipping invoices. I've been documenting it for a few weeks. I don't know who else to trust."

I don't tell him what we already suspect. I let him talk.

"Who is this?" I ask.

"I'd rather not say yet."

"That's fine. Tell me what you found."

He tells me about mismatched manifests, about trucks logged for disaster routes that never went near the disasters, about small companies that seem to exist only on paper. It's everything Dash already flagged, except this man has access we don't—internal financial records, invoice trails, vendor payment history.

"This sounds like it could be bigger than embezzlement," I say carefully.

A long pause. "I was afraid you'd say that."

"Don't do anything. Don't confront anyone. Don't change your routine. If this is what I think it is, the people involved will notice if you start acting strange."

"Okay," he says, and I hear the fear underneath the word, thin and stretched.

"What's your name?"

Another pause. "Daniel."

I write it on a legal pad and underline it twice.

One week passes. Daniel calls twice more, each time a little more careful, a little more scared. He gives me shipment numbers, vendor names, dates. Every piece slots into the picture Dash has been building. I start to believe we might actually get this bastard.