Page 2 of The Agent’s Curvy Seduction

Then Daniel calls at eleven at night, and his voice is wrong. Too flat. Too controlled, like a man holding himself together with both hands.

"I saw something," he says.

"Where are you right now?"

"Home. I'm home. My family's asleep." A shaky breath. "I stayed late. I wanted to check something in the loading facility before I left. I saw Michaelson. And a man named Voss—he runs security. They were talking to Curtis, one of the shipping supervisors. He must have found what I found."

"Daniel—"

"They killed him." His voice cracks on the word. "I watched them kill him, Agent Wolfe. I was behind the stacked pallets. I couldn't move. I couldn't—" He stops. I hear him breathing, forcing air into lungs that don't want to cooperate. "I have it on the security footage. I pulled the drive before I left. I have everything. Financial records, manifests, shell company documents, and now I have him on camera. Actually on camera."

I close my eyes. This just became a murder case, and Daniel Thompson just became the only person who can connect Michaelson to it.

"Listen to me carefully," I say. "You did the right thing calling me. But this changes everything. These people will kill to protect this operation. You've just proven that yourself. You cannot go to work tomorrow like nothing happened."

"I have a wife. Two kids." His voice breaks fully now. "My daughter's twenty. My son's twelve. What do I do?"

"You do exactly what I tell you," I say. "Nothing else. Not one thing outside of what I tell you."

I hear him nod, even though nodding doesn't make a sound. Fear does, though. Fear has a sound, and I've heard it in a hundred voices over twenty-five years. His is the kind that means he's already imagining his own funeral.

"I'm going to arrange protection," I tell him. "I need a few days to set it up properly. Until then, go to work. Act normal. Come home. Lock your doors. Don't talk to anyone about this. Not friends, not family, no one."

"Okay."

"I promise you, Daniel. I will get your family out safely. All of you."

I mean it when I say it. I have no idea yet how much that promise is going to cost.

Two days later I sit across from my supervisor with a legal pad full of names and a very bad feeling I can't quite name.

"We need to move on the extraction faster than planned," I say. "He witnessed a murder. Michaelson knows someone's been in the financial files. It's a matter of time before they trace it back to Thompson."

"You said full extraction. Family of four."

"Wife, daughter, son. All at risk the second Michaelson figures out who's talking."

He taps his pen against the table. "You're sure about the route?"

"Dash mapped it. The core planning group is small, but pieces of this extraction have passed through multiple operational systems. Financial authorization, vehicle requisition, safe-house coordination. Too many people have touched pieces of it. If there's a leak, I won't be able to prove where it came from until after it matters."

"So you're moving blind."

"I'm moving because Daniel Thompson is in immediate danger. We can audit access logs after his family is safe. Right now, we move tonight."

The last call with Daniel happens four hours before the extraction.

"Tell me again," he says. His voice sounds steadier than it has since he first called me, which worries me more than the fear did. Steady is what people sound like right before they either do something very brave or something very stupid.

"You'll pack light. Essentials only. We'll meet you two miles from your house, at the gas station off Route 9. Black SUV, government plates removed. You get in, we drive straight to a secure location, and from there into witness protection. Your family will be safe within twenty-four hours."

"Margaret doesn't know everything. Just that we have to leave tonight for work reasons. I didn't want to scare the kids more than they already—" He stops.

"That's fine. You'll have time to explain once you're safe."

"I made a second copy," he says. "Of everything. Just in case something happens to the first drive."

"Where?"