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Charlotte’s fingers stopped, hovered over the keyboard, and she listened carefully. She was sure she’d heard something that sounded like a door clicking shut. She saved her work, stood, and walked over to her office doorway.

“Hello?” She stood on her tiptoes and looked out over the rows of cubicles, but everyone had left long ago. She’d walked around the office to make sure of it.

Was she becoming paranoid, or was someone messing with her head?

Motivated to get the heck out of there, she rushed back to her desk, sat down, and hurriedly finished typing a summary of everything she’d discovered over the past few months. She had to stop twice because her fingers shook so badly. She attached her summary and the scanned images of the supporting documents and sent all of it to two separate anonymous email addresses she’d set up right after she first discovered what was happening and who was involved.

She quickly saved all of the documentation to an external hard drive and unplugged it from her laptop. Charlotte printed a copy of everything and stuffed it and the small hard drive into the largest poly envelope she could find. She would double-check the contents one last time when she got home, then seal it up. She planned to give it to someone who would know what to do with the information inside if anything happened to her.

Her phone beeped. She lifted it from her desk and checked the screen to verify she’d received both of the emails she’d sent. Once she knew they were there, she promptly deleted any trace of the originals from her work computer.

If anyone found out what she was doing and what she’d discovered, her life would be over. She didn’t mean that in an overly dramatic, high school, my-boyfriend-broke-up-with-me kind of way.

No, her life would literally be over.

That was how deep the shit was that she’d tripped into.

And, contrary to her current activities, Charlotte wasn’t some sort of corporate spy who was used to this kind of intrigue.

The government had a federally funded program responsible for resettling the record number of unaccompanied minors who entered the United States, but it delegated most of the work to NGOs like HRA.

A boatload of money flowed into the coffers of her organization, and where there was money, there were politicians and pundits willing to attach themselves for the good of the children , but really, it was for the good of their political careers and/or personal bank accounts.

They were like sharks, and the NGOs’ bloated treasuries were like chum in the water.

Human Rescue Alliance’s website and marketing touted their success, but Charlotte had discovered that was all a lie.

The ones responsible for funneling funds to HRA—the politicians and the power brokers who typically controlled them—expected something in return. Access and silence.

Since her discovery, Charlotte had become negative and cynical. Honestly, she’d never had much interest in or paid much attention to the inner workings of government and how it was intertwined with nonprofits. Her focus was always on helping people, and she let the guys on the top floor of HRA, the ones with the big corner offices, worry about everything else.

All of that changed when she came across shocking information about some frighteningly powerful people. What she’d learned had ripped off her idealistic blinders and exposed her to a level of wicked corruption she could’ve never imagined.

Living in Virginia—more accurately, DC-adjacent—she was fast becoming all-too-familiar with all of that stuff.

It pissed her off, because she had very personal reasons for wanting to work with children and young adults who’d experienced trauma from human trafficking, and these assholes were threatening her and others’ ability to do so.

They’d tainted the goodness of her work with their evil.

And that , along with saving innocents, was why she wanted to take them down.

Charlotte took every single case she handled personally and became emotionally involved with her clients, and what she’d discovered had begun taking its toll on her. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, and as a result, she’d lost weight. Not to mention, here she was sitting in her office playing amateur spy at—she glanced down at the time on her computer—almost nine o’clock on a Friday night, long after everyone else had left to be with their significant others, families, and friends.

Hell, she hadn’t even gone on a date in what seemed like forever, and the only thing she could remember about her last one was that she’d been happy when it was over.

Her mom told her that her dedication and ability to care deeply about people were what made Charlotte so good at her job. She’d also reminded her that life was about balance and encouraged Charlotte to figure out a way to scale back her work hours and to maybe even open herself to the idea of meeting someone she would want to hurry home to at the end of her day.

She already had someone in mind, but she’d never told anyone—not even her mom.

“Focus, Charlotte.” She verified that she’d scrubbed her computer of any damning information, shut it down, and unplugged it from the wall.

She rolled back to her credenza, pulled out her messenger bag, and set it on the middle of her desk blotter. Her laptop went into one compartment. The large envelope went into another. She tugged the little flashlight and her keychain, with the small can of pepper spray attached, from an outside pocket and clicked the light on and off to make sure it worked.

Charlotte had never been the nervous type, but strange things had been happening lately that created a heightened sense of alertness.

For example, she’d gotten home one night and the gate leading into the small yard behind her townhouse was wide open. Never, not once in the three years she’d lived there, had she ever left her gate open. Then her garbage bins were upended twice and the contents dumped out in her backyard. The most alarming was just last night, when she’d stepped into her house—she was certain someone had been there. Nothing seemed to be out of place or was missing, that she could tell, and the door was still locked, but something had made her skin crawl.

She’d been so spooked that she called her mom and asked if she could stay at her house. Her mom became instantly worried, so Charlotte fibbed and told her the power had gone out. It had always been just her and her mom, and lying to each other was something they never did.

But Donna Cavanaugh could be a skosh overprotective and a bit of a worrier where her daughter was concerned. Understandable, considering what her mom had been put through as a kid.

If Donna would have gotten even a hint there might’ve been a stranger inside Charlotte’s home, she would’ve marched into the nearest police station and insisted they send in the most advanced forensic crime scene team available to scour her daughter’s apartment for clues.

Charlotte clicked off her desk lamp, stood, and looped the strap of her messenger bag over her head. The streetlight outside her third-floor window provided enough light that she could move around without running into anything.

After locking the deadbolt on her door, she weaved her way through the maze of cubicles. At the main entrance to their section of the building, she tapped her ID card on the sensor, waited for the beep to push the door open, and stepped out into the foyer where the elevator was. She snuck a peek at the camera mounted up in the corner and strolled over to the bank of elevators and pressed the call button.

Cameras were located all over the place, which had never bothered her before. She’d naively assumed they were put there for the safety of their employees and hadn’t paid them much attention. After learning what she had about what was happening, she suddenly became more aware of just how many cameras there were. That was when she realized they were there not only for the safety of the employees but to keep an eye on them as well.

Charlotte even went so far as to buy one of those gadgets that were supposed to be able to detect hidden cameras in hotel rooms or rental houses. She’d scanned her office and hadn’t located a camera, but that hadn’t given her much comfort.

As she waited for the world’s slowest elevator, she put her hands to the small of her back and stretched. Stress had turned her into one giant mass of tight muscles, but after all of the horrible things she’d discovered, the idea of getting a massage seemed decadent and selfish.

Ding.

The doors slid open with a whisper. She stepped inside and pressed the button to the parking garage. With each floor, she bolstered her courage for the journey across the lot to her assigned parking spot.

She’d only recently been moved to a location farther away from the elevator, a less safe location. Before that, she’d been parking in the same reserved spot since she started with HRA five years ago.

Her boss knew she often worked late, and she’d formally requested a spot closer to the elevator. He’d been surprised by her request and said he hadn’t even been informed of the change. Apparently, he no longer had any control over where people parked but assured her he would do what he could to get it changed.

As if her crummy parking spot wasn’t bad enough, the maintenance people didn’t seem to be in too big of a hurry to replace the many burned-out lightbulbs in the parking garage either.

The elevator slowed to a stop, there was a ding , and the doors whispered open. She leaned out, looked around, and dammit , they still hadn’t replaced the lightbulbs.

Surely, that was a liability issue, right?

She couldn’t stand there all night, so she blew out a frustrated sigh and clicked on the flashlight in her left hand. In her other hand, she held the pepper spray, her thumb hovering over the button on the top, and left the relative safety of the elevator to make the trek to her car.

Her back stiffened and she lifted her chin in an effort to exude as much confidence as possible while trying not to give away that her insides were jiggling like Jell-O. Her hazel eyes scanned the parking lot, and her kitten heels clicked on the cement in time with the hammering of her heart.

I am confident. I am tough. I am not to be messed with. She chanted this over and over again in her head.

Her sensible, mid-size crossover SUV came into view, and the front end was cloaked in near darkness. As she got closer, something seemed … different about it. She quickened her pace and stopped short a few feet away from it. She slowly circled her car as she ran the beam of the flashlight over it from the roof to the ground.

All four of her tires had been slashed.

Her immediate thought was to lock herself inside and call a tow truck. So she fumbled with her key fob as she hurried around to the driver’s door and pressed the button. The horn gave a quick honk , she swung open the door, and the overhead light came on.

She jolted back a few steps.

The glow from the dome light gleamed off a long, shiny blade lying on the front seat of her car. The knife had a small chunk missing from the handle, exactly like one she kept in a knife block in the corner of her kitchen counter.

Her hand flew to her mouth on a gasp, and eyes wide, she spun around to scan the parking garage.

Perhaps Charlotte wasn’t being paranoid after all.