Chapter One
The warehouse stank like rot. Old blood. Grease. The kind of smell that got under your
skin and made you feel like you carried it with you after you left. I paused in the entryway, eyes adjusting to the flicker of dying fluorescent lights overhead. One of them buzzed, casting a jittery yellow glow across the concrete floor. The place used to be a meatpacking facility, back before the city shut it down for health code violations. Now it had a new purpose.
And so did I.
I took two steps forward, the soles of my boots sticking with every lift. My jacket was too light for the cold seeping through the walls, but I hadn’t come for comfort. Hector Alvarez stood at the far end of the room, crouched behind a folding table with a cooler atop it. He looked up when he heard me, eyes narrowing. Stringy hair clung to his cheeks.
Track marks lined his arms.
The man was alive—but barely. He was a husk of what he used to be, but he was smart. Dangerous. The worst kind of addict: the one who kept climbing.
“You’re late,” he said, standing. “This ain’t a social call.”
I stopped five feet from him. Kept my hands in my jacket pockets. My right hand curled around the transmitter taped to my side.
A little red button was all it would take to light up this place with agents. But I wasn’t ready yet.
“Traffic was intense.”
“Mm-hmm.” He nodded toward the cooler. “You got the scripts?”
I pulled the envelope out slow. Let him see my fingers. Tossed it onto the table.
“Twenty. Clean. Enough oxy and hydro to keep your people happy for a week.”
He didn’t reach for it right away. Just stared at me. Evaluating.
“You look familiar,” he said.
“I get that a lot.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Then he grabbed the envelope, flipped it open, and gave the scripts a once-over. He whistled low. “Somebody went through the trouble.”
“I’m good at trouble.”
The kid next to him, barely legal, maybe twenty, took the envelope and stuffed it into a backpack. His leg jittered like he was on something fast and mean.
Hector turned back to me. “How’s your appetite?”
“I didn’t come here to eat.”
He smirked. Opened the cooler. Inside were vacuum-sealed bags, pills lined like candy. Fentanyl. Blue, deadly, and street-slick. He pulled one of the bags out and tossed it to me. I caught it.
“Sample.”
I turned the bag over in my hand. “How pure?”
“Enough to take down a horse. Not that it matters. Your people aren’t buying it to sniff.”
I met his eyes. Held them. Let the silence stretch just long enough for him to shift on
his feet.
Then I smiled. “You got more?”
He chuckled. “Back room. But you ain’t seeing it until I know you’re solid.”
My thumb tapped twice on the transmitter. Not the signal, just a check. The plastic button was still there. Still ready.
“I didn’t drive all the way across the river to hold hands, Hector. Either we deal or I walk.”
Behind me, the back door clicked.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
Hector tilted his head. “You bring friends?”
“Nope.”
Then everything moved at once.
Glass shattered. Boots hit concrete. A voice roared, “Federal agents! Get down!”
I dropped. My shoulder slammed the floor. Cold and hard. My gun was already in my hand when the smoke grenade popped and rolled across the floor. The air filled with gray.
Hector reached for something under the table. I kicked it aside, and he cursed, stumbling backward. The kid bolted. I didn’t follow. Three agents tackled him by the door.
Screams.
A Taser crackled.
Wes Dalton came through the smoke like this was just another damn Tuesday. Tactical vest, gun drawn, calm like only he could be. He zeroed in on Hector, who was halfway to his feet.
“Move and I put you down,” Wes said. Voice like gravel.
Hector didn’t test him. Wes cuffed him, handed him off, and came to me. I was standing now, chest heaving, and trying to breathe through the chemical haze.
“You all right?” he asked.
I nodded, slow. My throat burned. My heart hadn’t slowed.
“You did good,” he said, his voice low.
I stared at him. At the blood on my sleeve that wasn’t mine. At the cooler. At the pills scattered on the floor like Halloween candy.
“That was your last one, Maisie,” he added. “You’re done. It’s official.”
I didn’t say anything.
He reached into his vest and pulled out a single folded page.
“All charges dropped. Clean record. You walk away now, it’s done.”
I took it from him. The page trembled in my hand.
Outside, blue lights pulsed against the warehouse wall. Someone barked orders.
Somewhere, Hector screamed.
Free.
That word didn’t sit right. Hearing it applied to me felt like putting on someone else’s clothes.
I walked out the door, leaving Wes to clean up and tie up anything they needed to do on their end.
The night slapped me in the face. Cincinnati summer air was hot and humid. My boots hit wet pavement. I could still hear the sirens. Taste the warehouse on my tongue. The metallic flavor of adrenaline still coated the back of my tongue as I ducked into the alley behind the busted warehouse, knees crackling from the crouch. Sirens, still closing in, wailed from three blocks out. I could smell the copper tang of blood from where Frankie’d clocked the guy who ran. He was still sniveling on the linoleum inside, cuffed to a table leg.
But I wasn’t focused on him anymore. I had about five seconds to catch my breath before I needed to disappear.
“You good?” came the voice from the comm clipped under my collar. Wes’s voice.
Calm. Steady. Like always.
“Peachy,” I muttered, pushing myself upright and stepping over a half-dead potted fern.
“Tell your boys to stop scaring the civvies. I think one of ’em wet himself.”
“Where are you?” His voice came through softer this time.
“Ducking out of sight,” I said, knowing if I saw him, I’d wait for him.
The squad was flooding the place. DEA, CPD, U.S. Marshals. Too many badges for one sting, but that was the point. This had to be big, big enough to end it all.
Footsteps sounded behind me, and I looked back. Wes was running towards me, his expression unreadable. In his hand was a Gatorade. I stared.
“Thought you could use electrolytes.”
“Only if they come with a side of bourbon,” I said, grabbing the bottle. I twisted the cap, downed half of the liquid, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Hell of a job, Doss,” he said, voice low as he stepped closer. “Fifteen months and you finally did it.”
I leaned against the brick. “We did it. You pulled the strings.”
He shook his head. “No. You infiltrated a fentanyl pipeline running out of an old, abandoned warehouse. That’s not strings. That’s straight-up guts.”
I didn’t answer. My pulse hadn’t slowed. It never did, not right after. I was still halfway in the skin of Katie the desperate addict, the weak link in the supply chain. The girl who sold stolen dog meds for a quick fix. That was who they knew. Not Maisie Doss.
I wasn’t even sure if I knew Maisie Doss at this point.
“How’s it feel to be free?” Wes’s voice shifted to something softer as he took a step closer. “The last one.”
I should’ve felt something. Relief. Joy. Fear. Instead, I stared at the cracked pavement between my boots, where blood had dried into a reddish smear.
“All charges dropped. Your record’s sealed. You’re done.” His southern-accented voice dragged out the words.
“Then what now?” I asked quietly. “I go back to Camp Springs and play waitress at the bar while everyone pretends they don’t remember my mug shot?”
Wes hesitated then said, “You start over. You live your life. You be Maisie Doss. Maybe I’m in there somewhere.”
That was the problem. I didn’t know who she was anymore. I’d been living my life as their confidential informant, at their beck and call, given the ID they wanted me to have and the clothes they wanted me to wear.
The wind shifted, bringing sirens and the scents of sweat and asphalt. Around the corner, officers barked orders. Someone shouted. I barely heard it.
Wes touched my arm. I flinched. It’d been a few months since we’d, well, been intimate.
“I’m not your handler anymore, Maisie,” he said. “But I hope I’m still… someone,” he said again.
My eyes met his. His were full of something I wasn’t ready to name.
“I need to go home.” I pushed off the car.
I gave him one last nod and turned toward the mouth of the alley. The noise was louder now with ambulances, squad cars, too many uniforms, and too many questions.
But I wasn’t part of that anymore.
I was walking out free.
And for the first time in my life, that scared me to death.
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