CHAPTER ONE
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Charlotte Cavanaugh’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 stand in her office doorway.
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“Hello?” She looked out over the rows of cubicles, but everyone had left long ago.
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Was she becoming paranoid or was someone messing with her head?
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Motivated to get the heck out of there, she rushed back to her desk, sat down, and hurriedly finished typing a summary of what she’d discovered. She had to stop twice because her fingers shook so badly. She attached it and the scanned images of the supporting documents and sent all of it to two separate anonymous email addresses she’d set up about six weeks ago. Right after she first discovered what was happening and who was involved.
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She quickly saved all of the documentation to an external hard drive and unplugged it from her laptop. Charlotte printed a copy of everything, stuffed it and the small hard drive into a stamped manila envelope, and sealed it shut. It was addressed to someone who would know what to do with the information inside if anything happened to her.
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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 all traces of the originals from her work computer.
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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’s how deep the shit was that she’d stumbled into.
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Contrary to her current activities, Charlotte wasn’t some sort of corporate spy or anything, she was a therapist and victim advocate with the Human Rescue Alliance. HRA was a non-governmental organization that provided support to victims of human trafficking in all of its forms.
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As an NGO, her organization was, supposedly, independent of any government. That looked good on the website and marketing materials but was rarely one hundred percent true. Basically, there was a sort of unspoken, gentleman’s agreement between the NGOs and the government. The government promised not to stick its nose into the NGO’s business, and the NGO understood that lack of oversight came at a price.
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A lot of money in the form of donations 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.
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They were like sharks and the NGO’s bloated treasuries were like chum in the water.
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Charlotte would readily admit she’d become jaded by the slimy machinations of some politicians, the power brokers that typically controlled them, and how heavily they influenced where the money went. Living in Virginia, or, more accurately, DC-adjacent, she was fast becoming all-too-familiar with all of that stuff.
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She hadn’t always been so negative and cynical. Honestly, she’d never had much interest in or paid much attention to the inner workings of government and how they were intertwined with non-profits. 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.
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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.
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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 other’s ability to do so.
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They’d tainted the goodness of her work with their evil.
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And that was why she wanted to take them down. She just needed time to figure out how.
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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 playing amateur spy at—she glanced down at the time on her computer—almost nine o’clock on a Friday night, sitting in her office, long after everyone else left to be with their significant others, families, and friends. Hell, she hadn’t even gone on a date in forever, and the only thing she could remember about her last one was that she’d been happy when it was over.
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Suddenly anxious to get the heck out of there, she verified again that she’d scrubbed her computer of any damning information, and shut it down. She rolled open her bottom drawer, lifted out her purse, and set it on the middle of her desk blotter. Her small flashlight was readily available in one pocket, and her keychain with a small can of pepper spray attached in another.
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Charlotte had never been the nervous type, but lately, strange things had been happening that created a heightened sense of alertness.
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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 there were two times her garbage bins were upended and the contents dumped out. The most alarming was just last night when she stepped into her house and was certain someone had been there. Nothing seemed to be out of place or was missing, and the door was still locked, but something had made her skin crawl.
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Hell, she’d been so spooked that she called her mom and asked if she could stay at her house. She’d fibbed and told her the power was out. It had always been just Charlotte and her mom, and lying to each other was something they never did. But Donna Cavanaugh could be a skosh over-protective and a bit of a worrier where her daughter was concerned. Understandable, considering what her mom had endured as a kid. So, if she even got a hint that 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.
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Charlotte rolled back her chair, stood, and clicked off her desk lamp. 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.
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She looped the strap of her purse over her head and walked out of the office. 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 department, she tapped her ID card on the sensor, waited for the beep to push the door open, and stepped out into the main hallway. She snuck a peek at the camera mounted up in the corner as she strolled over to the bank of elevators and pressed the call button.
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Cameras were located all over the place, which had never bothered her before. She figured 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’s when she knew they were there not only for the safety of the employees but to keep an eye on them as well.
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Charlotte even went so far as to buy one of those gadgets that are 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.
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​Ding.
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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 spot located much too far away.
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Her boss knew she often worked late, and she’d formally requested a spot closer to the elevator. He’d told her someone either had to quit, get fired, or die for her to move up the list. As if that 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.
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The elevator arrived at the garage level, there was a ding, and the doors whispered open. She leaned out, looked around, and, dammit, they still hadn’t replaced the lightbulbs.
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Surely, that was a liability issue, right?
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Well, 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.
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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 jiggled like jelly. Her hazel eyes scanned the parking lot and her heels clicked on the cement in time with the hammering of her heart.
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I am confident. I am tough. I am not to be messed with. She chanted this over and over again in her head.
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Her sensible, mid-sized 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, stopped short a few feet from her car, and then slowly circled it as she ran the beam of the flashlight over it from the roof to the ground.
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​ Her hand flew to her mouth on a gasp, and, eyes wide, she spun around to scan the parking garage.
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​All four of her tires had been slashed.
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​Perhaps Charlotte wasn’t being paranoid after all.
