Life of Secrets by Bowen Greenwood Read Free Book Online Page A

walked
out the door of the headquarters.
    At once, Alyssa
sat down at the finance director’s computer. She popped in a thumb drive. Soon,
she was copying the entire contents of the computer to sort it out at leisure
later on and figure out if one of these two was the mole.
    When the file
transfer finished, she shut the computer down and popped out her thumb drive.
Then she went to the office next door.
    The sign on the
door read, "Communications Director Michael Vincent."
    Alyssa eased
into his chair. It was still warm from his recent departure. She plugged her
thumb drive in, started the computer, and again began copying files.
    "What’s
going on here?"
    The
communications director was back. He was tall, with wavy blond hair that was
blow-dried perfectly into place. Alyssa’s head whipped up to meet his eyes, and
her brain began searching for an answer that might alleviate the situation.
    "What are
you doing with my computer?"
    When Alyssa
still didn’t answer, the man backed up, and pulled a cell phone out of his
pocket. This was unacceptable. Alyssa saw all her careful secrecy going up in
smoke with one phone call. She saw her budding career destroyed. The
possibility made her angry. It made her angry enough to do something stupid.
    She vaulted
over the desk and tackled the man, quickly knocking his phone out of his hand.
She was better trained, but there was a substantial difference in physical size
that made it hard to keep him pinned down. He got an arm free and tried to
throw a punch at her. Alyssa blocked it easily with a forearm block, then
grabbed his wrist and pinned his arm back down, sitting on his stomach. He kept
trying to break his arms free.
    Caught up in
the moment, mad at the man for turning a simple job into a potential disaster,
Alyssa made a fateful decision. She reached inside her baggy coveralls and
pulled out her silenced Ruger .22 to aim it at the
man’s face. That pretty much put an end to his struggling, but it created a new
problem.
    "Never
point a gun at someone you don’t want to shoot," was the first rule of
firearms safety classes. Likewise, "Never make a threat you can’t follow
through on," was the first rule of negotiation. Since she was emphatically
not going to shoot him, she was breaking both rules. It made her path forward
rather awkward.
    "Just let
me do my job…" she muttered, unsure how to solve the problem. She had no
desire to hurt the man, she just wanted to do what she’d been paid for and get
out but how was she supposed to get out when this guy was here?
    "What
job?" he asked.
    Alyssa growled
under her breath. She hadn’t really meant to say that aloud. Instead of a
direct reply, she asked, "What will it take for you to just leave?"
    "What
job?" he asked again.
    When she didn’t
answer, he said, "Is this job about me?"
    Alyssa didn’t
know what to say. It might be about him, if he was the guy leaking campaign
secrets. He took her silence as agreement.
    "Did
Tilman figure out I’ve been telling the press about him? He hired a private
detective to get evidence to fire me?"
    Alyssa blinked.
She hadn’t expected the man to just come out and admit that he was the one she
was looking for.
    Her facial
expression must have told him he’d hit a nerve. He’d given up struggling now
and simply lay there with his head on the carpet, watching her eyes.
    "Look,
Lance Reeder cheats on his wife," the guy said. "And not in some kind
of one-time slip either. He goes through mistresses like an alcoholic through
bourbon. He likes them young and naive and easily impressed by a Congressman.
He uses his position of power…"
    The young man
shook his head and looked away.
    "I can’t
just sit idly by and do nothing about that. I don’t believe a man like that
should represent me in the Senate."
    Alyssa couldn’t
really disagree. She didn’t like helping a man like that stay in office much
more than this guy did, but opportunities to get paid for work like this were
rare, and she