My hotel room was warm, but the voice on the other end of the phone was as cold as ice.

“I don’t know what it is you’re doing out there, but you’re not on vacation,” my boss said. “Your target doesn’t require this kind of up close and personal surveillance to gather information for our client.”

I gritted my teeth. “I disagree. Something isn’t right with this—”

“Make Mr. Kent happy, and you’ll get a permanent position on my staff. He specifically picked you for this case, so if this goes well, it means repeat business for our agency and for you.”

“Boss, I understand that, but you hired me all those years ago because of my gut instincts,” I said.

“I hired you because you were able to track down information on people. When I found you, you were working at a credit collection agency, wasting away in an office and still dreaming of becoming an artist.” His dismissive tone stung a bit.

“Sir, there’s something really weird here.”

“I don’t care about weird,” he said, sighing. “Mr. Kent practically solved this case for you. Find the paper trail that ties this man to the accounts so we can move on.”

“But he hired me for the entire month, didn’t he?” I asked.

“No, he paid three times what you’re worth for month because he wanted the job done as quickly as possible.”

“That’s not what he told me in our meeting,” I said. “He wants me to keep an eye on Zach Harte and report back to him. So, that’s what I’m doing.”

“You’re supposed to report back to me. Have you been calling him directly?”

“Sir, I really don’t understand why you’re—”

“Stop,” he interrupted. “I don’t even care. Here are your orders. You do your research, you wrap up this case, and you get home. Understood?”

“Understood. But at this point, I still have to meet up with him to wrap up this case. Randomly backing out but staying in town would look suspicious.”

Silence fell on his end of the line as my boss contemplated my words. He was irate, and I understood why. He was being left out of the loop, which wasn’t how things worked.

Normally, if I had information for a client, I routed all my information through him. He was the middle man and for good reason. He provided a buffer, just in case things got rough with a client. Sometimes, they did. Still, Mr. Kent was paying me a great deal of money to report back to him, and something in my gut told me there was much more to this story than Mr. Kent was letting on.

The evidence I was digging up was slowly proving that theory.

“Fine,” he said. “You’ll go tonight, and you’ll get more intel. But you call me before you call Mr. Kent, and you brief me on everything. Understand?”

“Yes,” I said. “I understand.”

“Good. Get what you can and use any means necessary. I expect a call tonight.”

He hung up the phone before I could get another word in. I hated my boss with every fiber of my being. With every case that came across my desk, he became more aggressive. His attitude was beginning to get to me, and the way he talked down to me pissed me off. I tossed my cell phone onto the bed and sighed.

I’d worked for this man for four years. Four fucking years, and the only thing I had to show for it was my own little dinky office. It wasn’t any bigger than the bathroom in my apartment back home. Hell, if I took a meeting with a client, I usually had to do it outside of the office.

Even though I hated the job I had when my boss found me, he offered me much more money to do it. That meant paying down my student loans faster, which meant I could get back to doing what I really wanted to do with my life more quickly.

I needed about two more years to pay off my student loans, but I couldn’t take this for another two years.

I couldn’t take the attitude and the haughty tone he took with me because he was my superior. I couldn’t take the incessant need to exert his authority over me just because he was the middleman when it came to cases. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to take any more insinuations that I should be using my damn body to get information on cases.

I still had three hours before I was set to meet Zach at his place, and I was nervous. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, and I was ready to call it quits.

I was prepared to pick up the phone, tell Mr. Kent what he could do with this fucking case, then call my boss and let him have it. My hands were shaking, and my eyes were watering with anger.

Use any means necessary. What a scumbag.