Joel Davidson sat in his tiny cubicle at The Washington Leader newspaper. It was the biggest newspaper in the DC area, and he was one of their top reporters. Joel stared unseeingly at his desk piled high with papers. Notecards had been tacked onto the tan, rough material blanketing the walls of his cubicle. He didn’t see the people walking by his small space. He didn’t hear the phones ringing or people shouting over the cubicles at each other for information on pieces they were running. He couldn’t because all of his attention was focused on the anonymous email he’d just received.

I know what you’re investigating. Stop now or you’ll die.

Joel still hadn’t breathed as he read the email for the eighth time. No one knew what he was working on. One of his sources must have talked. Now thirty-six and a reporter since college, Joel had received his fair share of threats. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let this one bother him.

Joel printed the threat and took the long walk out of the pits to the senior editor’s office. He knocked, and Jeff Sargent waved him in. Jeff’s tie was crumpled on the desk and his coffee-stained, white button-up shirt was open at the neck. “You got something for me, Joel?”

Joel set the paper on his desk. “I went a whole two months without getting a threat,” Joel joked. “But this one is a little different. No one knows what I’m working on.”

Jeff read the note and leaned back in his chair. “Shit, son, I don’t even know what you’re working on. Maybe it’s time you told me.”

Joel looked around before closing the office door. “I’m looking into that FBI agent’s death in Africa. Agent Phylicia Claymore.”

Jeff shrugged. “So? Every reporter under the sun is looking into her and the rest of the FBI.”

“I know, but I think I have a good lead on something. Something big.” Joel started to pace the office. This was the story of a lifetime—Pulitzer material, book deal material, major motion picture type of material. “I’ll know more tomorrow. I’m meeting with a source tonight.”

“I bet Sheila loves that. Another night at work,” Jeff tried to joke. Joel had been married for five years. Jeff had been married for seventeen. “But seriously, what’s the scoop?”

“I’ll fill you in tomorrow morning. It’s big, Jeff. Front page material that will have The Washington Leader crushing our competition.”

Jeff smiled at the thought of his newspaper being the top in town. “I’ve learned to trust your feelings, Joel. I look forward to hearing what you have tomorrow.”

Joel gave a nod and opened the door. It was six o’clock, and he was meeting his source an hour outside of DC. He needed to hurry or he’d miss his chance.

Joel pulled up at Manassas National Park and parked his car. It was dark, and the park was deserted. He opened his car door and got out to look down the empty road leading into the park—the same park that was once the site of the Battle of Bull Run, the first major battle in the American Civil War. Soldiers from the North and South clashed fighting. Brothers fought against brothers, fathers against sons, and cousins against cousins. It truly was a country torn in half.

The sound of a car reached Joel’s ears before he saw it. He pressed Record on his phone and set it on the roof of his car so that it was hidden by the luggage racks. The car was driving up the lane with its lights off as it pulled next to Joel.

The door opened and a man stepped out. His brown hair was military short and a tattoo covered the inside of his wrist. “Mr. Davidson?”

“Yes. And you are . . .?”

“I need to check you for a wire,” the man said, coming around the car.

“Of course,” Joel untucked his shirt and lifted it up. The man patted him down and then closed the door to Joel’s car. Joel had left his work phone sitting on the passenger’s seat, and so far his source was doing exactly what Joel had hoped—thinking no one was listening. Joel wasn’t going to share the recording, but he would use it all the same to get direct quotes and to try to ferret out any information leading to this man’s identity so he could guarantee the story’s authenticity.

“You said you have something about Agent Claymore’s death.” Joel nudged the man back a step.

“It’s bigger than Claymore. The FBI is compromised by enemies of the United States.”

Joel raised his eyebrow. “What kind of enemies?”

The man shook his head. “I don’t know. But things are happening that aren’t being ordered, or at least there is no record of the orders. Phylicia Claymore was a power-hungry bitch who would never have gotten a job at the FBI in the first place if it weren’t for her senator father. But what’s interesting isn’t what happened in Africa, it’s what happened before Africa. There have been items disappearing from the FBI laboratory at Quantico over the past year. Items such as the biometrics identifying who set off certain bombs and even a chemical weapon that had been defused at an investigated site of a terrorist attack. Director Kirby has kept it quiet. But don’t you think it’s strange that the biometrics we thought showed proof the rebel leader had touched it suddenly disappeared two weeks before that same rebel leader allegedly used that exact type of weapon on a small town that refused to bow to his power? It would have been the proof needed to bring in the UN to support the leadership and, hopefully, help quell the rebellion. Instead, now there’s a missing bomb, and he got away scot-free until he was found dead with Phylicia Claymore of all people.”

Joel sucked in a deep breath. “But you had the proof at the lab . . .”

“The proof was wiped away as if it never existed. Now, who has the power to do that?”

“You think it was Claymore?” Joel asked.

“I do.”

“Was her name on the list of visitors for that day?”

The man nodded his head. “Yes. There’s evidence she was there for twenty minutes but then left in the company of Director Kirby, who was at the FBI Academy giving a speech to new recruits. However, there are ways into and out of the base that she could have used undetected.”

The man handed a log to Joel showing that Agent Claymore had signed into the labs at 16:36, right before they closed for the day. “Or she scoped out the location of what she wanted and passed it along to someone else to steal,” Joel suggested.

“Look into it more. None of the reporters are looking into anything other than her involvement in Africa. Look at her movements here in Washington. Talk to people at Quantico. Shit, she got our bartender fired because she was threatened by Elizabeth’s climb up the FBI ladder.”

“Elizabeth who?”

“Elizabeth James. She was under Phylicia, and they did not like each other.”

“Anything else?” Joel asked. He was itching to find Elizabeth James.

“There’s still a missing chemical weapon out there. I hope you can find it because I’ve been shut down.” The man turned and got back into his car. Joel watched as he drove away before moving to turn off the recording. Stolen weapons ending up in the hands of United States enemies all because of a rogue FBI agent. This was the story of a lifetime.

Joel pumped his fist as he jerked open his door. He couldn’t wait to get home to start his research.

“Honey! I’m home!” Joel shouted as he tossed his keys on the side table. He rushed in, opening his laptop as he headed toward the light from the kitchen’s open window, looking out into the living room. “Did you keep dinner warm?”

Joel pushed the swinging door to kitchen open and took a deep breath as he smelled dinner warming in the oven. He powered up his laptop before looking up to kiss his wife.

“Sheila,” Joel gasped. His wife wasn’t alone. A man wearing black gloves and a suit stood behind his wife with a knife to her throat. He was just under six feet with blond hair, blue eyes, and a pink paisley necktie. His face was handsome, but his eyes . . . they were empty.

“Joel,” Sheila gave a strangled cry before the man jabbed the point of the knife harder into her neck. Blood pooled around the sharp edge of the knife and began to trickle down her throat.

“I’ll do whatever you want, just let my wife go,” Joel begged.

“I warned you, didn’t I?”

Joel’s mind couldn’t compute the man’s words. “Warned? The email from today?”

“Haven’t you learned that reporters do what we tell them to? What were you told to do?”

“You told me to leave the story. I will. I’ll burn everything I have,” Joel swore as he looked into the pleading eyes of his wife.

“No, before I warned you. What were you supposed to be writing a story on? The one that came down from corporate. The one that you thought you could ignore.”

Joel’s eyes flashed up to the man’s. “The story about President Stratton secretly supporting a coup in Zambia in order to steal the mineral rights of the country?”

“They even gave you the source’s name, and you just ignored it.”

“The story was completely fabricated. The source has no direct knowledge or contact to the so-called rebels, which I couldn’t prove existed in the first place. No one would believe it.”

The man dug deeper into Sheila’s neck as tears and blood mixed. “People will believe it because we tell them to. The media and the people are entangled in a beautiful dance. The stories don’t have to be real because before they’re found to be fake, folks are already up in arms. How dare the president support a coup! It’s a violation of human rights! It will be all over social media in hours. When the paper later finds the story to be false, they’ll print a short retraction and not a single person will see it. How do I know this? Because we will have moved on to the next dance that enrages or scares the people, just as we have been successfully doing for years.”

“I’ll write it!” Joel promised. “Right now. Just let my wife go, please!”

“Dance, puppet,” the man laughed as he slid the blade across Sheila’s neck.

“No!” Joel yelled. He ran to his wife as the man dropped her to the floor. The sound of his newborn son crying echoed in the house, mixing with his unintelligible sounds of grief. Sheila gurgled and tears fell from her eyes as Joel held her. It was over in seconds. Her beautiful green eyes faded closed.

“You didn’t think I’d let her live, did you?”

Joel looked up in despair at the man who was now kneeling down in front of him. “Go to hell.”

The man smiled and Joel knew the man had no empathy. He’d never seen anything as bone-chilling as the way this man looked amused at the death upon his hands.

“Where are all your notes on the piece you’ve been writing?” the man asked, cocking his head to one side and staring at Joel.

“How did you know what I was writing?”

“You saved it to the newspaper’s cloud. Now, give them to me.”

Joel made a sound of disbelief. “I’m not going to give them to you. You’re going to kill me anyway.”

The man smiled again, only this time bigger. “Yes, I am. The question is, will I also kill your baby?”

Joel’s whole life flashed before him. Every thought was focused on keeping his son safe as he deleted his story from the cloud, handed over his cell phone, and told the intruder where to find his notes in his home office. Sheila’s mother and father would raise him. What would he look like grown up? Would he know how much Joel and Sheila had loved him? And when the bullet ripped into his brain, he died remembering the way Sheila looked while she held their son for the first time.