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tried to think, but my mind was jumbled and confused.
    My heart still racing, I ran over and checked the man on the floor. You didn’t have to be an MD to see he was dead as well, his cold, gray eyes glazed over and inert; the pool of blood on his chest continuing to spread. You killed him, Wendy . . . I’d pulled a trigger once before on the job, and it had changed my life. But not like this. Not at point-blank range. Not with my life on the line. I thought, What the hell do I do now? Call security? The police? You just killed someone, Wendy . . . I knew I didn’t have any choice. I’d just watched the son of a bitch kill Curtis in cold blood. He was about to shoot me too. I was lucky to even be alive.
    Anyone would see it was clearly self-defense.
    But then the reality of where I was swelled up inside me.
    No. I couldn’t do that at all! Call the police. That was the last thing I could do. I was in the hotel room of a complete stranger. A place I absolutely shouldn’t have been. How would I possibly explain that? Not just to the police, even if I could convince them of what had happened.
    But to my husband. To Dave. To our kids!
    That I was up here to have sex with a guy I’d just met at the bar when the whole thing happened.
    My whole life would be torn apart.
    My eyes fell on the intruder. Who are you? Why were you following Curtis? What were you up here to do? Leaning over him, I saw he had an earphone in his ear. Which suddenly unnerved me even more, realizing that there was likely an accomplice somewhere. Probably in the hotel at that moment!
    Possibly even right outside.
    If he has any idea what had just happened in here . . .
    Terrified, I took the earphone out and held it to my ear. I heard a voice on the other end.
    â€œRay? Ray, what’s going on up there? Answer me, Ray, are you all right?”
    His jacket had fallen open, and I saw an ID folder in the breast pocket. I started thinking, What if he was security? Or maybe even the police? What then?
    I was suddenly encased in sweat.
    I opened the ID folder and stared. And whatever panic or fear I had felt up to that moment became just a dry run for what was rippling through me now.
    I was staring at a badge. But not from hotel security.
    It read, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA . DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY .

CHAPTER THREE
    M y heart, which to that point had been acting as if a live wire were loose in my chest, went instantly still, as if the power had been cut. The agent’s ID fell out of my hand.
    I’d just killed a government agent.
    Not just an agent—Raymond Hruseff. From the Department of fucking Homeland Security!
    Who only seconds before I had watched commit a cold-blooded murder and then try to frame someone else. And who would have surely done the same to me had that gun not happened to be close by.
    My throat went completely dry.
    You have no idea what you stepped into, Hruseff had said to me. I turned to Curtis and wanted to shake him from the dead. Tell me . . . tell me, damn it, what did I stumble into? What the hell did you do?
    I knew I had only seconds to decide what to do. But, clearly, staying here wasn’t an option.
    I found a duplicate room key in the agent’s jacket pocket, which was no doubt how he’d gotten in. He had icily put two bullets into Curtis right in front of my eyes. He was in the process of trying to make it seem as if Curtis was the one about to shoot. Even more troubling, when I identified myself as an ex-cop, instead of laying down his weapon and putting his hands in the air—and identifying himself , standard operating procedure—he’d made a move to shoot me. Clearly, he wasn’t up here on official business.
    What I’d stumbled into was an execution.
    And I knew if the person on the other end of that earphone happened to find me in this room , I’d be as good as Curtis.
    Wendy, you have to get the hell out of here now!
    I