Page 1 of Brutal
PROLOGUE
Rain pelts, making the wooden dock slick.
I shouldn’t be here.
I know it.
I knew it the second I left the car, the second I chose not to wait, not to call it in, not to hand this off to someone safer.
But safer doesn’t get you this close.
And I am close.
Close enough to feel it.
The truth has a weight to it. You don’t see it, not at first, but once you do, it settles in your bones.
The file inside my coat does exactly that.
It’s enough.
Enough to prove that what looks like separate companies, separate deals, separate incidents is anything but.
It’s all the same thing.
I press my hand briefly against my chest, feeling the edge of the folder through the fabric.
This is proof.
Not rumor. Not suspicion.
Proof from a reliable source who slipped it to me minutes ago.
The kind of proof that brings down families. Powerful families who think they can’t be touched.
But they can.
This is how I redeem myself. How I become what my girl deserves. What I should have been long ago.
The marina is quieter than it should be.
That’s the first thing that’s wrong.
Too quiet.
Like something already happened. I slow as I move down the dock.
I wasn’t supposed to come this far. That’s the second thing.
The meeting point was closer to shore where the light is better.
So either I misunderstood the instructions…or they changed.
Voices carry over the water. I stop to listen.
There are at least two of them.
No. Three.
