KELSEY KNEW THERE WAS GOING TO BE TROUBLE after she read the transcript of the interview. The reporter had the audacity to ask Lowell Rollins about Gavin Kent and his murder confession followed by suicide.

“Did you actually have a longtime aide who was a confessed murderer and not know anything about it?”

Lowell was a politician. He made it through the interview without losing his composure, and Kelsey knew the friendly reporter was satisfied.

But her employer was not happy and as expected went ballistic. Kelsey kept her mouth shut as her boss raged to the point of histrionics, even throwing a glass into the fireplace to shatter into a thousand pieces.

“I want her dealt with now!” Pointing at Kelsey. “Do you know where she is?”

“Of course. You wanted me to keep tabs on her.”

“Well, finish her and that stupid PI. I want her and Murphy out of the way permanently.”

Kelsey saw the bloodlust in her boss’s eyes and cringed inside. For the first time since she took the job Gavin’s death had given her, she wondered if she really wanted it. Was this position, this shot at a life in the national spotlight, worth what this person asked of her? But where would she go if she quit? A lifetime of choices had brought her to this place, choices she couldn’t take back.

When she didn’t immediately respond to her boss, the rebuke came. “What? You don’t have the stomach to handle this? Do I need to find someone else?”

“I’ll handle it,” Kelsey said. There was no point in saying that Hart’s death, especially if it was violent and unexplained, might open up a whole other can of worms. Nope, she’d do what she was told and deal with the fallout when it came.

“See that you do. And just because I want to be certain, take Quinn with you.”

“Quinn? He’s part of the personal protection detail. Why —?”

“We have plenty of protection in place. This is important. I want that woman and everyone connected with that investigation erased permanently, now. I’ve already told Quinn he’s with you for a couple of days. He’ll do what he’s told and keep his mouth shut.”

Kelsey was left speechless and dismissed. Quinn, the person Kelsey hated most in the organization, was to be her partner. He was a Brit. He’d been a bobby but quit to join a global security company. That’s where Gavin found him when he was looking for extra help. Gavin and Quinn connected on a macho he-man level, but Kelsey never liked him, hated the way he looked at her and the way his accent always made him sound condescending and smug. Her employer, on the other hand, loved the accent, considered it class while everyone else thought it pretentious.

She left the office and headed for her car in a daze. Though it had been threatened before, it had never occurred to her that her employer would want to be separated from Quinn during this frenzy of fund-raising. Kill two people? Quinn could do it without raising his pulse rate, of that Kelsey was certain.

Maybe she should see this as a positive, let Quinn do the dirty work. But once she stepped off the elevator and saw Quinn smirking at her in the lobby, she knew there was nothing positive about this situation. He had a travel bag slung over his shoulder. She’d been ordered to kill, to murder two people, and Quinn must detect no hesitation to her steps in that direction.

Her hands went numb as she pulled the car keys from her purse and motioned for the big oaf to follow her to the parking lot. Feeling cornered, and surprised she had any left, she fought the tears that threatened. She wished she could hold Gavin one more time and ask him how the two of them ever got to this point. Meanwhile, her grip slipped completely and she felt herself falling off the cliff, deep into a pit that had no bottom.