My captain handed me the file on a Friday afternoon and told me it was the most important undercover assignment in the department's history. He said it like he was giving me a gift. I know now he was giving me a sentence.

The target: Zane Harlow. Thirty-four years old. Founder of Harlow Technologies, valued at twelve billion dollars. On the surface, a visionary. Beneath the surface — according to eighteen months of surveillance and three dead informants — the architect of a data-trafficking syndicate that had compromised government systems in four countries.

My job was to get close. Become part of his inner circle. Find the evidence that three dead informants hadn't lived long enough to deliver.

My captain said I was perfect for it because I was smart and I was good at reading people. What he didn't say — what I understand now — was that I was also expendable. That if things went wrong, my disappearance could be managed. That the department had already decided I was the kind of asset you use up.

I took the assignment anyway. Because I believed in the work. Because three informants had died and someone needed to answer for that. Because I was twenty-nine years old and I thought being brave was the same as being safe.