Page 5 of Misdirection

She stepped closer for a better look.

The streaks were red.

Three lines of smeared red.

All in a row.

Like fingers.

Red fingers.

Olive’s mind raced.

That was blood, she realized.

There was blood on the doorway leading to her parents’ bedroom—almost as if someone had crawled toward the hallway and reached through the crack in the door, desperate for help.

A scream lodged in her throat. What had happened while she was gone?

CHAPTER 2

TODAY

Olive Sterling paused in the stark hallway and stared at the polished concrete floor.

A drop of blood stared back at her.

Then another. And another.

Her chest tightened.

A trail of blood stretched in front of her.

This wasnotsupposed to be part of her job.

Figure out the mole? Yes.

Find a dead body and draw attention to herself? No.

But she couldn’t walk away now—not with evidence like this staring her in the face.

Instead, she glanced down the Sensitive Compartmented Information corridor, or SCI as it was called.

Six gray doors lined the hallway, three on each side. A blank white wall waited at the end of the hallway.

She glanced behind her at the thick metal door with its narrow, rectangular window. A scanner hung on the wall beside the door latch. Anyone coming or going from this corridor had to use both their badge and fingerprint in order to open it.

Of the four thousand employees at Conglomerate, only fifty-seven had access to this area.

Olive was one of them.

She rubbed her waist, the area where her holster would normally be.

Shereallywished she had her gun right now. But the only people allowed to have weapons inside this building were the paid security officers.

That blood was fresh.

Sweat spread across her skin. The fact she worked as an investigator didn’t matter. Dead bodies took the situation to a different level.

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