The easiest place to misunderstand my life was my parents’ Sunday dinner table.

The interior of the cold-storage warehouse smelled of ancient ammonia, rotting wood pallets, and industrial dampness.

Through Brandon’s chest microphone, every tiny sound was magnified: the drip of condensation from the high steel girders, the metallic hum of a portable generator running somewhere in the rear of the bay, and the terrifyingly steady breathing of the man standing in front of him.

"I... I had to find where he put it," Brandon stammered. His voice shook so violently that the audio monitor peaked in my ears. "My brother keeps his gear locked up. I had to look through three different drawers."

"Let me see it," the buyer said.

On the thermal feed, the buyer was taller than Brandon by three inches. He didn't move like an online bargain hunter. He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, his weight balanced forward, his right hand buried deep in the pocket of his gray canvas jacket.

Brandon raised his hand. In his palm rested the steel authenticator token, its tiny LCD screen glowing faintly in the dim light.

"That's it," Brandon said, trying desperately to sound assertive and failing completely. "That's the adapter that connects to the side port. But I want the thousand bucks first. You said a thousand cash."

The buyer stepped forward. In the surveillance van, Agent Vega raised her left hand, signaling the tactical teams to stand by.

"He's closing the distance," I muttered into the comms. "Ten feet... eight feet..."

Then, everything went wrong.

The buyer didn't reach for an envelope of cash. Instead, he pulled a compact, handheld black wand from his pocket and swept it horizontally across Brandon’s chest.

A high-pitched squeal exploded through my headset, tearing through the audio channel like broken glass.

"RF detector!" I shouted, ripping the headset halfway off my ear. "He's running a close-range bug sweeper!"

Inside the warehouse, the buyer’s reaction was instantaneous. His posture dropped into a combat crouch, his eyes darting directly to the center of Brandon’s chest where the transmitter was hidden beneath his shirt.

"You stupid piece of trash," the buyer snarled.

"Wait—!" Brandon screamed.

The buyer lunged, his hand whipping out of his jacket pocket. Steel glinted under the overhead sodium light—not a gun, but a heavy tactical blade aimed directly at Brandon's throat.

"BREACH! BREACH! BREACH!" Vega screamed into her tactical radio.

Before the words had finished leaving her mouth, the world outside the surveillance van erupted into violence.

Two flashbang grenades detonated simultaneously against the warehouse's corrugated steel siding with ear-splitting, thunderous cracks that rattled the van’s chassis. Blinding white light bled through the warehouse’s frosted skylights, turning the rainy darkness into high-noon daylight for a fraction of a second.

*BANG-BANG!*

The hydraulic pedestrian door was blown inward off its hinges by a dynamic breaching charge. Four tactical agents swarmed the threshold, their rifle-mounted flashlights cutting through the rising smoke like laser beams.

"FEDERAL AGENTS! ON THE GROUND! GET ON THE GROUND!"

Brandon shrieked, lost his footing in the wet muck, and tumbled backward onto an empty wooden pallet, curling into a tight fetal ball with his hands over his ears.

The buyer didn't freeze. He was a professional.

He didn't run toward the back door, where he knew another team would be waiting. Instead, he grabbed Brandon by the collar of his jacket, using my brother's flailing body as a human shield, and fired three suppressed rounds from a secondary weapon directly into the doorway, driving the lead FBI breacher back against the frame.

"Hostage situation! Hold fire!" the tactical lead screamed over the comms.

I stared at the thermal screen. Brandon was screaming incoherently, his limbs thrashing, completely pinned beneath the operative’s grip. The buyer was dragging him toward the idling silver Honda Accord parked beside the loading ramp.

"He's taking him!" I shouted, leaping out of my chair in the van.

"Cole, stay inside!" Vega ordered, but I was already moving.

I didn't have a weapon, but I had something far more critical: I had the secondary remote diagnostic terminal in my hand, and I knew what the buyer had left running inside that vehicle.

The laptop.

If the buyer got into that car with Brandon and the laptop, they were gone. The warehouse backed up to an abandoned spur of the CSX rail line that led directly to the commercial docks of south Baltimore.

I sprinted through the pouring rain, the freezing sleet stinging my face, my boots churning through the deep mud of the access road. Ahead of me, the warehouse entrance was billowing gray smoke, strobe lights flashing against the wet concrete.