One Wrong Move Read Online Free Page A

box, handing it to her.
    She snatched the box from him and marched to the door. “I can handle my own belongings, thank you.” She yanked open the door and let it slam behind her, but none of those actions made her feel better.
    It’s not that she loved the job, or even the town, but it was her chance to get away and rediscover her independence. Now what was she going to do?
     
    ***
     
    Camden
     
    “What were you thinking?” Moore chewed on the stump of his unlit cigar, an attempt to quit smoking cigarettes yet again. For some ridiculous reason, he considered cigars healthier.
    “What?” Camden opened cabinets in search of breakfast while he ignored his boss’s temper. He knew exactly what Moore was talking about, but was eager to stretch it out. The news hadn’t aired the footage from the restaurant this morning, but he doubted that upped his chance for reconciliation with Dare.
    The kitchen was Camden’s favorite part of this large but dreary coffin of a house. Wide and open, bright and airy, with a comfortable cheeriness. Besides the command room, it was the preferred area for agents to convene when they had something important to discuss. It was the only place where Camden didn’t feel enclosed in a tight box; here, it was like tiny holes had been poked through the box, admitting sunshine and air, and he could finally breathe.
    Today, though, he couldn’t breathe. Not with Moore’s words suffocating him.
    “Shawn hasn’t been found yet. We were hoping he could give us intel on Dare and his establishment.”
    Camden grabbed the canister of protein powder and slammed the cabinet door closed. “He hasn’t been found?”
    “We’ve got agents looking around the clock.” Moore struggled with a cereal box wrapper. Camden wanted to laugh. A macho DEA agent and he couldn’t even tear open the packaging.
    He added a banana to everything else in the blender then pushed start, drowning out his concerns. Moore managed to get the cereal open and ended up spilling a quarter of it on the floor.
    “Why’d you bring Shawn into it?” Moore asked. “He’s like, what, twenty?”
    Camden stopped the blender, hit the pulse button one last time to piss the boss off, and poured the shake into his glass. “I didn’t bring Shawn into anything. He did it all himself when he threatened to go out there and expose Dare. I intervened. But yeah, I hoped it’d make Dare trust me more, see me as an ally who will take up for him.”
    Camden had served as a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration for the past seven years and had worked undercover most of that time. Before that he’d served in the Army, learning a lot in the Special Forces then leaving to do what he was meant to do since adolescence. Joining the DEA and busting high-end drug lords had been Camden’s mission ever since the death of his fourteen-year-old brother when Camden was seven. That, along with the execution of his friend at sixteen, gave him an intense hatred for drugs and the people who made them readily available to naïve kids.
    If Camden saved one child from death by a drug overdose or a drug-related slaying, he would feel he succeeded in life. He’d as soon kill Darrell now and get it over with, save the taxpayers a lot of money, and give him more time to find other pathetic individuals who made money preying on kids and giving them a lifelong addiction to drugs.
    But the criminal justice system sucked. This assignment proved to be his hardest yet. For nine months he’d served as chef of a lucrative restaurant situated in a small city between Houston and South Padre Island. Besides cocaine delivery and money laundering, they were purported to be making a new drug, undetectable in a drug test, and they were doing a booming business.
    Camden didn’t hold a culinary degree, but thanks to his babysitter’s good cooking and his interest in learning, he grew adept at food preparation. His skill, along with a fake degree, helped him land