A Sense of Danger Read online

  A Sense of Danger

  Copyright © 2021 by Jennifer Estep

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual or fictional characters or actual or fictional events, locales, business establishments, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The fictional characters, events, locales, business establishments, or persons in this story have no relation to any other fictional characters, events, locales, business establishments, or persons, except those in works by this author.

  No part or portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior permission from the author.

  All rights reserved by the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-950076-07-9

  Cover Art © 2021 by Tony Mauro

  Digital Formatting by Author E.M.S.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  A SENSE OF DANGER

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  About the Author

  Other Books by Jennifer Estep

  A SENSE OF DANGER

  by

  Jennifer Estep

  A Section 47 Book

  To my mom and my grandma—for everything.

  To myself—because I always wanted to write a spy book.

  Chapter One

  Charlotte

  You could always tell the assassins by their suits.

  Jackets, shirts, ties. The garments were all extremely expensive and finely made, but also unrelentingly dark and depressingly monochromatic. Black on black, navy on navy, perhaps a dark gray on an even darker gray if someone was feeling particularly cheerful. It was as though the men and women who served as assassins for Section 47 had decided to kill the color from their wardrobes as easily as they dispatched the paramortal terrorists, criminals, and other dangerous magic wielders who wished to wreak chaos and calamity on the unsuspecting mortal world.

  I eyed a couple of black-suited male assassins as they grabbed plastic trays and got in the cafeteria line. Of course, we didn’t actually call them assassins at Section 47. At least, not to their faces. Not if you wanted to keep breathing. No, my secret government agency referred to those men and women as cleaners, as if that somehow masked their true, deadly purpose. They didn’t clean up anything. They just created more bloody messes, in every sense of the word.

  Just like my father had.

  “Penny for your thoughts, Charlotte?” a light, feminine voice drawled, and a hand waved, drawing my attention away from the assassins.

  I looked at the gorgeous woman with long, sleek red hair, hazel eyes, and rosy skin, sitting across the table. Miriam Lancaster, my office friend and lunch buddy, stared back at me, clearly expecting an answer. I wasn’t about to confess how much the black-suited cleaners reminded me of my father, so I gestured at my laptop instead.

  “Just thinking about how much work I still need to finish.”

  Sympathy filled her face. “Trying to get that big report done before you leave to work your diner shift?”

  My fingers curled around the edges of the laptop keys at the mention of my second, unwanted job. I never should have told Miriam that I moonlighted as a waitress at a diner near the main Section building, but she had pried it out of me during one of our lunchtime chats after spotting the cheesy uniform sticking up out of my shoulder bag. Then again, Miriam was a charmer—someone who cozied up to and subtly extracted information from foreign spies, diplomats, and businesspeople—instead of just a lowly analyst like me.

  In addition to her stunning good looks, Miriam was also gifted with charisma. Even though she wasn’t currently using her power, wasn’t trying to charm or beguile me, I could still sense the magic emanating from her body. The warm, soothing sensation always reminded me of a soft, fuzzy blanket straight out of the dryer. Miriam knew how to use that comforting feeling to its fullest extent, knew how to smile, nod, and draw people in until they confessed their deepest, darkest secrets. She might not kill people, as the cleaners did, but Section 47 had trained and molded her into a weapon as well, one who wielded friendly grins and smooth words instead of guns and knives.

  “Yeah,” I replied in a neutral tone, finally answering her question. “Something like that.”

  Miriam nodded, then leaned back in her chair, her gaze sweeping over every nook and cranny of the cafeteria, as if the area were fascinating instead of functional.

  The cafeteria was like any other in the Washington, D.C., area—a large, cavernous space filled with gray plastic tables and chairs with cheap, framed black-and-white prints of D.C. landmarks covering the walls. One side of the cafeteria featured floor-to-ceiling windows that showed the hustle and bustle of the busy sidewalk and street outside, although the foot and motor traffic had died down a bit from the earlier frantic lunchtime rush. Even though it was creeping up on two o’clock, people still came in off the street, walked through the open archway, and headed for the food line along the back wall.

  The cafeteria—also uninspiringly named Section 47—served decent food, and the menu included everything from typical burgers, fries, and pizzas to vegan deli salads, cold-pressed juices, and gluten-free cookies. Since it was open to the public, the cafeteria did a brisk breakfast and lunchtime business, although the regular mortals who strolled inside didn’t realize they were sitting and eating next to dangerous people with magical abilities and deadly training.

  Then again, that was true of most restaurants in D.C. You never knew if the woman in the boring beige pantsuit throwing back shots of celery juice was a personal assistant or the head of some black-ops department, or if the guy in the wrinkled shirt and stained tie stuffing his face with mac-and-cheese was a taxi driver on his lunch break or some foreign diplomat spying on American soil. Washington, D.C., purportedly had more spies—both mortal and paramortal—per capita than any other city in the world.

  Miriam took a sip of her iced tea, somehow not smearing her perfect red lipstick. It wasn’t a magical talent, but I envied her the ability all the same. My own plum lipstick had evaporated seconds after I had arrived at work this morning.

  “What about Jensen’s funeral?” she asked. “You going to that tonight?”

  My fingers flexed and then curled around the laptop keys again. Gregory Jensen had been my direct supervisor and a passionate environmentalist who was always railing about Section’s carbon footprint and how the cafeteria was killing the planet with plastic straws. Jensen had also been a devoted cyclist who thought he owned the road, instead of the cars and trucks whizzing by, and he had biked to and from work every day—until he’d been killed by a hit-and-run driver last week. Jensen had fought the traffic, and the traffic had finally won.

  I felt sorry
for his wife and daughter, but Gregory Jensen had been a royal pain in my ass, always barking orders and pointing out perceived flaws in my work. The day before his accident, he’d said that the staple in my latest report was crooked, before ordering me to yank it out and re-staple the papers together to his satisfaction.

  He also had a nasty, infuriating habit of taking credit for my work. More than once, I’d been in an interdepartmental meeting where Jensen had presented my reports as his own, glossing over the fact that I had compiled the information, and laying out the conclusions I’d drawn as if he’d come up with them all by himself. I might just be an analyst, but I worked three times as hard as Jensen, who had been too lazy to do his own damn work, to take my reports and confirm and expound on them the way he should have, the way he was supposed to. Instead, he had been perfectly happy to coast along on my insights.

  Jensen was always riding my ass, the way that so many unhappy, middle-management bosses did with their underlings. Miriam was the only person in our office who Jensen had liked, and only because she had occasionally stroked his ego about what important work we analysts and charmers were doing.

  Like many other spy organizations, Section 47’s main mission was to gather intelligence and then use that information to prevent terror attacks, mass-casualty events, and other serious, life-threatening catastrophes. Only instead of tracking and chasing regular mortal bad guys, Section went after those who used magic and enhanced weapons to commit their crimes. In the unfortunate event that an attack did happen, and some paramortals unleashed their powers to rain down death and destruction, Section then covered up and explained away the magical calamity as best it could before hunting down the perpetrators—and eliminating them. And so, there was truth and justice for all. At least, that was the idea, although the execution was far from perfect.

  But Jensen’s real problem had been the fact that I was a Legacy and he was not. My grandmother and father had both worked for Section, which meant that I had a guaranteed job here after college and grad school. In many ways, Section 47 was a family business, albeit one made up of dozens and dozens of different families, instead of a single entity or bloodline, and those folks in the know raised their children to become cleaners, charmers, and analysts the same way that regular mortal families produced generations of doctors, lawyers, and dentists.

  Given all that long, storied family history, there was naturally a fair amount of nepotism and soul-crushing pressure within the spy agency. If your mother had done well at Section, then you were expected to do even better. If your brother had flamed out in his first year, then it was up to you to right the ship and restore your family’s honor and good name. And so on and so forth.

  Your family’s standing and, well, legacy, could either help or hinder your own prospects inside Section. Due to their family members’ previous service, histories, and connections, most Legacies tended to climb higher and at a much quicker pace through the Section ranks than non-Legacies like Jensen, who had been stuck in the same post for five years. Hence his seething bitterness toward me, even though the Locke family legacy was far more tarnished than sterling.

  “Hello? Earth to Charlotte.” Miriam snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Are you going to Jensen’s funeral?”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t have time. I’m supposed to cover for another waitress at the diner tonight. Besides, I signed the office card and chipped in for the flowers. That’s more than Jensen would have done for me.”

  Miriam shrugged her agreement. Her phone buzzed, and she looked at the message. Then she picked up the device and started texting, her thumbs flying over the screen.

  “New boy toy?” I asked, using her preferred term.

  “Oh, yes,” she purred.

  “Who is it? Pete from accounting? Hank from the weapons depot? Or did you finally land that mystery man you’ve been crushing on for the past few weeks?”

  A sly smile spread across Miriam’s red lips. “You know I don’t kiss and tell. At least, not until it’s over.”

  I snorted. Miriam was always in some sort of relationship, whether it was the early, tentative stages of flirting, the heady excitement of the first date, the boring routine of maintaining the status quo, or the inevitable harsh breakup. Perhaps it was part of her charmer magic, her ability to beguile others, but Miriam was one of those people who loved being in love—or at least lust—and she thrived on all the drama that came along with juggling a relationship inside Section.

  Fraternization wasn’t forbidden here, but it was definitely frowned upon. The higher-ups wanted their agents to be loyal to Section, not to someone else, and more than one career, even a Legacy’s, had been ruined over an affair gone wrong.

  “You’re really not going to tell me who it is?”

  “Not this time. I don’t want to jinx it. Besides, I really think this guy might be the one.”

  I snorted again. “You say that about every man you date.”

  Miriam grinned. “That’s because it’s always true. At least, it always seems that way in the beginning. But I’m more hopeful about this boy toy than most. Actually, this one is a bit more mature than my usual type, so I should probably call him my mystery man like you always do.” She thought about it for a second, and her grin widened. “Nope! Boy toy it is. Because I’ve definitely been having fun playing with him so far.”

  Miriam snickered at her own bad joke and kept texting. I shook my head in disbelief, even as envy sparked in my heart. I didn’t know how Miriam found the time and energy for her serial dating, hookups, and breakups, in addition to her similar schmoozing work for Section, and I envied her carefree attitude and enjoyment of it all.

  I hadn’t been out with someone in more than a year, thanks to my grandmother’s illness and then death a few months ago. Even before my world had crashed and burned, I had never been much for dating. I had a hard time trusting people, thanks to my grandmother’s myriad moneymaking schemes and my father’s notorious fuckups, and my own work for Section had made me even more jaded, paranoid, and suspicious about other people’s desires, motives, and agendas. Better to be alone and trust in myself than take a shot on someone who would probably screw me over the second he got the chance.

  Morose musings aside, I still needed to finish the Hyde report by the end of the day, so I gulped down some of my cookies-and-cream mocha to give my brain a much-needed boost of sugar and caffeine. The cafeteria served excellent drinks, and the rich chocolate brew coated my tongue, while the airy whipped cream melted in my mouth like a vanilla cloud.

  I had just set my cup down when a splash of color caught my eye. A man wearing a powder-blue tie with a light gray suit walked through the cafeteria, skirting around the people, tables, and chairs and heading toward the food line. His head was held high, his shoulders were back and down, and his stride was long, smooth, and confident. Definitely an assassin, despite his shockingly bright choice of tie.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, discreetly pointing him out to Miriam. “I’ve never seen that guy before.”

  I kept mental dossiers on all the assassins, er, cleaners, so I could be sure to steer clear of them. We might work for the same agency, but they weren’t the kind of people you wanted to annoy, piss off, or stand out to in any way.

  Section 47 spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars training, housing, feeding, and honing its cleaners into the most lethal weapons possible. All that time, energy, and money made cleaners far more valuable to the Section bosses than the other agents, especially analysts, like me. Cleaners were definitely number one in the pecking order; I was guaranteed to lose if I ever had a conflict or picked any sort of fight with a cleaner, even if it was something as simple as who got the last blueberry muffin during our interdepartmental meetings.

  Miriam lowered her phone and glanced in that direction. She leaned forward, and a sharp, interested gleam filled her hazel eyes. “I don’t know who that guy is, but I’d certainly like to find out. Hubba-hubba.”
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  “What about your mystery man?”

  “He’s great, but I always have time to make the acquaintance of a handsome stranger,” she said, letting an exaggerated Southern drawl seep into her voice.

  She winked, making me laugh. Typical Miriam, but her incessant, bubbly enthusiasm was one of the things I liked about her. Plus, hearing about her dating exploits—good, bad, and ugly—let me escape from my own humdrum life for a little while.

  Miriam’s phone buzzed again, and she glanced at the message on the screen. “Anyway, I’ve gotta run. I’ve got my own work to finish before Jensen’s funeral.”

  “Sure. See you later.”

  Miriam stood up, tucked her phone into the back pocket of her skinny jeans, slung her designer bag over her shoulder, and sauntered out of the cafeteria. More than one person watched her go, including Diego Benito, the IT tech she had broken up with last month. Diego caught me staring at him staring at Miriam, and he ducked his head, focusing on his laptop again.

  I took another fortifying sip of my mocha, then started working on summarizing the latest bank transactions I’d been reviewing.

  I clicked through various documents and spreadsheets, scanning the information for immediate, obvious mistakes. I didn’t find any, so I sat back in my chair and took in my whole screen, letting the words and numbers fill my field of vision and sink into my brain all at once.