Traffic (Complete two-hundred pages) (Moving to Kindle Vella in 30 Days! )

14

SECRET

BREATHING HEAVILY, Jack saw his wife awaken in horror to the realization he was not at all that she thought he was.

"I don't understand," she said.

She seemed to shrink into a mouse, recoiling into the door like a ghost. They both peered down at the gun sitting idly like a rattlesnake on the floor.

Then Katelyn remembered why she came up to see him in the first place. "You're not going on a plane with that man are you? Who is he?"

Jack said, "He's my boss. And yes I am. If I can't run away."

Katelyn trembled and broke as if this was the summons to her husband's death. "I thought your boss was Mr. Gregory from the vehicle software company."

"That's my undercover boss. My real boss is Mr. Golem. And I don't know how long he's been talking to you or why or if you have the bravery to tell me the details, but he's not a man whose afraid to kill everybody to keep his secrets as secrets. But if you know anything, and you tell me now, you might just save my life."

Katelyn burst into tears. Jack realized his hands were shaking and knew now that Katelyn absolutely did know something. "What do you know, Kate?"

Katelyn sunk to the floor like a child. "I don't know anything."

"I said what do you know, Goddammit!"

Katelyn screamed as he came to pull her off her ass. "Leave me alone!"

Jack pulled her over and spotted the drawer with the newly installed lock on it. "What's in the drawer? Why'd you put a lock on it? Where's the key?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said. She collapsed onto the bed. Her whole environment spinning around her, cracking at the edges of her perfect world, giving out to the weight of the truth.