Ask Twice

A Customs director is moving money through the Port of New Orleans, and the auditor who found it is about to be framed for it. The only man she can ask has no badge.

Mason Cade spent nineteen years running spies overseas.

His reward for reporting his own division: a one-room office in New Orleans, a title nobody can explain, and a phone that only rings when something is being taken away.

So when a federal auditor calls on a Saturday morning, he says no.

She asks again.

Lena Whitfield doesn't round numbers, and she doesn't look away. She found four Customs officers drawing overtime on the same nights one broker's containers leave the Port of New Orleans unopened. She reported it the right way.

Two days later she's locked out of her own computer. A week later, forty thousand dollars lands in her checking account.

Somebody is building a case against her. Somebody who has never met her.

Now Mason has a woman nobody believes, a crew he swore he'd never call again, and twenty days before a ship comes up the river. Every piece of evidence he can steal is worthless in court.

So he'll have to win the hard way.

With what they sign.

A standalone Mason Cade thriller.