Fierce Impact - Julie Trettel Page 0,1

me a lot of room. I was down two identities already. This job shouldn’t have been this hard. If it wasn’t personal, I’d have walked away already.

The vase in question was a priceless ancient artifact pre-dating the time of Jesus, or so they said. The contract price had been above normal, so I had jumped at the opportunity. Now that I had seen the relic firsthand and knew the carvings depicted, I was even more determined to finish the job. It was the story of shifters, my people, and in the wrong hands could be devastating for all shifters world-wide.

Normally I didn’t give a shit about other shifters, but I cared enough about my own hide to know that this vase could never fall into the wrong hands again. Fortunately, Ramirez didn’t know what he had, but something told me that some of the buyers coming to this auction would.

No human had a right to steal historical shifter artifacts. I had no clue what I was going to do with it when I finally had it safely in my hands, but there’s no way I could just hand it over to the people who hired me. I knew I was going to have to renege on this contract or swap it for something of equal value. It sucked because this group had been a valuable client of mine over the years, but this was bigger than that.

Even if it screwed up my entire career, I had to do it. Money wasn’t the issue; I had enough stored in savings to last me several lifetimes. I would miss the thrill of the take. Being a spy was what I did. It fulfilled me in ways nothing else ever had. I didn’t want to give it up.

I had other identities I’d used for a few contracts in the past. I was even known to have used them against each other to bid up a contract as I counteroffered against myself. But losing this one would be hard. He made me a lot of money and was well known in the espionage world as someone reliable who got the job done at all costs.

I’d finally hit the “all costs” line and it wasn’t one I was willing to cross.

The fact that everyone in the biz thought I was a man helped my case tremendously. I’d never once worked a job as a female.

Sure, there were some women that used their femininity to get the job done. I never had, but the stakes were high enough this time that I needed to pull out the big guns.

Just in case, I’d already secured a local contact that would get me close to Carlos. I learned early into the job that Carlos Ramirez loved women. It disgusted me to think about it, and he would be a dead man if he tried to lay a hand on me, but I knew there were people coming in for a closer look at the vase and that meant he would want pretty women hanging on his arm as he showed off his life and opened his home to these wealthy people interested in the relic.

I didn’t like it, but I knew I had to do it.

As a personal choice, I only ever worked undercover as a man. It helped protect my identity better than anything else I’d tried. No one ever looked at the innocent woman in the corner when on the hunt for a male.

This time would be different. I carefully packed. First, I changed out my kit for what I would need and had to make sure it fit in the large purse I kept hidden in my backpack. I often made the swap to conceal my pack in the purse, but I had worked it out in reverse.

It took me longer than I’d hoped to secure the bag and setup an exit, identity, and strategy. Putting a latex face covering on would be more time consuming than ripping one off, but I had to make do with what I had. It would work. It had to.

Once I was confident in that, I carefully packed the remainder of the room and left without officially checking out. It was a little hike to where I’d left my van, but once there, I called the front desk to tell them I was gone. It was easier just disguising my voice than my entire body, especially when time was of the essence.

The next phone call I made was to