Leverage Point

Mara Calloway doesn’t make mistakes. As a political opposition researcher, she turns other people’s mistakes into leverage — cataloguing the pressure points that end careers, the quiet scandals no one sees coming, the decisions made at 2 a.m. that unravel everything in daylight. She’s good at her job. She doesn’t get involved.

Ethan Voss is a liability she’s supposed to be documenting. A former congressional aide with too much access and a history she hasn’t finished reading yet. He’s cooperative. Disarmingly honest. And entirely too aware of what she’s doing and why she’s doing it. He doesn’t ask her to stop. He asks her to be accurate.

What starts as research becomes something harder to file and forget. There’s a case for walking away — she’s built it. There’s also a case for the alternative, and she’s quietly, methodically assembling that one too. Some liabilities, it turns out, are only dangerous if you’re trying to stay clean.