I stepped into my office without anyone stopping me. I was in a room filled with journalists, all of which who knew various pieces about what transpired last night, and no one was taking the chance to interview me. This was why I snagged front page. I was willing to risk it.
Clearly, my subconscious pointed out. Your tenacity nearly got you killed.
I touched my cross necklace, reassuring myself that it was still there, and walked over to my desk. I saw the stain of my own blood still there on my carpet. It was minimal, just a small stain, but it was a bright red reminder that I had almost died.
I would have, if it wasn’t for Jon.
The thought kept the flashbacks at bay. It snapped me back into my own mind, the one that I used to focus on getting the story. The one that constantly reminded me of my why.
I glanced at my uncle’s picture, placed in a frame on the corner of my desk. He had dark brown hair, graying just slightly, hazel eyes that crinkled when he smiled, and straight teeth. He had small smoker’s wrinkles surrounding his lips and his teeth, while white due to the yearly whitening procedures he would have done were just slightly yellow. He wasn’t a talk man, maybe an inch or two taller than I was, and he was lean rather than bulky.
Richard dedicated his life to solving his father’s—my grandfather’s—disappearance. He was the reason I became an investigative journalist in the first place. I wanted to help solve it to. His case, of course, was cold. All I knew was that he enrolled in the Army for World War II despite not needing to because he was a few years older than the draft required him to be. After a few letters to his mom over a few months, he was never heard from again. They didn’t have a body. After the war, someone happened to drop by and told my grandmother he had died in combat but my grandmother didn’t believe it and neither did my uncle.
I didn’t either.
“Tucker.” My editor stepped into my office and shut the door behind her. She turned and proceeded to draw the blinds. “Mind telling me why the front door to my building has been shot into tiny pieces of glass?”
“Michelle, I—” I looked out the window and ran my fingers through my long hair. I wanted to continue to stand but my feet hurt too much do I dropped into my fancy office chair and all but melted into it.
“Save it.” She turned from the windows and fixed her piercing blue eyes on me. “Did you get the story?”
I sighed, unable to meet her eye.
Michelle pushed her pink lips together before crossing her arms over her chest. She proceeded to walk the length of my office before turning around and doing the same thing.
“So,” she said, “what you’re telling me is that you’re alive, my building is in shambles, and there’s not even a bright side where I can print a damn good story that might help me recoup the costs of the damage.”
I looked up at her. She was beautiful, a woman pushing sixty with blonde hair, a slender frame, and the ability to wear high heels like a confident woman. She was who I wanted to be. She didn’t have a family, she had never been married, but she still loved her life and her job.
“Michelle, I am so close,” I murmured.
“Close isn’t there, Lara; close means shit to me.” She slammed her hand on the surface of the table. “I’m glad you’re all right, I am, but I can’t print ‘Mayor Guzman is close to being investigated.’ I can’t use close.”
I nodded my head, looking down at my hands folded in my lap. As much as I hated to be confronted with the truth, she was right. There was no reason to run an article with speculation against someone, especially one of the most important people in this city. Michelle would probably get fired for allowing such a thing to happen and, if what I wrote about Guzman were true—and everything was, I had no doubt—I would become a target, putting my life on the line without having any proof to make it work.
“You’re a damn good reporter, kid,” Michelle said. “I see a lot of me in you. Trust me, there were plenty of other reporters—all men—who were trying to weasel their way into this corner office. But none of them had the balls to go there the way you do. You’ve never half-assed anything before and I don’t expect you to do it at all.” She placed both palms on the surface of my desk and locked eyes with me. “I believe you. Everything you’ve told me about the mayor, I believe you. But nothing will change unless we have tangible proof. It will even prove our own police force is ninety percent corrupt, which means a lot of change for Perry.”
“You think things will change if I find evidence against Guzman?” I asked.
“Guzman has been tied to a bunch of shit going on in this city for years,” Michelle said, standing back up to cross her arms over her chest to continue pacing. “Her entire family is corrupt. Her father was a lieutenant in the police force and he’s doing time over at Deerfield. Her grandfather headed some secret section of the government. Her brother runs a cartel our force can’t seem to put away, even though they’ve arrested countless bottomfeeders.”
“Yeah, but those bottomfeeders won’t open their mouths,” I pointed out, looking up at her. I stretched out my legs, enjoying the pull of my muscles. “They get sent to jail for months, some even years, and then their families mysteriously get a nice lump sum of money.”
“Trust me, I know.” She stopped pacing and turned on the heel of her shoe to give me a long look. “I know how important it is to solve this.” Her eyes went to the picture on the corner of my desk and I felt my heart swell. She knew Richard from when I first started interning here. Michelle, the Ice Queen, melted whenever he was around. It was actually pretty comical to watch. “I want the same thing. But we need evidence.”
“You sound like Estrada,” I murmured, tugging at my fingers. My hands felt off, like they needed more to do.
“I like him,” Michelle said. “He’s the one with the curly hair?” Ay my nod, she grinned. “He’s the quintessential good boy. And I do think he’s on our side.”
“Yes, but he won’t do anything without evidence,” I pointed out. “I’ve already discussed this with him, and he refuses to even look.”
“Can you blame the guy?” Michelle asked.
My desk phone rang but I ignored it. I had stacks of paper on my desk, all waiting for me to go through them. Court paperwork I wanted to look through, old police reports I could get a copy of. Anything with the Guzmans. Anything I could read. Anything that might help me.
“Estrada already knows what’s going on in Perry,” Michelle said. “He also has a mother and a grandmother living with him, depending on him to take care of him. He will do his job if you give him proof but he’s not going to go searching for it himself, not when he knows what’s he’s risking.” She paused. “Are you planning on that? On getting him evidence?”
I forced myself to pick up my eyes and look at Michelle. Michelle read my face, my eyes, and let out a sigh.
“You’re fucking crazy, Lara,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s why I love you, don’t get me wrong. But I feel as though you’re taking on too much. Richard’s death was not your fault. You know that, right? The article you wrote on Jon Hawkins was the truth. Perry needed to hear it.”
“Yes, and my uncle was murdered because of it,” I said. I didn’t bother to hide the bitterness either. “If I don’t solve this, if this doesn’t come out, this whole thing is in vain. His death.” I shook my head, feeling tears accumulate in my eyes. I had never been a crier but the past day was leaving me emotional. “They have to pay for what they did to him. To Jon.”
“I still don’t know how they’re responsible for him,” Michelle said. She had stopped pacing once more, her fingers touching her chin as if in deep thought.
“I didn’t realize they were until after the article was published,” I said. “I wanted to put out the truth. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do as journalists? Doesn’t the public deserve to know the truth? But when he was murdered and Estrada arrested one of Guzman’s cousins, I realized it all had to be connected. I just needed to find
something that would link them. That’s what I was doing last night.”
“What happened last night?” Michelle asked. She took a seat on the edge of my desk but twisted her torso so it faced me. Her arms were still crossed over her chest but her face was more relaxed, curious. It made her look even younger than she already appeared.
“I had a contact tell me Guzman was going to oversee shipments being transported at the docks,” I said. “I didn’t know what was in the shipments but I don’t think it was drugs. I tried getting pictures on my phone but they came out grainy.”
“You’re telling me you ran all the way from the docks to here?” Michelle asked, wrinkling her brow. “How did you manage to get away without them catching you?”
I snorted, shaking my head. “I don’t even know,” I told her, shrugging my shoulders. “I had to lose my favorite heels. I was taking pictures and I got caught. I was lucky to get away.”
“You were lucky the thugs chasing you were shot in the head, execution-style,” Michelle added. “I’m going to have to replace the carpet in the Hall because God knows blood won’t come out. Who saved you?”
I pressed my lips together and kept my eyes focused on Michelle. I would not blink. I would not turn my head. She would not know I’m lying. I could not let her know. Jon’s safety depended on it. Just because I trusted her, just like I trusted Estrada, did not mean I was going to utter Jon’s name to anyone. I wouldn’t risk it.
Which meant I had to lie. I had to make it work.
“Honestly, I have no idea,” I told her. My voice didn’t shake. I actually sounded convincing. “I don’t know if it was a security guard. Whoever it was…I owe them my life.”
Michelle gave me a long look like she didn’t believe me. She probably didn’t.
“Conveniently, they knew exactly where we had our cameras, which happened to be cut just before your attackers were killed,” she murmured. She stood to her full height, sighing as she shook her head. A stray strand of blonde hair fell out of the clip that pulled it back and into her face. She didn’t bother to put it back. “Be careful, Tucker. I know this is personal for you. But it’s not worth your life. Go find a boyfriend. Go make some friends—and not the kind that shoot up government operatives and military generals.”
“For good reason,” I cut in but she silenced me with a piercing stare.
“Regardless,” she said, her voice curt. “Do your job. Do a good job. But even the job isn’t worth your life. Look what happened to Richard.” Her voice hitched saying his name and I felt my heart break all over again. “What would he want you to do? Would he really want you to be running for your life in the middle of the night just to bring him to justice? He’d want you to be safe, Lara.” She took a breath.
My phone rang again. I continued to ignore it.
“Have anything for me today?” She raised her eyes expectantly.
I glanced away, shaking my head.
She let out a sigh. “I really hate giving Luis the front page when he’s an asshole,” she said as she walked to the door. “But he writes riveting pieces and he’s not trying to get himself killed.” She opened the door and turned back to me. “Get me something, Tucker.”
I nodded, turning to my computer. And I would.
But not until after I finished researching Sonya Crawford.
Chapter 5
I spent the entire day researching Sonya Crawford and all I found were scraps of barely anything, things Jon probably already knew. At lunch time, I headed out of my office and to a deli just across the street. I turned heads as I walked to elevators—not because people thought I was eye-catching and had to watch me move, but because they all knew that I was somehow partly responsible for the damage done to this building and I was some kind of moving car accident. I knew this because I could hear what they were whispering as I walked by.
“I heard there’s a blood stain on her carpet now.”
“Hope she got a story out of it to make it worth it.”
“How the hell did she survive?”
It was unnerving.
There was a reason I preferred to be an investigative journalist rather than a news reporter. I had no desire to be watched, to be known for what I looked like. I would rather be known for my words, for the topics I researched, wrote about, and shared.
I stepped out of the office and took a deep breath. There was a patch of grass next to our fountain out front. The skies were still clear. It was cold but sunny and I took a moment to breathe in the fresh air and let myself appreciate the fact that I was still alive to breathe it.
A part of me was worried that something might happen to me so out in the open. I wasn’t positive, but I had a feeling I was being watched, or, at least tracked, and leaving the office was akin to stepping out of a zone of safety. However, I also couldn’t live my life scared, so I tried to remind myself that it was important for me to keep my head held high. It was daylight. I was in a crowded deli at lunch time. I highly doubted anything would happen—even though it definitely could.
Sam’s Deli was run by a guy in his thirties. He would have been perfect for California—he had shaggy hair, an easy smile, and—whenever he wasn’t behind the corner serving food—flip flops on his feet. He was always laidback and relaxed; nothing seemed to faze him. His sandwiches were unique and delicious. They were also decently priced, which was nice, considering eating out in this city was damn expensive.
“Lady Lara,” Sam said when it was my turn. His warm brown eyes caught mine and he grinned. He had a nickname for everyone. “Can I get you your usual? Egg salad on wheat, toasted?”
Sam also had the memory of an elephant even if he resembled a teenage pot smoker.
“Yes, please,” I said. “And a bottle of Fiji water.”
I watched as his expert hands crafted my sandwich. I needed something to focus on of I would continue to look at the door each time the bell rang and someone walked into the small space. I would look over my shoulder at the line behind me, trying to see if I could make out anyone who might try and kill me for what happened last night.
When he finished and rang me up, I paid for my meal and stepped back outside. I took another deep breath, trying to figure out if I should eat by the fountain and get some fresh air, or if that was too out in the open, placing a bigger target on my back.
I grunted to myself and headed back inside. It was such a shame, too, because it was beautiful day, one of the rare days Perry wasn’t cloudy or raining. Usually, I was eating my lunch in my office because I had to, not because I wanted to.
The office was practically empty save for Michelle. She usually got takeout and worked through lunch, holing up in her gorgeous office. The blinds to her large windows were drawn, probably so she didn’t get distracted from the view of Perry’s skyline and the mountains in the distance.
I walked to my own office and plopped in my chair. I took out my sandwich and started to eat. I tried distracting myself—I went on Facebook and took ridiculous BuzzFeed quizzes. I itched to get back to work, to research Sonya Crawford. I was halfway into my sandwich when I gave into my temptation and turned to my computer. My fingers flew across the keyboards, the clicks like music to my ears.
Sonya Crawford was head of the CIA for seven years, from 2010–2017. There wasn’t much else about her, except that she had many accolades during her interim as director and a lot of important people, including two different presidents—both from different political parties—had nothing but good things to say.
I wiped mayonnaise that had accumulated on the corner of my lip as I clicked link after link, trying to figure out why Jon would give me her name. I was sure she had secret the public didn’t know due to her job but how did that relate to Jon?
He joined the Marines in 2010 and was incapacitated three years later. That incapacitation led him to what he was now.
Maybe she headed the program up?
My ex-boyfriend was a computer hacker who taught me a few things that I used
from time to time. It was how I was able to obtain certain information. I couldn’t exactly use that information when I wrote my articles because I got it illegally but the evidence I found gave me the direction I needed to start looking in the right place.
I was tempted to do that here, now, but hesitated. If anyone found out, they would track my IP address here, potentially getting Michelle in trouble.
Better her in trouble than you dead, my subconscious pointed out.
I couldn’t help but agree.
“Fuck it,” I muttered under my breath, setting my sandwich down. I glanced up to make sure my blinds were still closed and started typing. “I’m not writing an article anyway. I’m finding information.”
I wasn’t sure where to start except for the CIA database. I had already broken through the firewall before, the first time I met Jon and wanted to pull his military records. Instead of searching for him, though, I was searching for Crawford.
Two hours passed and I had nothing except for a growing headache that came about from staring at my screen for too long. This was going nowhere, and I was sure that Jon needed this information as soon as possible. The only problem was, I had no idea what kind of information he was looking for.
I ran my fingers through my hair and tugged at the roots. I definitely couldn’t do this by myself. I didn’t trust anyone either, except maybe Robbie. Henry would do it for me, no questions. But I didn’t want to involve anyone else, especially if Jon wasn’t comfortable with it.
I let out a groan, pinching the bridge of my nose. The information was what was important. How I got it didn’t matter. Jon trusted my judgment. If I brought in Robbie, I didn’t have to tell him who this was for. He might not ask too many questions, just assume that it was something important, something I was writing about.
I picked up my desk phone and called the number I had had memorized for years. Somehow, a guy constantly off the grid managed to keep his phone number the same for as long as I could remember.
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