by Dete Meserve
I was headed to the shower when I heard a swift knock at the door. I glanced at the clock. 6:07 a.m.
I opened the door and was surprised to see Eric standing there, his sandy brown hair still damp. He wore jeans and the snug fit of his white T-shirt didn’t hide the athletic body underneath. He handed me a venti-size cup of Starbucks coffee.
“You have a key,” I murmured, giving him a quick kiss.
“I’m still getting used to that.”
“You okay?”
He pulled me close and I drank in the clean smell of soap. “It was a rough one but we finally got everyone out. What we’ve been through hasn’t fully hit me yet. It probably will land hard in a few days. You took a big risk the other night getting so close to the scene.”
“That’s what we do, right? We both have to get close to the fire to do our jobs.”
“Some of us are prepared with state-of-the-art equipment and fire protection,” he said, brushing a lock of hair from my face. “While others of us go into the fire wearing heels—”
“They were actually sensible, practical shoes,” I countered.
“—and holding a microphone.” His voice softened. “I was worried about you.”
I took a sip of the warm coffee. “I’m getting used to that about you. That worrying thing you do. I was fine. Physically anyway. But watching you and your team pulling everyone out of the wreckage made the whole ordeal worthwhile. It made me…proud.”
“It’s what we train for,” he said quietly.
I shook my head. “It’s more than just training.”
He nuzzled my cheek. “That’s what I love about you. You see something more in me. Something I don’t see. Yet you’re sure it’s there.”
I kissed him. “It’s there. Here’s what I said in my report.” I used my reporter’s voice for show. “For nearly twenty-four hours, the brave men and women of the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s Urban Search and Rescue Team, headed by dashing—okay, I didn’t say dashing—Captain Eric Hayes, demonstrated incredible perseverance and self-sacrifice, working tirelessly to extinguish the burning wreckage and saving countless lives.”
He smiled. “And we all know that if you say it on TV news, of course it’s true.”
I swatted him playfully. “It’s true about you. Why can’t you see you’re a hero?”
“Maybe I need more convincing.” His mouth was warm and firm on mine and I felt myself melt into him at the tenderness of a kiss that seemed to last forever. Still, I had the feeling something was wrong.
“I wish I could be here to take your mind off the train wreck,” he said, breaking off the kiss. His expression sobered. “But we’re being sent to South Carolina later this morning for Hurricane Juanita.”
“I thought Hurricane Juanita wasn’t supposed to hit land.”
“The forecast changed early this morning. She’s spinning out and turning into a Category 4 hurricane that will hit landfall in South Carolina within forty-eight hours. They’re activating search and rescue teams up and down the East Coast and about a dozen from California and Colorado. This is big, Kate.”
He had once told me he and the search and rescue task force he captained had been called to work on other disasters, like Hurricane Sandy, but I always figured that was something in the past. Not something that would take him away now.
“There’s always a chance you won’t actually be deployed, right?”
He shook his head. “Our team has some of the most experienced swift-water rescuers in the country. If they’re right about how much rain is coming, they’re going to need us.”
Worry crept into my veins. It was an unfamiliar feeling, because I’m not one to worry much. But after nearly drowning twice earlier in the year, I knew firsthand the enormous destructive power of water. Even Eric, with all his training and his highly experienced team and sophisticated equipment, might not be a match for an extreme hurricane like Juanita.
“I’ll be fine. It’s what we train for,” he said.
I detected a brief flicker of fear in his eyes but then it disappeared, and in its place was a look so warm, it knocked the breath out of me.
“I’ll miss you,” he whispered.
His light brown eyes roamed over my face, setting me aglow. I had never been wanted by anyone like this before and wondered if this was how everyone felt when they were in love. He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me again, deeper and more possessively, and I knew he was worried too.
Chapter Two
The morning’s assignment meeting, held in the Fish Bowl—a glass-walled conference room in the back of the newsroom—had turned into a rant fest. Megyn Carlson, who covered entertainment news with Susan Andrews but rarely spoke in the assignment meetings, was turning crimson as reporter Russ Hartman raged on about the story she pitched on the Renovation Heaven house being rehabbed in Silver Lake.
“No offense to Megyn, but how is that news?” he said loudly. “That’s just a promotion for the Renovation Heaven TV series that will premiere on this network later this week. Seriously? We’ve got a cyclone whipping up trouble on the East Coast and FEMA sending eighteen LA search and rescue specialists to the scene, and we’re reporting on the new stainless steel appliances and granite countertops the Gibbs family is installing.”
My phone vibrated, alerting me to a text.
“Are you on the El Mirasol story?”
The text came from Los Angeles police detective Jake Newton. We’d met covering the gruesome murder of a flight attendant whose severed head was found in the Hollywood Hills a few years ago. The other stories I worked on with him were never as graphic or sensational, but Jake was a secret inside source of information on high-profile homicides, stabbings, and, once, a bank robbery in Gardena involving a fake bomb.
“Don’t know what that is,” I typed back.
“A $3 million heist. Malibu. You must cover. Call me.”
“Covering train disaster,” I wrote.
Seconds later, his text pinged back: “This is bigger. Much.”
I swallowed hard. Jake never exaggerated. As a police detective, he was, not surprisingly, a facts and details guy. If he said the El Mirasol story was bigger than the train derailment, he probably wasn’t feeding me hype.
“Really don’t cover burglaries. You know that.”
I glanced at the whiteboard. David had written “Train Derailment Cleanup,” but the story had moved from the Breaking News column to Follow-Up. Now that all the victims had been removed from the crash site, the story had definitely slowed down.
Jake’s text flashed up: “High-tech, sophisticated heist. Reporters swarming. Working on exclusive access for you. If you want.”
Exclusive access on a high-profile crime outmatched just about any news story. Especially a follow-up story about efforts to clean up the crash site, a story even a novice reporter could cover. Could I get myself assigned to El Mirasol?
David had scotched the Hartman rant and was droning on about the mayor’s Great Streets initiative, trying to find an angle on the story and a reporter to cover it. The story felt like a snoozer and nearly all the reporters in the room were looking at their phones or scanning the newspapers on the table, hoping David wouldn’t assign it to them.
“I’ll take on Great Streets,” Russ said finally, which was a smart move because after his outburst, David was likely to stick him with a string of mind-numbing stories that would end up on the Channel Eleven News website, but not on air.
The room was silent for a second, so I leaped at the opportunity to speak. “I just got a lead on the El Mirasol heist.”
“I’m already on that story,” Susan Andrews shot back, raising a Pilates-toned, spray-tanned arm in the air.
“Since when do you cover a crime story?” Russ asked, rolling his eyes. He was still riled up from his Renovation Heaven rant and maybe a little too eager to pick a fight.
“El Mirasol is owned by music mogul Davi
d Geffen,” she said.
“Used to be owned by David Geffen,” Hannah piped up, reading from her laptop. “Its new owner is Richard Ingram, founder and CEO of Enterprise Products. An oil producer.”
Susan pursed her lips. Clearly she didn’t recognize the name or the company.
“Feels like a breaking news story—a crime—more than entertainment…so I can take it on,” I said, but not too eagerly. If Susan felt I wanted the story too much, I was pretty sure she’d latch on to it as though it had Peabody Award potential.
David shot me a smug smile. “You want to give up reporting on the worst train derailment in LA history for a ‘fluff’ story?” He was baiting me, enjoying watching me squirm after the lecture I’d given about covering serious news. He stretched his arms over his head. “Welcome to the dark side, Kate.”
“I’ll take on the train derailment,” Conan Phillips volunteered. Conan had come to Channel Eleven after being a reporter in Phoenix, Arizona. He had classic reporter good looks—a year-round tan, thick brown hair with a hint of gray at the temples—and had established a trademark light blue polo, which he wore on every Channel Eleven live shot. He was one of our best at on-air ad-libbing and at explaining complicated stories, and I had no doubt he’d do a great job with the derailment story. Maybe too good a job.
“All yours, Conan. Kate, you’re on El Mirasol.”
As I headed out of the assignment meeting, I wondered if I had just made a major career mistake. Had I taken myself off the biggest disaster story of the year in favor of a burglary story?
“Got you exclusive access,” Jake texted me.
“On it,” I typed back.
I had no idea such places existed. El Mirasol was a twelve-thousand-square-foot mansion with a two-story hand-carved limestone entryway and a hand-laid pietra dura mosaic made from antique marble. Pietra dura, I learned from a small plaque on the entryway wall, was an art that flourished in Florence four hundred years ago and was used primarily in tabletops and small wall panels. This mosaic covered the entire one thousand square foot entryway.
The entryway wasn’t the main attraction, however. The part of the estate that literally made my jaw drop was the natatorium, an indoor pool with a frieze over the door crafted out of more than a million seashells. Twenty-foot-tall ceilings and gilded chandeliers soared above the glittering blue pool tiled in Murano glass. The room made the Pacific Ocean and the pristine Malibu beach, a few steps away, look ordinary.
Considering that most of the stories I covered were about murders and disasters, my beat rarely brought me to extravagant homes like this. Even as the daughter of a U.S. senator and someone who reluctantly attended many political events in wealthy donors’ homes, I’d never seen such luxury and meticulous perfection. The estate was like a palace by the ocean.
“It’s the most high-tech, highly organized burglary we’ve ever seen,” Jake said.
Detective Jake Newton looked more like a brash attorney than he did a police detective. His wavy reddish brown hair was carefully clipped to department standards but otherwise he had the buttoned-down look of an attractive young attorney who was about to take you down in court. Except for when he smiled. Then his big toothy grin stretched forever across his face and made him look overly friendly, like a guy who had just won a pie-eating contest at the county fair.
“The place is secured like Fort Knox,” Jake continued, as we left the natatorium and stepped onto a floating walkway of travertine slabs that connected the pool house with what appeared to be a greenhouse. “Motion sensors, cameras, alarms on every door and window.” He pointed out several cameras perched on the rooftop. “The thieves got past the expensive security system and, without disturbing anything or anyone, walked out of here with over three million dollars’ worth of stuff.”
“Did the cameras see anything?”
“They went black for exactly nineteen minutes, forty seconds. Security guys monitoring them thought something was wrong with the signal transmission. By the time they sent a patrol to investigate, the heist was already over.”
“Any suspects?”
He shook his head. “We’re looking into a gang called the Chicago Connection. But this isn’t their handiwork. This is meticulous, carefully thought out. Perfect.”
I stared at him. “You always say there’s no such thing as a perfect crime.”
He loosened his tie. “This might be as perfect a crime as I’ve ever seen.” He opened the door to the greenhouse and a whoosh of warm moist air rushed at us. We stepped inside to see thousands of orchids lining two tiers of shelving that stretched from one end of the greenhouse to the other. “We’re hoping some of the stolen stuff ends up on the black market where we can trace it back to its source. But what they took is highly untraceable, easily sold without suspicion.”
“What did they take?”
“Some was cash—a few hundred thousand—the owners kept in a safe. Plus they took about a dozen high-end watches that cost anywhere from twenty thousand to two hundred thousand.”
“Each? What kind of watch costs two hundred thousand dollars?”
“A lot. Rolex, Patek Philippe. We think this heist is linked to yesterday’s burglary at Chateau de Soleil in Bel Air.” He peered at an exotic yellow and dark purple flower. “Same kind of stuff stolen, same stealthlike approach. No fingerprints and no evidence.”
“How did they disable the security systems?”
He shook his head. “No clues yet. These weren’t smash-and-grabs where the thieves cut the phone lines or smashed the security black box. The systems don’t appear to have been tampered with.”
“Then it must be an inside job. Someone on the household staff who knew the security codes.”
He smiled. “Like I’ve said before, you’d make a good detective. Now that there are two robberies, we’re looking for someone who’d have security access codes for both homes. So far, that’s a dead end.”
“What can I tell viewers?”
“Same as always.”
The rules with Jake were simple: no cameras, no quotes, and I couldn’t use any information that would lead directly or indirectly back to him. In exchange, I shared with him any intel I gathered from eyewitnesses or other interviews on the story.
He touched his hand to my arm. “You want to grab lunch after you’re finished? I’ve been here since four this morning and I’m starving.”
I hesitated. We’d never socialized away from working on a story together, but there was something about the way he asked, a little too nervously, that made me think there was more to it. “Don’t you need to stay here?”
“This one is so high-profile, there are at least a half dozen other detectives on the scene. Besides, Geoffrey’s Malibu is only five minutes from here. We’ll be back in under an hour.”
“It’s a bad idea to be seen together in public. People might make the connection that you’re my inside source.”
“Geoffrey’s is the last place anyone in the department would head for lunch. Too upscale. And no one there will even give us a second look. We’re safe.”
That made me nervous. Up until now, Jake and I had avoided situations where we might be seen together. This lunch seemed fraught with the possibility of discovery.
He grinned. “It’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” I said finally. “See you in about an hour.”
My report opened the noon cast. It was complete with exclusive details about how the thieves evaded a top-of-the-line security system, stealing high-end watches and cash and leaving behind zero evidence. But as I watched it on playback, my spirits sank. Yes, I had inside information that no other station had. Yes, the visuals were outstanding and my performance was polished and concise. But in one shot I appeared to be smiling as I listed off the items that had been stolen. I sounded like a sports reporter reveling in the excitement of the game.
A journalist’s number one priority is to remain objective, so the idea that I
might be biased about this story disturbed me. A few years ago I’d covered a story about a family in Inglewood whose Christmas presents, along with their dog, were stolen at gunpoint. When I saw how the home had been ransacked, with only the torn wrapping paper left behind, my anger over the senseless situation seeped into my report. The story sparked so much interest that dozens of people delivered presents and gifts to the family the next day.
It had been natural to feel sympathy for the robbery victims in Inglewood, but clearly I was having a hard time mustering a similar feeling here. Instead of sympathy for the billionaire victim there was a different emotion—one that surprised me. I actually felt a twinge of admiration for the people behind this carefully planned maneuver. What was wrong with me?
In every other story, I had always wanted to see the criminals caught and justice served. But I appreciated the criminals’ ability here to vault past high-end security systems and walk away with $3 million without damaging anything or leaving behind any evidence. I actually liked that they got away with it. Was it because the victim was a billionaire who could afford to lose $3 million? Was I allowing stereotypes of pampered CEOs and greedy Wall Street investment bankers to color my impression of this crime?
My lack of objectivity troubled me and that unsettled feeling stayed with me as I headed to Geoffrey’s Malibu for lunch with Jake. Call it reporter’s intuition, but the way he made the invitation and his willingness to be seen with me in public made me think this was more than a collegial lunch. But Jake had given me inside police department information on some of the biggest stories on my beat, and turning down his lunch proposal wouldn’t be a smart move. Not if I expected that exclusive access to continue.