by Alexa Davis
"It would also add an additional five hundred to a thousand dollars to the sale price of each individual weapon, rendering it unaffordable for those in lower income brackets," Russo sneered. "So, if I'm understanding Mr. Redding's thesis, it's that he wants only billionaires such as himself to be able to afford to buy guns."
"That's not at all what I'm saying, Russo and you know it," I shot back. Russo always aimed at class warfare to try and whittle down my points because he knew that otherwise, he had no leg to stand on. "I'm saying get the guns out of the hands of the criminals by locking usage into one person's prints – or in the case of our GripPlus technology, you can program the grip for multiple person access."
"The reality is that you don't want the common man to own a gun, do you?" Russo said. "You hate poor people and you think they're too dumb to be able to own guns. Isn't that right, Mr. Redding?"
"Gentlemen, I'm afraid that we've run out of time, but I want to thank you both for being here today," Callie said as she faced the camera and continued. "It's obvious that we have a range of opinions about gun ownership in this country and that the American people are divided on the issue. The question is how we will find a way to compromise. Join us tomorrow night when dig deeper into the issue and talk with researchers from the CDC who are advocating overturning the Dickey Amendment and allowing the CDC to begin researching the epidemic of gun violence in the United States."
We all paused, looking at the camera as the director called cut and the lights came up. Callie looked at me and gave me a sad smile as she shrugged.
"You aren't going to win this one, Redding," Russo said as he waited for an assistant to remove his mic. "The tide of public opinion is shifting toward individual rights and away from your 'greater good' narrative. People are scared, and they don't trust the government to protect them."
"I don't believe that, Russo," I said as I nodded at the young assistant pulling my mic. "People don't want their children shooting each other accidentally, nor do they want criminals getting a hold of weapons. I have never understood why you oppose the implementation of technology that would render both of those things impossible."
"I'm for individual rights," he replied as he brushed a piece of lint from his lapel.
"Your own individual rights, maybe," I said wryly. "You don't give a shit about anyone but yourself, Russo. All of this is a ruse to fool people into supporting the weapons manufacturing industry because they line your pockets with cash."
"Not all of us have been so fortunate to inherit large sums of money," he said as he raised an eyebrow.
"That's a low blow, even for a slime ball like you, Russo," I said through clenched teeth as I fought to hold back the urge to punch his teeth into the back of his throat.
"Still, you've got your money," he smiled. "The rest of us have to earn a living somehow."
"On the backs of people who die," I said in a flat voice.
"Unfortunate souls, indeed," he replied as he stood up and turned to leave. Then he turned back and added with a smile, "But liberty must occasionally be defended with the blood of tyrants and patriots, don't you know?"
I clenched my fists at my side and inhaled deeply as I watched him walk off the set. One of the assistants patted me on the shoulder and said, "Man, I hate that guy. He's such a douche." I flashed him a tense smile, exhaled, and then vowed once again to find a way to bring Davis Russo to his knees.
CHAPTER TWO
Olivia
"Man, those two really hate each other, don't they?" I said to Carl as I grabbed another slice of pizza from the box in his desk and returned to my own. We were sitting in the deserted offices of the Washington Sentinel on a Sunday morning, eating cold pizza while watching Linc Redding and Davis Russo trying to tear each other to shreds as they debated the necessity of gun control.
"Russo's such a bottom feeder," Carl observed as he tried to shove an entire slice of pizza into his mouth.
"Jesus, Jackson, pig out much?" I said shaking my head as I took a less disgusting bite and turned my attention back to the television screen on the wall. Our editor Frank Beatty kept the television running twenty-four/seven as we tracked the news and wrote about it. Many of my fellow reporters found it annoying to have it running in the background, but I found it comforting and reassuring. After years of tracking down stories in remote locations without the support of anyone but a translator and maybe a guide and one too many close calls, I'd come back to D.C. three months prior and taken a job as a features writer for the Sentinel after Carl had recommended me. I didn't really like the assignment as a general features writer, but I needed time to think as I planned my next move, and this gave me a little breathing room. It definitely wasn't anywhere near as challenging as tracking down Boko Haram in Nigeria or covering the attempts by the Chinese to build a super highway across the African continent, but it didn't require me to work nights or weekends and I was able to catch up on so many of the things I'd missed out on while I was overseas.
"Mrgph arwef mrgap," Carl said with his mouth full of pizza.
"Dude, chew and swallow, then talk," I told him, waving him off as I kept my eyes on the screen. Carl Jackson was my work-husband: a top-notch political reporter with an eye for bullshit like no one I'd ever met. We'd met when we'd both freelanced for the Times over a decade ago, and while our lives had gone in distinctly different directions, we'd remained close thanks to the advent of technology. Carl didn't suffer fools, but he did have an excellent sense of humor about them, and we enjoyed making fun of the plethora of idiots that occupied offices on Capitol Hill. He wrote about their congressional hijinks, while I wrote about the things their wives were interested in, always icing the stories with a bit of the political tidbits that Carl was unable to stick in his own stories. As a result of our unholy alliance, pretty much everyone in Washington hated Carl, but they had no idea who I was. However, they also recognized that he wielded a kind of power that few other reporters had, so they laughed it off in public and swore revenge in private.
"I said, look at Russo's face," Carl said more clearly as he pointed at the screen. "He's about to lose his shit on Redding!"
"What's the beef between those two again?" I took a closer look at Linc Redding. I shivered a bit as he turned and addressed the camera. His blue eyes radiated an intensity that made me look away for a moment. When I looked back, he had turned back towards Russo and was flashing a wry grin that made me chuckle. Redding obviously hated Russo, but I couldn't remember why.
"Russo acts like he’s got something on everyone," Carl tossed over his shoulder as he grabbed another piece of pizza and tossed it on his plate. “But I think it’s a guilty conscience that drives his nastiness.”
"Wait, what?”
"Russo was the pastor at the church where Warren Abraham claims he got the message from God to kill people who opposed the second amendment," Carl said.
"Abraham is that crazy they locked up for his shooting spree in Baltimore, right?" I recalled as I grabbed my now-warm soda and unscrewed the bottle top.
"Yeah, that's the one," he nodded before taking a human bite from his slice. "They caught him on his way into D.C. to continue his spree, but they couldn’t directly connect Russo to him outside of the fact that he was the pastor at his church."
"That's messed up," I said shaking my head. "Where is he now?"
"Still locked up in St. Elizabeth's, as far as I know," he said. "He gets a hearing every year to see if he's sane or not. Why are you so interested in this?"
"No reason, just curious," I said as I turned my attention back to Linc Redding. "He looks kind of like a bro-ish frat boy, doesn't he?"
"Yeah, he does!" Carl laughed. "That scruff is probably maintained by a team of highly trained stylists that follow him everywhere and feed him peeled grapes when they're not grooming him."
"Ha!" I snorted. "What do you think he's worth?"
"Oh, I know what he's worth," Carl replied as he grabbed his notebook and flipped back a few page
s. "As of last June, fifty billion."
"Holy moly, Carl!" I whistled. "The boy is loaded! No wonder he looks so good; he's got the cash to maintain it all."
"Yeah, imagine how good I'd look if I had that kind of money," he said as he stood up and strutted down the aisle between our desks. "I'd look like a damn prince!"
"Carl, face it. No matter how much money you had, you'd still be a newsroom schlub, my friend," I laughed. He shot me a dirty look as he sat back down at his desk.
"You can really be a bitch sometimes, Liv," he said as he grabbed the television remote and turned down the sound before he turned his attention to the pile of papers on his desk and began sorting through them. He quickly tossed sheet after sheet into the recycle box under his desk before stopping suddenly. "Hey, look at this, will you?"
"What is it?" I asked as I took the paper from him and quickly scanned it. "Oh damn, is this what I think it is?"
"If you think it is the financial report on the Sentinel, then yes, it is what you think it is," he said nodding.
"Damn, this looks like we're bleeding," I said before handing the sheet back. "What the hell?"
"I do believe our beloved Sentinel is in trouble," Carl remarked as he read the paper again and then tucked it into the folder he kept locked in a drawer in his desk. "Perhaps we should be seeking alternative employment options."
"That's kind of fatalistic," I said. "What do you think is happening?"
"I'm not sure, but if I had to ponder a guess, I'd say we're not writing the kinds of stories that attract online attention and that advertisers are fleeing when they realize they can't get exposure on our pages."
"It sounds like you have a pretty damn good idea of what's going on," I said with a wry smile.
"I've been thinking about it a lot lately." He tossed his pizza crust into the trash. "This paper isn't moving with the times. We do things the old-fashioned way and while that's been great, it's not generating revenue. We're going to lose our jobs, you know."
"Aw, c'mon, Carl, don't be a pessimist," I teased. Still, I understood his underlying concern. Carl had a family, a mortgage, car payments; in other words, he had a life that required a regular paycheck. I, on the other hand, was a nomad. I lived in a studio apartment on Massachusetts Avenue where I slept at night. As a freelancer, I'd grown accustomed to feast or famine, so I'd learned to live on the famine wages and squirreled everything else away for a rainy day. If the paper went under, Carl and I would be okay, but a lot of the staff would not be and at his age, it would be unlikely that Frank would find another managing editor position. I looked at Carl with sympathy and said, "I know it's tough, but we'll find a way to keep this thing afloat. The paper has been through worse times, right?"
"How the hell would you know, Liv?" he said in an irritated tone. "You've been here less than a month, and if things go south, you'll just pick up and go globetrotting again. Footloose and fancy free!"
"Hey, I'm not throwing in the towel," I protested. "I'm just saying that it's not time to give up hope. We'll figure out something and it'll all be okay."
"I know, I know," he sighed rubbing his forehead. “I've put twenty years into this paper, Liv. This is my home. If this goes under, I can't just pick up and move somewhere else. Besides, who will hire me? I'm past my shelf life for the current reporting world. I'm a dinosaur."
"Knock it off, Jackson," I said trying to lighten his mood, but what he was saying got under my skin. I was still in my early thirties, but I, too, felt the younger reporters nipping at my heels. They were young and hungry and they were willing to do things that those of us who had discovered our mortality were no longer willing to do. If the paper went under, I'd find another job, but it would be more difficult that it had been before, and it would only continue to get tougher. "Look, we're going to figure something out, okay? We'll land a big story and put ourselves on the map. We'll do something. I promise."
"Thanks, Liv," he smiled weakly. "It'll all be fine tomorrow; I just get down sometimes."
"I know, buddy," I nodded as I turned back toward my computer and began sifting through the files I kept on my ideas for stories. As I looked at one after another, I said over my shoulder, "But don't give up, we need to hold onto hope."
The only response was the clicking of Carl's keyboard and the low hum of the television on the background.
CHAPTER THREE
Linc
I'd left the station pissed that Russo had gotten the last word, but bolstered by the fact that many others thought he was as much of an ass as I did. I headed out to my car and told my driver to head for the nearest coffee shop. I needed caffeine and I wasn't in any mood to have to wait for an assistant to run out and get it.
I thought about what Mo would say about the interview, and I grinned thinking about how she'd skewer Russo in her cute, Southern accent. Mo Warren was a force of nature and had been my mother's best friend since childhood. She was the daughter of a man who'd put all of his money into the oil business in the early 1900s and had hit it big. However, he'd been loath to raise his children as part of the moneyed class, so she'd had a surprisingly normal childhood growing up in Richmond.
She'd graduated from the University of Virginia, then married Robert Warren, whom she'd met at a college mixer her sophomore year. Robert had a degree in business, and Mo's father had hired him to run the southern Virginia office. They happily presided over their little corner of Norfolk until one winter afternoon, on his way back from a meeting with a group of investors, Robert was run off the road in a rainstorm and died on his way to the hospital. Mo was devastated, but her father was a tough, Irish man who refused to allow her to wallow in pity and regret, so he'd given her Robert's job and told her to learn the ropes.
It was a controversial decision, and many of the clients balked at having to deal with a woman, but Mo had quickly learned the job and surprised everyone except her father when she landed a number of important clients within a year. There was no going back, and from then on, Mo moved up the company ladder as she prepared herself to take over for her father.
Unfortunately, that would be sooner rather than later as Morris McIlherny had a heart attack and died at his desk six years later. Mo took over the company and ran it until she realized that she could make more money selling it, so she did.
After she sold the oil company, she invested the profits in a fund that allowed her and her family members to live off of the interest generated, and she swore that she would never worked for another person again.
I'd grown up with Mo as a doting, if tough, aunt. I fully expected and welcomed her presence at every holiday celebration or major life event, and she'd never once disappointed. Mo always brought the biggest and best gifts and had the most exotic tales to tell. She was tall and lean and had a laugh that spread out, enveloping us like the warm, hand-knit sweaters she'd bring back from Scotland and Iceland or the handmade blankets she'd found halfway up a mountainside in Peru. Mo was as much a part of my life as my parents were, and when they'd been murdered, she'd immediately stepped in and taken care of all of the logistical issues while I'd tried to cope with the brutal loss.
The first couple of days after my parents had been shot, Mo made all the arrangements for identification, funeral services, caskets, burial plots, and lists of people who needed to be notified. She'd called the insurance company, the lawyers, and sorted out all of the details that I had no idea even existed. No one had prepared me for my parents' deaths, but Mo seemed equipped to deal with every aspect of it, so I let her while I mourned.
She had also made the decision to spirit me out of the country while the authorities investigated the crime. She'd told me that it would be easier for me to grieve the loss and then find a way to live a life outside the spotlight if I wasn't constantly being sought out for interviews. She even convinced me that it would be beneficial to change my last name from Massey to my grandmother's maiden name, Redding. At the time, I thought Mo was being unbelievably paranoid, but in the end
, she'd been absolutely right.
I never knew when or how she grieved the loss of her best friend, nor did I ask, but the older I got, the more I understood her approach to things and why "suck it up and walk it off" was her motto.
While I'd grown up comfortably upper class, I hadn't become rich until after my parents had been killed. My father had known that he had a job with the potential to put him in harm's way, and as a result, had taken out an extremely large life insurance policy on both he and my mother. I'd been shocked when I'd received the settlement: a whopping twenty-seven million dollars after attorney fees and taxes had taken a bite out of it.
My best friend's father was an investment banker, who'd been coached by Mo to keep everything as quiet as possible. When I'd turned to him for advice, he'd told me where to put my money so that it would grow quickly, but safely. I followed his instructions, and by the time I graduated from college with my business degree, I was sitting on a bank account that totaled more than fifty billion dollars.
I knew that there was no way I would ever be able to spend that kind of money in my lifetime, so I set about formulating a plan that would allow me to avenge my parents' deaths without turning me into a thuggish criminal. I didn't want to kill Davis Russo, despite the fact that there were thousands of people who would have been more than willing to help me accomplish the task. No, killing him would have been too easy and completely unsatisfying. What I wanted was to bring the man to his knees in a public forum where he would be forced to admit to all of his hateful, immoral actions.
I didn't want to even the score. I wanted to win.