“Oh, I’m sorry, sir. Miss Walters checked out ten minutes ago.”
“What? Do you know where she was heading?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Thank you.” I walk away, realizing that Gisselle has beat me at my own game of mind fuck, and I had it coming. But what does that mean for us?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A few weeks later, I’m sitting at my desk back in Austin, trying my very best to focus on work, when I get a text from a contact whom I call Mr. Green: She’s on it again.
“Sonofabitch!” I bark at my phone. Why does Gisselle insist on opening this can of worms? It still bothers me how things were left between us, but my attempts to contact her immediately following my return were unsuccessful. A blessing in disguise, I suppose, because despite my strong physical attraction, our relationship has no future. My only task now is to keep tabs on her and to ensure she stays away from the Hofer-Kristoff story, which is why when I get this text, my blood pressure hits the roof.
“Stephanie! Call that…that woman and keep calling until she picks up. I need to speak to her. Now!”
My assistant has heard me griping about Gisselle many times since I returned from Sydney, so she knows exactly whom I’m referring to.
Stephanie yells back from the other room, “Someone needs to take a please-pill and learn some manners!”
I roll my eyes. “Please!”
“Better!”
A few minutes pass and then my desk phone lights up. I grab the handpiece. “Gisselle! We had a deal.”
“I’m fine. Thank you very much, Merrick. And yourself?” Gisselle says, her voice firm but just as sexy as I remember. I missed hearing it, frankly.
“As you can guess, not well,” I say through gritted teeth. “A little intern hasn’t kept her word, and I’m not at all pleased.” I take my pen, the Montblanc, and start scribbling on my notepad—anything to help me keep my wits.
“I’m not your intern, and I did keep my word. I spoke to Carl and they’re all in witness protection now.”
I already heard the good news. “I’m glad you did the right thing, but now you need to do it again. Stop poking around on Kristoff.”
“Why? I heard something might happen soon, so why shouldn’t I be the first to break the story? Even better, why not be prepared with a fully written, detailed exposé, including interviews with people who’re involved in this Hofer murder case?”
I don’t know how Gisselle got wind of it, but she’s referring to rumors that Kristoff might be willing to talk if the attorney general in Australia takes extradition off the table. It’s just a rumor. Kristoff will never talk. He’s not the kind to rat out a client or make a deal to save his skin. From the little I know, he goes out of his way to punish anyone who breaks his code, which means he’s not about to break it himself.
“Gisselle,” I continue scribbling and draw a tiger, “I won’t allow it.”
“Haha! You won’t allow it? Hysterical. I don’t remember needing your approval, Merrick. I’m moving on the story.”
Grrrr… Time for another approach. I set the pen down. “You don’t need this story to build your career, Gisselle. The other work you’ve been doing is truly excellent. And much, much safer.” Her name has appeared in several stories over the past few weeks, though none have made the international headlines—sweatshop conditions at a major retailer, a farmer selling fake organics, a romance author gone missing whose fans claim she was taken hostage by a vampire. Strangest story I’ve ever read. Nonetheless, hats off to Gisselle for her hard work.
“You’ve been keeping tabs on me?” she accuses.
“Errrr…no,” I lie. “Why would I?”
“Then why the call?” she asks. “How’d you know I was looking into Kristoff?”
Busted. “Fine. I’ve been keeping tabs, but only because I knew I couldn’t trust you and your nosy, ambitious brain.”
“I swear, Merrick…” she growls. “You are the last person who gets to talk about trust or tell me what to do, so just butt out. I’m doing this story. I need it.”
Like she needs a bullet to the head. Time to initiate operation G-bomb. I start firing off emails while she continues talking.
“And don’t think I haven’t considered the risks, because I have. I know full well what’s at stake if I’m linked as a witness to the crime.”
I stop typing for a moment. “Gisselle, this is not like the issue you helped Jed with, and it’s not even close to the—eh-hem, janitorial issue. This is completely different. It’s dangerous.” I can’t say more. If I did and anyone found out, heads would roll and not just mine. My contacts would be fired, tried for treason, or put out to pasture.
“Okay, Mr. Big Pen, I’ll drop the story if you tell me how you knew ahead of time that there’d be a hit on Albert Hofer, how the police were there in sixty seconds, and how they just happened to call you afterward to tell you Kristoff had been caught.”
“That all, love?” I snap, feeling irritated.
“No. You also have to give me one good reason why the world doesn’t need to know the truth.”
“Anything else?” I say.
“Yes. I want to know why you lied to my face when you swore you wouldn’t.”
Let me see… Can’t answer. Can’t answer. Definitely can’t answer. And…nope. Can’t answer. “Sorry, you’ll just have to take my word for it when I say that if you defy me and follow this, you’ll only end up hurting a lot of people.”
“Well, it’s too bad their lives don’t mean anything to you, because if they did, you’d answer my questions.”
“How about you answer one of mine?” I throw back. “Why do you think I flew all the way to Australia?”
“I fucking wish I knew, Merrick. Seriously. But the only answer I can come up with is that it’s a big story—maybe the biggest of your life—and you don’t want me to get credit for it.”
She genuinely thinks so little of me? I put my life on the line to save her.
Fuming, nostrils flared, I pick up my pen and start scribbling again. “So this, this is what you think of me—that I’m some heartless, selfish prick who only cares about my career and notoriety?”
“You forgot liar. Big fat liar.”
Oh. Well, now she’s done it. I only lied to keep her safe. “Well, you are a spoiled, entitled, piteous little…little…”
“Yeah? What am I, Merrick?” she prods.
“You’re a she-demon.”
Gisselle’s sharp laugh cracks through the phone.
Did I really call her a she-demon? I’m an idiot.
“You don’t have the balls to call me a bitch, do you?” She chuckles bitterly. “You’re such a pussy, Merrick! Can’t even kiss a woman you like because, ‘Ooh no, it’s too scary!’”
She’s crossed the line and declared war on my sense of decency. I’m not having it. “For the record, I did go back to your room, but thank God you were gone because clearly, you’re nothing more than a dirty-mouthed, little snot-nosed American. Your parents should put a muzzle on you.”
“Oh.” She laughs again. “Isn’t it just like you to want to silence me, a woman. You chauvinistic fucker.”
“There. You see! Dirty. And whatever happened to the church mouse who showed up to my office and said, ‘Oh, language matters. Don’t swear. It’s unprofessional.’” I mock her high-pitched voice.
“That church mouse saw the light, and it’s shining right on your devil horns! But you wait, Merrick, because when I write my story, I’m going to make sure the world sees those, too. They’ll know how you hate women and threatened me just now to keep me away from a story.”
“Threatened you? I’m trying to save you! And this is the thanks I get?”
“Wait. Hold on. I’m flipping you off. There’s your thanks, you moldy old crumpet.”
The call ends. “You, you…fucking horrible woman!” I yell at my phone.
“Sir? Everything all right?” Stephanie pops in the room.
“Never bett
er!” I snap.
She nods. “I’ll go get you one of those maple scones you like.”
“With the tiny bits of bacon.” God, I love those.
“Of course.” Stephanie leaves, and I go back on the attack, hammering out more emails. Gisselle’s head is going to spin so hard she’ll be vomiting for the next week.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Gisselle
I knew it! I knew he’d try to bully me and tell me I couldn’t go after the Hofer-Kristoff-Kemmler story. Why? Because he’s a lying turd who’ll do anything, say anything to get his story. Yep. That’s his secret. That’s the Leland Merrick secret sauce to getting people to tell him things they shouldn’t.
And to think, all these years, I looked up to him.
“Well, joke’s on you, Merrick.” Because I have it on good authority—through one of the policemen I’ve been keeping in contact with in Sydney—that Mitch Hofer is going to do a press conference. I’m going to go and talk him into doing an interview. I’m sure some topics, related to his uncle’s murder, will be off the table, but I will be able to get to the bottom of those photographs. Real or fakes? After that, I’m flying to Switzerland to talk to Augusto’s aunt and uncle. I’ve promised that if I find out the photos are real and they speak only to me, I won’t release the story until they’ve had a chance to try to save their company by getting out ahead of things. In other words, I’ve got this story locked up, and there’s not a damned thing Merrick can do about it.
Honestly though, I just wish he’d say he was sorry and tell the truth. Why did he lie? Why let that man die? Why hide the truth from me? Instead, he just carries on like none of it matters. I was starting to fall for him, and he…he broke my trust. He treated me like a tiny nothing.
I grab my suitcase and get to packing my things. I’ve had to take out yet another loan from my parents, but this time after I told them what I’m working on—everything minus being an actual witness to the murder because I’m sure it would scare the hell out of them. I’ve got just enough time to get to Sydney before Mitch talks.
Thirty hours later…
“I’m sorry. What do you mean there’s no press conference?” I’m standing in the lobby of the Sydney Presidential Hotel and Suites at seven in the morning, bags the size of dump trucks under my eyes, and camera ready.
“I’m sorry,” says the concierge woman, “but I have no idea what you’re talking about. There are no press conferences scheduled here today.”
My mouth falls open. This must be a mistake. Or maybe I got the hotels mixed up?
I get on my phone and call the policeman I’ve been speaking with. It goes into voicemail, so I call the station directly. The guy is on vacation for the next two weeks? I ask to talk to the sergeant or whoever is working on the Hofer case, but I’m given a “no comment” followed by a hang-up.
Wonderful. On a whim, I check my phone to see if the conference happened and I got the date wrong.
Standing in the lobby, I scroll through my phone. “No. No. No.” Mitch Hofer is in Houston? What the fuck? The brief article goes on to say that he’s agreed to train there at the university for the next Olympics.
I can’t even believe this shit. I just spent another seventeen hundred dollars on a plane ticket to come here while Mitch Hofer was flying in the opposite direction? This all smells incredibly fishy.
I find the office number for the Kemmlers, who work out of their Switzerland office, and manage to convince the guy on the phone to pass me over to their admin. She’s a nice woman who speaks perfect English and insists that there is no appointment for a Gisselle Walters scheduled with anyone.
What the…? I call Augusto, who doesn’t answer, so I go back to the emails we exchanged. Son of a bitch! That’s when I notice that the email address is spoofed. It has his name, but the actual email address isn’t from the university’s server.
I feel my face turn bright red with rage. I know what’s happening and who’s behind this. I’ve been Merricked. He’s so going to pay.
With no other choice, and Mitch Hofer on another continent, I head back to the airport to see what flights are available. I’m praying the change ticket fee isn’t outrageous because I’m broke. Broker than broke.
I’m going to kill Leland Merrick.
Leland
“You’re sure? You got a positive ID?” I ask my mate over the phone. He owes me a few favors, a lot of people do, and I’m pleased to hear that Gisselle has turned up in Sydney, right on schedule. After that, she’ll fly to Switzerland, find out there is no interview with the Kemmlers, just like there was no press conference with Mitch Hofer. At that point, she will call Augusto, find out he never emailed her anything about interviews with his family, and then spend another day or two getting back to the US. That should get her out of my hair and out of harm’s way for a few days, which is just enough time to put my real plan into action. When she returns, I’ll have another bag of tricks waiting. If she won’t give up, then I’ll just have to keep her busy until the Kristoff story fizzles out.
Teach her to go up against me. Yes, a part of me wants to put her in her place, but there’s a bigger part that genuinely fears for her. Seems that every rock I turn over, I find another hole. First off, Augusto spoke to his family and they swore to him, privately, that they had nothing to do with Albert Hofer’s murder. I’ve heard phony pleas of innocence one too many times, so obviously I’m not letting them off the hook, but it is my job to question.
Could another person be behind the murder?
Then I hear through a friend at the CIA that Mitch Hofer is hiring private security. And not just any security, highly trained, armed bodyguards, the sorts who protect diplomats, not Olympic swimmers. My contact also tells me that Mitch left Australia for his own safety, not out of grief for his uncle, as reported in the local Aussie papers. The home Mitch has just purchased, oddly not too far from here in Houston, is a fortress fit for a drug lord, which tells me that the rumors are true. Someone is after Mitch.
A friend of Kristoff’s? Someone else? I’m praying it’s the latter because if Kristoff’s behind it, we’re playing a whole other ball game, as the Yanks like to put it. I’m told the surveillance footage from Albert’s murder is not the best, so the prosecution will be wanting eyewitnesses if Kristoff gets put on trial. If that’s so, and Kristoff wants Mitch dead, he’ll be dead. And that means once Mitch is taken care of, they’ll be looking for other witnesses to come forward.
Yes, you guessed it correctly. That leaves me. And Gisselle. And only one of us is naïve enough to offer herself as tribute.
I have got to find out what the hell is going on so I can find a solution. But over my dead body will I allow Gisselle to get involved or go public with the fact that she was there.
I know. I’m a bloody fool for caring what happens to her, but I do. And I can keep Gisselle busy for as long as it takes her to forget all about this story.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gisselle
Three months later…
I’m sitting at the JFK airport in New York, on my way back from a very interesting interview, debating if I should call Merrick. This is not what I expected to deal with today, because the interview in question wasn’t for a story. This was for a job at a major newspaper. My recent works, though not what I initially envisioned writing, have been catching the eye of several editors and publications. Here’s the crazy part. I think Merrick is behind everything.
After Sydney, I fully intended to go back to Texas, tear Merrick a new one, and then continue chasing the Kemmler story—really, the Kemmler-Hofer-Kristoff story, but that’s too long to say—until I got a call from an editor at a pretty major magazine, saying that they loved the piece I wrote about the sweatshops. She asked if I would be willing to expand the article into a full-blown exposé that would be featured on the cover. Honestly, it was so much money—five thousand dollars plus travel expenses and a per diem—I couldn’t say no. I had to put the Kemmler thing on the
back burner.
Of course, that sweatshop exposé took over a month to do—came out pretty darn good if I do say so myself—and then they requested I work on something else: a story about an auto manufacturer that was rigging the software in their cars in order to comply with US emission tests. That was when I started to hear this nagging voice in the back of my head. Why me? I had zero experience in the auto industry. I didn’t know a thing about tech either. But, once again, I found myself faced with loans to pay—student and parental—plus my day-to-day expenses. I couldn’t walk away from the money or the opportunity to build my body of work.
Then the holidays rolled around, and I spent most of the time with my family, though Camila stopped over for a weekend visit, too. She’s loving her new job at the winery, but seems she’s facing some sort of challenge with Jed. He refuses to give up chasing her or something. She didn’t say much more, and I didn’t push since she looked super pissed off about it.
Anyway, after New Year’s, just when I started scratching around on the Kemmler story again, I got a call from an editor in New York, Nancy Blaine, offering a staff position. Eighty grand a year. Eighty!
I couldn’t say no to an interview, but something just didn’t sit right. Why me? I’ve had a few wins and have gotten my name out there, but I’m not even one year out of school and, well, there are far more qualified candidates. Still, I went. And I don’t think I would have suspected a thing except for one tiny detail: The National Journalism Award for Investigative Reporting on Nancy’s wall. It was from four years ago. The same year Merrick got an award for his work on the cocaine-banana. Apparently, drug traffickers were close to commercializing a new crossbreed of the two plants so they could import cocaine-powered fruit into the US. She was the editor for the article and shared in the award.
“So, what did Leland Merrick promise you in exchange for offering me this job?” I asked.
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