Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
The question neither offends nor bothers me. Josie was nosy enough to ask as well, and the fact that I’m more than happy to delve into this tells me that these two women have become friends for life.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I wish I had a miraculous answer, but things are so crazy right now, it’s hard to make sense of right and wrong.”
“Do you want there to be a you and Cole?”
I look at my coffee. At my hands wrapped around the mug, the silver bracelet with its hidden tracker sitting at my wrist. “I never stopped,” I say quietly. “Loving him, that is. I just got very disciplined about not acting on it and put a lot of effort into trying to forget it.”
Anna nods like that’s exactly what she expected to hear. “And him?”
“He sets a mug out for me every morning before I’m awake,” I say. “Just like he always did when we were together. He turns up the heat in the car before I say I’m cold. He grabbed his keys the second I said I was going to Tacoma with or without him.” I pause. “He’s terrified of losing me but at least for right now, he’s not asking me to be less.”
“That’s different,” Anna says.
“That’s everything,” I correct quietly. “The question is… will he stay that way once this is all said and done, or will he revert to the man who doesn’t want to be with someone who has a dangerous job?”
She smiles at that—the smile of a woman who knows about loving a person in a dangerous world and building a life anyway. “Then maybe stop treating the end of this case like a finish line,” she says, “and treat it like a starting line.”
I look at her for a long moment. “I think that’s probably very good advice.”
I hold out my cup and she clinks hers against it. “Cheers.”
My phone buzzes on the table between us, the notification popping up at the top. An email. I almost dismiss it before I’m jolted by the familiarity of the sender.
Adrian Schwartz.
I stare at it for three full seconds before I’m able to process how extraordinary it is.
Adrian Shwartz, COO of RainVest, Erik Lanning’s boss.
“Excuse me a minute,” I say, picking up my phone to open the email. “I’ve got to handle this.”
“Sure,” she says, picking up our almost empty mugs and walking over to the coffee pot for a refill.
I pull up the email and read it.
Ms. Ward,
I believe we have mutual interests. I’ve been following recent events with considerable concern, and I have information that goes beyond anything currently in your possession. I’m prepared to talk, but only directly and only soon. I’ll want some type of immunity in exchange, which I’m sure you can help me get. I imagine you understand the urgency.
If you’re willing to meet, reply to this email and I’ll provide details.
— AS
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
Adrian Schwartz. COO of RainVest, the man who sat one office away from Gavin DelRey while this was all being orchestrated. The man whose name appears in the emails Erik provided, vague and careful but unmistakably complicit.
He wants to talk and he says he has more than I have. Could he be that last piece of evidence in the form of a live witness that I need?
Every instinct I’ve built over a decade of investigative journalism lights up at once. There’s that specific electric charge of a door opening at exactly the right moment, the thrill of a source materializing when you need one most.
And underneath it, quieter but present, what I’ve learned from my days inside this building, two men dead in my living room, and a whistleblower who trusted me and ended up under a vehicle in a parking garage… this could be a trap.
I should tell Cole. I know I should tell Cole.
I stare at the email and think about a story that is the most important piece I’ve ever written and a man who says he has information that goes beyond anything I currently have.
I should tell Cole, but I won’t. In a million years, he’d never allow me to meet up with this man. In fact, I’m sure he wouldn’t even want me to reply to him. If Schwartz is a potential witness, I know Cole will push me to turn all of this over to the feds right now.
“Um… I’ve got a few things I need to do,” I say to Anna, rising from the chair. “Catch you later?”
“You bet,” she says with a smile.
CHAPTER 20
Tessa
The Jameson team meeting starts at two o’clock. I know this because I’ve been paying careful attention for the last six days, the quiet accumulating awareness of a journalist who never fully stops observing her environment. Malik calls them every Tuesday and Thursday at two, pulls everyone into the large conference room, and for approximately forty-five minutes the building runs on a skeleton of whoever isn’t required to attend.