LOVING HER SOUL MATE (10 page)

“I understand you showed your ass
this morning at the chief’s press conference,” he said to her in his usual
blunt style.

Shay looked at him, her big eyes
filled with consternation.
 
“I asked him
tough questions, yes, sir.”

Ed nodded.
 
“Good,” he said, causing Shay to inwardly
sigh relief.
 
“Good for you.
 
Too many of these reporters around here are
booty wipes for City Hall anyway.
 
But
watch yourself.
 
There’s a thin line
between hard-hitting journalism and unfairness.
 
Make sure you stay on the hard-hitting side.”

Shay smiled.
 
“Yes, sir,” she said with that sincere look
in those huge eyes of hers that Ed found most attractive.
 

“However,” he continued, which
Shay knew meant something less gratifying was about to be unloaded.
 
“I’m pulling you off of the Dodge
story.”
 
He avoided looking directly into
Shay’s now troubled eyes.

“Pulling me off?
 
But, sir---,” she started.

“No, but,” he interrupted.
 
“Ronnie will handle the story going
forward.
 
And that’s final.
 
I want you to focus on these.”
 
He tossed a small stack of papers onto her
desk.

Shay looked at the papers now
strewn on her desk.
 
“What is it?”

“Info on
those
string
of burglaries over in Queen’s Ridge.
 
Not glamorous, granted, but it’ll keep you
employed and out of trouble.”

This, for Shay, smacked of the
same bullshit they pulled on her in Birmingham.
 
Give the big stories to everybody else.
 
Give her the crap.
 
“But I thought
Lance was handling those burglaries,” she said halfheartedly.

“They’re yours now.
 
You’re going to handle them now.”

Shay’s heart grew faint.
 
She was only doing her job and this was the
thanks she got.
 
But it wasn’t as if she
had a choice.
 
She had to eat.
 
“Yes, sir,” she said unenthusiastically.
 

“Don’t look so depressing, Turner,
geez.”

Shay looked at him.
 
“I don’t see where I did anything wrong.”

“Did I say you did something
wrong? I said I’m pulling you off the case.
 
That’s all I said.”
 
Then he exhaled.
 
“Just stop your griping and get to work,” he
ordered, glanced down at her breasts as he always did to remind her that he
could make her life a whole lot easier, and then walked away.
 

Within a week of her hire he
called her into his office and propositioned her.
 
He said one way a female reporter could
ensure success in such a male-dominated profession was to have an inside man on
her side.
 
Spend the night with him, he
had blatantly said, and he’ll be her inside man.
 
He’ll move her career right along.
 

She remembered standing there
amazed that her boss would be so blunt.
 
And it saddened her to know that it was going to be this kind of
ride.
 
But she made herself equally
clear.

“If sleeping with you is the only
way for me to get ahead,” she said with more bravado than she felt, “then I
won’t be getting ahead.”

And she left his office.
 
Walked right out.
 
She halfway expected to be fired that same
day.
 
She was on probation and could
therefore be fired summarily, without cause.
 
But remarkably there was no blowback.
 
She didn’t find that he tried to sabotage her with bad assignments, or
to pull her off of big ones.
 

Until today.

Ronnie Burk waited until Ed was
back in his office before he left his desk near the front of the newsroom and
hurried back to Shay’s desk near the back.
 

“He kicked you off the story,
didn’t he?” he asked as soon as he walked up to her.

“Yes, Ronnie, he kicked me off,”
Shay said.

“What did I tell you?
 
Didn’t I tell you that would happen? You have
to keep your big mouth shut in this town, Shay.
 
That’s how you make it in this town.
 
Speak less.
 
That’s how you get
ahead.”

Shay looked at Ronnie.
 
He was one of those fat-faced know-it-alls
with an obnoxiousness he couldn’t seem to help.
 
He, in fact, so eagerly took her under his wings when he became her team
leader that it felt suffocating.
 
She saw
him, however, as one of the good guys.
 
“It’s done now,” she said, resigning herself to the fact of the matter.

“I can talk to him,” Ronnie said,
his green eyes blazing with that eagerness.
 
“You want me to talk to him?”

“No,” Shay said with a sternest
she didn’t mean to display.
 
But she
didn’t want to owe any man anything.
 
She
knew where that would lead.
 
“But thanks
for asking,” she added with a smile.

Ronnie hesitated, as he usually
did, and then walked away.
 

Shay always got the impression
that something was bothering him and he wanted to address it with her, but he
never could get up the nerve to do so.
 
But just as she was about to call him back, to ask him if there was
something on his mind, her desk phone buzzed.
 
She pressed the blinking extension and picked up the phone.

“Shay Turner, may I help you?”

John Malone was seated in his
black and gray truck, a big Chevy Silverado, at the red light intersection of
Dale Avenue and Hodges Boulevard.
 
He
took his cell phone off of speaker and put it to his ear.
 
“This is John Malone, but don’t say my name,”
he said.

Shay’s heart pounded.
 
“Okay,” she said.

“I need to talk to you.”

The last time they talked he
wanted her to be his sex partner.
 
She
therefore proceeded cautiously.
 
“What is
it that you need to talk to me about?”

“Dodge,” he said as the light
changed to green and his truck began moving again.

Shay looked around the
newsroom,
realized no-one was watching her.
 
“The Dodge murders?” she asked in a lowered
voice.

“Right.”

“So you agree they’re related?”

“We won’t be discussing it over
the phone.
 
I can move a few things
around and get with you tonight.
 
If you’re still interested in the truth.”

Shay didn’t want to tell him that
she was no longer working the case.
 
What
rational reporter would turn down an opportunity to get inside information from
an inside source like John Malone?
 
But
she was no liar, no devious person, and wasn’t about to become one now.
 
Not even for her career.
 
“You’ll need to talk with Ronnie,” she said
with some degree of bitterness.
 
“I’ve
been removed from the story.”

“Of course you were removed,” John
snapped.
 
“What did you expect calling
out the chief on his own turf?
 
McNamara had
a conversation with your publisher as soon as that press conference was
over.
 
Nobody’s going to stand up to him
the way you did and expect no retribution.”

Shay was taken aback by his
snappiness.
 
“Then why do you want to
meet with me?”

“Because you stood up to him,”
John said.
 
And never backed down the way those other so-called veteran reporters
would have
, he wanted to add.
 
But
added instead:
 
“You did understand you
would be pulled off of the case when you went that far, didn’t you?”
 
He was suddenly praying that she did get it;
that she wasn’t so naïve as to be surprised by the move.

Shay sighed.
 
Of course she should have expected a penalty
for going toe-to-toe with the chief of police.
 
But that was what she thought journalists were supposed to do.
 
“I just didn’t think about that,” she replied
honestly.
 
“All I could think about was
another female in Dodge, going out at night, thinking nothing’s wrong.
 
And then she ends up butchered too.”

John stopped at another red light
and leaned his head back.
 
He understood
what she meant.
 
He was thinking about
the next victim too.
 
“Are you still
interested?” he asked her.

“I’m interested,” she said,
grabbing a pen.
 
“Where do you want to
meet?”

“You still live alone, don’t
you?”
 
 

“Alone?” Shay asked, oddly taken
aback by the question.
 
But she quickly
regrouped.
 
“Yes,” she said.
 
“I still live alone.”

“Okay.
 
I’ll try to get over there at nine or around
that time.
 
And Turner,” John added,
“this is strictly confidential, you hear me?
 
Not even Ronnie Burk or Ed Barrington
are
to be
told about our little get together.
 
Understood?”

“Yes, yes of course,” Shay
said.
 
“I’ll see you tonight.”

John killed the call and then
tossed his cell phone onto the passenger seat.
 
He ran his hand through his thick, already rumpled pile of hair and
shook his head.
 
Why he didn’t just leave
it the hell alone like the rest of his colleagues were doing, and just let the
little investigating he’d been able to do play itself out, was a mystery to
him.
 

And why confide in her?
 
Yes, she showed some spunk this morning at
the press conference, and yes he viewed her as a tough kid.
 
But so what?
 
That didn’t mean he should be risking his entire career by putting this
kind of information in the hands of some new-to-Brady outsider like her.
 
Besides, she wasn’t even on the case
anymore.
 
She may not even know how to
handle this level of information.
 

Then he wondered if it was more
her body than her spunk that was driving this move.
 
Wondered if he was really
more interested in fucking her again than schooling her about this
ass-backwards case that should have been exposed a long time ago.
 
Although he just discovered what was really
going on himself, he knew for a fact that Chief McNamara and others on the
force knew all along.
 

But he had to get this just right
or it could blow up in his face.
 
And of
all the reporters he could have gone to, he decided to take a chance on this
fresh young thang with those large and terrified, but adorable eyes.
 

But to hell with it, he thought as
he blew through another intersection.
 
It’s done now.
 
She was the only
reporter he felt would possess enough backbone to see this through, so he was
going with her.
 
For good or ill, he was
going with her.

His cell phone began ringing.
 
He grabbed it from the seat.
 
“Malone,” he said.
 
To his disappointment, it was Blair Malone,
his ex-wife, reminding him that the mortgage needed to be paid.

“What are you reminding me for?”
he asked her, an angry scowl on his face.
 
“It’s not even due yet.
 
Do I ever
forget?”

“Yes!” she said emphatically.
 
“But not this time, John.
 
Parker and I are going to our Timeshare in
Hilton Head and we don’t want any problems.”

John frowned.
 
What in the world does her going to South
Carolina with some boyfriend of hers have to do with his paying the mortgage on
a condo he doesn’t even own?
 
But knowing
Blair as he did, the point of this call wasn’t about the mortgage payment at
all, but all about making sure he personally got the word of the trip
itself.
 
As if she could possibly make
him jealous or cause him to feel any kind of emotion toward her, except
unbridled anger.
 
Sometimes maybe even
hatred.