17. Ava
17
Ava
I slouched over my desk—the statement buckle designed to accentuate my waist, digging into my bloated, miserable stomach. The feather earrings brushed against my cheeks with each slight movement, their natural sway hindered by the chunky infinity scarf wrapped around my neck.
Why did I think they were a good idea?
My phone vibrated on the desk, causing it to shimmy across the surface. My eyes flicked to the screen, locking onto Nate's name in bold letters.
Not now.
I can't...
"Conference room. Everyone. Now." Whitney's distinct voice penetrated the tense floor.
"I hate Mondays." Aria leaned against the cubicle wall as I swiped my phone off the desk.
"At least you only have one left."
"That sounds like I'm doomed to die."
We walked into the windowed room with laughter under our breaths and took our seats next to Whitney despite avoiding her and her endless reminders of my deadline today.
The scent of fresh coffee mingled with the faint odor of printed papers Whitney tapped against the conference table with impatience.
She adjusted her reading glasses as everyone shuffled in, finding their seats, some yawning and whispering to each other.
"Alright, let's get started." Whitney's crisp voice cut through the low, chattering hum like a paper guillotine. "Oktoberfest's coverage was solid—good job with the photos, Jake. That shot of the Mayor holding the oversized pretzel. Gold."
Jake, the staff photographer, grinned and held up his camera like a trophy. "Small-town drama at its finest."
"Speaking of drama." Whitney searched the room and landed on her next target. "Erin, you're on follow-up duty for the vendor dispute at the festival. I want to know why there was a shouting match and if anyone's filing a complaint."
Shouting match?
Did this happen after we left or while we were—
"I've already got a lead from a witness." Erin scribbled in her notebook.
"Great. Now, what about the economic angle? Kat, dig into the revenue numbers. How much did the festival bring in compared to last year? Check with the Chamber of Commerce."
Kat nodded, her laptop already open. "Got it."
Whitney leaned back, her eyes searing into my flesh. "We also had a quiet weekend at the sheriff's office, thank God. But it's too quiet. I need someone to check on any updates from the courthouse—pending cases, anything that could spark interest."
I sat up straighter, my leather jacket squeaking against the metal armrest. "I—"
"I'll take it," Max said, stretching his arm over his head as if in preschool.
Whitney's eyes flicked from me to Max, our senior journalist.
Crap.
What if he sees the reports on the raids?
He'll snatch my story right out from under me.
"Thank you, Max, but I think Ava's going to take this one. I want you on the Kane Roger's story."
"Thank you." Max gave a curt nod with a slight smile, his glare puncturing my lungs.
My stomach tumbled, the blood rushing from my face. "I'm sorry, what about Kane Rogers?"
"His death."
I turned to Aria, her mouth ajar.
"How?"
Whitney flipped through her papers. "Still unknown." She slapped her hand over the papers. "Okay. Don't forget, folks—our October series on Riverfield’s haunted history kicks off tomorrow. Jamie, your piece on the ghost of the old mill is due by noon today."
"It's ready." Jamie held up a thumb drive. "You’ll love the part about the headless blacksmith."
The room chuckled, and Whitney allowed a small smile before her expression turned serious—the surrounding ambiance faded as my heart thudded in my ears.
He's dead.
So he wasn't just paranoid?
Someone really was after him.
"That's it." Whitney stood. "Ava, you're staying."
Jerking forward, I snapped out of my shaking thoughts. "Okay."
"Get to work." Whitney huffed through her nose as she looked over at the people crowding the room. "This paper doesn't run itself." She cracked a rare grin as the team scattered to their desks. Aria gripped my arm with a tight-lipped smile of reassurance and joined the fleeing staff.
Whitney sipped her coffee and glanced over her notes. "Your deadline is up. What do you have?"
I shook my head. "Kane Rogers was my source."
She put her coffee mug down on the table with a bang. "When did you speak to him last?"
Shrugging, I pulled my gaze from hers, staring at the manufactured rip in my dark-wash jeans. "Last Thursday."
"How's that possible? He wasn't allowed any visitors."
"I'd rather not divulge that information."
Whitney gave a curt nod. She'd enforced the code of ethics in each one of us. "Okay. Umm. " Her full lips twitched as she pulled them to the side. "Do you have anything else?"
I shook my head. "I'm waiting for another source to pull through."
She exhaled through her mouth, pursing her lips. "I'm not sure how I'm supposed to give you any more leniency—"
"I know. Just... Please." I pressed my hands flat on the table. "I am so close to breaking through on this. I can feel it."
"You haven't—"
"And now, with Kane dying just days after I spoke to him... you can't tell me that's just a coincidence. That man was paranoid that someone was going to off him."
"Ava, you haven't produced anything on this story for 2 weeks."
"A good story takes time, Whitney. That's all I need." I paused, biting the inside of my cheek, my fingers digging into my cuticle. "Just a little more time. Please?"
"I don't know..." She tapped her pointer finger on the stack of paperwork in front of her.
"I won't ask again." I leaned over the table, my elbows resting on the surface, my knuckle pinched between my teeth.
"Alright. You have one more week. If you don't produce anything of substance, that's it. I'm putting you on animal shelter duty for a month."
My left eyelid twitched as I stood, restraining myself from offering her a gigantic hug. "Thank you."
"You have a condition."
"Okay?" I gave her a wary look.
"I want a report on Kane."
"But you handed it to Max. I can't take that from him. He already despises me."
" Psshh ." She picked up her papers and stood. "He does not ."
"Does... Did you not see his glare today?"
"That's his reaction to everything. Jamie brought in the cake one time, and he glared at each bite he took. The man had a blast."
I laughed, letting a bit of tension release from my shoulders.
"You worry too much." She rested a gentle hand on my shoulder, her reassurance like an asp's bite. "Get these stories done so we can move on."
Nodding, I left the conference room, phone gripped tight in my hand, and plopped into my rolling desk chair.
"What the hell was that about?" Aria slid into my cubicle with her chair. "Are you fired?"
"No. She wanted an update. My deadline was today." I dropped my phone onto the desk and crossed my leg over my knee. Loosening my belt, I bounced my head against my chair and exhaled a puff of air before looking at her again. "My source is dead."
Her mouth gaped as her eyes darted over the office, then scooched in closer to me. "Who?"
"Kane Rogers."
Aria raised a brow. " He ' s your source?"
I nodded. " Was. " My fingers pinched my lower lip, my phone buzzing on my desk. "Dammit. I've got to take this."
"Who is it?" She frowned and extended her neck, looking at my screen.
" Your source." I pressed the green button and put the phone to my ear. "Hello?"
"It's Dr. Kline," his gruff voice crackled over the phone. "I ran your mystery pill through every machine I’ve got. Mass spectrometry, chromatography, even that old spectrophotometer I keep around for nostalgia. And let me tell you—"
I jerked upright, elbows smacking the desk, sending a tingling spark to my fingers. "Is it bad?"
"Nope, it’s acetylsalicylic acid. Plain ol’ aspirin."
I paused, my heart thrumming like an out-of-control bull. "Come again?"
"Unless you're planning on taking down headaches across America, I'd say you're safe. No secret formulas, no bad guys hiding in the shadows. It's a glorified painkiller you can pick up at any corner store."
"That’s it? Are you sure?"
He scammed me.
That little dirtbag...
"Sure as I’m alive and my back still aches every morning, which, for the record, is one hundred percent." He chuckled and tapered off with a groan. "The compound's as basic as they come. Someone either really wanted you to have a headache-free day or thought it'd make for a killer joke. Pun absolutely intended."
I glared at Aria, who sat wide-eyed, her body leaning towards me. "And there is no way you made a mistake?"
"None. Now I have other things to get to. Remind your colleague this was it. I'm done."
The phone went dead and I dropped it onto the desk. My fingers dashed through my hair, tugging on the loose strands at the base.
"Well?"
"He is the most annoying source I've ever had the displeasure of working with."
She laughed. "He's eccentric."
I rolled my eyes. "I'll say."
"Did he figure it out?"
I bit the inside of my cheek, my knee bobbing beneath the desk. "That little shit scammed me."
"Who?"
"The drug dealer," I whispered. "He gave me goddamned aspirin."
Aria's suppressed laughter broke free, spilling into a full-bellied giggle.
"This is so not funny." I shook my head in my hands, then sat back. "He said that was the last favor he's doing. So you lost a source for nothing."
She wiped a tear from beneath her mascara eyelashes. "Yeah, he says that every time." Aria sucked in a shaky breath and released it with the remnants of laughter. "Don't worry about him. He's eccentric, remember?"
"What do I do now?"
"Wait for the Mayor's office to call for an interview?" She shrugged. "Harass the ATF for your FOIA or whoever you submitted that to."
"Right. Because that works so well."
"Go on a date." She spun in her chair. "Speaking of—"
"No."
"No? I didn't even ask my question."
"You didn't have to. The answer is no."
"Come on. Let me live my life vicariously through you."
I gave her a grim smile. "I thought that's what I was doing with you?"
"My life is boring. You're single and not taking advantage of the moment."
Rolling my eyes, I bit into my lower lip. "I don't have an interest in dating."
I tried.
It was too perfect.
And perfection never lasts.
"That is a bald-faced lie. I saw how you were talking to that hottie at the rave."
I waved her off. "He's just a friend."
My phone buzzed, and her eyes grazed over it. "Just a friend who keeps texting you?"
"He's..." I crossed my leg over my knee and groaned. "We had a date last night at the festival, and we sort of—" I raised a brow and nodded, hoping she'd catch the hint without the words spewing from my lips. "You know..."
"Oh..." Her mouth parted, her eyes widening. "Oh. At the festival?" Blush hit her cheeks as I nodded.
"It wasn't planned or anything. It just happened."
"That's normally how sex goes." She rolled her lips. "It's been a long time since Henry and I did something like that."
"Spontaneous sex?"
Her eyes lowered. "No, anything like that outside of the bedroom ." A sigh fell from her lips as she sat back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. "In fact, I think the last time was when we went camping two years ago. I can still hear the birds chirping."
Two years...
I shivered as the memory of the odd-behaving bird came to mind. "Hey, speaking of nature." Sliding my pen and paper across my desk, I drew a bizarre sketch of the bird in the tree, the image crisper in my mind than the blob on paper. "Have you ever seen a bird like this?"
" Ummm. .." she squinted as she looked at the drawing. "Maybe, but this isn't a John James Audubon of pictures."
I tore the paper back from her hands. "It's the best I can do." Tossing the paper back to the desk, I stuffed the end of the pen into my mouth and chewed. "Have you ever seen it act strange?"
"Well, if it's a finch-like this toddler drawing indicates... it depends. Strange how?"
Shrugging, I pulled the pen from my lips, checking the end for broken ink, then settled my hands in my lap. "It flew into the tree above me during my meeting with your source, then sat there, unmoving, while another bird chirped and pecked at it."
"Yeah, that’s strange." She dug into her pocket and withdrew her phone. "Birds rarely stay still. Especially if they’re being attacked. But there was this one time that I saw something like that. The bird struck a window, then flew into a tree and sat there for like thirty minutes." She turned her phone screen towards me.
A cardinal sat in the lower-lying branches, while a female sat in a branch above, her head cocked to the side as she looked down at him.
"Henry wouldn't let me touch him, but after a few minutes, he flew away, and his little girlfriend followed."
Maybe...
"There are a lot of windows on those buildings."
"It happens all the time. I once ran a campaign to have the windows of the office buildings in town covered in wraps. You know, like the ones on cars?" She held her hands out in front of her as she talked. "That way, no bird would fly into them. Besides, it'd be aesthetically pleasing all the way around. No one wants to look at big metal buildings with glinting windows that blind you in the evening traffic."
"Speak for yourself." My phone vibrated, and I reached for it. "The people in New York City find it beautiful." I glanced down at my screen, and my heart rate spiked.
"Another lead?" Aria tipped her head up. "Or your one-night stand?" She wiggled her brows.
"You aren't helping. Go find something to do before Whitney tans your hide."
"Fine." With an exhale, she pushed herself back to her cubicle as she sat in her chair, leaving me with shaking fingers and a swirling gut.
Answer it... or leave it...
Like I'd left him last night without another word, my heart hammering and dread twisting my mind like a walking nightmare.
I opened his message before I chickened out.
Nate
I had fun last night.
Okay, that sounds like my teenage self after prom.
Help me out here. I'm kinda flailing.
Let me take you to dinner tomorrow.
A smile spread across my face, my knuckles covering my mouth.
I can handle that.
No strings.
It's just benefits.
Depends.
His three dancing dots appeared, and I puffed out a breath of air, my hands shaking.
Nate
On what?
My thumbs moved over the letters, erasing, backtracking, and starting over, consuming at least five minutes.
Are you picking the location?
Nate
I mean... I did ask.
I pressed my lips between my teeth, holding back my smile, my cheeks burning as I glanced around.
True. Okay. Tomorrow at 6?
Nate
That's my line.
I let out a sharp breath, dropped my phone into my bag, tucked my chair under my desk, and left the office with what little dignity I had left.