Chapter 16
Sloane
I woke to the weight of Garrett's arm around my waist. His breath warm against the back of my neck.
His heartbeat. The solid warmth of him pressed against me. Morning light through the curtains, painting everything gold.
He'd asked me to move in three days ago.
It felt fast. Eight years of silence, a few months of circling each other, and now this, my toothbrush next to his, my clothes claiming the left side of his closet. Waking up tangled together like we'd never learned how to sleep apart.
But it wasn't fast. Not really.
We weren't starting over. We were picking up where we left off. All those years between us, the long way around to the same destination. The scenic route through hell, maybe.
But we'd made it.
Garrett stirred behind me. His arm tightened, pulling me closer. His nose brushed the curve of my shoulder.
"You're thinking too loud," he murmured against my skin.
"Sorry."
"Don't be." A kiss to my shoulder blade. Another, higher, against the side of my neck. "What time is it?"
"Almost seven."
He groaned. The sound vibrated through his chest and into my back. "Shift starts at eight."
"Marianne wants me in the office." I stretched, body protesting the idea of leaving this bed. "She's assigning something new."
"Already?" He propped himself up on one elbow. Sleep-rumpled hair. Stubble dark along his jaw. Gray-blue eyes soft in the morning light. "The corruption piece just published."
"That's how it works. One story ends, another starts."
I rolled onto my back. Reached up to brush the hair from his face. "She mentioned a billionaire. Money laundering that isn't really money laundering. The kind of thing that takes months."
"Sounds like you."
"Sounds like a lot of late nights."
"I can handle late nights." He kissed me. Slow and soft. His hand found my hip, thumb tracing circles against thin cotton, his shirt, the old FDNY one I'd claimed as mine. "As long as you come home to me."
Home.
The word settled into my chest like it had been waiting for permission to land. "Always."
"Always," I said.
He kissed me again. Deeper this time. His weight shifting over me, his hand sliding up my side, and for a moment I forgot about Marianne and deadlines and billionaires laundering money through shell companies.
Then his phone alarm went off.
Garrett dropped his forehead to my collarbone with a groan. "I hate that sound."
"Go." I pushed at his shoulder, laughing. "Save the city. I'll be here when you get back."
He lifted his head. Looked at me with something soft and fierce and a little bit wondering, like he couldn't quite believe I was real.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "You will."
One more kiss. Quick and warm. Then he was up, heading for the shower, and I lay there watching the morning light shift across the ceiling.
Eight years. We'd lost eight years.
But we had the rest of our lives to make up for it.
The New York Times building gleamed in the afternoon sun, all glass and steel and the weight of a hundred years of journalism pressing down from the masthead.
I'd worked here for five years. Walked through these doors a thousand times. But today felt different. Today felt like the start of something new.
Marianne looked up when I knocked. "Good. Sit."
I sat.
"Engagement numbers came in this morning. Strong across the board." She pulled off her reading glasses. "People are paying attention. That's what good journalism does."
Something warm in my chest. Weeks of work. Late nights in his living room, connecting dots, building the case piece by piece.
All of it leading to this.
"That's good to hear."
"It's excellent work, Harper." A thin smile crossed her face. "I've already fielded two calls from city officials asking who our sources are. I told them to pound sand."
That sounded like Marianne.
Seven years of filing reports no one read. Seven years of watching violations get buried. He'd built that documentation alone, in the margins of his shifts, never knowing if anyone would care.
Now the whole city was paying attention.
Now people cared. Now the whole city was paying attention.
I wished he could be here to see this. To know that all those years of careful, quiet work had finally meant something.
"Now. The arson story." Marianne leaned back. "Publishing Marsh's photo should help NYPD track her down. When Diaz makes an arrest, we run the full piece. Everything."
"And until then?"
"We wait." Her pen tapped against the desk. "Timing matters. We get one shot at this."
She was right. Garrett's documentation exposed the corruption. Rebecca's fires exposed what happened when the system failed. Together, the two stories told the truth about a city that had let its most vulnerable citizens burn.
"In the meantime." She slid a folder across the desk. "Victor Ashworth. Tech billionaire. Months of work. Right up your alley."
I took the folder.
"We'll talk next week." She turned back to her computer, then paused. "Good work, Harper. Really."
The newsroom emptied around me in stages.
First the day shift, packing up at six, then the evening crew, trickling out one by one as deadlines passed and stories filed. The cleaning staff came through around eight, vacuuming between desks, emptying trash cans, nodding at me as they passed.
By nine o'clock, the floor was quiet.
By ten, I was alone.
I liked working late. The silence. The way the city lights glittered through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The feeling of being the only person awake in a building full of stories, surrounded by decades of journalism soaked into the walls.
Tonight I was deep in the Ashworth files when I heard it.
Footsteps.
Not the click of heels or the shuffle of a janitor's sneakers. Something deliberate. Measured. The sound of someone who didn't want to be heard.
I looked up.
The newsroom stretched in front of me. Rows of empty desks lit by the blue glow of sleeping monitors. Darkness pooling in the corners.
Nothing moved.
But the hair on the back of my neck was standing up.
I reached for my phone. 10:47 PM. Garrett would be on shift until morning.
I heard footsteps and got spooked?
I set the phone down.
The footsteps came again. Closer. Slow and patient.
I stood. "Hello?"
My voice echoed across the empty floor.
Nothing.
"Security?"
Silence. Long enough that I started to feel foolish. Long enough that I almost sat back down.
Then a voice from the shadows between the rows of desks. Quiet. Calm.
"Ms. Harper."
Rebecca Marsh stepped into the light.
She looked like her photo. Brown hair going gray at the temples. Kind eyes that had seen too much grief. A face that might have been warm once, before loss carved it into something harder.
Dark clothes. Practical. A maintenance uniform, the kind that let you walk through a building without anyone looking twice.
"You published my picture." She said it like an observation. No anger. Just fact. "It made things harder. I had to adjust my plans."
"How did you get in here?"
"Walked in this morning. Maintenance uniform, borrowed badge. Hid in the basement until everyone left." A thin smile crossed her face. "It's not hard to be invisible."
My phone was on my desk. Three feet away.
Rebecca shook her head. "Don't. Please. I just want to talk."
Something in her voice stopped me. The crack underneath the calm. The exhaustion of someone who'd been carrying something heavy for far too long.
I knew that weight.
"About Emma." Her voice cracked on the name. Just slightly. Just enough to remind me that underneath everything, she was still a mother. Still grieving. "About Garrett Stone. About the happy ending he's getting while my daughter is in the ground."
"I know about Emma," I said quietly. "I know what happened to her."
Rebecca's eyes flickered. Surprise, maybe. That I knew her daughter's name. That I'd done more than just chase her as a story.
"Garrett tried to save her. He went into that building. He almost reached her."
"Almost." Rebecca's eyes went hard. "Almost doesn't mean anything when your child is dead."
"No." My throat tightened. "It doesn't."
The bathroom floor. The blood. The way my body had betrayed me, had taken something I wanted so badly before I ever got to hold her.
I'd never seen her face. Never heard her cry. But I'd loved her. And losing her had nearly destroyed me.
"I'm so sorry." The words came out rough. "What happened to Emma should never have happened."
She stared at me. Something shifted in her face. Like she hadn't expected that. Like she'd been bracing for an argument and found something else instead.
"I know what it's like to lose a child." Barely above a whisper. "Not the same way. Not for as long. But I know what it does to you. How you wake up every morning and for one second you forget, and then you remember, and it's like losing them all over again."
Rebecca's composure cracked. Just for a moment. Her lip trembled and her eyes went bright with tears she was fighting not to shed.
"You lost a child?"
"Years ago. Before she was born." I swallowed. "I never got to meet her. But I wanted her. So much."
The silence stretched between us.
Two women who knew what it meant to have something precious ripped away.
"I'm sorry," Rebecca said. And she meant it.
"I know you are."
"And I know nothing I say can make what happened to Emma okay. Nothing can bring her back. But the system that failed her, they're being held accountable now."
"Not fast enough."
"I know it feels that way."
"You don't know." A step closer.
"Rebecca."
Tears were sliding down her cheeks now. She didn't wipe them away.
"She was eight years old. Eight." Rebecca's hands curled into fists.
"First day of third grade. First crush. First heartbreak.
Graduation. College. Maybe children of her own someday.
She had all of that ahead of her." Her voice broke.
"And she burned to death in a building that should have been condemned years ago. "
"I know." My own eyes were burning. "I know, Rebecca. And I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry the system failed her. Failed you."
"I spent years trying to do it the right way.
" Her voice was raw. "I filed lawsuits. Wrote letters.
Showed up at city council meetings. Begged anyone who would listen.
" She wiped her face with the back of her hand.
"Nobody listened. The landlord who killed my daughter keeps collecting rent.
The inspector who signed off on that building got promoted.
The system that murdered Emma shrugged and moved on. "
"Let me tell her story." A careful step toward her. "Let me write about Emma. Let the world know who she was and what was taken from her."
"It's too late for that."
"It's not." I reached out. Slowly. "It's never too late to tell the truth."
Rebecca looked at me. For a moment, something softened behind her eyes.
Then it hardened. Something cold and resolved sliding into place.
"And Garrett Stone gets to be happy." Flat. "Gets to fall in love. Gets to build a future while Emma has no future at all."
She turned and walked toward the door. Calm. Unhurried. Like we'd just finished a conversation about the weather.
"Rebecca." I started after her. "Rebecca, where are you going?"
She didn't answer. Didn't look back. Just stepped through the doorway and pulled the door shut behind her.
I heard the click of a lock. Then another.
I ran to the door. Grabbed the handle. Shook it hard.
Nothing. She'd reinforced it somehow. Locks that shouldn't be there.
"Rebecca!" Pounding on the glass. "Let me out!"
Through the window, I watched her walk toward the stairwell. That same measured pace. That same eerie calm.
And then I noticed the floor.
The carpet was dark. Wet. Glistening under the fluorescent lights in a way it shouldn't be. A trail of liquid running the length of the corridor, pooling near the walls.
The smell hit a second later. Seeping through the cracks around the door.
Chemical. Sharp. Accelerant.
She'd prepared everything. Before she even came to find me.
Rebecca reached the stairwell door. Paused. Turned back to look at me through the glass.
For a moment, I saw the woman she used to be. Before grief remade her. A mother who loved her daughter. A woman who might have been my friend, in another life.
"I'm sorry." Quiet enough that I read her lips more than heard the words.
She pulled something from her pocket.
A matchbook.
"Rebecca, don't—"
She struck the match. Held it for a moment. The small flame dancing between her fingers.
Then she dropped it.
The hallway exploded into fire.
Blue and orange racing along the trails she'd laid, spreading faster than anything natural should. The carpet ignited. The walls caught. Within seconds, a wall of fire between me and the stairwell.
The sprinklers kicked on. Water hissing against the flames.
But it wasn't enough. The fire was too hot, too fast, too hungry. It pushed back against the spray, eating through the hallway, growing despite everything the building threw at it.
Through the flames, the stairwell door closing.
She was gone.