Chapter Thirteen #2
A few minutes later, she was back at the little table, fully dressed, hair tucked behind her ears as she accessed the Internet through the secure browser on her computer, and began her research, starting with Remy Blaze.
With Blitz lying heavily against her feet, Natalie created a spreadsheet to track information alongside the names of the dozen or so men she could recall that the Night Herons had exposed.
She spent hours scanning every bit of news she could find, taking note of what each man was doing now, where he lived—a few were in jail—his known associates, the details of his crimes, and anything else she could think of that might be relevant to finding a link or identifying the person behind the attack on her and Emma.
She also made a note to ask Dallas if there was a way to use AI to do this kind of analysis while maintaining the team’s anonymity. It would save a ton of time and probably find info or recognize connections that she missed.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Ford’s rusty voice came from the doorway.
Nat jumped, startled by his sudden presence. How had he snuck up on her? Pressing a hand to her chest to calm her racing heart, she looked at him over her shoulder.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“S’okay.” She turned her attention back to her computer, because—goddamn—he looked good, all sleep rumpled, hair a little wild, plaid boxers doing nothing to hide his lean physique.
He grabbed a cup of water and came to stand beside her in a position where he couldn’t view her screen. “What are you working on?”
Sighing, she sat back in the chair and rubbed her suddenly tired eyes. “Trying to figure out who’s after me and my team.”
“Any luck?”
She shook her head. “So far, I just have a list of assholes who might blame us for destroying their good standing. Nothing jumps out at me though.”
Ford sat in the chair across from her, giving her neck a break from looking up. “These are all people you wrote about, and it ruined their career somehow?”
This was where it got tricky, because if he looked up her byline, she was on very few of the breaking stories. She had just enough articles to her name to support her assertion that she worked as a reporter for the Free Pen Project.
The FPP was a legit group that she and Emma had formed to support the often-underfunded investigative journalism work, but they kept that separate from the work they did for the Night Herons.
The two of them always passed along the information and evidence they collected to someone at one of the major media companies.
Sometimes it was the person who’d tipped them off to the crimes in the first place—usually when they couldn’t convince their paper or news outlet to let them follow the story.
Sometimes it was a reporter they knew could bring the story to the widest audience.
At every stage, they went to great lengths to hide their link to those breaking the news, and spread out who they fed information to in order to protect their network. But someone had figured it out anyway. Maybe they were using AI?
Regardless, Ford waited patiently for an answer, and he could easily verify her bylines with a quick web search.
“Emma and I tend to work behind the scenes on the investigative side. For maximum impact, we usually pass on what we find to our network of writers at larger news outlets.” All true, it was just their methods and funding sources that might not pass muster if revealed.
She and her team used social engineering, fake identities, and spyware to get what they needed. Nothing admissible in court, but enough to convict these assholes in the court of public opinion—and get law enforcement interested in digging deeper.
The Night Herons also “redirected” as much of the men’s offshore wealth as they could find, giving it to organizations that helped women in need.
Still, sometimes the biggest punishment for men like Remy Blaze and Earl Price wasn’t jail—or even losing a large chunk of blood money—but losing their power and influence. And they did not take kindly to it.
Which was the reason the Night Herons avoided any public connections to the stories.
Someone who worked for media titans like the New York Times or the one of the major broadcast stations should have better protection and resources than Nat’s team.
Then again, the reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein story had been followed, bugged, and intimidated.
If the bad guys were willing to go after them, they probably wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of relative nobodies like Nat and Emma.
“You do all the leg work and then give up the glory to someone else?” Ford asked, a deep groove forming between his brows. “Why?”
She shrugged. “Turns out I’m better at research than writing.” True enough. Her writing skills were passable, but not Pulitzer-worthy or anything. “Besides, writing is the boring part for me.” Another fact.
He studied her like he could tell something was off, but he didn’t call her on it. “Can I see the list?”
No. Giving him that info put her and her team at risk.
Didn’t it?
Only if she didn’t trust him. Which she did. Wholeheartedly. With her safety and her body, if not her heart.
She ran her fingers lightly over the keyboard, enjoying the faint rattle and the tickling sensation. Would anyone else on the team be pissed at her for revealing the magnitude of what they’d accomplished in secret? Did the potential benefit of sharing outweigh the risks?
On the sofa, Blitz stood and stretched, shaking her body from head to tail before hopping to the floor and slurping water for nearly a minute straight, leaving little puddles all over the kitchen tile.
Natalie suppressed a laugh, but the tension in the room subsided.
With a sigh, Ford stood. “I love you, Beezee, but you’re the messiest fucking dog on the planet.”
“Beezee?” Nat’s smile broke free. Somehow the fact that he had nicknames for his dog made her inordinately happy.
His turn to shrug. “They just pop out. I have a million of them.”
“Tell me.” She swiveled in her seat to watch him mop up the water with a paper towel.
The muscles in his back and arms and legs—everywhere, really—bunched and stretched enticingly.
He glanced at her sideways with a slight smirk, and suddenly she wasn’t tired anymore.
Rising, he tossed the wet towel in the trash and washed his hands before turning to face her, arms crossed, his beautiful body on full display.
“I’ll share my list if you share yours.”
Across the small room, Natalie’s gaze raked Ford’s skin, lighting him up as she considered his challenge. To keep his body’s reaction to her hot look under control, he focused on the danger she was in, and the mystery of why an investigative reporter would give away her best leads.
She had to be hiding something, right?
“Would it help if I put on some clothes?” He’d come downstairs with the intention of enticing her back to bed. Had he known the turn things would take, he’d have at least thrown on a T-shirt.
Giving him a flirty look, she said, “Help who? You look fine to me.”
Holding in a laugh, he shook his head. “It doesn’t seem fair that you’re fully dressed and I’m in my unmentionables.”
She smiled and shook her head. Then, without breaking eye contact, she stood and placed a hand on the button of her jeans. “That’s easily remedied.”
He swallowed hard. God, she was beautiful. Bold and brash. Playful and tough. Exasperating and fierce. Something about her undid him completely, and he wanted her like he’d wanted nothing and no one before.
Not that it changed anything. Once they figured out who was behind the attempt on her life and put a stop to it, she’d return to LA, and he’d return to Geneva, and that was that.
Does it have to be?
He shushed his fickle mind. Blitz and his family aside, Ford could not—would not—willingly open himself up to personal loss ever again. He could enjoy Natalie without doing something foolish like giving her his heart. “Okay, I’ll be right back.”
Her laughter followed him up the stairs to the bedroom where he quickly slid on his jeans and the T-shirt that he’d tossed onto the lampshade in his earlier haste to remove it.
As much as he wanted a repeat, he wanted to see that list first. The sooner they had answers and she was safe, the sooner he could breathe easy again.
If there was even the slightest chance he knew something that could help, he had to try.
Two minutes later, he was in the dining room again, already regretting his choices. Natalie pouted at his fully dressed state, but her red V-neck and jeans did nothing to tamp down his own reaction to her. Desperate to distract himself, he said, “Lightning Bug.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Yellow jacket.”
“What?”
Nat gave him an amused look. “I don’t know. You named a bug, so I did the same.”
He snickered. This woman. “It’s one of Blitz’s nicknames.”
“Aww. That’s adorable.” She smiled at his dog and then faced him again, her expression solemn. Only the twinkle in her blue eyes gave her away. “Are we trading then?”
“Yep.” He sat across from her, anticipation tightening his stomach.
Biting her lower lip, Nat clicked the trackpad on her laptop. She looked at the screen for a long moment before saying, “Remy Blaze.”
The name was a punch to the chest. God, how he hated that man. Blaze’s disgusting revenge porn website had kicked off the chain of events that led to Nat being stalked and Ford getting stabbed. But he hadn’t realized she’d had a hand in taking him down. “Really? Good for you.”
She gave him a tight smile, clearly not as unaffected by her past as she wanted him to believe. “Thank you. It was incredibly satisfying. Also, anticlimactic, if I’m being honest.”
He nodded. “I get it. Revenge doesn’t change the past.”
“Exactly.” She made a twisting motion in the air with her finger, commanding him to reveal another nickname.
Bozo, Blitzen, Beezer…
Earl Price, Richard McMaster, Felix Hoffman…
They switched off, revealing names until Ford started making up new ones just to get the rest of her list. And what a fucking list. It was like the Who’s Who of America’s most vile and powerful.
Natalie laughed. “You really call her Blissy?”
He would now. “These things just pop out.” Tilting his head at her, he asked, “You really dug up the dirt on Archer Lonagan?” The radio show host had gone into hiding after he was convicted of sexual harassment and coercion of dozens of staff members and guests.
How could Natalie be behind the man’s downfall and no one knew about it?
Then again, maybe someone did. Were any of these men angry enough to kill her?
Someone was.
She visibly bristled. “Not just me, but yes, my team got the goods on him.”
“Sorry, it’s just difficult to believe that you guys broke most of the major scandals of the past few years.”
Voice hard, she said, “It’s all about where you put your money and your effort. FPP—the Free Pen Project—has the advantage of a generous donor, and no one to tell us ‘No.’”
“But why not take the credit then?”
“It’s safer for us to fly under the radar.
If no one realizes what we’re doing, we can keep passing the info on to reporters with clout and keep working without interference.
” Her left hand pressed into the table. “We’re in it to expose these assholes who take advantage of their wealth and power to hurt others, not for fame or recognition. ”
Oh. Oh, shit. How had he missed it? “This started with Blaze, didn’t it?”
She paled. Blinked. Looked down at her computer. Licking her lips, she finally made eye contact again. “For me it did.”
There was a lie in there somewhere, but he didn’t understand why or what it could be. “He’s why you went into journalism.” When he’d known her before, she’d been working full-time for a PR firm and studying toward an MBA from UCLA at night.
She nodded, confirming the connection, and her face hardened. “I didn’t want to stop with him. Now I want to take them all down. As many as I can. We all do.”
“How did you meet the others?”
She shook her head. “That’s not on the table.”
Why the hell not? He frowned, but let it go. For now. “Okay.” Pointing to the computer, he asked, “Got more names?”
“Yep. You?”
He wracked his brain. “Blitz-o-rama.” He was pretty sure he’d called his dog that at least once. They really did just tumble out when he was roughhousing with her, or honestly, any time.
Natalie chuckled. “You’re just making them up now.”
He put up his hands and gave her a blank expression. “I’m not.”
Shaking her head, she swiped up on the trackpad and sighed, scrunching her nose. “Harrison Wallace.”
He sat up straight. “The pharmaceutical fraud guy?”
She nodded. “The one responsible for thousands of deaths because his company faked the clinical trial data.”
Ford scrubbed a hand down his face. Fuck.