Chapter 8
The mailbox still had a faded bumper sticker on its side: Support Local Journalism.
Harper sat in the passenger seat of Mitch DeMario's truck and studied Edward Marsh's house through the windshield. The sticker was sun-bleached, peeling at the corners, but someone had left it there. A small act of defiance, or maybe just forgetting. She wasn't sure which was sadder.
"You want me to come in?" Mitch asked.
"No. Wait here."
"I don't like it."
"I know." Harper reached for the door handle. "But he's more likely to talk if it's just me. Two strangers make it feel like an interrogation."
Mitch shifted in his seat. He had the patience of a man who'd spent years waiting in worse places than this, but his eyes kept tracking the empty road behind them.
"Fifteen minutes," he said. "After that, I'm coming to the door."
"Twenty."
"Fifteen. Non-negotiable."
Harper almost smiled. "Fine."
She climbed out of the truck and walked up the cracked concrete path. A wind chime hung motionless near the door. The yard was overgrown but not abandoned—someone still mowed, just not often enough.
She knocked.
Footsteps, slow and heavy. The door opened six inches to reveal a face that matched the house—weathered, tired, holding together through habit rather than hope.
"Mr. Marsh?"
"Who's asking?"
"My name is Holly Warren. I'm a writer working on a book about small-town journalism. I was hoping to talk to you about The Blossom Springs Herald."
His hand tightened on the door frame. The Herald. She could see the name land on him like something heavy.
"The Herald's been dead two years."
"I know. That's what I want to understand."
He studied her through the gap. Harper let him look, kept her posture open, her expression neutral. She'd done this a hundred times—stood on doorsteps asking strangers to trust her with their stories. Some said no. Most said yes, eventually, because people wanted to be heard.
"You're not from around here," he said.
"No."
"Good." He opened the door wider. "Come in."
"They came for my advertisers first."
Marsh sat in an armchair that had molded to his shape over the years of use. Harper had taken the couch across from him, a mug of weak coffee cooling in her hands.
"Hardware store, grocery, car dealership—everyone I'd worked with for twenty years." He stared past her, out the window. "Gone in ten days. They called to cancel their contracts and wouldn't say why. Wouldn't look me in the eye when I saw them on the street."
"What triggered it?"
"A story. A series, actually—three parts.
I'd been digging into property sales in the county.
Patterns that didn't make sense." His jaw tightened.
"Families selling land they'd owned for generations, always to the same handful of buyers.
Prices below market. Transactions that happened fast, sometimes overnight. "
"Shell companies."
"At least a dozen of them, all connected if you knew where to look. They were buying up Blossom Springs piece by piece, and no one was asking questions." He set down his mug with more force than necessary. "So I asked them. In print. With names and dates and public records, anyone could verify."
"And the advertisers pulled out."
"That was just the start." Marsh's voice flattened. "Distribution dried up next. The company that delivered my papers suddenly couldn't make the route. Then my printer had 'equipment problems.' Then someone bought the building I'd been renting for fifteen years and tripled my rent."
"Who?"
"A company called Coastal Venture Partners."
Harper kept her face still. The name was all over Geri's album. All over her own research. But Marsh didn't need to know that yet.
"I've heard of them," she said.
Marsh looked at her sharply. "Then you know more than you're letting on."
"I know enough to believe you. I'm trying to understand the rest."
He was quiet. The wind chime outside stirred, a faint hollow sound.
"I tried to fight," he said finally. "Went digital. Published online. Thought maybe I could survive without the print edition, without the advertisers, without the building." He shook his head. "But they came for that too."
"How?"
"Legal threats. Copyright claims on photographs I'd taken myself.
Cease and desist letters for stories that were completely factual.
My website got hacked three times in one month.
" He rubbed his eyes. "Then my lawyer called.
Said he couldn't represent me anymore. Conflict of interest. Wouldn't explain what that meant. "
"So you stopped."
"I didn't stop. I was stopped." The distinction mattered to him. Harper heard it in his voice. "I couldn't publish. Couldn't distribute. Couldn't afford to defend myself against an endless stream of lawsuits. They didn't beat me. They buried me."
Harper glanced at the wall behind him. Framed awards—Florida Press Association, Community Journalism Excellence, and a certificate from the Society of Professional Journalists. The glass was dusty, but the awards themselves gleamed. He still cleaned them.
"The day my lawyer dropped me," Marsh said, his voice going rough, "I drove to my office. Former office, by then—I'd already moved everything out, couldn't afford the rent. But I still had the key. Landlord hadn't changed the locks yet."
He stopped. His hand trembled slightly where it rested on the armchair.
"I sat at my desk for three hours. Empty room.
No computer, no files, nothing. Just me and the desk I'd written ten thousand stories on.
" His voice cracked. He cleared his throat, hard, and pressed on.
"I kept thinking someone would call. One of my sources, one of my old contacts, someone who'd read The Herald for thirty years and wanted to know what happened. The phone never rang."
Harper said nothing. She'd learned when to push and when to let silence do the work.
"My wife left me six months later." He said it flatly, like a fact about someone else. "Thirty-one years of marriage. She said she didn't recognize me anymore. Said I'd become obsessed with something I couldn't change, and she couldn't watch me destroy myself over it."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. She was right." He looked down at his hands. They were shaking now, fine tremors he couldn't control. "I was destroying myself. I couldn't let it go. Couldn't accept that everything I'd built for thirty-five years was just—gone. Like it never mattered."
His voice broke. He turned his face toward the window and went quiet. His shoulders rose once, twice. Harper watched him fight for control, and she kept still, and she breathed, and she waited.
When he turned back to her, his eyes were wet, but his voice was steady.
"I haven't talked about this in a long time," he said. "Most people don't want to hear it. They want the quick version—paper went under, sad story, moving on. They don't want to know what it actually costs."
"I want to know."
He looked at her for a long moment. Whatever test she was being given, she must have passed it, because something in his posture loosened.
"Do you know who was behind it?" she asked. "Not the shell companies. The person."
"I have suspicions. Nothing I can prove." He met her eyes. "Douglas Sattler was one of the names in my story. Big real estate developer. Very connected. A week after I published, he came to see me. Sat right where you're sitting now."
"What did he say?"
"He said I was a good journalist. Said the community was lucky to have someone like me.
Said it would be a shame if something happened to the paper.
" Marsh's hands curled into fists on the armrests.
"Never threatened me directly. Never raised his voice.
Just smiled and talked about what a nice town this was and how important it was to keep things peaceful. "
"And two weeks later, everything fell apart."
"Like clockwork."
Harper set down her coffee.
"Edward. Did you ever hear the name Harrison Montgomery in connection with any of this?"
His hands went still on the armrests. The trembling stopped cold.
"Montgomery owns a lighting company. Donates to half the charities in the state. Why would he be connected?"
"I don't know yet. That's what I'm trying to find out."
Marsh was quiet for a long moment.
"I saw him once," he said slowly. "Montgomery. At a Chamber of Commerce dinner, about six months after my paper died. He was sitting with Sattler. Laughing about something. Old friends, you could tell. Comfortable with each other."
"Did you talk to him?"
"I tried. Introduced myself, mentioned I used to run The Herald. He looked right through me like I wasn't there." Marsh's voice went flat. "Sattler saw me approach. Put his hand on Montgomery's arm. Just a touch. And Montgomery walked away without another word."
Harper filed that away. Montgomery and Sattler. Connected. Coordinated.
"Thank you," she said. "For talking to me."
"Why are you really here?" Marsh leaned forward. "You're not writing a book. Or if you are, that's not all you're doing."
Harper considered lying.
"I'm a journalist," she said. "Like you. And I'm investigating the same people who destroyed your paper."
Marsh stared at her.
"Then be careful," he said quietly. "Be very careful.
Because they don't just take your paper.
They take everything. Your reputation. Your savings.
Your marriage. Your will to fight." He looked down at his hands.
"I used to write every day. Couldn't imagine not writing.
Now I can't remember the last time I opened a notebook. "
Harper looked at this man—his dusty awards, his shaking hands, his empty desk three miles away—and saw her own reflection. Not who she was. Who she could become, if the people hunting her won.
"I'm sorry," she said. "For what they did to you."
"Don't be sorry. Be effective." He stood, signaling the interview was over. "Finish what I started. Make them pay for it."
"I'm going to try."
"Trying isn't enough." He walked her to the door. "They've been doing this for decades. They're patient. They're organized. And they have more resources than you can imagine."
"I know."
"Do you?" He opened the door. Afternoon light fell across his face. "Because I thought I knew too."
Mitch was leaning against the truck when she came down the porch steps.
"Seventeen minutes," he said.
"I lost track."
"That's why you have me." He opened the passenger door. "You okay?"
Harper climbed in without answering.
Mitch got behind the wheel and started the engine, but didn't move. He sat there, hands resting on the steering wheel, watching her.
"Whoever that man is, whatever he told you—it shook you."
"I'm fine."
"You're not." He said it the way he said most things—without judgment, without pressure, just a flat statement of what he saw.
"And that's your business. But I've been doing this job a long time, Ms. Warren, and I know the difference between someone who's scared of an ex-boyfriend and someone who's scared of something else entirely. "
Harper turned to look at him. His face was unreadable, but his eyes were sharp.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying your story doesn't quite add up." He shifted to face her more directly. "You told me you needed protection from a stalker. An ex who won't let go. But you don't act like someone with a stalker. You act like someone running an operation."
Her stomach tightened. "I don't know what you mean."
"You check your surroundings constantly.
You vary your routes without being asked.
You notice surveillance before I point it out.
" He ticked the items off like a list. "You asked me to wait in the car while you interview a former newspaper editor who lives alone at the edge of town.
None of that fits the profile of a woman hiding from an abusive ex. "
Harper said nothing.
"I'm not asking you to tell me the truth," Mitch said. "Whatever you're really doing here, that's your concern. But I need to know if the threat level is higher than you've let on. Because if it is, I need to adjust my protocols."
She weighed her options. Mitch was perceptive—more perceptive than she'd given him credit for. Lying to him now would only make him more suspicious. But telling him the truth wasn't possible either.
"The threat is real," she said carefully. "And it may be more serious than I originally indicated. But I can't give you details."
"Can't or won't?"
"Both."
He nodded slowly, processing that.
"Are you law enforcement?"
"No."
"Federal?"
"No."
"Journalist."
She hesitated a beat too long.
"Thought so." He put the truck in gear. "I worked with a few journalists overseas. Embedded reporters, that kind of thing. You've got the same look. Always watching, always calculating, always three steps ahead of the conversation."
"Is that a problem?"
"Depends." He pulled out onto the dirt road. "Are the people you're investigating likely to come after you with lawyers, or with something more direct?"
Harper thought about Isak in a parking garage. Daniel Bennett's heart. Nova Boone's stairs.
"I don't know," she said honestly. "It could go either way."
"Then we plan for both." His voice was matter-of-fact, the tone of a man who had planned for worse. "I'll adjust my rates accordingly. Hazard pay."
"I can afford it."
"Good." He glanced at her as he drove. "For what it's worth, I hope you get them. Whoever they are. Marsh back there—he had the look of a man who got ground up by something bigger than himself. I've seen that look before. Never liked it."
"You believed him? You could hear what we were saying?"
"Couldn't hear a word. Didn't need to. The way he carried himself when he opened the door. The way you carried yourself when you came back out." Mitch shrugged. "Some things you don't need to hear to understand."
They drove in silence for a while. The dirt road gave way to pavement. The scattered houses thickened into neighborhoods. Blossom Springs assembled itself around them, piece by piece—the park, the shops, the families walking dogs and pushing strollers.
"Where to?" Mitch asked.
"Back to Sarge's. I need to make some calls."
He nodded and turned toward the water.
Harper watched through the windshield as the town slid past. Charming. Peaceful. The kind of place you'd see on a postcard.
Marsh's voice echoed in her head. Trying isn't enough.