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JOSH: Everything's fine. Don't worry -- just a delay in the meeting I was going to have, so it screwed up my schedule. I'll be there soon.
ELLA: K.
I leaned back, glad that he was fine and there was nothing dangerous about him being so late.
* * *
Josh finally arrived close to eight thirty, a bag of Vietnamese food in one hand and a six-pack of beer in the other.
"Here I am," he said and placed the beer and food on the kitchen island. "Let the bells right out and the banners fly. Feast your eyes on me."
I laughed at the reference to an old cartoon we'd both seen on television one Saturday morning when we were scanning the channels for something to watch before a game.
We sat together at the coffee table and opened the food, grabbed a beer each and watched the game, which was already in progress.
"Cheers," Josh said and held up his bottle of beer. "Sorry I'm late but I hope the food and of course, the company, will make up for it."
"It does," I said and clinked the neck of my beer against his. "More than makes up for it."
"Good," he said and took a sip. He placed his beer down and had a serious expression on his face. "I got delayed due to a thing, and then my other thing was pushed back as a result."
"You sound busy with things," I replied, smiling at his choice of words. "Don't worry. I won't ask about the thing and the other thing."
"Thank you," he said and dug into his spicy beef stir fry. "Because I won't tell you."
I shrugged. "Luckily, you talk in your sleep, so I'll probably find out anyway," I said with an exaggerated sigh.
"I don't talk in my sleep," he said with a huff. Then he glanced at me. "Do I?"
I laughed. "No, you don't. Don't worry. I was just teasing you since you're determined to be all secretive and mysterious."
"Ella, it's not that I want to be secretive. I want to share everything with you, but this particular story is sensitive, and I don't want to risk it. You'll find out if it comes to anything. For all I know right now, it could be just gossip and disinformation."
"It's okay," I said and squeezed his arm. "I understand. I really do. You won't hear another word from me about the stories you work on at the Chronicle, okay?"
He looked in my eyes. "Thanks. I'll tell you everything I can."
"I know," I said and turned back to my food, picking up a spicy spring roll with my chopsticks and dipped it into the sauce.
I hoped Josh wasn't just minimizing the risks he and the paper were taking with the story he was working on. There was nothing I could do about it anyway, so I tried to push it out of my mind.
10
Josh
I checked my watch and hoped I wasn't making a big mistake.
I met with Reg at his office after my brief stop in Ella's office, planning to go over what news he'd found about Mr. Fedora. Reg's Private Detective Colin had been following Mr. Fedora to find out who the hell he was and why he was tracking us. He'd submitted his first report.
"What have you got for me?" I asked, sitting on the chair across from Reg's desk in the security office.
He flipped open a file and turned a few pages.
"Turns out that his name is Grant McPherson. He's a former cop and worked the fraud squad for a decade before he semi-retired to a life as a private investigator."
"How did you find that out?"
"Face recognition software, the origins of which I won't tell you for your own security."
