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“I do.” I crossed to the kitchenette which was part of the open living area and pulled another rocks glass out of the cupboard. I fetched one cubic piece of ice from the freezer, poured a finger of whiskey over it, and handed it to her.
She held up her glass and waited.
I picked up my drink. “What are we toasting?” I asked.
Her gorgeous grin widened, and she clinked her glass against mine. “A plan. A beautiful, excellent, heartbreaking plan.”
I took a sip of my drink along with her, then motioned to the living room. “Now I’m intrigued.” We sat on either end of the sofa with a few feet of space between us. It wasn’t where I wanted to be in relation to her, but I wasn’t going to make a clusterfuck of everything like I had this afternoon, so distance was good. Well, not good, but necessary. “What, exactly, are you planning?”
“My return from the dead.”
I nearly choked on my second sip of whiskey. “I don’t follow.”
“More like my return from imminent death.” She tossed back the rest of her drink and set her glass on the coffee table, then turned to me with wide, shining eyes. “You said I wouldn’t be safe if Luka thought I was any kind of threat to him, so all we have to do is assure him I’m not a threat.”
“Okay, I’m on board with the what, but the real question is in the how. Do you have something in mind for that?”
“Yes. Were you not paying attention to my speech about the beautiful and excellent plan?”
I set down my half-empty glass and angled myself to face her. “I was. And I also heard the word heartbreaking.”
Her smile faded. “We’ll get to that. We’ll get to all of it. Let me start at the beginning.”
“Please do.” I settled back against the arm of the sofa. I held out little hope that she’d really masterminded a solution to our problem, but I hadn’t been lying when I’d said I was intrigued, and I didn’t hate sitting back and listening to her tell me a story.
“Seven years ago, I was fresh out of college and had just started working at The Sentinel. That’s when I met Aiden Brooks.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “We’re going way back for this. Based on our intel, the Carbonados didn’t even exist seven years ago. How is this relevant to our current problem?”
“I know you’re bossy, but are you always this impatient, too?”
That made me think of our afternoon together, of backing her against the wall and telling her what to do. Her blush made me think she was remembering the exact same moment.
I grinned. “Please, do go on.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Aiden was smart and funny and an absolute curmudgeon, but one of my favorite things about him was his love for what he did. He believed in the importance of journalism and the sanctity of a free press. He knew his generation of reporters wouldn’t be around forever, and he considered it his duty to pass along his knowledge. If he saw someone with talent, he went out of his way to mentor them and nurture that talent. That’s rare in my industry.”
“I’d say it’s pretty rare in most industries.”
She took a deep breath and continued. “I was one of the lucky ones—about a dozen of us total, over the years—whom he took under his wing. He tapped me to help him follow leads, organize his notes, and eventually write parts of his stories, and when I did, he insisted I get a shared byline.
“Then the first MeToo stories broke in the press. I had a few story ideas I pitched to Aiden, thinking he might agree to work on them together. He told me the ideas were excellent and also that they were mine. He supported me all along the way, but in the end, those were my first solo feature stories, and I won my first award for that series.”
I didn’t know whether or not there would truly be a plan at the end of her story, but it was obvious that she needed to talk about her lost friend. “I can understand why he was important to you.”
She nodded solemnly. “He was. I’m getting to the plan, I promise.”
“Take your time,” I said. “I’m in no rush, and despite rumors to the contrary, I’m not always impatient.”
She smiled again, and I realized how much I enjoyed eliciting that reaction from her.
“Anyway, after I won the award, I got a promotion and an office. It’s tiny and windowless, but it’s mine. And then the rumors started, things about Aiden’s and my relationship.”
I widened my eyes. “People accused you of sleeping with him for favors? He was openly gay.”
“It was sadly unsurprising that some people still tried that old standard. But mostly the lies were about the work itself, hinting that I hadn’t actually written those articles at all, that The Sentinel just wanted a woman to be the face of their coverage of the MeToo movement.”
“That’s shitty. I’m sorry.” Once again, as I had many times in the past, I felt a surge of pride for the equality X had not only fostered in HEAT’s ranks but that she had insisted on building it into its DNA.
