Chapter One
Devyn
Iknow the minute he calls my name I’m in trouble. I tense, sensing my boss’s stare boring into my back.
“Girl, what did you donow?” Alesha, the woman who uses the desk in front of me, asks, shaking her head.
“Breathe,” I mutter. I put up with the way Walt treats me because I need this job. I don’t let anyone know how much I need this job.
Pasting a smile on my face, I turn and say, “Just a second.”
Walt nods once, sharply, and disappears into his office.
“Good luck, hon,” Alesha says. “With that glower, you’re gonna need it.”
“Thanks a lot.” I try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. It’s not her fault Walt doesn’t like me. Well, it’s not that he doesn’t like me. He likes me fine, or he wouldn’t have gone up to bat for me when I applied for this job. It’s that ever since then, the owners of the Portland Pioneer have been breathing down his neck.Theydon’t like me, and in two point five seconds I’m going to find out just how much they don’t like me.
Again.
“What’s up?” I ask, tentatively stepping into his office.
“Have a seat, Devyn. We need to talk.”
I push a piece of hair behind my ear, perch on the edge of the chair in front of his desk, and tuck my hands between my knees to keep them from shaking.
“What do I need to do to prove my worth this time?” I ask, not a little bitter. I draw the shittiest assignments. They want me to quit. And even crappier, I don’t know whotheyis. I have no idea who owns this fucking paper and pulls on Walt’s puppet strings. I never dared to look or else I think I’d kill them.
Walt sits behind his beat-up metal desk and leans back in his squeaky chair. “You know it’s not like that.”
“Yeah, it is.” Tears want to spring to my eyes, but I won’t let them. I’m a damned good reporter. I tangled with the wrong person, and Igetthat, but I shouldn’t have to suffer for it for the rest of my life. Except, that’s not how it works.
He sighs, tips his head, and talks to the ceiling. “Look. I tried, I really did, and they’re setting you up to fail with this assignment. Devyn, ever since you walked into this newsroom looking for a paycheck for an honest day’s work, I’ve done my best by you. I really have.”
“It’s that impossible, huh?” I give up and rub a tear off my cheek. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Talia, my sister. She’s depended on me for the past couple of years. Hell, we moved here because of this job, and to get her as far away from Cedar Hill as possible.
He tosses a file at me, and I open the front flap. A headshot of Rickard Mercer glares at me. God, the man is intimidating. Sexy, hot, and intimidating.
“They want you to interview him.” His voice is flat.
“He doesn’t give interviews.”
“They...don’t care. I’m supposed to send you up there with two hundred bucks for expenses and tell you to stay there for as long as it takes.”
I flip the flap over and cover Rickard Mercer’s glower. “I might as well just quit, then. You know how impossible that will be. He hasn’t spoken to the press since he was discharged from the hospital.” And the words he said to the reporters loitering outside were, “Fuck you.”
They’d ran the sound bite over and over again. Memes flew around the internet, and Rickard Mercer, the fifth richest man in the United States, turned into a laughingstock in two seconds.
Walt blows out a breath.
“And that was two years ago,” I add, for nobody’s benefit.
“I can’t force you,” he says, “but if you can’t, don’t, whatever, then I’m supposed to send you packing. I hate it, but I don’t make the rules.”
Incredulous, I laugh. I can’t help it. “And they think if I’m able to land the interview of the fu—” I cut myself off from swearing. Walt hates it. “—the year, I would hand it over to the Pioneer? I’d sell that sh—” God, I need to curb my potty mouth “—well, you know what I’m getting at.”
Walt scoffs. “Maybe they didn’t consider it, but if you went up there on their dime and you sold that interview to the highest bidder, I think you’d have a lawsuit on your hands. You’re still trying to wade out of the shit Stevie Johansson flung at you. I’d watch it. Don’t get any bright ideas.”
He’s right. Not the part about the lawsuit, but Stevie Johansson is the reason why I’m in Portland, Minnesota, population 15,333, instead of working at the Cedar Hill Times on my way to a Pulitzer. I’d beenthisclose,and it went up in a ball of flames.