Chapter Eleven
Devyn
Ibrush tears off my cheeks as I drive away from the lighthouse. It was so hard to pretend leaving wasn’t a big deal. He never asked when he’d see me again, never asked me to visit, never offered to drive to Portland to see me. Damn him for thinking these past few days didn’t mean as much to me as they did to him.
Before I pull onto the highway heading into town, I text Talia and tell her I have a few things I want to do before hitting the road. She’s at school arranging to be absent for the next few days, though I don’t know how much time I’ll need. A day to be proven wrong. Weeks, perhaps, if my suspicions are accurate.
I’m not familiar with Old Harbor, though I know it’s quite a bit bigger than Portland. Rick’s lighthouse is fifteen minutes out of town, and I crawl along the slippery road hoping I don’t slide into the ditch as my tires search for traction against the ice. Calling it a town isn’t quite accurate. With almost ninety-thousand people, I consider it a small to medium city, and I stop at the first gas station I see and choose to pay inside.
“Morning,” a gruff old man says when I push into the convenience store to pay. “Just gas?”
“I’ll grab a coffee, too, and I have a couple of questions if you have a second.”
He laughs as his eyes dart around the empty store. “I think I might.”
I fill a Styrofoam cup with hazelnut flavored coffee and add a good amount of cream before going to the counter to pay. “Can you recommend a close realtor, and the name of the newspaper here is the Harbor Herald, is that right?”
He runs my card and as the receipt prints, he pushes today’s newspaper sitting by a dish of pennies at me. “Free of charge. There’s a Century 21 down the street a couple of blocks to the south. You looking to move here? Need a job? I could use a dependable night manager.”
I grin my thanks and slide the paper off the counter. “I might be moving here, but I was snowed in with Rick Mercer.”
He chuckles. “Pretty thing like you won’t need a job then. Nice guy.”
“He is. A little sad.”
The old man clucks, looks up when two teenagers stomp inside, laughing. “Be that a lesson to ya. Doesn’t matter how much money you have if you can’t be happy.”
“I’ll do my best to turn him around. Thanks.”
“Have a good day.”
I drive to the Herald’s offices and introduce myself to the editor-in-chief. He knows who I am, had heard about my fiasco with Stevie Johansson, and he studies me with interest when I explain that in the next few weeks I’ll be moving to Old Harbor and could use a job.
“That blew up in your face, didn’t it?” Barney Rubens says, leaning against the desk in his office, chewing on the part of his glasses that fits behind his ear.
I tell him something I didn’t tell Walt when I applied at the Pioneer. I don’t know what media conglomerate owns this paper, but maybe one day I can redeem myself through hard work and what happened won’t be such a blemish on my résumé. Then it won’t matter who owns what. “Mr. Rubens—”
“Barney.”
“Barney. I was on to something. After a year of digging, I knew it, but Cedar Hill is a cesspool, and they all watch each other’s backs. Bill Newsom’s a good guy; he fired me because he had to. Everyone loves Stevie and didn’t want to think bad of her. Yet, had she been innocent, I just don’t think she would have hit me so hard. I hadn’t announced anything publicly, it’s not like I was writing articles full of accusations for a gossip site. I was investigating on my own time, and she got wind of it. She stopped me before I found out the truth.”
“And what truth is that?” Barney asks, an interested gleam in his eye.
“That she runs Sweet out of her warehouse, and she uses her stores to launder the money she earns distributing it. She’s untouchable, and she’s dirty. I just didn’t have time to prove it. I left Cedar Hill for other reasons than her, but she was a big part of it.”
He huffs. “You’re taking a chance thatI’mnot in her back pocket,” he says, shaking his head. “For a reporter, you’re too trusting. She owns Minnesota, Devyn, and North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana. She’s looking into Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana. We have Sweet on the streets here, and, coincidentally, we also have one of her sweetshops. After you were run out of Cedar Hill, I started looking into it. You were on to something big, I agree, and when she falls, she’s going to drag a lot of people down with her.”
I wilt in relief. “You believe me.”
He nods. “I believe you. I saw it for myself when my niece went into her shop for candy and came out hooked on Sweet.”
“I’m sorry. My sister was addicted. She spent a lot of time in rehab. They were able to get her off it, if you want the name of the facility.”
“Where did your sister pick it up?”
I shrug. “At a party, but she doesn’t talk to me about it much.”
“You let me know if she did the same as my niece. Went in for those dipping sticks—Devyn. If she’s doing what I think she’s doing, she’s creating her own addicts from candy she sells in her stores.”