Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(51)

She got up and left the room.

“Shit,” I said.

I contemplated things for a few moments and then pulled out my phone and composed a text to the contact I had labeled Deep Throat.


I’m not sure who you are but if you have anything else that can help me, now is the time. I just got pulled from the story for lack of progress. Orton was a bust. He was waiting and ready. In fact, there is no story. I need your help. I know some bad shit is going down out there and Orton is the key. Please respond.



I read it twice and wondered if it sounded like I was whining. Finally, I cut the last two words and sent it. I then got up and went back to my cubicle, passing Emily’s on the way. I felt bad about what I’d said and the way things ended with her in the conference room.

At my desk I opened my laptop and went into a few folders labeled with stories I had been working on before Mattson and Sakai first showed up at my apartment. Top of the list was the “King of Con Artists” story, which had already been written and turned in but not yet posted because there had been no time for me to sit down with Myron and go over his edit. That would be the first priority. After that, I looked at my futures list, but nothing excited me after being on the recent adrenaline-charged story chase.

I next looked at my follow-up file. It contained stories that had already been posted but that I knew I should circle back on to see if anything had changed—whether the companies or government agencies had fixed the problems my stories had put the spotlight on. Though any reporter at FairWarning could pursue a story of their own interest in any industry, I had informally been given the auto-industry beat. For it, I had posted several pieces about sudden-acceleration issues, faulty electronic-control chips, dangerous gas tanks, and substandard parts, from outsourced integral assemblies to unregulated foreign manufacturers. The U.S. was an auto-based society and these stories hit hard and drew attention. They ran in several newspapers, and I had put on a jacket and tie to appear on the Today show as well as CNN, Fox, and several local news channels including L.A., Detroit, and Boston—with FairWarning getting credit all the way. It was a general rule that if you wrote a negative story about a Japanese car manufacturer, you would get on TV in Detroit.

I knew that I could now piggyback on any one of these stories and probably get a solid nothing-has-changed piece. That might please Myron and help ease me away from the DNA story.

I had a physical file in a desk drawer with all the documentation and contact information I had accumulated while originally reporting the auto-industry stories. I now pulled it and slid it into my backpack so I could refresh my thoughts while taking my morning coffee.

But I was done for the day. I couldn’t simply transition from the unfinished story of Christina Portrero and William Orton to something wholly different and uninspiring. I needed time and now I was going to take it.

But I was still bothered by how things had just gone with Emily. I zipped up the backpack and got up and moved down the aisle to her cubicle.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey what?” she replied curtly.

“I made the wrong move in there. I shouldn’t have thrown you under the bus, okay? If anything happens, we’re both on it together. I just sent a text to my Deep Throat source and told him the story is on fumes and he needs to come through. We’ll see. I probably sounded like a whiny asshole.”

“Probably.”

But she looked up and smiled at me after saying it. I smiled back.

“Well, thanks for being so agreeable about my deficiencies.”

“Anytime. So …”

She turned her screen so I could see it.

“Look what I just got.”

On her screen was what looked like a document with the Federal Trade Commission seal on it.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Well, I sent my FTC guy an email directly asking if he tipped off Orton,” she said. “I exaggerated and said that if he did he almost got me killed.”

“And?”

“And he denied it. He even called me to deny it. And then he sent me this as some kind of gesture of good faith. It’s the last list Orange Nano turned over to the FTC of labs it redistributed DNA to. It’s almost three years old but these might be worth checking out—I mean, if we were still on the story.”

Because it was a photo of a document, the writing was small and difficult to read from my angle.

“Well, anything jump out right away?” I asked.

“Not really,” Emily said. “There’s only five companies and all were registered with the FTC back then. I need to pull their profiles to get names, locations, things like that.”

“And you’re going to do that when?”

“Soon.”

She glanced over the top of her cubicle in the direction of Myron’s pod. We could only see the top of his head, but the arch of his headphone crossed over his hair. He was on the phone and the coast was clear. Emily corrected herself.

“Now,” she said.

“Can I help?” I asked. “I was about to leave but I can stay.”

“No, that will be too obvious. You go. I’ll do this from home.

I’ll call if anything pops.”

I hesitated before walking away. I didn’t like the ball being in her court. Emily read me.

“I promise to call you, okay?” she said. “And you call me if Deep Throat comes through.”