On the Record- the Complete Collection

by Lee Winter

  “Good. Scoops only stay that way if no one gets wind of them. Now then, more importantly, can you tell me where you disappeared to at five this morning? I woke up alone. A state I found highly unacceptable—not to mention cold.”

  Lauren laughed and toyed with the Topaz Lake snow dome adorning Ayers’s desk. An amusing gift from Jon Sands. Lauren had one just like it on her desk. Plastic fish swam up and down as she wiggled it.

  “Got a tip off. Two White House officials have been dealing drugs to politicians and their staff. A senator was behind the ring. Cops let them do the walk of shame just after five this morning to try and beat the media crush.”

  “Ah, and did you catch them?”

  “Ronald Douglas Jr. was crying like a baby.”

  “Wait, the family values senator? The man who bleated on television about ‘our poor, poor drug-afflicted children’?”

  “One and only. Hey can I read your drone story?” She leaned over and tilted the screen toward her.

  “No,” Ayers said, slapping her hand away. “It’s not finished. And can you make yourself useful?” She pointed at the tailoring stub. “Please?”

  “Is this for the green dress? I love that one. You wore it to the SmartPay launch.”

  “It would be social suicide to wear a dress more than once to one of these things,” Ayers observed. “So, no, not that one. Although I recall I was quite the hit with your craigslist crowd that night.”

  Lauren laughed.

  “And you, too,” Ayers added mischievously. “You couldn’t keep your eyes off me.”

  “Uh huh,” Lauren said. “Quite the active imagination you have there, Ayers.” She waved the stub. “I’ll drop your dress off at home tonight. Meet you at the dinner later. A group of us from the Post is going together.”

  “Okay.” Ayers paused. “And what will you be wearing?”

  “Denim cut-off shorts, army boots, and tractor cap. I’ll be a sensation.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Her expression dropped. “Lauren, I’m sorry we can’t arrive together. Or be honest with our colleagues.”

  “I know. I get it. We’re flying under the radar. Getting established without any innuendo or crap,” she said, trying to push aside the disappointment this discussion always invoked. “Maybe next year?”

  Ayers smiled. “I’d like that.” Her appreciative gaze ran over Lauren’s outfit again. “Get out of here,” she whispered. “Your perfectly tailored rear is making me forget how to spell exclusive.”

  Lauren grinned and dropped the snow dome back on the desk, then headed for her own office.

  Catherine Ayers seriously knew how to make an entrance, Lauren decided, listening to the murmurs around her, the subtle intakes of air as she swept up the front hotel stairs in a gorgeous silver dress. Paul Harrington Sr. was her date for the evening. Lauren watched them enviously as they chatted comfortably, body language showing the ease of long-time friends. The old man also looked quite dashing out of his golf gear.

  “Holy shit, the Caustic Queen scrubs up nice, doesn’t she?” One of the Post’s staff photographers, Hugo, distracted her with a low wolf whistle.

  “Yeah,” Lauren agreed wistfully. Her other colleagues were making equally flattering comments around her.

  “She dating that old publisher dude now?” Hugo persisted as he spotted Harrington Sr. by her side. “Is she into sugar daddies? Father figures? Crap, I’m officially thirty years too young and about ten million too poor.”

  “That’s not her boyfriend,” Lauren said through gritted teeth. “He’s just her boss.”

  “Really?”

  He looked way too hopeful, and Lauren groaned inwardly. “She’s also off the market,” she added.

  “Don’t see a ring on it.” Hugo adjusted his bowtie and sucked his stomach in. “So, fair game. Wish me luck.”

  He strolled over toward Ayers with his best game face on.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t Real America,” a voice drawled near her ear. “And a nominee in tonight’s awards to boot.”

  Lauren wondered which god she’d pissed off this week. Cynthia Redwell. She turned, reluctantly, tearing her gaze from Hugo’s stealthy approach of Ayers.

  “Aren’t you and Cat just burning through DC since you got here,” Redwell observed. “Quite the pair. Scoops are piling up. Making a lot of fans. Impressing the big boys.”

  “We worked hard,” Lauren said. “Every accolade has been earned.”

  “Oh I don’t doubt it. Besides, Cat always had a terrific nose for news.”

  Both women looked over to Ayers who was now engaged in conversation with Hugo. Her girlfriend looked about as unimpressed as Lauren felt. She ground her teeth.

  “Poor boy. He doesn’t have a clue, does he?” Redwell asked with a hearty laugh, shaking her shimmering blonde hair. Her eyes dropped back to Lauren’s. “Oh don’t look so shocked. I knew about you and Cat the moment she unloaded on me with both barrels for teasing you. Anyone else, she’d probably have doubled down herself.”

  “What’s the deal with you two?” Lauren asked. “Are you mortal enemies or something?”

  Redwell’s crimson lips parted into a ferocious smile. “Actually Cat’s one of my oldest friends. We just fell out once over someone she refused to date.”

  Lauren shot her a knowing look.

  “Well, don’t worry, dear, I know when to run up the white flag. I actually came to say good luck with your award nomination tonight. Although I’m sure you know you have no chance. Up against the Wall St Journal’s sensational insider trading piece? Well. I wouldn’t bother memorizing the speech if I were either of you.”

  Lauren gaped at her. “And you call yourself her friend.”

  “What? That wasn’t friendly advice?”

  “No.” She folded her arms.

  Redwell laughed. “I see why she likes you. You’re so…not like us.”

  Lauren sighed. “I get that a lot.”

  “I’ll just bet.” She smoothed her fingers down her classic, midnight-blue Dior gown. “By the way, your adored co-nominee appears to be about to go thermonuclear on the Post’s photographer. I suspect he won’t be getting his money back on the rental tux.”

  Lauren whipped her head around. Oh hell.

  Lauren took a breather from the swirl of conversations and stepped out onto one of the hotel’s many balconies. This was the third one she’d tried. The other two she’d interrupted smokers furtively sneaking in some puffs and looking at her guiltily from the shadows.

  Finally alone, she rested her elbows on the railing, taking in the view of DC. It was dark this high up, but the lights below lit the grids of the roads.

  “Not so close,” a male voice said. “That’s how accidents happen.”

  Lauren started and spun around. A man stepped out of the shadows wearing a fine Italian suit. A jagged scar bisected his left cheek, running up to his eye.

  Gabbana.

  She swallowed fearfully and looked at his pocket. No bulge. Still, he might have a weapon under his armpit. They did that, right?

  “Now, now, Ms. King, if we’d wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” he said as he stepped beside her on the balcony and leaned forward to study the view himself. “You’ve done well. Solid buzz. Hot job. Hotter girlfriend. Up for a fancy award.”

  Lauren glared. “What do you want?”

  “Me? I just happened to be here. You happened to be here, too. I’m no longer with my former employer. There was something of a restructure across several organizations when you bankrupted SmartPay with your cutting little exposé. Certain people were moved elsewhere.”

  “They bankrupted themselves with their spy viruses.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t care. It was a job. But they’re watching you, you know. You and her. Waiting. Vultures hovering around a nearly dead corpse.”
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br />   “I don’t know where you get your information, but there’s plenty of life in us yet.”

  “You misunderstand. We’re all nearly dead,” he said and turned to look her coldly in the eye. “You become actually dead in DC the moment we say so, whether it’s metaphoric, as happened to Ms. Ayers last time, or in the more literal sense. Quite a few of my colleagues wanted a more literal ending for you both. Aren’t you lucky national security is not a democracy?”

  Lauren sucked in a breath. “You’re trying to scare me? Payback for that interesting scar?”

  “Actually, no. I suppose you think you won though? You didn’t.”

  “SmartPay went under.”

  He smiled, teeth and eyes glittering in the low light. “And you truly think they were the only one? It’s everywhere, Ms. King. The spy virus software isn’t the only one of its kind. An idea that useful doesn’t get forgotten. There are many clones like it in the works. You can’t stop it.

  “SmartPay’s mistake was to get greedy, to try and expand faster than they should have and bribe their way forward. It was foolish, yes, but inconsequential to the bigger picture.

  “Our reach is immense. You got away with this story because we let you. Because by giving you this win, it looks like we’re stopping this. It makes the unwashed masses have confidence in the system. That their government genuinely cares about their freedom and privacy.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I told you at the start; I don’t work for my previous employers anymore.” He straightened. “And consider this some career advice—you’re not as good as you think you are.”

  “Who did you work for?” Lauren asked.

  He flicked her a curious glance and then returned his gaze to the view. “Does that really matter?”

  Lauren wondered if he didn’t have a good point.

  “Option D,” he finally said, straightened, and turned.

  “What?”

  He shook his head at her like she was a particularly dim-witted child, then studied every inch of her classic off-the-shoulder blue gown as if she was a bug under glass. He tilted his head, and she shivered at the violence she could see lurking just beyond those cold brown eyes.

  Gabbana said nothing as he walked off, opened the balcony’s French doors, and slipped back into the crowd.

  Option D?

  None of the Above?

  She followed him into the main ballroom just as the music started, and she heard “All rise for the President of the United States of America.”

  She watched in shock as Gabbana slid in an earpiece, then seamlessly joined the elite security posse flanking POTUS.

  Different job, indeed.

  Lauren snuggled Ayers in their bed and stared at the rather prominent new award displayed on the dresser.

  “It’s really phallic, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Mmm,” Ayers agreed with hooded eyes. Eyes that were spending a lot of time mapping Lauren’s bare skin.

  “They let us get away with the story, Catherine,” she said. She’d already repeated every word of Gabbana’s conversation. It shocked her to the core.

  She felt Ayers’s arms tighten around her waist. “I figured. At the time.”

  “You did?”

  “A couple of anonymous agents visiting us, no raid, and a few scary tails? They did seem to let us have the story too easily.”

  “You never said.”

  “No. I like you not knowing all the disturbing things I do. It’s frustrating being paranoid and then realizing you’re actually right most of the time.” Ayers slid her fingers up Lauren’s ribs.

  “Then what’s the point in any of this?”

  Ayers considered that as she flattened her fingers and stroked her soothingly. “The point is whatever we make it. I like to think I’m doing my bit in my corner of the world.”

  “It’s a drop in the ocean, though! They’re huge, and we’re tiny. Our stories are like pointing out a missing bolt on the Titanic.”

  “And that was the point of your friend’s little pep talk tonight. He wanted to demoralize you. To make you feel defeated and small. They don’t like us getting away with anything, even if that’s how they ultimately decided to let it play out in the end.”

  “You don’t feel overwhelmed by the scale of all this cloak and dagger stuff?”

  “No. Or rather, I don’t dwell on it,” she said. “I’ve been to hell and back and lived to tell the tale.”

  “I haven’t,” Lauren countered. She frowned. “Think it’ll hurt getting the scales knocked from my eyes?”

  “Yes,” Ayers agreed, curling her arms all the way around her. “It always does the first time. And the second. And even the third. But we’re together. We have each other. I love you. It’s enough.”

  “Yeah, about that…”

  “Mmm?”

  “Next time, how about a little head’s up before you thank me in a speech in front of a room full of journalists as the ‘woman who gives form to your hope and dreams.’”

  “That doesn’t sound too revealing. Plenty of people have platonic muses who inspire them.”

  “Okay, but then you mentioned that I complete you.”

  “Too much?” Ayers said dryly.

  “And you invited them all to the wedding. The cheer was deafening! Even the president was on his feet, clapping. Oh my god, I just about died of embarrassment and shock.”

  Ayers smirked. “I know. I was there. Don’t worry, they’ll all decline. It is in Iowa, after all.”

  “Ha freaking ha. Although Cynthia came up later and asked what the dress code was in outer Hicksville. She said she’d look into designer galoshes. She added that she probably despises me right now, but she gives good wedding presents.”

  “That sounds like her.” Ayers chuckled. “It also sounds like she actually approves of you in her own twisted way.”

  “Uh huh. Mariella, meanwhile, texted to tell me we made all the news channels. She congratulated me on my dragon-whisperer skills, and she’s dying to book us on some chat shows.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “My response exactly. Josh texted as well. He says Tad got a call from your folks. They can’t work out which is worse—that you’re marrying a woman, a reporter, or doing it in Iowa.”

  Ayers pursed her lips. “I imagine their feigned heart palpitations will continue for weeks.”

  “But your sister said ‘congratulations, oh and don’t drink anything homebrewed in Iowa.’”

  Ayers smiled and rolled her eyes. “Don’t ask. She watches too much 60 Minutes.”

  “Josh is threatening to send us a toaster oven with Yep I’m officially gay! in glitter down one side.”

  “How utterly…” Ayers paused at Lauren’s arched eyebrow, “er, unique,” she amended.

  “But seriously, why did you do it? After all our hiding and pretending? Hugo got such a shock he spat a bread roll chunk at the editor’s head.”

  “It’s simple. I looked at you beside me at the podium just as I was about to tell the room that you were such a professional colleague and I valued your insights. And it felt like a ridiculous charade—especially in this day and age. The truth is I don’t ever want to have to pretend again that you don’t mean everything to me. And so I said what I said.”

  “God,” Lauren whispered. “You’re such a romantic under all those pretty spikes and prickles.”

  “No, no,” Ayers said sternly. “Never, ever spread that rumor.” She regarded her. “Now don’t you think the joint winners of one of the nation’s highest prizes for investigative journalism should be celebrating?”

  “Now that you mention it…” Lauren smiled.

  Ayers lowered her lips, hovering just above her. “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “What for?”

&nbs
p; “Being you. Tractor caps and all.”

  Lauren smiled as those wicked lips landed on hers, and Catherine Ayers began to love her completely.

  Flashbang

  Daily Sentinel reporter Lauren King might have spent over a year covering the outlandish parties of LA’s rich and famous, but she had never experienced anything like this. Hell no.

  In the center of the Pacific Grand Hollywood’s Arctic-hued ballroom sat an enormous bed, upon which was arranged a half dozen A-list actresses, barely dressed in scraps of white, tapping away on their cell phones and sipping colorful cocktails.

  An Icelandic girl band was on a corner stage, swaying and singing a quirky folk-pop repertoire, their faces barely visible above shaggy white coats. They looked like blue-haired polar bears.

  “Radiator Fluid, ma’am?” asked a passing muscle-bound waiter wearing nothing but white boxers and suspenders. He offered her a noxious-looking yellowy-green drink with a white umbrella in it. He was on roller skates. White.

  “Ah, I’ll pass.” Lauren winced. “I’d prefer not to drink my car.”

  He rolled off, and she turned to study the glitterati, their shiny cocktail outfits flashing under a dozen mirror balls.

  She shook her head. Only a bunch of overindulged celebrities would think that a 600-person white party with 100-proof cocktails would be a great way to launch their fashion blog, Flashbang.

  A blog, for god’s sake.

  “Appalling, isn’t it?” a sotto voice murmured near her ear. Lauren turned to find her good friend by her side. Los Angeles’s top publicist was a vision tonight, draped in white satin, like some Rubenesque goddess commanding a toga party. Her scarlet slash of lipstick matched her vivid red hair.

  But Mariella Slater wasn’t just any publicist. She had a reputation for genius and could turn any celebrity’s worst indiscretion into a publicity triumph. Such as last week when bad-boy action star Jordan Klauss tossed his personalized, handmade rubber sex doll from an eighth-story apartment window. It landed, with shattering effect, on an elderly resident’s BMW parked below.

  Mariella had spun it to the breathless media as a “highly technical stunt rehearsal with a minor gravity malfunction.” She praised the star’s “unquenchable work ethic” and noted that the car owner had scored not only a new BMW but, most importantly, free tickets to Klauss’s next movie. Which was called Slammmer—with three Ms. Coming to a theater near you this fall.