“One you seemed quite eager to make, which got me thinking.”
“That must have been a change for you.” She smiled, a placid expression that did not reach her eyes, almost like she could turn off her emotion. But he had seen her lose control before. He knew the passion roiling just below the surface. And he knew that below the bitch was a brilliant woman.
“Indeed.” Despite himself he smiled. Megan McCoy was hard work, almost excruciatingly so, but James had never been averse to a challenge. “Would you like to know what I have been thinking?”
“Not really. I would prefer it if you left and never came back. And I would really like it if you told your army of photographers to stay off my lawn and out of my business.”
“I told you before; I don’t tell my journalists what to report, ever. I don’t manipulate the media. If it’s news, it’s reported, no matter what.”
“You say that like you are proud of that, like there is something noble in what you’re doing. Who consenting adults sleep with is not news. The world is not a better place for knowing that.”
She looked even younger now without make-up, her freckles darkened from the sun. She looked vulnerable and that bothered him, or more to the point he was bothered that he cared. He had a job to do. He didn’t have time to consider the ice queen’s vulnerabilities. She was not his responsibility. He would leave it to her husband to care about her.
“I’m not trying to make the world a better place, just a more honest one. People need to be held accountable for their actions.”
“Why are you here?” Megan closed her laptop and returned it to her canvas bag. “I am not supposed to get visitors. It could interfere with the treatment process.”
If James was not mistaken, there was a hint of disdain in her words. “I’m here because I wanted to speak to you. I have done a bit of research on you and I’ve discovered a few interesting things.”
Megan blinked; a flash of panic shot through her eyes like lightning, gone as quickly as it appeared. “Should I be flattered that you are wasting time investigating me?”
She fascinated him; the hard edges, the caustic words, the tiniest glimmers of emotion. They all made him curious, intrigued even. The fact that she held this much of his attention after sex was noteworthy. “It was hardly a waste of time. It was fascinating what I found, or actually, what I didn’t find. Until thirteen years ago you did not exist. You were completely off the grid. You have no history, no record, nothing. Almost like Megan McCoy was created.”
Megan’s eyes narrowed but she did not break her stare. “I thought you were a journalist, not a fiction writer. Oh my mistake, they’re synonymous, aren’t they?”
James was edging closer to the truth. “You go on the attack to avoid direct questions.”
“Was there a question? I thought you were just pontificating. I know how men love to hear their own voice.”
“You want to know what else I learned?”
James could see Megan thinking, deliberating. “Not really. I need to get back to work. I’m starting a new case next week.”
James held out his finger to make a point. “See, now that is funny. You have just experienced what I can only assume is the most humiliating event in your life, and you are not using this time to reflect or regroup or any of the other bullshit you’re meant to do in rehab. You’re working on a case. It’s almost like you don’t care.”
Megan’s mouth tightened before she spoke. “You know nothing about me. And we’re going to keep it that way. Print anything you want. I know the truth.”
Her words were so guarded, giving nothing away about her feelings. He would be tempted to think she had none, but the woman he had taken to bed had plenty of passion. There was emotion in there somewhere. She just kept it very tightly guarded. “Here’s the thing. I reckon I’m starting to figure it out too. And it is a far more interesting story than I ever imagined. I’ll give you your due, Megan, you’re full of surprises.”
Megan sighed. “What do you want from me?”
“The truth would be fantastic, but you don’t share that with many people, do you? You’re very guarded.”
She ignored his question. “I’m not going to give you an interview. Everything is public record now. Rehash it and sensationalise it, but I am not going to give you a quote.”
James shook his head. “Not everything is public record. Take this picture for example.” He reached into his pocket and produced the photo that had been seen by every man, woman and child in America. But this photo, was different, it was date and time stamped.
Megan looked away. “I don’t need to see that. I was there.”
“You weren’t actually. Take a look at the bottom corner. Do you see the time? It was taken at 2:53 a.m.”
Megan reached for the picture. She cleared her throat as she examined the evidence. “There is no way to verify the date or time. This is not admissible.” She thrust the photo back at him like the sight of it disgusted her.
“It’s been verified. That’s when the photo was taken. You see how that poses a problem for this narrative you have created?”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at but I told you before, I won’t give an interview.”
“You don’t have to say anything, actually I prefer it if you don’t. I detest liars—”
“That’s rich coming from you,” Megan scoffed. “I watched the Senate hearings. GMN is nothing but lies and cover-ups. Don’t pretend to be righteous.”
“There are two things you need to know about me: I had no involvement in the wiretapping or the subsequent cover-up. And I will never use my position to manipulate the media, not to protect myself, my fortune, or anything else. If it’s news, I will report it. And had you watched the Senate hearing you would know I was cleared of any involvement. I was imbedded in a platoon in Iraq when the wiretapping came to light. It would not have happened under my watch.” James stopped himself before he said any more; this was not about him. He swallowed his annoyance and forced himself to pretend he was not bothered by her constant suspicion about him.
“As I said before, that is not admissible—”
“We’re not in court. I don’t need to prove anything because we both know where you were when this photo was taken. And we know what you were doing, or more to the point, who you were doing it with.”
Megan shook her head. “No comment. I told you I’m not giving you an interview.”
The anger in James began to rise. One thing he could not tolerate was dishonesty. “I don’t want a bloody interview. I want the truth. There is no way you could have been with this man because at 2:53 on Saturday morning, I was fucking you against a wall.”
His anger was matched by a fire in her eyes. He had unleashed her fighting spirit. “You have no proof of that. As you said, there were no photographers in your house. No one knows where I was or who I was with.”
“Damn it, woman! I know where you were and exactly what you were doing.” He left out the part about fantasising about it since it happened. She was unbelievable; even cornered with nowhere to go, she would not admit the truth. Suddenly he realised she had not denied it. “Where were you last Friday night and early Saturday morning?”
Megan took a deep breath. “Every media outlet in the country has reported where I was. It is now a matter of public record.”
“Tell me. Use your own words. And tell me where you were Friday night. Be honest. We’re off the record. Who were you fucking?”
“First of all, I don’t call it fucking.”
“What shall we call it? I don’t know you well enough to call it ‘making love’ and ‘having sex’ doesn’t really capture how intense it was. What we did requires something more reckless, more passionate, more animalistic. I think ‘fucking’ sums it up nicely.”
“Go to hell.”
“You still won’t answer me. Thank you for not outright lying.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything. And I certainly don’t owe you
truth.”
“Fine. Don’t tell me the truth, but don’t lie to me.”
“I cheated on my husband, the man I owe my loyalty to, so you can’t think I’m above lying.”
James sat back and studied her. She was so guarded, she covered herself in an armour of hostility. Yes she had cheated on her husband, but it was her reaction to it that had thrown him. She had not begged him to keep quiet. Megan had been desperate to get home, to confess. It did not make any more sense then than it did now. “You might prove me wrong, but I think you are basically an honest person. You say it like it is. There’s no bullshit.” James pulled out the photo and looked at it again. “So when I look at this picture, I see a cover-up. And we both know I have had plenty of experience dealing with the fallouts of those. I’m here as a friend—”
“We’re not friends.”
“We must be friends, otherwise I would have run with the story before I gave you a chance to explain your side. Prove me wrong.” James was unsettled that he had sat on the story at all. But he had good reason; he needed all the pieces before he pushed forward with the story. He was not killing the story. He was taking it slowly, doing his due diligence. If Megan was at the heart of the story, he would report it. “We both know you were not there, which got me thinking about who was there.”
James stopped to watch for her response, any expression would be fleeting. Her face only allowed the shadow of emotion, never the actual feeling. “I checked. You have a cleaner. She is a sixty-two-year-old Mormon with eight kids and twenty-seven grandchildren. Safe to say we can rule her out. But just to be sure, I checked. Louise was at home with her husband of forty-three years. They had spent the evening at their church feeding missionaries. Plenty of witnesses. Tell me, counsellor, as far as alibis go that is pretty airtight.”
Megan glared at him. Her face so stony, there was nothing to read past cold anger.
James continued. A sadistic side of him enjoyed pushing her. He wanted to know just how far she could go before she broke. There was a point that would push her over the edge and he would find it. “Then obviously my thoughts turned to the gentleman in question. He was harder to track down. He has left the country. Did you know that? He’s in Mykonos. Now I could have tracked him to Greece but then I thought who would know more about him than his friends? And do you know what I found out?” “I’m amazed at the lengths you’ve gone to, almost like you thrive on humiliating people. Is that your game?”
“My only concern is the truth.”
“Ha!” she scoffed. “The truth, Mr. Emerson, is that it is none of your God damn business who I have sex with. I don’t care what the time on the picture says. It’s disgusting that you would allow your papers to run a story about something as private as this. You’re the reason I hate journalists, this behaviour right here. Go find a real story and stop wasting my time.”
“Like it or not, this is a story. Your husband is very likely the next Vice President of the United States of America. If I don’t print this story, someone else will.”
“Then let them.” Megan’s voice cracked; the first betrayal of emotion. She recovered quickly, coughing to mask the sound.
There it was; the vulnerability he knew was there. A slight heaviness pushed against his chest, not the victory he had expected. He shrugged it off, nothing would stop him. The truth hurt, but honesty was its own reward. “You never let me tell you what I found out. Chad is a very private guy. He keeps to himself mostly. But his co-workers did say that he takes a trip to upstate New York at least once a month. Seems he enjoys the fishing. Do you know anyone else who spends time there? Anyone with a remote cabin along the lake? A place where two men could go away for quiet weekends?”
Megan’s hand pushed into the thick grass until her knuckles turned white. “This is irrelevant. I don’t know where you’re going with this but again it’s none of your business who he has sex with. Will adding that small detail to your story be enough to run it again? How much embarrassment are you hoping for? Is there a quota I should know about?”
James ignored the question. “Chad wasn’t there to see you. He wasn’t there to see Louise, which leaves one person: your husband. The husband you were so eager to tell when you cheated on him. I will admit that threw me. But what really threw me was why you are not on birth control. If you were my wife, I would be fucking you on a daily basis, hell, probably more than once a day. And no man wants to use condoms with his wife. You’re not sleeping with the Senator because he is gay. You know it and you are his cover. I still don’t know who you were before you became Megan McCoy, but trust me, I’ll find out. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Why?” Megan demanded. “Why did you come here and make accusations about me and my husband? It’s no one’s fucking business who anyone sleeps with. I wish you and every stupid closed-minded person in America would get it through their thick skulls. It’s none of your business. How dare you, you stupid, arrogant, judgemental man.”
Megan jumped up and grabbed her bag, throwing it behind her shoulder.
Finally there was emotion. “Deny it,” James said. “Deny it. Prove me wrong.”
“I have nothing to prove to you or anyone else.” She began walking back to the treatment facility, her pace just short of a run.
“Megan, I’m going to run the story. I just wanted to give you the heads up. If you want to get out of Dodge, now is the time to go. I am here as a friend. I want to give you time to get things together. You might want to leave town for a while.”
She stopped and spun on her heel. “And go where, asshole? Ben is all I have.”
There was look of such utter sorrow in her eyes, it caused him to stop. She looked like an animal being sent to the slaughter: scared, defenceless, and confused. He didn’t want to intentionally inflict pain on her. He wasn’t cruel, but he was not going to compromise his ethics because she looked like a deer in the headlights. The truth was the truth and he was going to report it. If she thought the media coverage now was invasive, wait until she had the full glare of the spotlight beating down on her. Megan’s life was about to get really shitty. She needed to have people around her to look out for her.
“Listen, I’m telling you, if you aren’t going to leave town, you are going to at least want to have your family around, circle the wagons. You’ll need their support.”
Megan shook her head. “Ben is my family. He is all I have. There is nowhere for me to go, no one to run to. I have Ben, that’s all. There is no one else, no place else. So remember that when you’re running your story and destroying our lives.”
She was shaking now.
James ran his hand through his hair and let out a stream of air. He wouldn’t kill the story. He couldn’t, not for her, not for him, not for anyone. He had made lots of mistakes in his life, but he was always honest. He couldn’t stop the story but he could let Megan know the magnitude of shit that was about to come raining in on her. “If I don’t run it, some one else will. I’m not the first one to figure it out, and I won’t be the last. Ben fucked up, not just this time. There was another reporter onto him. That is why I scheduled the interview on Friday night.” He stopped and reflected on the intelligence of telling her the rest. If she was involved he would be tipping her off, giving her time to destroy evidence and create an alibi. But if she wasn’t involved she deserved to know. He rubbed the stitches above his eye and considered both eventualities.
He sighed before he started. He had to tell her, she deserved to know everything. She could do what she wanted with the information. “Tuesday night Seth Blair phoned me and told me he had a massive story on Senator McCoy.” James paused and searched her face for some recognition of the name. Megan raised her shoulders in question. Either she was as good an actress as she was a prosecutor, or Megan had not crossed paths with Seth Bair. “He wanted to see me so we could decide how to proceed. I told him to meet me at my office. But he never made it. He was killed in a car crash.”
Megan shook her h
ead again. “I’m sorry about his death, but what does that have to do with Ben?”
“There was no USB in the car, nothing at his house. Not a single thing anywhere to suggest he was even doing a story on Ben.”
Megan flexed and relaxed her fists, over and over. “If you even suggest that Ben had anything to do with that, I will break your other hand. That is slander, and I will shut your company down if you even give the impression of impropriety. Consider that a warning. There is one thing you need to know about me: I don’t make idle threats.” She turned and marched away.
“Stop, Megan. There’s more. I reckon you don’t want the staff at New Hope knowing this particular tale.”
She spun round to face him. “What more can you possibly have to say? You have threatened to expose my husband as a homosexual and you have accused him of murder. I think you’ve shot your load.”
James considered her words: expose and accuse. Megan had inadvertently admitted Ben was gay. The realisation washed over him. James strongly suspected but now he was as sure as he could be without witnessing Ben in the act. He didn’t have time to reflect on how he felt about the information; it wasn’t like it changed what had happened between them on Friday night. If anything, things were more straightforward when she was just a woman cheating on her husband. He could understand that, he had seen his dad cheat on his mum for years before he finally left and started a new family.
Megan thought her husband had no involvement in the death of Seth Blair but all signs were pointing to the contrary. “The preliminary toxicology report suggests Seth had opiates in his system at the time of his crash but none were found at his house and he had no history of drug use.”
“That you know of. Everyone has secrets. Everyone has lives they keep from the world. You have no idea what anyone gets up to when they’re away from prying eyes. That evidence would not get you anywhere near an indictment and you know that or you would have taken it to the police. Unless of course all that talk of honesty and integrity was hot air. Be honest, you don’t give a shit about the truth, you want a good story and if you don’t have one, you make it up.”
Dirty Little Secrets Page 7
