Front Page Fatality

by Walker, LynDee

  “Are we good?” he asked.

  He shot Brandon a thumbs up.

  “Excellent.” Busy swallowing nausea and tears, I wasn’t sure which of them said it.

  Nash slid his phone into his pocket and pulled a gun out of his jacket.

  “Bullets are much quicker than flames, Nichelle,” he said. “What’s it going to be?”

  19.

  Here comes the cavalry

  I closed my eyes as Nash prodded my shoulder with the gun when I didn’t answer him. Before I opened them again all hell broke loose around me. The door slammed open with a metallic ringing. Nash and Jerry/Brandon whirled in two different directions as a barrage of sharp cracks split the stillness outside.

  I froze for the tiniest fraction of a second before I wrenched my right hand out of the rope, losing a good bit of skin in the process. Clawing at the binding around my left ankle, I got it loose, then used the heel on that shoe to lever the rope and jerked my right foot free. Swiveling on my tailbone, I pulled my knees to my chest and slammed both feet into the small of Brandon’s back.

  The stilettos on my battered black Louboutins sank into his kidneys, and he let out a strangled cry and pitched face-first onto the concrete. He didn’t move to get back up.

  I somehow rolled over, flipped backward, and managed to land upright on the far side of the table.

  Though his attention was on the commotion outside, Nash still stood less than ten feet away. Between me and the door. Leg throbbing and head wound burning, I stumbled back two steps, looking around for another way out.

  “Not so fast,” Nash said as he whirled on me.

  I planted my Louboutins and shoved the table with all the strength I could muster.

  It flew at him, the casters beneath it gliding across the concrete. The wind left his chest in a whoosh and he staggered backward when the steel edge hit him squarely in the sternum.

  A gleeful cackle came from somewhere. Maybe from me. I wasn’t sure of anything but the relief that washed over me as the building filled with bodies encased in black tactical gear.

  Brandishing large guns, the cavalry took its orders from a tall man in a bulletproof vest whose face was mostly obscured by a two-way radio.

  “Watch the woman,” he ordered, striding to the middle of the nearly-empty room. “Donovan Nash, you are under arrest.”

  I took my eyes off Nash long enough to see that Captain Rescue had a gun in his other hand. He didn’t move the radio, but the ice-blue eyes peering over the top of it widened when they met mine.

  I didn’t process that before Nash raised his gun, swinging between me and Officer Cool. He settled on the easy target.

  “Give my regards to Gavin Neal, won’t you, Nichelle?”

  The room was empty. Nowhere to hide.

  A shot fired.

  I screamed. But the pain didn’t come.

  Nash crumpled to the ground, a dark spot blooming across the middle of his tailored navy suit coat. A pair of SWAT-clad officers pounced on him.

  I locked eyes with Captain Rescue, who holstered his sidearm as the radio handset fell away from a face I could never forget.

  Adding shock to the adrenaline and sedatives was too much. The room wavered, the floor seeming to buckle under me as I fell.

  But I never hit the ground.

  Kyle Miller, ex-love-of-my-life, sprinted across the dozen feet of concrete between us and caught me as I drifted back into the fog.

  More voices. I lifted my eyelids, but couldn’t focus on the backlit figure next to me for a full minute.

  “Bob,” I mumbled. “My story.”

  “That’s the Nichelle Clarke I remember. Bleeding. Nearly murdered. But always thinking about the story.”

  Not Bob.

  “Kyle?” I blinked.

  His voice had a commanding edge I’d never heard. He leaned forward, no longer silhouetted by the summer sun flooding the ambulance. The white sheet over my lap reflected flashing blue and red from the emergency vehicles crowding the parking lot around Nash’s warehouse.

  I probed gingerly behind my ear, finding hamburger where a sizable chunk of my hair had been. It hurt. And was still bleeding.

  If I was dreaming, I had to award points for realism.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but what the hell are you doing here?” I asked. “Am I dead? Because when I heard your life flashes before your eyes, this is not what I had in mind.”

  “No, Nicey, you’re not.” He chuckled, gentle hands smoothing the hair I still had off my forehead. “All things considered, I think you’re okay. But I want someone to check you out.”

  “How? Where did you come from?” I stared, even reaching a hand up to touch his face lightly.

  He was older, with a neat goatee the same auburn color as his hair. But I’d looked into those eyes a thousand times in another life.

  “I work for the ATF.” He smiled. “And I guess you work for the Richmond newspaper, right? We got a tip from the FBI that a reporter was taken hostage by a group of crooked cops who’ve been moving guns and drugs all over the east coast. We’ve been trying to trace something back to Nash for a long time. I came up a month ago to help with the investigation.”

  When my mom said “law enforcement,” I assumed Kyle had joined the Dallas PD with his dad, but the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives made more sense in the context of him being sent out of state, which didn’t happen often in local police work.

  “Small world,” I said. “Lucky for me, I guess.”

  “I’m a pretty good shot.” He handed me my Blackberry. “Is this yours? My guys found your car, too. The bag that was in the backseat is right here.” He pointed to the floor.

  “Thanks.” I smiled.

  “Nicey!” Bob’s it’s-four-o’clock-where-the-hell-is-my-copy shout rattled the windows, and Kyle turned to the open ambulance bay doors.

  “Bob?” he asked.

  I nodded. “My boss.”

  He stood. “I guess that’s my cue. I have four corpses out there and a shit-ton of paperwork to do, anyway.”

  “She’s in here,” he called, sticking his head out of the back of the ambulance and waving one arm before he disappeared.

  “Goodbye to you, too,” I said. “Thanks for saving my ass.”

  Bob climbed into the ambulance, the lines in his face deeper than I recalled.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  The medic shooed at him from her perch behind me. “Sir, I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to go,” she said. “You can meet us at St. Vincent’s if you want to visit with the patient.”

  “No.” I tried to look at her, but succeeded only in scraping my injured scalp on the sandpapery pillowcase.

  “No, what?” Bob asked, ignoring the medic and laying a meaty hand over one of mine.

  “No, I’m not going to the hospital. Not until my story is done. Get me a computer.”

  “Excuse me?” The medic leaned forward, her red hair brushing my face. “Ma’am, you’ve been drugged, you have a bleeding head wound, and you’ve been in the middle of a police firefight. You have to see a doctor.”

  “I will. As soon as my story is done.” I looked at Bob as I spoke. “My laptop is in that bag. There’ll be TV trucks out there from everywhere between here and Fredericksburg in a half-hour, and I’ll completely lose my shit if I almost got killed twice so Charlie Lewis could break this story.”

  Bob laughed, bending to retrieve the computer and laying it across my lap.

  “That’s my ace,” he said. “Always worried about the scoop.”

  “Miss, we really can’t—” the medic began, but Bob cut her off.

  “You might as well let it be,” he said. “She won’t sign the treatment consent until she gets her way. Besides, it looks to me like she’s earned it.”

  The paramedics huddled behind me, muttering. Apparently, people don’t often demand to finish work before being ferried to the hospital. Not that I cared—I alrea
dy started typing.

  “Just tell Ryan to be ready to get it on the website and Facebook and everywhere else he can throw it as soon as I’m done,” I said. “Get the pictures off my phone over to photo. And then hush up and let me work some magic for you.”

  “Get after it, kiddo.” Bob sat on the bench Kyle had vacated and picked up my Blackberry. “This is going to be one hell of a story.”

  The keyboard and my thoughts drowned out his conversation.

  Hands in the air, an unknown man with a scar on his left cheek dropped to his knees on the concrete floor of a warehouse in Richmond’s river district Saturday, begging for his life. His pleas fell on deaf ears, surrender not altering Richmond Police Chief Donovan Nash’s plan.

  Nash fired a single shot, then stood over his victim, kicking him in the ribs as the man lay in a growing pool of his own blood on the concrete.

  Nash, in his ninth year as head of the RPD, confessed the murder to a Telegraph reporter he and RPD Detective Jerry Davis drugged and took hostage Saturday. The journalist became a threat when she uncovered a drug ring operating out of police headquarters.

  Nash and Davis, formerly known as Officer Brandon Smith of the Miami PD narcotics unit, used the RPD river unit to move drugs and guns throughout the mid-Atlantic.

  Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Gavin Neal, whose body was found in the James this week, was suspicious of oddities in the RPD’s evidence procedures, his widow said.

  “Gavin swore to me something fishy was going on at the police department,” Grace Neal said Thursday. “From that point on, he made weekly random checks of the evidence room. Then Sunday, he never made it home.”

  Nash confessed to involvement in Neal’s death, among other crimes, including trafficking drugs and weapons and accessory to perjury that set a confessed murderer free.

  Nash was shot Saturday by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Agent Kyle Miller while threatening Miller with a gun. Two additional people were killed in the firefight between criminals and ATF agents, but their names were not available at press time.

  I continued into the conflicting lab reports on the heroin, Smith’s conviction in the drug thefts in Miami, and Roberts and Freeman’s innocence.

  Since I was the only person who knew the story of my kidnapping, we could hold it for the next day, but I tossed another teaser into the end.

  I flipped the screen around and Bob read it silently, touching the keys only twice before he looked up at me.

  “You have outdone yourself.” He smiled and handed the computer back. “Just don’t jump ship when Washington comes calling. I gave you a shot when they wouldn’t, and don’t you forget it.”

  I smiled, the pricking in the backs of my eyes telling me tears were coming whether I wanted them or not.

  I brushed them away, grinning as I read.

  I’d really done it. We had the story of the year. Grace Neal would know why her husband died. So would Valerie Roberts.

  Hot damn.

  “You want to do the honors?” Bob asked.

  I turned on my Blackberry’s Wi-Fi hotspot and opened an email to Les.

  “Bite me, you asshat,” I muttered as I clicked send. He’d no doubt find a reason to be unimpressed.

  “What a colorful—and accurate—description.” Bob laughed, nodding to the medic. “I think she’ll behave now.”

  She put a blood pressure cuff on my arm and Bob’s grin dissolved into a glare.

  “You scared the shit out of me, kid,” he said. “I heard you scream, then a scuffle, and then nothing—well, let’s just say those pills must be working, because I’m still sitting here.

  “Why the hell would you go after this guy without any help?” He shook his head. “I told you Parker said to let him know if you needed anything. He’s a big guy. And he would’ve come with you.”

  “Which would have been great, if I was sure he wasn’t in on it.”

  “If you what?” Bob stared. “What are you talking about?”

  Sighing, I waited for the medic to decide I wouldn’t expire on the ride to the hospital. When she returned to her seat, I pulled a copy of the photo of Lowe and Parker out of my bag, waving it under Bob’s nose as I explained a suspicion that suddenly sounded far-fetched. Especially given that Lowe wasn’t actually the big bad.

  “Oh, good Lord,” Bob chuckled. “You have to remove The X-Files from your Netflix immediately. Impressive conclusion you jumped to. Did that take a springboard?”

  “I didn’t jump to anything,” I argued, ticking off points on my fingers. “The designer bike, the flashy cash. And then the photo. Plus, he-who-has-never-spoken-to-me has been all into my story this week. It’s weird. A long step, or a hop, maybe, but no jumping.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that he might respect you?” Bob asked. “And I imagine he was asking about the drug dealers because he had a friend from college who blew out his knee catching for the Cardinals not long after Parker wrecked his shoulder. Except his buddy got addicted to Oxycontin, then to heroin. Hung himself. Sad story.

  “Parker’s got a real thing about it. He gives speeches to school kids on the evils of drugs. And he has more money than you because we pay him more.”

  “What? How much more?”

  “Grant Parker is a bona fide local hero,” Bob said. “According to Les’ focus groups, his column generates nearly a third of our daily subs and almost that much of our ad revenue. And he saves me paying a baseball reporter. He’s also a good writer, which you would know if you’d ever read that column he’s been begging you to critique for him. We can’t afford to lose him. He makes more money than I do.”

  My eyes dropped to my lap under his reproachful stare. Bob and my mother were the only two people in the world who could make me feel so effectively chastised.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Oh, indeed. You may owe him an apology.”

  “Well, why didn’t he mention knowing Lowe?” I cringed at what Parker must have thought of my insane behavior the night before.

  What if he really was a decent guy who just wanted to be my friend? Though he probably wouldn’t once he heard I’d labeled him a murderer.

  “The cop was the water boy, right? Didn’t you go to high school? How many star pitchers knew the water boy’s name?”

  Everything he said made perfect sense, which irritated me.

  “Forgive me for being a newbie at the ‘everyone’s trying to kill me’ platinum edition,” I huffed. “Maybe next time I’ll get to the bonus levels.”

  “Let’s not have a next time,” Bob said as the ambulance rolled to a stop outside the emergency room. The medic ordered him to the registration desk, and he took my bag and eased himself out the back doors.

  I snatched up my Blackberry.

  “Miss, you can’t make a call right now,” the medic sighed. “You really do need medical attention. Everything else can wait.”

  “I’m not calling anyone,” I smiled, clicking the browser open and looking for Parker’s name on the Telegraph’s mobile site. “But while I’m stuck here, I have some reading to catch up on.”

  20.

  Overnight sensation

  It turned out Bob was right. Parker was a hell of a good writer, and while I’ll admit to being emotional when I read it, his piece on the basketball coach brought tears to my eyes.

  I emailed my mom a link with “Read this, but get tissues first” in the subject line, and copied Parker. Maybe that would begin to make up for suspecting him of murder.

  The doctor who patched up my scalp assured me my hair would grow back eventually and admitted me for observation because of the sedatives.

  I watched Charlie’s coverage of the day’s events and learned that Nash was one of Kyle’s corpses. I didn’t know how to feel about that, but couldn’t say I was sorry.

  Since I knew my name and who was president, they let me go Saturday night.

  Jenna came to pick me up, listening to the tale with wide ey
es before she stopped in my driveway. Leaning across the console, she hugged me, mumbling something into my shoulder about boring being a good thing. I could go with that. I climbed out and waved as she drove off.

  “The dog is glad to be home.” The voice floated out of the darkness and I smiled.

  “Nope. Still not surprised,” I limped up the steps and seated myself next to Joey on the white wooden swing that was one of the best things about my house. “Maybe it’s you, because my old beau showing up with the cavalry this morning shocked the hell out of me.”

  “I used it all up on that first night.” He snapped his fingers. “Damn.”

  “That must be it. To what do I owe the honor of this visit? You could’ve left the dog here. I do it all the time.”

  “I wanted to thank you,” he said.

  “Shouldn’t I be the one thanking you? You called the FBI and tipped them off, right?” I knew Bob hadn’t, because he’d told me as much while we waited for the ER doctor. Joey was the only other logical assumption. “Which saved my life. Again. But how did you know?”

  “I went snooping around the warehouse.” His teeth flashed white in the darkness. “I thought I’d be in the clear, going early on a Saturday. Instead I found them moving stuff out and hosing the place down with gasoline. I found your car a couple of blocks away and called the FBI. They showed up while I was debating the best tactic for a rescue mission.”

  “You were?” It made me smile, though I didn’t know why.

  “Of course. I drug you into this. At least part of it.”

  His eyes held mine and my hospital-issue broiled cod flopped around in my stomach like it was still alive.

  “I never wanted you to get hurt. I had no idea it went all the way to the police chief. But I also didn’t want a shootout with a truckload of cops. I was outnumbered, and wouldn’t have come out of it well no matter how it went down. So I called it in. Working around the edges of the law, remember?”

  The edges. It still didn’t sound so bad. I stared at his lips and wondered if he was a good kisser. Something told me that was a given. And something else told me the answer was there for the having if I wanted it.