“Miss?”
Zoe looked away from the entrance to find a security guard eyeing her. She waved him off. “I’m moving the car. Just give me a second.”
She closed the back door and got in the front. The motor was still running. She adjusted the seat and shifted the car into drive. Just as she had all summer long as a volunteer at the hospital, she drove to the visitor lot, pulled into a spot, and cut the ignition. But unlike those mundane days, she dropped her head to the steering wheel and released a low, broken cry. But before she could catch her breath, somebody knocked on the car’s window.
Her head shot up, and then her heart nearly stopped beating.
Sam.
Sam, with what looked like a black eye, gave her the saddest smile she’d ever seen. She stared at him for a beat, then two. Was this even real? He took a step back, and she got out of the car.
He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Why are you driving Michael’s car?”
She glanced around the parking lot. “Why the hell are you here?”
“You weren’t at home. I thought maybe you were volunteering here today. So much has happened. I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve missed you so much. I need to talk to you. There’s so much I need to tell you, Z.”
He looked terrible—absolutely wrecked. An angry purple bruise outlined his right eye. But she did not have time for his shit. Not with Em inside the ER and God knows what happening with her hand.
She lifted her chin and held his pitiful gaze. Anger and devastation roared through her like a tornado ready to tear this motherfucker apart. “No, you don’t get to say or explain anything to me! Your actions did that. Here are the facts. You have a girlfriend, and on a normal day, I might have the time to rip you a new one and tell you all about what a dunder-fuck dick wagon you are. But I just played a major role in probably ruining my best friend’s life. So, I just don’t have it in me, Sam. I have zero interest in anything you have to say. If you were ever my friend, you would pick up your sorry, cheating ass and leave and never, ever talk to me again.”
He stared, stupefied. Had he not been the strongest man she knew, she would have expected his knees to buckle and his ass to hit the pavement.
Tears streaked down his cheeks as he stared up into the sky. “I’m sorry, Z.”
She wiped hot tears from her own cheeks. “Save it! Save it for your girlfriend, Sam. I don’t need or want your fucking apology.”
7
Five Years Ago
“Stein! Get in here!”
Zoe grabbed her laptop and gathered her notes. Every day was a busy day at Zipline Media, one of D.C.’s fastest growing internet media news companies. In this town, breaking news could happen at any moment. And most days—it did. A crackle of anticipation popped every time the phone rang. The next tip, the next email, even the next weirdo to walk in the door could be the story, that story. The big one.
She searched her desk, throwing random papers onto the floor of her cubical, looking for another file. As a general assignment reporter, she was at the bottom of the newsroom pecking order, but two weeks ago, a random call changed everything.
“Stein! You’ve got thirty seconds!”
Zoe peeked over the low wall that separated her desk and caught the gaze of Agnes Gordon, another general assignment reporter. The woman cringed. It was never a good sign when their editor in chief screamed out a reporter’s name.
“What did you do this time, Zoe?” Agnes asked, gaze darting toward the half-opened door of the editor’s office.
This time.
Zoe froze. Yesterday, she’d posted a story of abusive practices reported at Newcastle Youth Rehabilitation Services, a girls’ detention center near the Virginia and West Virginia border.
She gathered her hair and twisted it into a messy bun. “Do I look decent?”
Agnes cringed again. “How much coffee have you had?”
Zoe glanced down at her desk littered with Styrofoam cups. “A lot.”
“All break room coffee?” Agnes’ cringe face had morphed into full-blown repulsed.
“Yeah, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends trying to get another source to go on the record and corroborate what my source told me. I need all the caffeine I can get.”
Agnes sat back in her chair. “You look like it, honey.”
Zoe found the folder she was looking for and glanced over at Jack’s door just as Cheryl Laughlin, one of the venture capitalists funding Zipline Media, sauntered into his office.
“Shit, Zoe!” Agnes said under her breath.
Shit was right. When Cheryl came down from the ivory tower to mingle with the minions, shit was about to get real.
With her laptop tucked under her arm, Zoe grabbed her cell phone and glanced at the screen. Four missed calls from her mother and another missed call from Michael. Why didn’t they just send a text? She had too much on her plate to gab with her mom about her three-year-old niece Kate’s latest antics or listen to Michael lament on how he wished he could focus more on music instead of his family’s law practice.
She slipped the phone into her back pocket and carried every important document she’d amassed in the last two weeks over to the editor in chief’s door. She paused before entering. Cheryl and Jack spoke in hushed tones, their heads bent over a laptop.
Zoe swallowed past the lump in her throat. She glanced back at Agnes. The woman held up crossed fingers, but trepidation flashed on her face.
One of the youngest reporters at Zipline Media, Zoe was determined to move up the newsroom food chain. She’d worked her ass off. Whether it was a puff piece about the penguins at the zoo or an interview with a D.C. debutante, she gave it her all. But it was a random call to the tip line that had brought her to this point. A real story. A scoop with teeth. A topic that mattered.
She knocked on the door with her elbow. As soon as Jack looked up, the blood in her veins went cold. The editor in chief had a tell. If he crossed his arms as you entered the room, you’d be fine. If he grabbed the container of antacid tablets on his desk and threw a handful in his mouth, that was a first-class ticket to covering the Kardashians for the next six months.
But Jack didn’t do either. His face remained neutral. “Come in, Zoe.”
Shit! She’d never seen this side of him.
Another knock at the door. Zoe glanced over her shoulder to see the news editor, Dan Lerner, her direct boss.
In this newsroom, she reported to Dan. Dan reported to Jack and Jack interacted with Cheryl and the other high-ups keeping this place afloat. She’d never even seen Cheryl speak to anyone in the newsroom. Zoe glanced around the room. Everybody had on their poker face except for Dan who wiped a sheen of sweat off his top lip with the back of his wrist.
Jack gestured to a long table. “Let’s sit.”
Sit?
That was a bad sign. When she’d called the junior senator from Indiana a bumbling wedgie sphincter or when she’d addressed the city’s most crooked lobbyist as a master turd peddler, she’d gotten a quick reprimand. Red-faced, Jack had rattled off a string of expletives—par for the course with this man. In his late thirties, Jack Riggs was one of the youngest editors in chiefs of a major news media organization. He had the reputation as a driven hot-head, but he was also seen as a straight shooter. If someone was a douchebag, you called them a douchebag.
She set her laptop and files on the table. Jack and Dan joined her, but Cheryl remained at the desk. She leaned against the side, arms crossed like a Chanel clad statue.
Jack nodded to Dan. Her news editor’s Adam’s apple moved up and down as he swallowed hard.
What the hell was going on?
Dan glanced back at Cheryl. The woman didn’t move a muscle. As still as a lynx ready to pounce, her sharp gaze revealed nothing.
Dan leaned in. “Zoe, walk us through how you’ve gotten to this point with your story.”
Go time! She cracked open a folder just as her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of he
r pocket. Michael, again!
“Sorry!” she said, switching it to silent mode and setting it on the table.
Jack said nothing and stared her down.
Zoe steadied herself. “A couple of weeks ago, I got a tip that girls at a juvenile detention center run by Newcastle Youth Rehabilitation Services near the border of Virginia and West Virginia were being mistreated. The caller reported that she had recently been released and shared accounts of physical and sexual abuse. She also reported the girls there weren’t receiving any counseling or schooling. She cited accounts of girls in physical restraints, forced medication, solitary confinement for long periods of time, and body cavity searches done by male security personnel. I met her in person. I saw the scars on her wrists from the restraints.”
Jack blinked. He wasn’t giving her anything.
She grabbed another file. “I’ve dug into this. Newcastle owns and operates facilities all over the country. There have been similar accounts from girls at their centers in Florida and Ohio. There’s not a lot of hard data out there because these places aren’t even required to collect any or make it public. In my opinion, this is just the tip of the iceberg. These instances of gross negligence run deeper than one rogue facility in the sticks. And something’s going on with the money funneling in and out of these places. It doesn’t seem to be adding up, but I don’t have enough information on that yet.”
Her heart rate kicked up a notch. This was big. She could feel it—the energy around this story was like a tractor beam, pulling her in. Girls were being abused. State-funded abuse. Teenage girls in growing numbers were being tossed into these places. Privately run prisons promised cost savings but were charging the government millions while girls were denied the academic and rehabilitative services they desperately needed.
Her gaze bounced between the men. How were they not outraged? Her heart pounded, the sound near deafening. She leaned forward. “Girls—vulnerable girls—many of whom have been neglected by their parents and already endured years of abuse are then sent to these places that not only don’t help them but do further damage!”
A muscle twitched on Jack’s cheek. “What did you tell Dan you were working on?”
She blinked. “A story about teen girls from a rehab facility.”
Dan wiped his wrist across his lip again. “You mentioned nothing about it being a private girls detention center, Zoe.”
She glanced between the men.
Jack hardened his gaze. “Yesterday, you posted a story on the main Zipline page making serious allegations. Your editor didn’t have the whole story, and I sure as shit didn’t have it either. You didn’t run this through the right channels.”
Zoe sat on the edge of her chair. “This all came together quickly. But these girls need help. This is important. People need to know about this.”
Jack banged his fist on the table. “And that’s why these kinds of stories need to go through me!”
She tried a different approach. “We haven’t been covering much corporate corruption lately. I thought this was big enough to run with.”
“Tell me about your source,” Jack growled.
“Yes, let’s talk about that,” Cheryl said. Her voice as light as air and as deadly as Sarin gas.
Cheryl Laughlin didn’t need to rant or rave. One whispered word from this young, powerful woman could make or break careers. She straightened and walked over to the table, her long, toned legs consuming each inch of the office’s hardwood floor. Click, click, click.
A pocket of silence swallowed the room.
Zoe rubbed her eyes. Had she not been awake for the last forty-eight hours, she might have been able to decipher the hard gleam in Cheryl Laughlin’s gaze. Yesterday’s piece was an interview she’d done with the teen who’d called in the tip. The girl had spent six months in the Newcastle facility for petty theft, and she’d only agreed to cooperate if her identity remained secret.
Zoe lifted her chin, her second wind kicking in. “I wish I could have named my source, but she was afraid that if her identity were revealed, the staff at Newcastle would take it out on her friends who are still serving their sentences at the facility.”
Cheryl gave her a smug smile. “I did a little digging myself regarding your source.”
Zoe’s stomach dropped. All her notes were on her Zipline laptop which was all property of Zipline Media.
Cheryl walked the perimeter of the room. “Your source happens to be a meth-addicted seventeen-year-old.”
“Yes, but—”
Cheryl raised a finger, and Zoe bit her tongue. “I spoke to your source’s mother this morning. It turns out, this troubled girl didn’t have parental consent to speak with you.”
Shit! All the evidence was right there, locked inside the tortured minds of these young girls who had endured that hell hole. The only way to make it stop was to shine a light on the injustices.
Zoe reached for another file. “I checked her account against several other teens’ stories. The similarities are there. Something is going on. Something is not right. These facilities are secluded. They’re in tiny towns often in the middle of nowhere without many resources. The money flowing in and out is shrouded in secrecy.”
Jack banged his fist again. “And that’s where we have another clusterfuck of a problem! I have the mother of this girl telling us she didn’t give permission for an interview and that her daughter is a pathological liar. On top of that, I’ve got a congressman giving me a goddamned earful about how he believes Zipline Media is trying to discredit the facility, have it shut down, and take valuable jobs away from his constituents. Powerful people are blowing up my email, and you don’t have one piece of goddamned credible evidence!”
“I thought it was important enough to post as soon as possible,” she answered.
“You thought?” Jack boomed.
Everything went bleary. Her vision. Her thinking. It all ebbed and flowed in slow motion. “Somebody must have gotten to them.”
The vein in Jack’s forehead pulsed. “Who, Zoe?”
“It had to be someone from Newcastle.”
Jack sat back and narrowed his gaze. “No, the blame falls on you, Zoe. You trusted the integrity of this news outlet with the ramblings of a drug-addicted minor, and now Zipline has to post a retraction.”
Zoe gritted her teeth. “She’s not just a seventeen-year-old drug addict! She’s a rape victim. Her family was homeless from her fifth birthday until her tenth birthday. She’s lived on the streets. She’s a goddamned survivor who has lived through things you and I have never seen the likes of.”
Jack laughed. “Don’t start getting all high and mighty on me—especially when you didn’t bring the facts!”
Shit! She had to change tack. She closed the folder and held Jack’s gaze. He might be her boss’s boss, but she was not backing down. “Mr. Riggs, Jack, we’re the good guys. Our job as journalists is to be the voice of the oppressed. Our job is to tear back the curtain and expose the truth!”
Jack shared a glance with Cheryl. The woman gave a slight nod.
“You fucked up, Zoe. You’re at fault! You didn’t share all the facts with your editor, and you ran a story without my direct approval. You’re fired.”
Cheryl slid an envelope off Jack’s desk and placed it on the table. Zoe didn’t need to open it to know it contained her last paycheck. As she sat there, tail between her legs, IT was revoking her access to the network. The badge hanging from the lanyard around her neck was now a three-inch by two-inch piece of memorabilia from her time at one of the nation’s fastest growing online news and entertainment sites.
Zoe stared at the envelope as Cheryl Laughlin left the office. The clack of her heels pounded like nails being hammered into a coffin.
She had failed these girls.
“Excuse me, Jack.”
Zoe glanced at the door to see Jack’s assistant.
“Not now, Helen!”
The woman took a tentative step into the room. “I’
m sorry to interrupt, but there’s an urgent call for Zoe.”
Zoe’s eyes went wide. She felt like a death row inmate, and this call could be the governor’s reprieve. Maybe her source’s mother had reconsidered? Maybe they were willing to go on the record. This call was her last hope. She looked from Dan and then to Jack.
Jack gestured to his desk. “Take it.”
She jumped up, lifted the receiver, and pressed the flashing call button. “This is Zoe Stein.”
“Jesus Christ, Zoe! Pick up your cell phone!”
Her heart sank. “Michael, I can’t talk. I’m right in the—”
“Sara’s dead, Zoe. Your sister-in-law killed herself yesterday. She took a shitload of sleeping pills then started the car inside the garage. She and Kate were in there. Kate almost died of carbon monoxide poisoning, but Ben got to her in time.”
Zoe gripped the table. The ground shifted as if she was trapped inside an hourglass, the tiny grains funneling out from beneath her feet, threatening to carry her away.
She willed herself to breathe. “What?”
“I’m sorry to call you at work, but you need to come home. I know how busy you are at Zipline, but Ben needs you. Kate needs you. Your parents need you. I’m handling everything—the police, the funeral, all the legalities, but I’ve never seen your brother like this. It’s bad, Z. It’s really bad.”
Zoe scanned the room. Was this even real? Was her entire life crumbling around her? “Michael, I just need a minute. I promise I’ll call you back in sixty seconds.”
Michael was still speaking when she hung up the phone. She looked up to see Jack and Dan watching her. She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “That was a close family friend. My sister-in-law passed away yesterday. I need to go home.”
Jack crossed his arms. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
She held Jack’s gaze a beat. Her mind was spinning with news of Sara, but there was something more to this Newcastle story. She could see it in Jack’s eyes. But before she could try and connect the dots, a clammy hand gripped her shoulder. She looked up to see Dan.
The Complete Langley Park Series (Books 1-5) Page 113
