On Deadline & Under Fire

by Amanda M. Lee

  Maggie shot me a horrified look. “Did you really need to share that?”

  “Fawn has a crush on Eliot and gives me nothing but crap where he’s concerned,” I explained. “I have to get my jollies somewhere.”

  “Oh.” Maggie furrowed her brow. “Does she always act like this?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s ... not pleasant.”

  I could think of several better ways to describe the situation. “Yeah, she’s a real butt-sniffing ass munch,” I agreed. “It doesn’t matter. I know that Eliot told her I’m allowed to work on his computer whenever I need to.”

  Fawn huffed out a sound that sounded partially like a growl. “I don’t think he meant for that to occur when both of you were on vacation.”

  “And I think he won’t care.” I marched into his office and frowned when I realized his laptop wasn’t in its regular spot at the center of his desk. “Um ... where is his computer?”

  “Oh, you don’t know everything now, do you?” Fawn was haughty. “I think if Eliot wanted you to know where his computer was he would’ve told you. In fact, I bet he had no idea you were going to bring one of your loser friends to his store and try to use his computer when he was spending time with his saintly mother. I can’t wait to tell him.”

  It took me a moment to realize what Fawn was saying. “Oh. You think Eliot is spending time with his saintly mother and I’m hanging out with a loser, huh?”

  “I believe that’s what I said.”

  “Well, fact check, my moronic friend.” I was enjoying myself far too much. Fawn was an easy mark – almost too easy – but I enjoyed making her cry. It was becoming something of a regular occurrence. “Eliot is working at the sheriff’s department because they had an emergency.”

  “Oh ... but why didn’t he call me to check in?” Fawn looked pouty. “That would’ve been the professional thing to do.”

  “Maybe he didn’t realize his pawnshop clerk desperately needed validation,” I suggested. “As for my loser friend, meet Maggie Kane. She’s Eliot’s mother.”

  The look on Fawn’s face when she realized her mistake was priceless. She blinked several times in rapid succession, her mouth opening and closing as if she were a guppy out of water, and her eyes went vacant as she considered the ramifications of insulting her boss’s mother.

  “That’s what I thought.” I was pleased by her reaction, enough so that my mind cleared and I realized where Eliot likely moved his computer. “He took his computer upstairs because he was going to be on vacation, didn’t he?”

  “What’s upstairs?” Maggie asked, her gaze hard as she caused Fawn to shrink down to Lilliputian size with her ire. “Why would Eliot’s computer be in a different location?”

  “That’s where he used to live,” I explained. “It’s an apartment. Once we bought the house, he decided to use the space as an office for his security business. I’m sure he moved the computer there to keep it safe while he was taking time off.”

  “I am so sorry, Mrs. Kane.” Fawn finally found her voice. “You have to understand ... um ... I didn’t mean what I said. I just assumed you were one of the crazy people Avery hangs out with because I was certain that a woman like you – Eliot has nothing but nice things to say about you. I believe each and every one of them. I mean ... when I heard you were coming to visit ... I was excited because I thought you would be the one to end Eliot’s relationship with her.”

  “She’s a huge fan of mine,” I interjected, winking for Maggie’s benefit. “She falls all over me like this whenever we interact. It’s a bit embarrassing the way she fawns. Wait ... Fawn fawns. That should totally be the name of your next porno film, Fawn.”

  Fawn balked, her cheeks turning crimson. “I don’t do porn! Why do you keep saying things like that?”

  “Because I love getting reactions like that,” I answered without hesitation. “As for Maggie breaking Eliot and me up, you’re bound for disappointment. Maggie now loves me just as much as Eliot.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Maggie cautioned, “though I am starting to see why Eliot is so enamored with you. You have a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude that I’m starting to find refreshing. This is the third person you’ve agitated to the point of tears and it’s barely noon. You’re amazing.”

  “I’m definitely amazing,” I agreed as I pointed toward the front door. “We need to go that way. I figure we can get takeout for lunch and then run my search. By the time we’re finished eating I should be done messing around.”

  Maggie was back to being my happy assistant. “What should we get for lunch? I mean ... what do investigative reporters eat?”

  “I usually eat chili fries and hamburgers.”

  “That seems a bit heavy,” Maggie pointed out. “Plus, well, you have thick thighs. I don’t think you should eat so many carbohydrates. If you don’t adjust your eating habits now you’ll regret it when you turn forty.”

  That sounded ... annoying. “There’s a creole place around the corner. They have good jambalaya and red beans and rice.”

  “Also carbohydrates.”

  “I need carbohydrates to survive. I’ll die without them.”

  “That’s something to consider,” Fawn muttered under her breath.

  “Did you say something?” I challenged, pinning her with a dark gaze. “Do you need further attention?”

  Fawn balked at my tone. “I’m simply trying to make sure that you don’t take advantage of Eliot. I’m a good employee. That’s what good employees do.”

  “Eliot likes it when I take advantage of him,” I countered. “Don’t worry about that. He gets turned on and asks if he can wait on me hand and foot ... while naked.”

  Maggie made a tsking sound with her tongue. “Really, Avery? Must you always take it one step too far?”

  “You’ll have to ask my mother. You’ll be meeting her at dinner tonight.”

  “I’m looking forward to that,” Maggie said crisply. “I think we’ll have a lot to discuss.”

  That was exactly what I was afraid of. “I’m betting the two of you will love each other,” I agreed. “As for you, Fawn, don’t worry about what I’m doing. It will only take a few minutes and then we’ll be out of your hair.”

  “See, I don’t think I should simply forget about your visit,” Fawn argued. “I think Eliot would want to know that you’re here using his computer when you’re supposed to be on vacation ... and dragging his mother along for the ride.”

  Well, she wanted to play that way, did she? She was going to be sorry she went low. No one could go lower than me. “Go ahead,” I suggested brightly. “Call him. When he gets here I’ll explain how you called his mother one of my loser friends. I think it will be quite the illuminating experience.”

  Fawn balked. “That was an accident!”

  “I don’t think Eliot will see it that way,” I shot back, leading Maggie to the door. I cast a final gaze over my shoulder before exiting to the sidewalk. “Do you want to break poor Eliot’s heart with a bad attitude regarding his mother? Shame on you!”

  With that, I flounced out of the store and headed for the stairs that led to the upstairs apartment. Odds were that Fawn would still rat me out. If I worked quickly, though, I would be gone before Eliot could catch up.

  “THIS JAMBALAYA IS AMAZING,” Maggie enthused thirty minutes later as she shoveled shrimp, rice and okra in her mouth and watched me struggle with Eliot’s high-tech scanner. “What’s taking so long?”

  “I’m not good with his programs,” I admitted, frowning at the screen as I tried to isolate the hero’s head in the photograph. “He’s better at searching for stuff than I am. It takes me three times as long as it takes him. I have no idea why.”

  Maggie looked legitimately curious as she sat at the table across from me and stared. “Does he help you with your stories a lot?”

  “I guess that depends on how you define ‘a lot.’ I wouldn’t use that terminology, for the record.”

  “I wo
uld define it as running searches for you more than once a month,” Maggie said.

  “Oh, well, if that’s your definition then, yeah, he helps me a freaking lot.” I let loose a sigh as Eliot’s program scanned the photo and began searching. The facial recognition software on his computer was powerful, although it might take a while for the program to come up with anything. “Now we just have to wait for some matches.” I grabbed the container of jambalaya Maggie picked up for me and dug in. “This is really good.”

  “I have to agree. Good choice.”

  “I’m full of good choices.”

  “Especially in men,” Maggie said, causing me to shift in my chair under her weighted gaze. “You clearly love my son, even though you’re a massive pain in the behind most of the time. He doesn’t seem to care that you’re flaky and out there. He only seems to care that he loves you and you reciprocate.”

  “And you clearly still have a problem with that,” I muttered.

  Maggie immediately started shaking her head. “Actually, I don’t. I see you two for what you are.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Happy.”

  Her answer was so simple it caused my heart to roll. “Don’t you want Eliot to be happy?”

  “I do.” Maggie nodded. “I want to be happy, too. I miss him. I can’t help that.”

  I shook my head. I understood where she was coming from, even if her constant need to push boundaries was getting a bit old. “We’ll figure out a way for you to be happy, too. You can visit whenever you want. We can set up that Skype thing. Eliot can even visit you more often.”

  “Eliot won’t do that unless you go with him,” Maggie argued. “He’s afraid to leave you to your own devices in case you get into trouble while he’s out of town. You must realize that.”

  “He doesn’t have to worry. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time.”

  “You’ll never break him of that habit.”

  I recognized that. I hated it, but she was telling the truth. “Then I’ll go on vacation with him. We’ll come up with a schedule that works for everyone. This does not have to be a big thing.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Maggie said. “You’ve won the war. You can be magnanimous in victory.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty much a wanker whether I win or lose,” I admitted. “People hate being around me win or lose.”

  “Is that because you’re intense when you play the game?”

  “No. It’s because I’m a poor winner and loser. I can’t help myself.”

  Maggie snorted. “At least you’re self-aware. Some of the things you say would be intolerable if you weren’t aware that you were being intolerable.”

  “That’s what I’m going for. In fact ... .” I broke off when I heard the door at the bottom of the stairwell open, heavy feet stamping against the steps as someone headed in our direction. I’d left the apartment door open because I wasn’t expecting visitors, but I had no doubt exactly who was about to darken the office doorstep. “Crap! Fawn ratted us out.”

  Maggie’s eyes went wide. “What does that mean?”

  “It means things are about to get ugly.”

  “Oh, well, I can’t wait. It’s been quiet for a full thirty minutes. We were truly due for some drama.”

  “Then brace yourself. This is going to get dramatic.”

  20 Twenty

  Eliot didn’t look surprised when he walked through the door and found me using his computer. He did, however, look furious.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Hello, honey, and how is your day going?” I sang out the greeting in a happy tone, as if I were a lobotomized wife waiting for her man to bring home the bacon so she could fry it up and serve it to him on a platter while cooing over his muscles and work ethic. “You look like you’ve been working hard.”

  “Oh, cut the crap.” Eliot made a face as he glanced around the apartment. He’d yet to fully organize it into an office, so it was a mess with stacked boxes in the corners and blank walls to complete the sterile environment. “What are you doing?”

  “I was just explaining to your mother how you’re the light of my life.”

  Maggie nodded. “She was telling me that. In fact, she was also explaining how you guys would visit me together every few months to make sure I don’t feel so cut off from your life.”

  Eliot narrowed his eyes. “She volunteered to visit you?”

  “She did. She also said we could Skype. I don’t know what that is, but it sounds exciting.”

  “Oh, geez.” Eliot dragged a hand through his hair. “I don’t understand how this happened.”

  “What?” Maggie adopted an innocent tone as she looked around. “We’re not doing anything. We’re being good.”

  I bit back a chuckle. That sounded exactly like something I’d say to get out of trouble. In truth, I was starting to like Eliot’s mother. Sure, we had a long way to go if we wanted to build a lasting relationship, but we were moving along at a steady pace that should’ve made Eliot happy. He didn’t look happy, though.

  “You’re not being good,” Eliot fired back. “Don’t run that sewage on me.”

  “How do you know we’re not being good?” I challenged. “We could be up here discussing various charities to donate our time to for all you know.”

  “Yeah, because that sounds just like you.”

  “Hey! I’m charitable.”

  “You gave to the Star Wars for Students charity two weeks ago,” Eliot countered. “I’m pretty sure that’s the only charity you’ve ever given to, and their idea of helping the needy is making sure that kids with limited funds can get their hands on custom-made lightsabers.”

  “Untrue.” I wagged a finger as I watched the search progress bar tick over to eighty percent on the computer screen. “I also give to the Girl Scouts every year.”

  “Buying cookies is not giving to the Girl Scouts.”

  “It is so. They benefit from those cookies.”

  “And so do you because you hoard boxes of Samoas in places you think I won’t find them.”

  “I share the Thin Mints.”

  “Oh, well, thank you,” Eliot said dryly, folding his arms across his chest. “Do you want to tell me what you’re really doing here or should I use my imagination to come up with the worst possible scenario?”

  “I think you should guess,” I suggested, buying time.

  “Fawn says you were looking to run a search on my computer. She also says she did not call my mother a loser and if you say otherwise that you’re lying.”

  Oh, she was good. I had to give her that. “You’ll have to ask your mother how much the ‘loser’ comment upset her. I think it was hurtful, but it’s not my place to make the argument.”

  “It was definitely hurtful,” Maggie agreed, her expression solemn. “I almost cried.”

  “Yes, I can tell you’re bereft,” Eliot drawled, moving closer to me and studying the computer screen. I wanted to shut the laptop to cut off his avenue of investigation, but the search was ongoing and I didn’t want to lose the progress I’d already made. “Why are you running the facial recognition program?”

  “Oh, well ... .”

  “Let’s go back to talking about me being hurt,” Maggie suggested. She was trying to draw the onus of the conversation off me, which I appreciated, but there was no way Eliot would fall for that. “I think you should give that girl downstairs a good talking to. She’s incredibly rude.”

  “She’s only rude to two people,” Eliot countered. “Before you arrived in town it was only one.”

  “Your girlfriend.”

  “Yes, well, Avery isn’t exactly nice to her either.”

  “Perhaps not, but you’ve set up an environment in which your girlfriend is constantly attacked for simply being herself,” Maggie said. “I don’t think that’s fair to Avery. Of course, she lashes out in return. It’s no fun to always be attacked.”

  “Fawn isn’t that bad,” Eliot argued.
>
  “Maybe not in front of you because she knows she’ll be fired, but when you’re not around, well, she’s terrible,” Maggie supplied. “If I were Avery, I would’ve cried at the hurtful comments.”

  “Avery only cries at Little House on the Prairie episodes and encore viewings of E.T.”

  “I also cry at soap operas,” I added. “Oh, and Spock’s death ... and Han’s death ... and when Eleven was reunited with her friends on Stranger Things. That was a tearjerker there.”

  Eliot rolled his eyes. “I think we’ve gotten off on a tangent.”

  “And I think you just don’t want to admit that you keep Fawn around because she’s good for your ego,” Maggie said. “You like the attention she throws your way even though she undermines your girlfriend every attempt she gets.”

  Eliot’s mouth dropped open and he slid his eyes to me. “Did you tell her to harp on this?”

  I shook my head when the computer dinged to signify it was finished searching and had come up with three possible matches. “No. She did that herself. But I do approve of the tactic.”

  “You would.” Eliot stared over my shoulder as three faces filled the screen. “Who are you looking for?”

  “The hero.”

  “Is that a metaphor for something?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I’m looking for the hero who was at the fire the other day.”

  “The one you told me about who saved the kid?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Why are you looking for him?”

  “Because he was on the seventeenth floor, and that’s where Jay Truman was found dead. He also disappeared right after — although clearly he didn’t wander very far. I think it’s suspicious that he didn’t want to be patted on the back for his daring act of heroism.”

  Eliot was clearly frustrated as he rubbed the back of his neck. “I need you to tell me exactly what you’re doing, and I would appreciate it if you did it in a way that wasn’t meant to purposely confuse me.”

  That seemed simple enough. “We stopped at the newspaper office because I wanted to know if they’d found anything on my story. Before you give me grief about being on vacation and that not being my story, we both know I don’t see it that way. You’ll have better luck beating your head against a wall than arguing with me.”