Flash and Fire (13 page)

His arrogant smile rankled her even as it seeped under her skin. “Yes, I did.” He touched the tip of his tongue to his lip, as if savoring her kiss. “You’d be surprised what I know about you, Mandy.”

She wished she had a bodyguard who could throw him out on his ear for her. Anything to wipe that smug expression from his face.

“I don’t have the time to hear it, nor the stomach for
it.” She thought of Whitney, waiting on the line. Amanda
gestured toward the front of the house. “You know where the door is. Don’t let it hit you on the way out.”

Not waiting to see him off, Amanda hurried to the den, her mind already on Whitney. Why is he calling? Has he changed his mind?

Pierce watched her leave. “All in due time, Amanda,” he murmured under his breath. “All in due time.” He waited a beat, then ventured out into the hall.

The sound of her voice, low and secretive, guided him. Pierce stopped short of the den. The door was closed, but he could hear her clearly through it. Amanda sighed, and Pierce could tell that she knew Granger personally, just as she’d said.

Amanda’s heart ached for Whitney. It wasn’t what he said but the tone of his voice when he said it that told her just how much he was suffering. She felt so impotent, so helpless.

“I could come over,” she offered.

She could hear the sad smile over the telephone. “Holding my hand isn’t necessary, Amanda. I’m a grown man. I broke the law. No matter how good I thought my reasons were, I still broke the law. It’s time to face up to the consequences. I just wanted to be sure that you were still going through with the story.”

She wished she didn’t have to. “It’s what you want, right?”

He sighed heavily. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll do it. I’ll present it in the best light I possibly can tonight.” She worked her lower lip. “Whitney, everything’s going to be all right.”

At least I hope so.

She heard him laugh softly, as if he knew better. “Of course it will. I’ll be watching tonight. I know I can count on you.”

“You can always count on me, Whitney.” To go on the air and be the first one to destroy your reputation and maybe your life, she thought sadly. “I’ll be by later in case you change your mind about needing that hand to hold.”

From the sound of her voice, Pierce judged that Amanda was about to hang up. He withdrew quickly, hurrying down the hall and then out the door.

As he got into his car and started it, he pressed one of the buttons on his mobile phone. He needed Granger’s address, and fast. Jackie was probably in her office at the station. She could look it up for him.

One hand on the wheel, Pierce listened to the phone on the other end ring. Just what was it that Amanda was preparing to present on the news tonight about Granger? He hadn’t heard of any exclusive shaping up at the station involving Contemporary Vehicles or Granger. That meant she was going out on her own. We’ll see, Mandy, we’ll see.

Within forty-five minutes, Pierce was standing on the
marble front steps of Whitney Granger’s house. The estate
was guarded, but it had been an almost childishly simple
matter to gain entry. He’d told the guard that he had been
sent by Amanda to speak to Granger. Phoning the house to verify, the guard had opened the gates almost immediately.

Apparently, Pierce mused, Amanda’s name opened doors around here.

Whitney was at the door when Pierce knocked.

Pierce took out his wallet to show his ID. Whitney waved it aside without bothering to look at it. “That isn’t necessary,” he told him. “I know who you are.” Whitney gestured for Pierce to come in, but his eyes remained wary as he regarded the younger man.

It was starting already, he thought. The reporters flocking to his door like so many vultures after carrion. But he could deal with this one. “I do, however, find it difficult to believe that Amanda sent you.”

Pierce felt his way around slowly. “She just wanted to get a couple of last-minute details straight for the broadcast tonight. They occurred to her after she hung up with vou earlier.”

It had the ring of truth in it, but so did the best of lies. “You were there?”

“Yes, at her house. We were working on something else when you called.”

The impression of her mouth still warm on his, Pierce wondered how Amanda would have reacted to his wording. He stole a glance at Whitney as he pretended to look around his elegant library.

Pierce went out on a limb, playing a long shot as he tried to second-guess Amanda’s reasoning.

“She wants to do this without any outside interference, but she felt that she needed someone to use as a sounding board.” Pierce turned to smile broadly at Whitney, his eyes innocent and unassuming, perhaps even a touch humble. “She chose me.”

Whitney’s initial inclination was to resist offering any explanation. He had asked for secrecy until she broke the story and Amanda had promised it. But the man before him was a known personality, and he seemed genuine. Whitney recalled seeing Pierce on the news several times. There was a quality of believability that radiated from him when he made his reports. He wasn’t a painted, two-dimensional newscaster, he was more like one of the many people he interviewed. More like one of them than he, Whitney, had ever been.

“All right.” Whitney indicated a sofa and then sat down himself. He folded his hands before him and looked up at Pierce. “What is it you want to know?”

Everything.

Pierce took a seat on the edge of sofa. Willing sincerity
to enter his eyes, Pierce did his best to put Whitney at ease.
He’d played the kindly friend more times than he had the hard-nosed reporter and had been amply rewarded.

He wondered how much he could ask without giving himself away. He began with a vague question, hoping it would lead to specifics. “What do you plan to do after the story’s released?”

An enigmatic smile played on Whitney’s lips. “You mean, after the reporters lay siege to the estate?”

So it was going to be big. He knew it. ‘Yeah, after that.”

Whitney suddenly felt too restless to sit. He’d been counting the hours until the broadcast. There wasn’t much time left. He rose and crossed to the white fireplace. On the mantel was a wedding portrait. It brought him no joy.

“I imagine that it’ll probably be a matter for the law to handle. I’ve already sent for Amanda’s father to represent me in this.”

Pierce vaguely recalled hearing that her father was a high-powered lawyer who sold his services only to the rich, the very rich. Pierce cast about for more questions, his mind racing as he tried to piece things together. Whispered rumors of embezzlement had just surfaced, as recently as yesterday. But if that was the case and it was true, why was Granger releasing the story himself? Unless he wasn’t behind the embezzlement. But if he wasn’t, then who was? Pierce couldn’t ask without giving himself away.

He settled on another mundane question. “Does Amanda know that you’ve called her father?”

Whitney shook his head. “No, I haven’t told her, but I imagine she’s guessed. As a matter of fact, she was the one who counseled me not to say anything unless Henry Foster was at my side.”

“It might be wise to listen to that advice.”

Whitney thought of the blackmailer. The voice had been adamant.

“It’s too late to play it safe. Too late.” Whitney realized that his mind had been drifting. “Perhaps I should just call Amanda and answer her questions myself—?”

Granger suspected, Pierce decided. “She’s not available,” Pierce told him easily. He took his cue and rose to his feet. Well, it had been a gamble. No need to press his luck. “She’s at the studio right now, working on her copy. She told me not to call until after four. She wanted to do the story, and you, justice.”

Whitney’s mouth curved. He wasn’t entirely certain that Amanda had sent this man, but what did it matter? In a few hours, everyone would know. “Strange that you’d use that word.”

Pierce looked at Whitney and saw only a human being in pain.

“Hey, justice is for everyone. She told me to tell you not to worry. That she’d be there for you if you needed her. That hand to hold,” he reminded Whitney.

Whitney nodded as the wariness temporarily left his eyes.

He believes me, Pierce thought. Yet the triumph was oddly hollow. Pierce jerked a thumb behind him in the direction of the front door. He had a bad taste in his mouth. “I’ll just let myself out.”

“Nothing else you want to know?”

“No. Amanda has the rest of it.”

Whitney nodded. “Tell her thank you for me when you see her.” His voice was resigned.

“Sure thing.”

It occurred to Pierce as he drove away from the estate that he could be accused of attempted theft. This was Amanda’s story. Amanda’s and Whitney’s. Once she announced it on the air, it would belong to everyone. But until that time, it was hers alone. He had no right to try to steal it by using a man’s tnist.

Thirty-two and he was finally developing a conscience, he thought. No, that was wasn’t exactly accurate. He had a conscience. But until just now, it had only pertained to widows and orphans, not news stories.

He supposed that everyone deserved an off day. His was today.

Chapter Fourteen

He didn’t have enough information to break the story on his own, and a delayed sense of morality had impeded his normal instincts, but his curiosity was still aroused. Rather than going home, Pierce decided to head to the television studio. There was nothing waiting
for him at home anyway except for a mailbox full of bills
and an empty refrigerator.

The refrigerator.

Like a clue in a word association game, “refrigerator” made him recall the groceries he had haphazardly deposited into his trunk earlier today. He had been preoccupied with thoughts of Amanda. Seeing her had thrown things off kilter. Now the milk he had bought this morning was surely on its way to souring.

Swallowing a halfhearted curse, he debated turning around and heading home with the two bags. Oh, the hell with it. There was no point in going home now. The perishables were already gone.

Pierce shrugged. He could always buy more. His nonchalance about the waste amused him. There was a time when spoiled milk would have been more than just a source of minor irritation. It would have generated a real problem. But his days of hand-to-mouth existence, and Georgia, were long behind him.

Pierce drove to the studio.

He pulled the car into his reserved spot in the rear parking lot and popped the trunk. He raised the lid and looked in. Wrinkling his nose, he sorted through the groceries, saved what was salvageable, and packed the rest into one bag. He rolled the bag firmly up at the top and took it out. There was a Dumpster at the rear of the studio. He crossed to it and threw out the bag. As he did so, a movement in the shadow of the building caught his eye.

Turning, Pierce saw a shabbily dressed man waiting for him to go inside the studio. Despite the heat, the man wore a huge, shapeless, dirty overcoat that looked as if it had once been a light tan color. Pierce had seen him around before. The man was a homeless vagrant who hung around the area. Pierce didn’t know his name but he had dubbed him Maurice, naming him after a slow, shuffling alley cat his grandmother had favored for a while, before the cat had gotten run over by a car.

Pierce knew that as soon as he went in, Maurice would go through the Dumpster and retrieve the food he had just thrown away. And be sick before morning. Pretending to go in, Pierce turned and watched the man start to dig in the trash.

Sighing, Pierce cut the distance between them. Maurice jumped back and put his hands in front of his dirty face when he saw Pierce approaching. He said nothing, only whimpered.

“Here.” Pierce reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a bill. Ten dollars, he noted as he held it out. It wasn’t much, but it could buy Maurice a little food, or a bottle. Whichever gave him more comfort and saw him through the night.

His wild eyes fixed on Pierce’s face, Maurice snatched the bill out of the reporter’s hand. He curled his dirt-creased fingers around it and scurried away like an escaping rodent.

Pierce blew out a breath as he shook his head. There but for the grace of God...

He walked into the studio.

The soundstage where all the news programs at K-DAL were taped was on the first floor. It was a hub of activity, with all its energy aimed at the center, where the five o’clock news anchors sat. Ryan, as always, looked as if he’d been pressed directly out of the pages of GQ. Amanda looked cool and composed in an ice-blue suit that echoed the color of her eyes.

Pierce wondered if she’d had second thoughts about Whitney’s bombshell, whatever it was. Had she had a last-minute change of heart about winging it alone, or told Grimsley about it?

Judging by the atmosphere around him as he made his way to the perimeter of the show, the answer to both questions was no.

The station manager, as always, was in the production booth. His murky, piglike eyes darted back and forth as he watched several monitors at once. A tall, hulking man at six three and well over two hundred and fifty pounds, John Grimsley had a florid face that was set in a perpetual frown.

Grimsley ruled the various news teams like a despot who couldn’t be bothered with trivial things like benevolence. If he liked someone, he or she was in. If he didn’t, for whatever reason, he made that person’s life a living hell. He was not above petty jealousies and callous dismissals that came in the form of pink slips, which were always effective immediately. Grimsley left it to the legal department to iron out the particulars. The owners of the station let him have his way because the ratings were excellent.

It was well known that Grimsley intensely disliked Amanda.

Pierce decided to observe Grimsley’s reaction firsthand when Amanda made her announcement on the air. He slipped quietly into the control booth.

Grimsley’s eyes flicked over Pierce before returning to the bank of screens before him. A technician sat in front of each screen, nervously monitoring the cameras for anything that might be unexpected and affect the broadcast negatively.