you tomorrow,” Joe said.

“Again, that’s not the issue,” Lopez said. “Like you, we serve the public, but we each have different goals. Yours is about justice, while mine is about truth.”

“Our goal is always the truth,” Gil said coolly.

“Yes, but it’s not your main goal,” Lopez said, still smiling. “We serve the public by giving them facts and being a watchdog, and one of the main institutions we scrutinize is the police. We can do nothing that might undermine our reputation in the eyes of the public.”

“What the hell—” Joe said, before Gil interrupted him by saying, “There’s nothing we can say to change your mind, or maybe someone else we can talk to? These are security tapes, not interviews done by reporters.”

“I’m sorry,” Lopez said again. “The publisher is out of town, but she would absolutely agree with me. This is standard practice, really. Of course, as soon as you get the court order, I will do everything I can to help.”

“I bet,” said Joe as he and Gil got up to leave. They walked past the receptionist before Joe started swearing.

Gil interrupted him. “I’m going to head into the newsroom for a second. I’ll meet you back at the car.” He went through the glass door before the receptionist or Joe could protest.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Friday Afternoon

Lucy walked into the newsroom and instantly knew something was up. It wasn’t that people were rushing around. There was just a certain anticipation. Newsrooms were a great barometer of the importance of a news story. For people who live and breathe news, the real deal—not just a story about county taxes—gets them excited. Bad news was their best friend.

Lucy went to her desk and had just turned her computer on when she heard someone say to her, “Hi, boss.”

“Hi, Tommy,” she said without looking. Tommy Martinez was the cops reporter; his charm gave him access to news sources that made him indispensable in the newsroom. “What’s going on? Everyone seems hyper.”

“A skull was found in the ashes of Zozobra,” he said.

“Seriously?” Lucy said, getting excited when any normal person would be horrified. It was the nature of their work. “Are we doing this as the front page spread?”

“I don’t know,” Tommy said. “We haven’t talked about it yet. I’ve been too busy chasing the story.”

“We have to be,” she said. She got up and walked to the photo desk to find a printout of their daily news budget or someone who could tell her the scoop, but there was no one around. Maybe copydesk would know, she thought as she walked toward their warren of cubicles near the front of the windowless building.

She noticed that one of the lights overhead near the entrance to the newsroom was burnt out. The pocket of dark it left meant she could only make out hard shadows as a man came through the door, but she didn’t need extra illumination to make her brain fizz in recognition. She knew who it was.

Gil Montoya. She hadn’t seen him since January, and she wasn’t prepared to see him again. If she had been able to run and hide, she would have, but the only place to go was copydesk’s cubicle corral.

So she stood and stared as Gil walked toward her. She had forgotten how tall he was. How his dark eyelashes made his eyes seem ringed in eyeliner.

He stopped in front of her. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

He said nothing more as she nodded, her brain racing, trying to pin down an appropriate subject for small talk as the silence stretched out. They weren’t good enough friends or unfamiliar enough acquaintances to stand in comfortable silence. Lucy felt the need to make a joke, but then that was how she always felt around him. So she said, “On a scale of one to ten, with ten being in the fires of hell, how uncomfortable do you feel right now? Personally, I’d say I’m about an eight-point-two, but I could be talked into a nine.”

He smiled and said, “I’m going to go with five.”

“Bastard,” she said to him with a laugh. “You just have to show me up.”

“How have you been?” he said.

She considered the question. If she were honest, she would have to say not good. She lied. “Fine,” she said with a smile. “And you?”

Before he could answer, Peter Littlefield, one of the arts reporters, came up, saying, “Gil, it’s good to see you.” The two did the male back-patting hug.

“How’s Susan?” Peter asked. Lucy didn’t hear Gil’s reply. She had forgotten