was a bid process. The fix was in from day one. Wendt’s our best shot at figuring out exactly who got bribed, how much they took, and who made the payoffs to open New York’s doors for business.”
Tyler’s chair slid closer to hers. He held out his knuckles.
“City desk wonder-twin powers—”
“—activate,” she said, gliding over on the chair’s casters and meeting him with a fist-bump.
“Hear from your guy in Houston?”
Her good mood faded, just a little. The comptroller had been a lone holdout amid the city’s decision-makers, digging his heels deep in the way of the Weaver Group’s arrival. In the end, Houston got the Loom, and he got frozen out. He had been stirring up trouble and kicking stray bits of dirty laundry her way ever since.
“Car accident,” she said, scooting her chair back over. “He’s okay.”
“You sure it was just an accident?”
She flashed a lopsided smile. “You’re starting to sound like Wendt.”
“He’s a whistleblower. Can’t be too careful.”
“Like I told him,” she said, “this is real life, not the movies. Scumbag corporations don’t send hit men to silence the opposition. They send lawyers.”
Speaking of Arthur Wendt, it was time to check in. She didn’t use the desk phone for that. They had a protocol. Her personal cell, his burner, one he’d bought with cash. No in-person contact, ever.
It had been two days since he had last returned her calls, with nothing but a terse “I’m working on it.” She was getting close to breaking the no-personal-contact rule and showing up on his doorstep. Still, there was an art to handling an informant. You had to be a little pushy, ride them to get results, but never too hard or you’d lose them completely. Nell was still figuring out Arthur’s pressure points.
While she dialed and listened to the robotic voicemail message, a commotion was breaking out at the front of the newsroom. Loud voices, people in motion. She figured it was the sports desk guys having a conniption over today’s Yankees game. Then Tyler snapped his fingers and drew her eye.
“Uh, Nell?”
A wall of a woman steamed her way through the bullpen, cutting down the middle aisle like a battleship. She had a shovel-flat face and a strangler’s hands. Nell couldn’t quite place her, not at first, not until she came to a dead stop on the far side of her desk.
“You murdering bitch.”
Noah Sellers’s wife, then. Widow. Whatever. Nell hung up the phone, folded her hands, and tried for a conciliatory tone.
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Sellers.”
“He named you. In the suicide note. Did you know that?”
She knew. Everybody knew. The morning Noah Sellers was found hanging from a knotted bedsheet, Nell ended up behind closed doors with the Standard’s editor-in-chief, the owner, and a trio of stone-faced lawyers for a two-hour interrogation.
“I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“You were the reason he couldn’t get a fair trial. You, that story you wrote, those lies.”
“I reported the truth,” Nell said. “Every line, every word, all backed up by verified facts. I’m sorry if you—”
The widow’s hand was a blur. She grabbed Nell’s cardboard cup from the desk and flung it in her face. Ice-cold coffee splashed in Nell’s eyes, ran down her cheeks, soaking her blouse in wet rivulets. Nowak, a high school fullback turned sports reporter, was just a second too late. He clamped down on her arm, the empty cup tumbling to the floor, and dragged her backward as the big woman started to scream. Nothing to it, just a word salad of pure outrage, every slur she could think of and threats of lawsuits, threats of car bombs, threats breaking down in a guttural howl of grief as two more staffers jumped in. They wrestled her toward the exit with tears streaming down her ruddy cheeks.
“You okay?” Tyler asked.
Nell flicked her fingertips, sending droplets of coffee flying.
“Fine,” she said. “It was cold. Wasn’t going to drink it anyway.”
3.
Later that night, in the heart of Manhattan, Seelie Rose stared at her ghost in the darkened glass.
A light summer rain came down, drizzling against the floor-to-ceiling window, turning her reflection into a phantom smear. The hard angles of her face lingered, unanchored and drifting with the night wind. Beyond her ghost sprawled the canyon of Fifth Avenue and the curated, tamed wilderness of Central Park.
It was a little after one in the morning. She couldn’t sleep. Five floors below the window ledge, brake lights flared wet and scarlet. Restless insomniacs, taxi drivers, night crawlers on their