Page 1 of Exposé

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Ava

Another day gone, another day wasted.

Silence droned throughout the empty floor, the far light in the office flickering as though it were an ominous foretelling of something to come—except any logical thinker would know it was because Daniel, our maintenance man of twenty years, had yet to replace it.

I dropped my blue light blocking glasses to the desk and rubbed my forefinger against my eyelid, coaxing away the sleepiness racing to overtake my mind.

Darkness dotted around the streetlights outside the expansive windows.

Glancing at the calendar, I sighed and slumped my chin into my palm, my finger scrolling through recent events as I’d done for weeks on end.

No.

No.

My eyes landed on the image of the new smoothie place in town.No.

The Mayor’s new shelter puppy?No.

No one cared about that fluff—surface-level jabbery. They wanted a meaty story they could sink their teeth into, and I hadnothing.

“Ava?”

My heart leapt into my throat, my heel kicking the roller on my chair as I jumped, causing a chain of unfortunate events. The chair rolled out from beneath me, and my ass connected with the amber-stained cement floor, bruising my tailbone and pride.

“Ugh.”

“I’m so sorry.” Daniel bent over and stretched out his wrinkled, sun-spotted hands. “Here, let me help you.”

Daniel, a seventy or so year old man, gripped my elbow and heaved me up, then retrieved my rolling chair, which had crashed into the cubicle behind me.

“You scared the ever-loving-shit out of me, Daniel.” I glanced at my watch and confirmed the time with the clock on the far wall. “It’s eleven-thirty. I thought everyone had gone home already.”

“I pulled an evening shift instead. Dennis had a soccer game.”

My seat bounced as I sat, the cushion inside the black fabric pressed into a thin pancake, causing pressure points against my now bruised butt cheeks.

“Soccer? Your grandson is old enough to play a sport now?”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Time flies when we’re having fun.”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I guess so.”

Daniel leaned against my cubicle’s three-quarter wall, his elbow braced atop it, while he gripped the mop handle with his other. “What are you working on these days? I thought you’d take a break after busting the doctor’s place.”

“It was a children’s dentistry. And no. There’s too much going on in the world to sleep on it.”Not that I can find it…

“I hear you.” He shook his head. “How can someone sell their client’s information, much less children… I draw the line at children.”

Shrugging, I straightened my desk, folding my glasses and tucking them under my screen. “Dr. Green and his staff were disgusting. In fact, you should have your daughter lock Dennis’s social security number and set alerts for it. That’s how my source figured out something shady was happening.”

He raised a brow.“That easy, huh?”

“It takes one slip, and they get caught. Someone has to find that needle in the needle stack.”

He twisted the mop handle. “Don’t you mean haystack?”

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