Page 122 of Exposé

"I know. I need to go through it."

"Ava, you really need to be careful with this information. These people are powerful and rich, and those two things can get you almost anything you want. Including a journalist wiped off the map." Nate gave me a firm look.

History had a way of proving his statement true.

There had been a multitude of journalists 'wiped off the map' for simply inquiring and asking the wrong questions.

If history dictated my fate, and this was as serious as it must be, all bets were off on who I could trust.

Of course, he was right, but I was already aware of that. I was the one who made my job a dangerous one, but I wasn't scared enough to stop. If all of these powerful people did something wrong, the public deserved to know. We elected these people. We supported them, but we could also tear them down if driven enough.

These documents could be that spark of motivation. They could be the key to unraveling this whole weird conspiracy and whatever else was tangled up with NeuraZene. I was deeper in this than ever before, and I would take the plunge whether Nate was along for the ride or not.

25

Nate

For the last nineteen days, a low, droning static whispered from my computer speakers, the faint hum wrapping around me like a cocoon as every monitor flickered with live feeds of Ava’s studio apartment. Each screen offered me a piece of her sanctuary—the place she retreated to when she thought the world couldn’t touch her—the place where she believed she was safe.

Ava took another photo and tacked it onto her wall, drawing a red string from one to the next as though she saw some sort of puzzle inside of them, her mind working to solve the problem only one person seemed to know the answer to—Mr. Anonymous.

Who was this person?

How did they have the information that they did?

And how the hell did they know the Mayor was coming?

Our phones buzzed beside us, and I picked up my cloned copy, listening in, her voice echoing in my computer speakers.

"Hello?"

"Ava, it's Whitney. Where are you?"

"At home. Working."

"On the same story I told you to drop?"

"I did drop it." She winced.

Liar.

"Then why am I getting a call from the Mayor telling me you have an upcoming appointment for a follow-up?"

"It took him this long?"

Silence drowned the conversation.

"Odd isn't it?" Ava smiled, tucking the phone between her shoulder and ear, and then wrote on a sticky note and pressed it to the board. The wordinvolved?was circled in bright red. “If the Mayor didn’t tell you to drop the story, then why’d he bother calling to warn you about our meeting on Monday?”

"He didn't tell me to..." She let out an exasperated sigh through the phone. "Ava, I gave you explicit instructions—"

"Yeah, I’m aware. For the record, I’ve dropped the story," she lied. "My meeting was for something else entirely, but now that I know you two are in contact, there’s no reason for me to follow up with him."

"And what was the reason?"

"Just to see who he was in cahoots with." She placed the end of the pen into her mouth, diverted a string, and drew in a deep breath. "I quit, Whitney. And I won't even do you the solid of two-week’s notice."

"You're making a mistake—"

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