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Thank you! And happy reading!
Brynn Stewart steeredher Infinity sedan through downtown Boston, along a gritty, run-down section of North Nebraska Avenue. In the waning daylight the faded, cracked asphalt pieced together by black tar patch-lines looked like scribbles made by a toddler with a black crayon.
She scanned the road looking for someone, anyone, she could talk to who might have seen something the night Congressman Shepherd’s son, Cullen Shepherd, had been murdered between the Starlight Motel and a pawn shop with no name, just Pawn Shop.
All she had to do was lock down the story by finding the hidden details, and this time reveal them instead of handing over her juicy news bits to her bosses so they could reap the glory of her hard work. It was about time she advanced her own career instead of making everyone else look good.
Everyone was so quick to dismiss Cullen Shepherd’s murder as drug-related. After all, high- powered people, famous people, got busted all the time for drugs. It had become a kind of expectation. They get caught, and issue an immediate statement as to how they’ve seen the error of their ways and that they’re going to rehab for detox and reflection.
It was enough to set a person’s eyeballs on continuous roll.
But Cullen’s murder, in this tattered part of town, didn’t make sense. You didn’t hear about high-profile people dying in slum areas. They didn’t get their drugs the way regulars did. At least, not usually. Guys like him, born into families with old money, partied on yachts and with celebrities, enjoying vanity drugs laid out in a buffet of colorful pills and powders.
So, what the hell was she doing here?
Either business attracted a criminal element, but her gut beat its persistent fist and redirected her to the Starlight. She pulled onto the narrow lane between the two and stopped.
With her hands locked on the wheel she studied the one-story, school-bus-yellow, stucco motel that sat too close to the road; a gritty reminder of a section of Tampa that the moneymakers forgot. Chipping paint and wrought-iron bars on the windows screamed that you didn’t need a credit card to secure a room. A sweaty ball of crumpled-up cash would do.
She didn’t expect to have to wait long. Her car looked out of place, like a priest sitting front and center at a strip show with tassels brushing his nose. The new-model luxury car and a neat, blond woman in a business suit would surely cause someone to come crawling out of the crevices of the night.
It was easy to forget what happened in this dingy corner of the world. In most cases no one would have even cared, since the bodies found in the area were usually of drug victims, gang members, and prostitutes.
Although the bloodstains had long since been washed away, first by the authorities, and what remained by the daily, late-afternoon thunderstorms Florida was known for… pieces remained. Pieces like the strip of crime scene tape lying against the side of the motel, the ends in tatters on the ground next to a scraped-up green dumpster. So maybe clues remained as well.
A movement caught her eye—something next to the dumpster brushed against the tape and sank back into the shadows. She glanced around and saw no one else in sight.
Don’t do it, Brynn. There are literally no witnesses.
She’d never put her safety on the line like this. She’d always had her cameraman, Ross, there with her. Ever since they had blurred the lines of their professional relationship, she questioned when she should and shouldn’t call him so most of the time she didn’t.
But not tonight. Not for this. Something stunk to high heaven about this murder; if there was anyone to interview, anyone with the real information, she’d have no luck getting to them unless she went in vulnerable.
She might as well have been Little Red Riding Hood marching through a forest full wolves.
She shed her petal-pink suit jacket, leaving her in a matching pencil skirt cut just above her knees and sleeveless ivory blouse. She’d ditched her high heels for flats the minute she got into the car. Glancing down, she shrugged.
They were better to run in.
Her stomach rolled.
Please don’t let me have to run.
Everything that could happen to her out here, everything she hadn’t let herself think about, bull-rushed her mind and set up camp front and center, playing out the worst-case scenarios like a grainy, black and white classic.
She pushed open her door and stepped out of the car. Keeping hold of the handle she searched the area around her again, but found no one; just cars traveling up the dual-lane road, their headlights streaking through the night.
Traffic looked to be moving about thirty-five miles an hour in front of the Starlight. Bad for finding witnesses driving through. Perfect for murderers and rapists to perpetrate their crimes.
Her heartrate kicked up as the blood raced through her veins and thundered in her ears. She twisted her keys in her hand and clutched the small black bottle of Mace attached to her keyring as she gently closed the door and started toward the dumpster.
This went against everything her father had ever taught her about safety. He’d have her ass if he knew, didn’t matter that she’d turned thirty the month before. He’d made it clear, more than once, that she’d always be his little girl.
