“In town on business,” he said automatically, then seemed to hear how thin that sounded. His jaw flexed. “Can we talk?”
Every instinct I had sat up, alert.
“Now?” I glanced at the hallway over his shoulder, like maybe there’d be a camera crew, a surprise ethics board, anything that would make this make sense. “You didn’t email. Or call.”
“I’m calling now,” he said. “In person.” His gaze flicked past me into the room. “May I?”
For a second, the old reflex answered:of course. He was my editor. My mentor. The man who had shepherded my work when half the industry thought I’d crashed and burned.
Then Meghan’s voice brushed my memory:Don’t let them convince you that loving him means you have to set yourself on fire to keep him warm.
And underneath that, an older one: my mother at our kitchen table, saying,You get to decide who comes into your house and who doesn’t.
I slipped out into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind me.
“We can talk here,” I said. “What’s going on?”
A faint line appeared between his brows. “You don’t trust me in your room?”
“I don’t trust anyone in my room,” I said lightly. “Occupational hazard.”
He exhaled once through his nose, a half-laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. Close up, I could see his hands faintly tremoring where they curled around the strap of his laptop bag.
“You told me you’d send a memo,” he said without preamble. “Instead, I hear you’ve been playing dress-up with billionaires’ fiancées.”
Heat pricked the back of my neck. “You’ve been talking to my sources?”
“To my funders,” he shot back. “To my board. To people who are starting to wonder if I’ve sent my rising star to Charleston to take a vacation on someone else’s dime.”
I inhaled slowly. “That’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair,” he said, and something in his voice frayed on the last word, “is that I stuck my neck out for you after Afghanistan. I took the hits. The board wanted you gone. The lawyers wanted you muzzled. And I said, ‘No, Amelia is the one who tells the truth when everyone else is afraid to.’”
“I know.” Guilt bit sharp. “I haven’t forgotten that.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
His eyes were brighter than usual, almost feverish. He wasn’t just angry. He was scared.
I’d seen that look in war zones—in fixers who’d had visits from the wrong men, in local officials who’d started getting anonymous calls at night. People under pressure they couldn’t name.
“When exactly did you fly down?” I asked carefully. “Because the last time we talked, you were in D.C.”
He ignored the question. “I need to know what you have,” he said. “Today. Not next week. Not in some polished memo you send when you’ve decided how much truth you feel like releasing. Now.”
“You will get everything that’s relevant and safe,” I said. “I’m still verifying.”
“You’ve been here for days,” he snapped. “And all I have is ‘threads.’”
“Because that’s what it is,” I said, matching his volume. “Threads. A complex, dangerous situation I don’t fully understand yet. You taught me not to publish blind.”
“And I taught you not to get in bed with your subjects,” he said, low and vicious.
The words landed like a slap.
“That’s not—” I stopped, forced my voice back under control. “You don’t get to barge into my hotel and throw that at me. Not after every married reporter you’ve ever defended for writing about politicians they play golf with.”
“This isn’t golf,” he said. “This is a black-box fortress full of men whose money we can’t trace and whose influence we can’t quantify. This is a story that could finally put us back on the map. I’ve got donors breathing down my neck, Amelia. Board members calling my personal phone. Asking when the Dane piece drops. Asking if I’ve lost the plot again.”
