Dammit. Hadn’t he learned anything? He’d doubted Emma that horrible night in college, and again the morning after. Now he was doing it again. Making assumptions, jumping to conclusions, not waiting for her to explain.
Sitting up, he grabbed his phone and ran a search for her date rape series in the UVA student newspaper and found it in an archive for Charlottesville’s local daily paper, which had apparently run it too.
It was all there, just the way she’d told him, right down to a semi-redacted copy of her drug test results. She didn’t name Trey—probably because she couldn’t prove he’d drugged her. The story only stated that another student had taken advantage of her impaired state.
Jason clenched his fists, suddenly eager to hit something. Last time he’d mistrusted her it was the biggest mistake of his life. He didn’t want a repeat. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was hidingsomething. Her byline was all over stories inLA Todayfor a decade before she helped start the FPP with a group of journalists, including Natalie.
And then her output slowed to a trickle.
It didn’t add up. Sure, not being a staff writer would explain some of it, but if she was regularly exposing the misdeeds of high-profile men as she’d claimed, prominent papers would be happy to publish those stories her byline, or at least with her as contributor.
Natalie had a similarly short portfolio, though the other four reporters listed as members of the FPP were much more prolific.
Why had Emma and Natalie stepped into the background?
Had someone threatened them? Was the buzz around Warner and Byron going to put Emma in danger?
If so, why hadn’t she said anything about it?
He rubbed his forehead, no longer sure what to think.
Maybe Valerie could take a deeper look at Emma and Natalie, just to put his mind at ease.
An hour later when Valerie called him with the results, he almost wished he’d left it alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BEFORE RETURNING TO the US, Emma had spent a long weekend in Paris coaxing several of Renfro Warner’s victims and accomplices into either handing over copies of evidence, talking to reporter Dave Ulrich, or going to the FBI.
Once the media and the Feds had enough witnesses and evidence to run with the case against Byron, her part in it had been over. She’d given her version of the events, and given Dave any evidence she had that the police couldn’t use. In return, he kept quiet about their professional relationship.
If anyone asked, she’d turned over the story to him to give it the reach it deserved, and because now that she’d become part of the story, she shouldn’t write it.
During her first week back in LA, she worked from home to avoid giving away her connection to the Foundation or any of the Night Herons to anyone who might be following her. The story wasn’t so big that she had reporters camped out on her front lawn, but they did occasionally knock on her door, and she’d had to silence unknown callers on her new phone to keep it from ringing day and night. Her voicemail inbox had been filling up daily.
She’d avoided it all by immersing herself in debriefings via video call with the team, catching up on sleep, wading through her overstuffed email Inbox, and making calls to family. Gretchen forced her to take the second week off work. She filled it by binge-watchingStranger Thingsin her pajamas, eating too much cookie dough, crying herself dry over Nat, and missing Jason.
As much as she ached to hear his voice and reassure herself that he wanted to continue their relationship, she didn’t want to disrupt his family time with a bunch of needy messages or phone calls.
Nat’s cremains had taken more than ten days to be released by the Swiss authorities—apparently that was still quick—and shipped to LA. So it wasn’t until her second Monday at home that Emma cleaned up and put on a simple black dress to attend the memorial in Westwood. Sadly, despite diminishing public scrutiny and media interest, the rest of the team couldn’t be present at the service—or be associated with Emma—without risking exposure.
Guilt over how Natalie died ate at her, eased only by the fact that she and Jason’s team had punished Renfro and Byron in the end. The Nygaard-Browns now knew that their daughter was a hero who’d been trying to make the world a better place one despicable person at a time, though they’d never know the full truth of it.
They thought she’d been looking for her big break. The one that would make her career, maybe get her a book deal.
Emma sat alone near the back of the chapel-like building, its gleaming white interior broken only by black accents and a view through glass walls to a manicured garden. It was lovely, and depressing as hell.
She’d give anything to have Jason at her side, holding her hand, giving her strength. She lost the battle with her tears when Natalie’s younger brother took the lectern after their father broke down in the middle of a bittersweet story about teaching Nat to drive.
Thank God for the tissue boxes parked on every third chair. If it was this hard forher, she could only imagine what Natalie’s family was going through. The pain of losing a daughter, a sister… It had to be unbearable.
And wasn’t Jason going through something similar? A different kind of loss where Byron was concerned, but nearly as heartbreaking. And having to do it publicly… Jason’s name had made a much bigger splash in the media given his history as a public figure. And, of course, because he’d helped bring down his own brother.
Emma had kept tabs on the stories, but avoided reading them. Greedy as she was to see his face, read his words, anything about him only prodded the tender part of her heart she was trying to protect. And she felt bad consuming any part of him that way, knowing he was probably desperate for his privacy. He hadn’t given any interviews, so all the TV footage was either taken from afar, or recycled from his college days.
The old Hot Stuff campaign had gone viral on social media, and now a whole new generation would know his name, recognize him on the street. Great for Hot Stuff, not so great for Jason.
Or Emma.
