of him. He stared at her while she spoke. He seemed relaxed and confident. If he had picked up on any of her flirtations, he didn’t say anything or make any kind of knowing gesture. Unlike the young men at college, he was mature and a gentleman. She wasn’t sure she knew what to say to him or how to say it. He threw her off balance, and she wasn’t used to that.
She honestly thought she had gotten the interview by mistake. She went to a school at a small college in the Mid-West and had no experience other than working for school newspapers. Still, she knew she had talent and sent her clips and resume to the Chronicle along with most other newspapers in the country. She certainly never expected to get the most sought after job in journalism, but here she was sitting in front of Will this time as his employee.
“Ah, Krissy,” he said in a thoughtful tone. Family members were the only other people she allowed to call her Krissy. “If most anyone else would have walked through that door asking for cart blanche, I would have asked that person to shut the door on the way out,” he sighed. “But you have an amazing instinct for recognizing a story and an angle.”
“Is that a yes?” she asked eagerly. Will had come to trust her instincts and writing but told her in a recent review of her work that she was still learning to be a great investigator. There was a pause as they looked at each other. He’s married and the father of twin girls, she reminded herself. She caught herself biting her bottom lip as she studied him and blinked her eyes hard to clear the unprofessional thoughts.
“You’re asking me to tell the rest of our staff, editors and the publisher of the paper that our rising star is off doing God-knows-what for God-knows-how-long. I need more to tell them.”
“You can’t!” She moved forward in her seat. “Will, you can’t tell anyone what I’m doing. Just tell them I have a big lead.”
“Kris, this is a business. Things don’t exactly operate like that.”
“I know, and honestly, this may pan out to be nothing. I just have a feeling this is going to go somewhere huge,” she could feel her eyes grow bigger in a begging expression.
“I’ll have to tell them something. I’ll handle it, but this had better be good,” he said leaning forward to put his elbows on his desk.
“So, this means I’m good to go?” she replied eagerly.
“It means I’ll give you some time.” Her excitement grew, but she didn’t know exactly why. She didn’t know what was going to happen next, and all she had to go on was a disc that didn’t make any sense. “On some conditions,” he said with authority. He stood, walked around the desk and leaned up against it so he was standing over her. She looked up at him and waited to hear what he had to say. “One is you will come to me for help if you need it.” She nodded. “Two - you will give me regular updates on your progress or lack thereof. You may not want me to report to the chain of command, but I want to know everything.” She nodded again, but she wasn’t sure she meant this one. “One more, I’ll give you two months. If at the end of two months you still don’t have anything solid, you’ll give up this lead.” She nodded again.
“You won’t regret this, Will,” she said standing and touching his arm without thinking about it first. She pulled her hand away quickly and made her way to the door fighting the urge to run out of the office. His eyes followed her - she could feel them.
“I sure hope not,” he said returning to his seat and picking up his reading glasses. She blew Joyce a kiss as she breezed past and rushed to her desk. She packed her laptop and put the disc securely in the bag.
“Where’s the fire, Little Girl?” Burt asked, watching her from behind the junk yard he called his desk.
“Some of us actually work around here,” she said looking around to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything. Afraid of what Burt might have done to her coffee while unattended, she tossed the remaining few drinks in the garbage.
“Some of us actually earned the right to work here,” he said snorting again.
“Yes. Some of us have. You, I’m sure, were hired and retained out of pity,” she grabbed her suit jacket off the back of her chair and headed for the door. She tried not to point at Burt and yell, “In your face, loser!”
As she walked to the elevator, she thought about how competitive she was. She always had to win. She even cheated at Candyland when she was a kid. Sometimes it served her well - like her drive to accomplish great things in her career, but it didn’t serve her so well in her personal life. Who cares, she thought. She hoped her winning spirit wouldn’t let her down now. This story could be her Pulitzer. It could be her book deal, her opportunity to be on talk shows and her opportunity to “in your face” all the people she didn’t like in high school and college, especially the person she saw as her biggest competition - Tara Tierra.
That wasn’t even her real name. Her real name was Tara Butmacher. No one blamed her for changing it as soon as she turned 18 years old. Tierra actually suited Tara physically. She was perfect. Perfect skin and her hair never moved. Tara grew up across town from Kristine. Her dad had money - a lot of it. Tara and Kristine competed against each other in tennis matches from the time they were seven or eight years old through high school. Then, while in high school, they competed against each other in journalism. Tara always beat Kristine in tennis, but Kristine always beat Tara at journalism. Kristine won some recognition for her work in college, but she was always in a different division because of her smaller, less prestigious school. Tara went to a very old, highly respected and expensive college (thanks to Mr. Butmacher’s fortune) and landed a very good job being a weekend anchor, or news reader as Kristine liked to call her, at one of New York’s lower rated stations. Tara would do an occasional feature on the evening news, but she didn’t get the hard news stories.
While Kristine considered Tara a pain in her butt from day one, she wondered if she ever even registered a blip on Tara’s radar. Of course, Kristine couldn’t completely blame herself for disliking Tara. Females, even Tara’s friends, typically disliked Tara.
Tara was untouchable. She had shiny blonde hair, big blue eyes and skin like a porcelain doll. She was one of those people who didn’t seem to sweat. At the end of a grueling three set tennis match Kristine would be drenched with perspiration, ponytail soaked with no makeup left. Tara still looked like she had just walked onto the court. Now that they were both in New York, Kristine had the more prestigious job, but Tara was the one people recognized when they saw her walking down the street.
Someday Tara may have to report on what a huge success Kristine had made of herself, she thought. Tara would ask what it was like to be recognized as one of the best journalists in the world, and Kristine would blush bashfully and answer with the perfect humble response, “I’m just trying to make the world a better place for our children.” Kristine smiled to herself as the elevator doors opened to the lobby. It was a good daydream that she would make come true someday. But first, she had to get this story. She burst through the doors of the building determined to do just that.
Chapter Two
The next two months were filled with excitement - sometimes good, sometimes scary. The good excitement brought leads as she closed in on more and more facts about the story she chased. The scary brought calls to her apartment late at night, a broken lock on her desk drawer in the newsroom, a near miss with a car in a cross-walk, and she was pretty sure someone had broken into her apartment. She had arrived home one night and things were just not right - nothing obvious but an item here or there had been moved. At first she chalked these events up to paranoia, but eventually she
