peeled off his leather blazer and slid into the driver’s seat. With the air-conditioning set to high, the radio tuned in to an all-jazz station and his cell phone switched off, he drove away from the airport and headed for the interstate and home.
For the past two decades he had called Seattle, Washington, home, but there was home and then there was home. Seattle was where he had settled right after graduating from college and accepting an entry-level staff reporter position with the Seattle Times. It was where he had gotten his start as a local news reporter and honed his craft—where he had fully indulged his photography hobby and invested in his first Nikon. Even back then his camera had pointed him toward chaos and controversy, which was how he’d found his twentysomething self wandering into the midst of an infamous Seattle riot and snapping a series of pictures that had ultimately catapulted him from staff reporter to frontline investigative journalist.
From there, his camera had taken him into the kinds of volatile and unpredictable situations that many journalists wouldn’t even dream of going into, let alone getting up close and personal with—wars in the Middle East and Africa, the jungles of South America, guerrilla soldier camps... By now the list was endless.
Somewhere along the way he had earned a reputation for being a daredevil. Probably right around the time he had decided to strike out on his own and become a freelance journalist, Nate thought as he picked up speed on the interstate, activated the cruise control and relaxed back into the plush leather seat. Some had thought him a fool for wanting to make his own rules and choose his own path, and others had predicted quick and brutal career suicide for him. But he’d been just hungry enough, just stubborn and fearless enough, to put both himself and his camera in imminent danger again and again for the sake of a story.
His pictures, the words he paired them with and occasionally the sound bites that he sometimes risked his life recording on location—all had graced the covers of magazines and newspapers around the world and been featured on countless online and television news outlets. Now his services were so in demand that his publicist was overworked and in need of a raise, and Nate was lucky if he was able to carve out time for a quick vacation here and there between assignments.
It’d been months since he had actually met with his publicist in person and even longer than that since he’d stepped foot inside his apartment in Seattle, and covering the aftermath of the conflict in Darfur was only partly to blame. Trips like these, trips back home to Mercy, Georgia, were the other half of the equation.
At the Mercy exit, Nate left the interstate and cruised along the two-lane service road that led into town. Traffic on the usually quiet and scenic road was heavier than usual, inching along in some spots and coming to a complete standstill in others. He passed a long stretch of farmland before the scenery opened up to clusters of residential communities and then a small industrial park. It was the same scenery that had always been there, except that now there was a new addition. Just past the industrial parks, new construction was going on, ground being broken and buildings leveled.
Seeing it caused a wrinkle of irritation to appear in the center of Nate’s forehead. He knew without having to track its progress that it was heading straight toward Mercy, Georgia. Short of a miracle suddenly happening, in a matter of months those demolition crews would be destroying the entire town and leaving hundreds of displaced people in their wake. People who wouldn’t be able to afford to live in the resort-style, luxury gated community that was slated to be built in its place. In political terms, it was called eminent domain, but as far as the people of Mercy were concerned it was theft, plain and simple.
Nate tended to agree.
When the Welcome to Mercy, Georgia, sign finally appeared on the side of the road up ahead, Nate picked up his cell phone from the passenger seat, turned it on and pressed a button to connect to his publicist. The phone on the other end had barely rung once before it was answered.
“It’s about time you called,” Julia Gustav said by way of greeting. “I was beginning to wonder if I should call the police and have an APB put out on you. Oh, but wait, I wouldn’t be able to give them an accurate description of you, now, would I? God knows I haven’t seen you in forever. Do you even care that I miss you?”
Nate chuckled, glad that Julia couldn’t see him just then. He was blushing like a schoolboy, which was exactly what she made him feel like sometimes. “I know, sugar, and I’m sorry. It can’t be helped right now, but I’ll tell you what. How about I take you out for a night on the town when I get back to Seattle?” he said. “We’ll take in a show, have a lavish dinner and drink bubbly all night. Maybe take a walk by the lakefront and catch up. Sound good?”
“Better than good,” Julia purred. “Promise?”
“Of course. It’ll be just like old times.”
Julia had been his publicist and personal assistant for more than a decade, which meant that she knew him better than he knew himself most of the time. At sixty years old, she was the closest thing to a favorite aunt he’d ever had, and he was crazy about her. Ever since his mother had passed away six months ago, Julia had taken it upon herself to become his keeper, insisting that he call her at least once every other day, regardless of where he was in the world or what he was doing, just as he had called his mother. Normally, he was able to deliver, but being damn near undercover in Darfur, with limited or no cell access for hundreds of miles and very little human contact that hadn’t required a translator, had kept him out of touch for longer than usual this time. It went without saying that he had some making up to do.
“No, it won’t,” Julia told him. “The last time we went out for a night on the town, your mother was with us.” Her voice turned wistful. “You flew us both to New York on a private jet, like we were queens, and took us to a Broadway show. We sat next to that famous actress and her husband, and your mother couldn’t believe that you were actually friends with them.” Julia laughed throatily. “She had the best time.”
“Yes, she did,” Nate said quietly, remembering. Merlene Woodberry had been like a kid in a candy store whenever she visited New York, and her last trip there was no different. When she hadn’t been dragging him around to every tourist attraction that the city had to offer, she’d spent hours on end walking him around Time Square, watching people and marveling at their antics. At the time, Nate had chalked up her hyperenthusiasm to the fact that she had decided that the trip would be her last for the next little while. She had more clients than normal back home, she’d said, and there were some things that she wanted to have done around the house that she needed to be home to oversee.
He’d had no idea that she was dying.
“So we’ll dedicate the night to her memory,” he suggested with a cheerfulness that he was nowhere near feeling. “She’d like that.”
“Hmm, I think she would also approve of what you’re trying to do for your hometown. It’s a special little place.”
“It was to her.”
His ancestors had lived in Mercy since the slaves were emancipated, and Merlene had lived and breathed the town. As for him—well, it had always been a nice place to live as long as he’d actually had to. But the minute he was old enough to start dreaming about places far, far away, he had started planning his escape route. Still, Mercy was special—Julia was right about that. His mother would never forgive him if he didn’t at least try to save it.
Julia’s voice broke into his thoughts. “So I’ll see you in, what? A couple of days? A week?”
“Maybe a little longer. There’s a town-hall meeting scheduled for tomorrow that I want to sit in on, and then I have a meeting the day after that. So we’ll see how it goes.”
After
