3. Patrick

PATRICK: New Assignment

Dane had been right. The accident was just an accident. No famous people were harmed in the crunching of the car. Aside from the hit-and-run aspect of the crime, there was nothing interesting about the incident.

Still, a story was a story.

I walked into the office of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at half past six. A sleepy-eyed guard barely looked up from whatever smut he was reading as I badged in and punched the elevator button. As I strode the center aisle of our sprawling news floor, surrounded by a sea of low-rise cubicle walls and PC monitors, I realized I'd never been this early for my day's work. The lights were on, including the one fluorescent tube about a third of the way to the far wall that buzzed and blinked, likely giving the poor guy who sat beneath it migraines, but every desk sat empty. Every desk except two.

A silver bun peeked above one cube's walls, dancing back and forth as its owner typed furiously on her keyboard. Emily Grayson had been with the AJC for nearly twenty years. She was tough, persistent, brilliant, and could dial up her charm to make even the hardest cases crack. Emily wasn't merely one of the most admired reporters in Atlanta, she was one of the most respected writers in American print journalism.

She also happened to be my mentor.

"Morning, Em," I said, folding my arms across her cube wall and peering over her monitor.

"Shh. Let me get this out." Her fingers flew even faster, her eyes darting from her screen to a pad full of illegible scribbles.

A minute passed, then five.

"I'll grab coffee. Want a refill?" I asked, noticing her empty mug.

She nodded and waved a hand. When she was in the zone, nothing stood between Emily and her words.

I returned a moment later with two steaming paper cups. Emily had pushed herself back a couple of feet from her monitor, stuck her glasses on her head, and was squinting at the screen.

"Oh, this is good," she muttered, more to herself than me. "So freakin' good."

"Proud of ourselves this morning?"

She raised a middle finger.

"Aww, love you too, Em."

She finally cracked a smile and turned to look at me. "Give me that coffee before I bite your head off like a useless male mantis after a good fuck."

I shook my head as I handed her the cup. "I'm not sure what freaks me out more: your command of bizarre animal kingdom imagery or the fact that every analogy you use is laced with sexual frustration."

She took the cup, dumped its contents into her ceramic mug, and wagged one finger in the air like a teacher correcting a wayward student. "Tension."

"Huh?"

She took a sip and grinned. "Sexual tension. There's no frustration here. Mama gets laid more than the pipes under great Terminus herself."

I had to turn away to avoid spilling coffee all over her desk. "God, you're awful. Are you even allowed to invoke Atlanta's heritage while sexualizing her?"

"Of course I'm allowed. I'm a reporter." She cocked her head and wiggled her snowy brows. "Speaking of which, what's my favorite baby cub working on this early in the morning? Got a hot tip? Meet a guy with a hot—"

"Emily, please. I'm a professional."

"At news or men?"

I shrugged. "Have you seen my dance card lately? Clearly, it's the news."

"Aw, baby cub, I've seen that dance card too. Maybe we should redefine ‘professional' for future use."

I threw a palm over my heart and staggered back. "You wound me, madame."

She snatched the pencil from behind her ear and pointed it as though waving a tiny sword. "I will wound you if you don't tell me why you're here so early."

I returned to lean over her cube and lowered my head.

"Baby cub, talk to mama."

Despite it all, I laughed. Emily was tough as nails, but when she went into protective mother mode, she morphed into a mushy grammy whose arms were the warmest place in the whole world. The dichotomy between armored warrior and silver-haired sweetie cracked me up.

"I was chasing a squawk."

She blinked a few times, waiting for me to expound.

"It was a car accident. Nothing flashy or fun. By the time I got there, the fire truck was leaving and the paramedics were handing things off to the cops."

"Hmm. Nothing interesting at all?"

"It was a hit and run."

She sat up. "There you go."

"What? Another piece on insurance rates due to hit-and-run drivers?"

"Change the angle. Go after impact on families."

I shook my head. "Didn't Channel Eleven just run a whole series using that angle, interviewing every family member they could find? Like, two weeks ago?"

"Oh right. They did." She shrugged. "So, nothing else unusual?"

Before I could answer, "Pierce, my office. Now!" echoed throughout the empty office.

Demmit claimed the lights in his office made his eyes hurt, so he kept them turned off in favor of an ancient banker's lamp that loomed over his desk.

I groaned. "Here we go."

"Chin up, little one. His bark is far worse than his bite."

"That's because he'd never bite you. Me, on the other hand …"

"I don't have all morning, Pierce," Demmit barked.

I downed the last of my coffee and tossed the cup in Emma's trash then wove through the cube forest to Demmit's office. I entered to find him sitting with both elbows on his desk, his fingers steepled and tapping to some rhythm only he could hear, his beady eyes blinking rapidly in my direction.

"Sit," he said, motioning with his tiny peepers to the bare wooden chair opposite his.

"Good morning, sir."

"No small talk," he groused. "What have you got for me? You're never in this early."

Huh. He assumes I have a scoop.

"Uh, well, nothing really—"

"What the fuck do you mean nothing, son? I can't print nothing. Where have you been? I can smell a story on you."

If I hadn't been so rattled by his rapid-fire attack, I would've laughed at that.

"I tried, sir. Chased down a firehouse accident code, but it was nothing. Just another hit and run."

His chair screamed as he sat back. "Who was there?"

"Where, sir?"

"At the accident? The scene? Where else were you this morning? You'd better not be doing drugs on my watch."

"Uh, nowhere, sir. And no, sir, no drugs. I haven't … wouldn't. I didn't …" I blinked a few times, desperate to clear my head. "Routine crews were there. One ambulance with two paramedics, one cop in his cruiser, and a fire truck with a party of four."

His brows shot up. "Party? What the fuck is this now, a restaurant? Did you seat them at the good table? Maybe give them the chef treatment?"

I felt the redness clawing up my neck into my ears.

"Fire truck? What were they doing there?"

His sudden shift startled me. "Leaving, sir."

"Leaving?"

I nodded. "When I got there, they were almost loaded up and heading out. I talked to the last fireman before he left."

"And?"

I shrugged again. "He said it wasn't worth the ink. It sounded like he was used to dry runs like that."

Demmit's gaze shifted from me to some indistinct point on the wall behind me. He absently grabbed a pen off his desk and began tapping it against his lips. "That's it."

I wasn't sure what he meant by that, so I waited.

He stared off … and tapped. "Got it!" He slapped his palm on his desk.

I startled so badly I nearly peed myself. "Sir?"

His raptor-like gaze locked onto me. "You done with the dogs and hoops?"

"God, I hope so." I caught myself. "I mean, yes, sir."

"Good. You're doing a piece on life as a firefighter."

Great, another puff piece. "A lifestyle piece?"

"Call it a fucking exposé if it makes you feel better." He waved a hand. "Get them to let you ride along. Hang out at the station. Eat with them. Hell, sleep with them, if that's their thing. Whatever it takes."

"What's the angle, sir?"

He cocked his head. "What angle?"

"That's what I was asking. Am I looking for something specific?"

He glared as if I'd asked him to milk a cow right there on his desk. "You're a reporter. You find the angle, you aren't handed one. What kind of dumbass question is that?"

"Sorry, sir," I mumbled.

My mind spun, caught between anger and frustration over being assigned what was surely another crappy bit of busy work that would never see life beyond page ten of the Metro Section, and trying to figure out where to even start. I didn't know anyone inside the Fire Department. Maybe Emily did.

Then a square jaw and piercing blue eyes flashed before me, and a light sweat broke out across my neck. What was his name? Dane? He hadn't exactly been friendly, but he had said that thing about asking for his number. Was he actually hitting on me? It sure sounded like it, but I was clueless when it came to guys. Give me a good, old-fashioned corrupt politician or criminal and I could see right through their bullshit, but put a hot guy in front of me and all reason vanished faster than a Bloody Mary at gay brunch.

Dane was hitting on me, wasn't he?

Either way, I was sure he'd implied I could call him. That's how I was taking it anyway. It didn't matter that his olive skin needed a good licking or that his smile, such that I saw, turned my insides into a Slinky on stairs, he was my way into a fire station and I would use him like …

Damn, that made me want to really use him—and not in the keen reporter way.

My shirt was now drenched.

Demmit hadn't been watching me spiral into the depths of Dane's gaze. He hadn't noticed how I was now sweating more than a new gay getting his first good grind by a hot, muscular, shirtless couple—sandwiching him on both sides—on a poorly air-conditioned dance floor with music pounding a hard, steady rhythm and laser lights flashing.

I dabbed my forehead with my sleeve and tried to make that mental image disappear. I so wanted to be someone's jelly to their peanut butter right then.

The boss tapped a few more times, then glanced up and added, "Get me, oh, a thousand words by next week."

A thousand words? That was an insane count for a newspaper article; at least, for any article I'd ever been asked to write. With the attention span of most readers dwindling to nothing in recent years, most stories hovered around five hundred words. Features and newsworthy articles could go a lot longer, but they were rare. Most of my useless print got winnowed down to less than two hundred fifty after Demmit's army of red-penned assassins worked their evil on my precious words.

Then the part where he didn't want the article until next week sank in. I'd never had longer than an eight-hour window to turn in a piece. What the hell?

"Sir? A thousand? Did I hear—"

"You heard me. Do five thousand. However many words come out of your little brain. Write until your fingers hurt. We'll cut it down."

"Uh, okay. Yes, sir."

"Don't shit the bed on me, Pierce. Now get out."

I hopped out of the chair and turned, nearly tripping as my feet became entangled with the chair legs.

A grunt vaguely resembling a laugh came from behind the desk. "I didn't mean injure yourself so they have to come get you."

"Sorry, sir." I glanced back, my head cowed.

He was grinning. Evan Demmit was actually smiling—sort of, in his maniacal way. I'd only seen that expression cross his face a few times, and it usually accompanied multiple rounds of alcohol at the paper's annual Christmas party.

I turned and banged my knee on the chair's arm. "Shit!"

Demmit chuckled.

"Sorry, sir. Didn't mean to curse."

Now he laughed. "You got an assignment because you were here early busting your ass, Pierce. Good boy. Now get the fuck out of my office so I can get some real work done."And there he was. The Demmit we all knew and loved.

Well, the one we knew.

I shoved the chair out of my way and fled for the safety of cube land.

"Shut my door, dammit!"

Reversing course, I wrenched his door closed then bolted through the office toward my desk.

I had to find Dane.