Vortex by Catherine Coulter

Mia

The Guardian

1185 Houston Street

Tuesday, early afternoon

The Guardian was an old grande dame of a building, mellow redbrick, built in the thirties by Alfred Lowell to an impressive fourteen stories. The newspaper, still owned by the Lowell family, sprawled over most of the top five floors.

Mia stepped into the noisy newsroom, one floor below where the bigwigs hung out. She was so used to the chaos she barely heard the clacking keyboards, people talking to one another and on their cells, a senior editor chewing out a reporter inside one of the glass offices lining the room about something involving a lame-ass tagline as she walked to her cubicle. She saw a soda can go flying toward Janine, who deftly caught it. Janine was the Guardian’s woman-about-town writer, known as the Scooper by her colleagues. She saluted, popped the top, and drank.

Dirk Melcher waved to Mia. She gazed fondly at him; he was supertalented and always ready to help, always ready with a joke. He was thin as a stick and movie-star handsome, but even at twenty-four, he hadn’t picked up yet when a woman was into him. He wore Lady Gaga T-shirts in the summer, primarily those with her singing her heart out, and thick Madonna hoodies from January to the end of April, primarily with Madonna with very few clothes on.

“Hey, Briscoe!” Dirk handed Mia two eight-by-ten prints. “Best I can do, Mia. I tried everything, even swallowed my pride and called my buddy Thor, master of all things pixel. Thor has access to some NSA software he has no business having, but even then, because of the limited resolution, the camera motion, and the compression, neither of us could get the two guys’ profiles any clearer, sorry.”

Mia took the photos from him, cursed under her breath. She’d hoped, prayed, but she still didn’t think she could identify these men if they were standing right in front of her, waving in her face. At least now she could see the taller man’s outstretched hand more clearly, a large hand with a smattering of dark hair, reaching toward a drink on a side table. The heavy silver link chain around his left wrist was clear enough. She looked more closely. Wait, was he reaching for one of the glasses, or was his hand right above it? She couldn’t tell, but why wouldn’t he reach for a drink that was closer? Would any glass do? No, Serena was close by. The glass had to be hers, had to be.

She saw the healed tear in his left earlobe, the notch more obvious with Dirk’s enhancements. She leaned down, gave him a big hug, kissed his cheek, knew he’d pulled out all the stops, and so she said, “You’re my hero. What you’ve done is amazing, beyond what I expected.” She lifted a foil-covered pan out of her messenger bag. “Your meatloaf, my man. Defrosted, ready to pop in your oven at 350 for thirty minutes. Mashed potatoes suggested as a pleasing accompaniment.” No need to tell him it had been in her freezer for three weeks. “Really, Dirk, thank you. You’re a genius. And thank Thor.”

He grabbed the meatloaf, breathed it in through the foil. “Smells like ambrosia, then again”—he gave her a wicked grin to break hearts, if only he knew—“I’m a god, so I deserve it.” He cocked a dark brow at her. “God or not, I’m the one who made out on this deal. And no, I’m not about to let Thor in on my payoff.” He cocked his head, studied her face a moment. “What is this all about, Mia? Why these photos? They’re old, blurry, I mean, look at the technology, maybe eight years out of date. Who are these guys and why are they so important to you?”

Mia kissed his thin cheek again, breathed in the sandalwood soap he used. “I promise to tell you when I know. Enjoy the meatloaf. Maybe add a stick or two of broccoli, adds nice color.” She would have given him another hug, but he was clutching the meatloaf to his chest like a baby.

She walked over to Kali Knight, their intern studying journalism at Columbia, and, for the moment, Milo’s gofer. Mia always wanted to cuddle her, she was so small and shy, her blue eyes huge behind her large black-framed glasses. She was the baby in the newsroom, the youngest on staff at only twenty, but she was already their social media guy’s right hand. Benny was all of twenty-six and nabbed Kali whenever Milo gave her a free ten minutes. She’d done an excellent job in a very short time researching Harrington’s life and the Harrington family in Boston. She was as good at online research as any of them, but she had at least five more years of technology tucked under her arm, which made her faster.

Kali was bent over something at her desk. Mia lightly touched her shoulder. Kali looked up and smiled.

“Thank you, Kali, the Harrington landing page was perfect. You saved me hours of research.”

“No problem, Mia. I enjoyed it. The Harringtons, the facts about the family, the jazzy photos, it’s all amazing. And a summer place on Nantucket. They live in a different world. My dad would hate them.”

“Maybe my dad would, too.” Mia made her way to her desk, put her messenger bag in a drawer, and sat down in her squeaky chair. She laid the two photos on the desk and studied them, traced her finger over their profiles. Truth be told, she couldn’t be sure if the blond guy gesticulating to Serena had anything at all to do with Mr. Notched Ear with his thick silver chain-link bracelet. Who are you? Gail didn’t recognize you, I don’t recognize you. You crashed the rave, didn’t you? You’re both older, too, I think, and you know each other. I’ll bet my new dolphin earrings you do. You were there together to pick out a girl and roofie her, weren’t you? You’ve done that before? Of course you have. I bet you two have a plan in place that works for you. You know the steps to follow, what to do and when to do it. Find a girl both of you like, shouldn’t take you long. I don’t think you wanted to kill Serena, why would you? But this time something went wrong, didn’t it? Is that why you set the fire in the kitchen, so you could get her out of there? You know what, you bastards? I’m going to figure out who you are, you’ll see.

“What’d you say, Briscoe? Stop garbling your words, speak up, I didn’t hear you.”

Mia jumped, craned her head around to see her boss, everyone’s boss, Milo Burns, standing beside her desk, arms crossed over his chest. As usual, Milo looked like he’d slept in his trademark khakis and golf shirt—Augusta green today—always short-sleeved, even in this early spring that had dumped truckloads of arctic air on the East Coast, no end in sight. He told everyone he was born bald as an egg, a lie of course; everyone knew he religiously shaved his head. Mia both respected him and liked him because he thrived on off-the-wall ideas, some of them his own, some of them amazingly clever, but he never stinted on praise when one of the staff came up with a winner. And he was a natural debater, could take the other side of any question and have you nodding in agreement before you caught yourself. He lived in the Village with his new wife, a bright young tax attorney from Hong Kong, named Kiki, about Mia’s age. Milo called her Lotus Blossom. She was small, delicate, and firmly in control of her husband. Seeing her holding Milo’s big paw for the first time had made Mia shake her head at what life dished up. Milo loved Chinese food, a good thing since Kiki was a gourmet cook of all things Chinese, her steamed pork buns to die for. He’d brought his own birthday cake to the press room, claimed it was chocolate filled with chunks of crispy fortune cookies, with Hunan icing. No one wanted much to try it when he offered, a smirk on his face.

He picked up the photos, frowned. “What are these photos? Quality’s crap, we can’t use them, whoever they are. Who are they?”

Mia gently removed the photos from her boss’s hand.

“It’s something I’m checking into in my spare time, no worries, Milo. They’re not work related.”

He gave her the stink eye. “You still have spare time with the deadline I gave you? It’s for your blog, isn’t it? Lucky for you it’s so popular and brings readership to the Guardian. I expect your first five-thousand-word background piece to run in this Sunday’s edition. No flu, no colds, just work.”

Milo picked up one of the photos again, studied it more closely. He cocked his head. “Hmm. You know, this one guy looks familiar, even though it’s only his profile. Who is he?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him what she suspected, but no, it was way too soon. “That’s what I don’t know, Milo. If I find out who he is, and what he is, I’ll tell you.”

He stared at her a moment, ran his hand over his bald head. “So you’re after him about something. Whatever. Come into my office, Briscoe, the yahoos are too noisy out here. I want to hear more about your plans for Harrington. Tell me what you’re planning to do in Boston, who you’re going to see. You’re leaving tomorrow, right?”

Mia followed her boss into his large glass-windowed office and settled back into what everyone on staff called the electric chair. “To spare you some time, Milo, my plan is to interview everyone from Kali’s landing page I can get to in Boston, and Harrington’s campaign staff here in New York, of course. I hope to talk with the man himself today. And I’d like to make time when up in Boston to head over to Harvard, talk to his professors. I’m thinking about calling his coach at Bennington Prep in Connecticut. Alex Harrington was really into lacrosse, helped win a championship for Bennington Prep. Coaches often remember more about their kids than anyone else.” Like bad habits, suspected bad behavior, drugs, who knew?

Milo said, “Never played lacrosse, a snooty private school game, my dad always said, not nearly as tough as football.” Milo called up one of Kali’s photos, angled his laptop so both of them could see it. “There he is, good-looking kid. What, about seventeen, eighteen? You can tell he’s going to grow up to be a chick magnet.”

She pointed. “The kid next to him is his BFF we talked about, name’s Kent Harper.”

“Yeah, as I told you, he runs his family’s New York branch in New York, Harper Strategic Services, huge in insurance. I’m thinking he’s a string to pull too. Maybe you can worm a secret or two out of him.” He studied his photo again. “Kent definitely has the look of the wingman, like Robin to Batman.”

Mia studied the photo again, slowly nodded. “Thank you, Milo, you just might be right.”

Milo frowned at her, sat back in his big tufted black chair. “So if you don’t have any more to say, get out of here and find out everything Harrington’s done since he was sucking his thumb and finger-painting the walls of his nursery. I don’t pay you to sit there grinning at me.”