Page 6 of Filthy Liar

Left or right.

I risk a glance behind me, and I don’t see him. I don’t hear his footsteps, either, but those could come any second.

Which block is shorter?

Left.

The sticky summer humidity isn’t making this fun. My kingdom for a breeze, holy shit. A car’s engine growls to life a block away, and my pulse jacks up again. I force my breath out as steadily as possible while sprinting at top speed.

I get around the block and the tucked-away parking lot is in sight. I sprint the whole way, ignoring my protesting lungs, and don’t stop until I’m on my bike and roaring towards Georgetown.

It’s not that I’m afraid of Jason, exactly. I’m not afraid of anyone. But I don’t have time to deal with the mistakes of the past right now. I have enough on my plate with the mistakes of the present.

It doesn’t take me long to get to my new apartment building on the edge of Georgetown, conveniently located right between the Russian Embassy and the Naval Observatory where the VP lives.

Nosy girls like to be in the middle of the action. You never know when you’re going to overhear a grumpy staffer say the right/wrong thing while getting coffee.

I pull into the parking garage, quickly decelerating. A quick glance in my rearview mirrors as the secure door rolls up, then I pull through and wait until it closes behind me.

Once I stash my bike in the storage unit I got instead of a parking stall—one of the main reasons I picked this building—I head upstairs to my second-floor studio.

I don’t need a lot of space. Room for a bed, a desk, and a window for my aloe vera plant. Her name is Monica, and I bought her because she reminds me of California. The sun, the salty air.

The distance between me and my past.Jason.

Monica—being a plant—is unfamiliar with that complicating factor. Lucky Monica.

I set my helmet on its spot next to the aloe vera, under the window that overlooks the Naval Observatory, and I go to the kitchenette to get an extra-stiff drink.

What was Jason’s interest in crashing the party tonight? Because I have no doubt that’s how he got there. He looked cozy with the French Ambassador’s young wife, which had to be strategic on his part.

He had never been interested in playing the bull. But maybe he’s changed in the last five years. It’s none of my business. Whatever his business is—at least personally—I burned any claim to that man’s flesh when I ghosted him and his firm.

But politically…maybe there’s a story there.

I wrinkle my nose. I don’t like the idea of Jason As a Story. It’s why I left. But that was in the before times. Before the last election, before everything changed, before Lively killed himself. Before Amelia Dashford Reid went off the deep end.

And now I live in an empty studio apartment while I try to hack the time-intensive process of finding sources in a city I’ve done my damnedest to ignore for half a decade. Hence the catering job that I can’t go back. Fucking Jason, what a party-pooper.

I snicker to myself and toss back half my drink. He’d have liked it if I called him that. He’d find it cheeky.

The tequila burns, so I set the glass down and fire up my computer to check my encrypted email addresses. A few messages from sources for long-game stories I’m working on back burners, one weird lead idea that doesn’t sound like it will go anywhere—yes, all the rich old men in this town are pedophiles, almost certainly, but I’m not going to fall for a variation on the pizzagate story. I run a trace and sure enough, that email address has been used by a semi-infamous loser asshole who will do anything to make women look bad.

Delete.

The final note in my inbox makes me sit up a little straighter. It’s from an account inside the DC police force, and I recognize the name. Detective Kendra Browning. Ex-wife of Tag Browning, one of Jason’s partners in The Horus Group. What are the odds?

I’m not the type to believe in coincidences. My skepticism has driven me to sometimes find patterns and stories where none exist. Early in my career, that was drummed out of me. I had to learn that sometimes, a coincidence is just that.

But still…

I flip over to Twitter. Does Detective Browning have an account? Not that I can tell. I do, albeit an anonymous one.

There aren’t many people in this world who know anything about me. There are no photographs of me as Melinda Gray, Intrepid Girl Reporter. Anonymous author ofPrivate Jet, Private Hell. I have social media accounts and by-lines, but they’re all dead ends as far as finding a real person behind them. So the chances that Detective Browning knows that I know her through a different channel are slim.

My pulse thumps heavy at the base of my throat as I read the subject line for a second time.

From: Detective Kendra Browning

---