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“Sounds like a real bastard,” Tom muttered as they walked through the maze toward her desk.

She could feel the eyes of journalists and fact checkers as they tried to catch a glimpse of her skimpy glitter coated outfit. They peeked up over their cubical walls and she pretended she couldn’t see them. That is, until Chad in sports thought it was appropriate to whistle. She responded by flipping him the bird. Maybe she should have gone home to change first. But she wasn’t planning to be in the building for long. She often treated the office as a pit stop between assignments. As soon as she grabbed a stack of research and filed a story, she was leaving to shower and sleep for twelve hours straight. Hanging out in strip clubs all night had sounded like fun when she started this project, but when you weren’t drinking and had no one to take you home at the end of the night, it was kind of a drag.

“I’m just going to hide in my cubicle and take care of this stuff, Tom. But then I’m out of here until tomorrow afternoon.” Carrie dropped her heels under her desk and waited for him to leave.

“Sounds good. I’m sure your piece will kick ass. They always do. Have you thought anymore about taking the EP job with Gina Whitman?”

Carrie shrugged. “I don’t know, Tom. I don’t like the idea of always being stuck in a control room. I like field reporting and investigative journalism.”

“And you’re the best at it, which is why you would make a great executive producer for Gina. She needs someone with your experience running things. It doesn’t have to be a permanent change, but it would be better than you running the blog. That’s practically an intern’s job. Take the position for a few months. You’ll be back to traveling in no time. Did you talk to that counselor I told you about?”

She could have lied, but her face would have given her away. “Not yet. You know talking isn’t really my thing. But thanks, Tom.”

He looked at her intently, his hands shoved in his pockets, and she braced herself for a classic Tom Neiland lecture about taking better care of herself. Instead, he leaned in and kissed her cheek and headed for his office. She stared after him for a minute. What had gotten into him? She blinked and tried to shake off the weird interaction then woke up her computer and got to work filing her articles and compiling information she had collected last night at the Doll House. A piece like this would never make it into one of the network’s news hours, but she might be able to squeeze some of it into one of the shows designed to catch people’s attention with splashy headlines. She didn’t love that UNN had those kinds of shows, but she understood that network executives would never get rid of them so why not use one to her advantage?

When she reached for a sticky note, her eyes caught on a manila envelope sitting in her mail basket. It had been a couple of days since she’d been at her desk, so she had no clue how long it had been sitting there. She turned the package in her hands. It had to weigh less than a pound. There was no postmark, but her name was written in thick black marker. With her letter opener, she slit the envelope and looked inside. There was a thin stack of eight by ten photographs and a single piece of paper.

She set the paper aside and flipped through the photographs. Each one had been taken inside the Doll House.

The pictures all featured men speaking to each other in dark corners of the club. She recognized several as those she was about to name in her article for being hypocrites. Others she recognized for being powerful in D.C. The most recognizable was the director of the CIA, Corbit Upwood. She hadn’t actually seen him come into the club on any of the nights she’d visited, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there.

She felt her pulse pick up as she sorted the photos. Once she had looked at them all, she picked up the paper. It contained a lone typed paragraph.

Miss Davenport,

I’ve read your work. When you showed up at the Doll House, I knew you were the one to pass this to. I can’t reveal my name, but there is a human trafficking ring being run out of the Doll House. You need to decide now if you’re going to investigate or walk away. Lives are at stake, and I won’t contact you again if you’re not going to look into this. Start with the men in these photographs.

RIP

Carrie read the letter several times before standing to pace. This was big, she could feel it. Who was RIP? Was it initials? A warning? It was creepy. But something told her she needed to clear her docket and focus on this. That meant finishing a series of blog posts for Tom to approve and writing some copy for a two-minute segment in prime-time later that night. She set the letter aside and sat at her desk to work on it.

As she hit send on the final copy thirty minutes later, the noise in the newsroom changed. Fingers were flying across keyboards and phones were ringing everywhere. There was a hum. An electricity in the air that she recognized immediately. Breaking news.

Carrie grabbed a sweater off the back of her chair to hide her strip club attire and walked barefoot to the assignment desk. As she did, Joe, a fact checker, nearly ran into her.

“What’s going on, Joe?”

“Somebody just tried to blow up the CIA director’s house.”

“Whoa. Seriously?” Carrie glanced at her phone. Her Twitter feed hadn’t blown up yet, so this was fresh.

“Yeah. Bomb techs are defusing it now. Word is, this is the second attempt on his life and the president is issuing an executive order for a Secret Service detail. Upwood is pissed.”

It couldn’t be a coincidence that the day she got an anonymous tip about Upwood being involved in human trafficking, someone tried to blow him to bits. “Gotta run, Joe. Can you verify whether this is a second attempt?”

Joe cocked his head and looked at her quizzically. “I thought you were doing the strip club thing. Isn’t that what the trashy outfit is all about?”

“No Joe, I’m just trying out a new style. Get me that verification. And find out if the executive order is real, too. I’ll be at my desk.”

Carrie ran back to her computer and pulled out the mysterious package. Flipping through the photos, she found the one of Corbit Upwood. She didn’t recognize the man he was talking to. Finding that out would be her first step.

The thought of her twelve-hour nap was long gone. She would have to change and grab a case of energy drinks to dig into this now. If she could break the story that the director of the CIA was a human trafficker at the same time that someone was trying to blow up his house, it might be the biggest story she had ever written. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d written a negative piece about Corbit Upwood. Though he technically hadn’t been named in the first one, she knew he was a sketchy bastard who liked to have his way with women. Carrie shuddered as she recalled interviewing a female soldier that Upwood had been less than gentlemanly towards in Afghanistan.

Joe poked his head over her cubicle wall, interrupting her thoughts.

“Secret Service detail has definitely been ordered. I’ve got double confirmation from two sources on the record and a copy of the executive order with the president’s signature is on its way.”

Carrie flipped a blank sheet of paper over the photographs as he spoke.

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