It’s still a rag. His mother’s voice was like a buzzing gnat. You could do so much better, Jeffy.

Probably, but this was what he had right now.

“It’s not finished, Nolan. I’m not finished.”

“And I say you are. You’ve been working this story for six weeks, Jeff. It’s time to let it out into the world.” Nolan Albanesi spoke in levels of oil. There was the sleazy, greasy Nolan and the icky, too-much-fried-food Nolan. This was the WD-40 Nolan, easy, slick, and hard to elude.

“Why?” Jeff asked, suspicious.

Nolan laughed. “Haven’t you seen the news?”

“Not yet. I’ve been working on the story write-up pretty much nonstop.” Which was a lie, but there was no way he was telling Nolan about the old lady’s body.

“So industrious,” Nolan mocked. “Send me what you’ve got, kid. I’ll polish it and post.”

Alarm bells were dinging. “Why?” he repeated.

“Because your subject was nearly abducted from the airport an hour ago. It’s all over the net.”

Jeff inhaled sharply. “What?”

“You heard me. Some dude tried to grab her and take her right out of the airport. The fact that she’s the same Mercy Callahan who got snatched back in February hasn’t been connected by a lot of the news agencies.”

Think, Jeff. Think, for fuck’s sake. “You said that some dude tried. He didn’t succeed?”

“No. But Callahan’s news again and we’re ahead of the power curve. We’ve got your article. So send it to me,” Nolan finished, carefully enunciating every word. “Or I’ll give the story to someone else.”

“No!” Jeff exploded. Over my dead body. He winced. Bad choice of words, because the image of the old lady’s body barreled back into his mind. “It’s just not finished. There’s more to this story, Nolan. I know it.”

“Then write a sequel,” Nolan snarled. “But for now, send me the fucking story or you’re fired.”

Jeff’s stomach was sick. He couldn’t be fired. It wasn’t much money, but he needed every penny of it. His scholarship didn’t cover even half of his college expenses. “Fine. But give me a minute to delete a few paragraphs. There’s stuff there that I’m not comfortable including.”

“Send it to me,” Nolan said, back to his slightly sleazy self, but at least he wasn’t yelling anymore. “I’ll decide what gets deleted, but I want to read it in its entirety first.”

Yeah, right, Jeff thought. He might have been a little young and a little naive, but he wasn’t stupid. “Fine, will do.”

Ending the call, he scanned the story and deleted the paragraphs that had seemed titillating before last night. Before that dead lady’s body. So Mercy had been a party girl in college. So what? So were thousands of other women. The asshole who’d been all too ready to dish dirt for a price wasn’t relevant to her story now. He gave it one last read-through, then uploaded it to the Gabber’s server.

He closed his eyes. And now he had to figure out what to do about the dead lady. And Mercy Callahan. Because he’d be so very surprised if the man who’d tried to abduct Mercy from the airport wasn’t the same man he’d seen leaving her neighbor’s apartment. After killing her.