Two-thirds of her life ago, when she was eleven, Miriam had been stung by a hornet. It had been a bad one: Her arm had swollen up like a balloon, red and sore and painful to touch, and the sting itself had hurt like crazy. But the worst thing of all was the sense of moral indignation and outrage. Miriam-aged-eleven had been minding her own business, playing in the park with her skateboard—she’d been a tomboy back then, and some would say she still was—and she hadn’t done anything to provoke the angry yellow-and-black insect. It just flew at her, wings whining angrily, landed, and before she could shake it off it stung her.

She’d howled.

This time she was older and much more self-sufficient—college, pre-med, and her failed marriage to Ben had given her a grounding in self-sufficiency—so she managed to say good-bye to an equally shocked Paulie and make it into her car before she broke down. And the tears came silently—this time. It was raining in the car park, but she couldn’t tell whether there was more water inside or outside. They weren’t tears of pain: They were tears of anger. That bastard—

For a moment, Miriam fantasized about storming back in through the fire door at the side of the building, going up to Joe Dixon’s office, and pushing him out of the big picture window. It made her feel better to think about that, but after a few minutes she reluctantly concluded that it wouldn’t solve anything. Joe had the file. He had her computer—and Paulie’s—and a moment’s thought told her that those machines would be being wiped right now. Doubtless, server logs showing her peeking at porn on the job would be being fabricated. She’d spoken to some geeks at a dot-com startup once who explained just how easy it was if you wanted to get someone dismissed. “Shit,” she mumbled to herself and sniffed. “I’ll have to get another job. Shouldn’t be too hard, even without a reference.”

Still, she was badly shaken. Journalists didn’t get fired for exposing money-laundering scams; that was in the rules somewhere. Wasn’t it? In fact, it was completely crazy. She blinked away the remaining angry tears. I need to go see Iris, she decided. Tomorrow would be soon enough to start looking for a new job. Or to figure out a way to break the story herself, if she was going to try and do it freelance. Today she needed a shoulder to cry on—and a sanity check. And if there was one person who could provide both, it was her adoptive mother.