Bones Of Contention: The McKinnon Legends - The American Men Book 3 (40 page)

As a freelance writer she often worked late into the night. The quiet of the city inspired her and brought out her inner muse. The subtle change of the heartbeat could be felt by those in tuned to its special rhythm. She was a night creature, always had been, driving her foster parents and older sister crazy through the years. She felt at her best as the long shadows generated by the moon stretched out over the city skyline. She needed very little sleep and chose to power nap in the late afternoons. It had worked for her for years and she saw no reason to change.  

     Tonight was no different as she hit the
send
button on her latest piece. It was good, maybe even great. It was the sixth piece in what was going to be a nine part series on inner city crime, graft, and political corruption. She was now critically acclaimed with the first five parts, winning her accolades for her gutsy reporting. The specifics she had dug up while doing her investigation were shocking. She could never put into writing most of the evidence. That much information cast about in print would gain her a seat right next to Jimmy Hoffa on a bus ride to hell. Truthfully, the disappearance of Hoffa was one mystery she would love to solve; however, not necessarily with firsthand knowledge.

     “Meow, meow”. The large male brindle with a bobbed tail leapt up onto the window sill from the fire escape and then jumped onto the floor with a healthy thump. Rubbing against her, and intertwining his big, long body with her legs just enticed her to pick him up.

     “I know, Bobby. I don’t want to end up like Jimmy Hoffa either.” She scratched the fuzzy head of this wild-stray-turned-domesticated pet. He had shown up one day over a year ago and she had fallen in love with him. Rubbing noses with him, she then dropped him back on the floor. “Go on. I need to pack,” she told him as she got up from her desk.

The death threats had increased with each successive piece. The locks and security measures on her building doubled after the last publication. Her landlord did it feeling the need not to necessarily keep her safer, but to make the other tenants feel better. She wasn’t totally convinced the threats were not from some of those same neighbors.

She couldn’t blame them and held nothing against those who felt she was simply out of her mind for doing what she felt was her civic duty. What they could not see and chose not to understand was the fact that she was being driven to do these articles. It was a force she could not hold back. Karma would take care of itself. Consequently, she held no resentment for the dirty looks and comments she received.

They were just trying to make a living going about their lives in blissful ignorance. Once a light is shined on an ugly stain there is no way to go back to ignoring it, and she had placed a bright light on some pretty ugly spots, not just in Phoenix, but other major cities as well.

“Bobby, you know you are doing something right when the pot gets stirred,” she said as she closed the cover on her laptop, leaving it connected to the docking station.

She disconnected the portable 320 gigabyte hard drive containing all her notes, references, sources, and witnesses. The antique buffet in her dinning room was a fun piece of furniture designed and built in the 1920s. Her backup drive would be safe there, tucked into the secret nook carved out of the back which was designed to hide liquor bottles during prohibition.

She always saved everything to a backup drive because she had learned the hard way when she lost months of work due to a hard drive crash on her laptop.

Never again, she had vowed after that mishap!

Under normal circumstances, she usually kept the drive with her at all times. However, she was not going to take her computer on vacation. This was a trip for fun, not work. Besides, her sister would kill her for bringing work along. It had been difficult for her to unplug on their last trip together and Kristen had been very specific in her conditions and demands to pay Kari’s way on this Caribbean vacation.

No work! Kristen has told her in no uncertain terms.

“Hey,” she shrugged, “it is an easy thing to do for a good time with my sister.” Bobby barely looked up from his food bowl. “You are soooo not going to like the flight, puss-puss. Sorry, but I just can’t leave you behind. That mean lady downstairs threw another shoe at you didn’t she?” she asked while scratching his head and listening to his purr of contentment. Bobby would not mind. He loved his benefactor and would follow her anywhere. He just did not like his cage.

Kari also had a copy of her resources on the way to a very safe place, along with instructions to hand it over to police should anything ever happen to her. It was strictly precautionary, but one could never be too careful. It was prudent to have a backup plan considering she had dug up some seriously nasty dirt on some pretty high ranking officials in Phoenix and other larger cities across the nation.  

This piece she just delivered was going to blow the lid off a multimillion dollar Welfare and Medicare scam in Detroit. Currently, with the article in the bag, she was taking her publisher's advice and leaving town for a little while until things settled down a notch or two. She was going on an extended trip to do some island hopping in Caribbean with her sister. She had already checked in online, but still needed to get a move on. Her flight was wheels up at six that morning, and she had just enough time to make it.

“Oh,” she said, remembering the open window just as she was about to walk out the door with her suitcase and cat carrier in hand.

She should have left the window alone.