When Leah reached her desk, her shoulders slumped at the sight of a bouquet of grocery store flowers in a plastic vase on her blotter. She looked around the half-empty newsroom, but everybody was going about their business, so she sat heavily and reached for the small card taped to the vase.
Sorry to be a bummer the other night. Let’s start over, okay? Bill
She closed her eyes for a moment. Dinner had been tense, Bill being the type who was unable to let go of a topic, and she’d finally had to cut their meal short with a terse explanation that she wasn’t feeling sociable and she wanted to go home. Bill had realized too late that he’d pushed too hard, but the damage had been done, and she couldn’t get out of the restaurant fast enough, her evening ruined by his prodding. She’d considered herself lucky when he hadn’t come into the office yesterday, but her celebration of her good fortune had obviously been premature.
She moved the flowers and considered tossing them into her garbage, but elected to keep them so Bill wouldn’t feel any worse than he probably already did. If he came in today, they’d be on display, and his gesture wouldn’t have been in vain. Leah rose and walked across the room to the coffee area and poured herself a large steaming mug, and then retraced her steps to begin her day by scouring the wire for anything that might be relevant to her story.
Her Spanish was rusty at best, two years of high school language class coupled with living in a border town leaving her with little more than a rudimentary vocabulary, and it was hard to decipher many of the online Spanish news pages and blogs that centered around Juárez. The papers were a quick read that she could plug into an online translator for a rough interpretation, but the blogs and Facebook pages devoted to crime in the city were more difficult, as much of the commentary was written in slang and riddled with spelling or typing errors and nonstandard grammar, confounding the translation software and often leaving her shaking her head.
Juárez, like many cities near the border, had a thriving social media network that advised residents of unsafe routes where robberies had recently occurred, where gunfights had broken out, or where a military sweep was in progress. She’d discovered that the amateur sites covered topics that the mainstream publications refused to, in part because the cartels routinely threatened reporters and editors and in some cases went as far as murdering any that published articles critical of their interests.
Leah was finishing her first cup of coffee and arguing with herself about whether her nerves really needed another when her desk phone rang.
“Leah Mason,” she said, typing in another web address as she answered.
“Miss Mason, thank goodness I reached you.”
The male voice was almost a whisper, the Spanish accent light. Leah glanced at Margaret’s door and sat forward.
“Who am I speaking with?”
“I’m sorry. My name is Uriel. Uriel Sánchez.”
She gulped the final swallow of coffee and exhaled. “Sánchez?”
“Yes. I see you recognize the name.”
Leah didn’t respond. Instead, she leaned back in her chair and looked at her monitor.
“Miss Mason?” Sánchez asked.
“I’m here. What can I do for you?”
“I received a rather cryptic message from my father, Miss Mason. It says that if anything happens to him, I should get in touch with you.”
“I have no idea why, Mr. Sánchez. Your father made an appointment to see me the day before yesterday in Juárez and then stood me up. We have nothing to talk about.”
A long pause hung over the line. Sánchez’s voice softened further. “What time was your meeting?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Leah removed her glasses and set them on the desk. The monitor and her surroundings blurred, and she blinked several times. “Two o’clock.”
Sánchez said something unintelligible that sounded like a curse. Leah frowned and waited for the man to get to the point, and then something he’d said registered. “You said he told you to get in touch with me if something happened to him?”
Sánchez’s sigh on the other end of the line was audible. “That’s right, Miss Mason. He was killed two days ago at one fifteen. That’s why he never made it to your meeting.”
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Table of Contents
Books by Russell Blake
About the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Excerpt from A Girl Apart