Bow Down(152)

9





Cassidy





I barely slept that night. I kept having visions of masked men breaking down my door and murdering me in my sleep.

The sun rose and pressed in through my windows, waking me up. I was exhausted and sluggish as I got up and made some coffee, but at least I was still alive.

I needed to get the hell out of my apartment. I kept seeing those men attacking me, and nothing seemed to help. I showered, got dressed, and drank some coffee.

I hadn’t heard from Rafa yet, but I hadn’t really expected to. I wished he hadn’t left, but I didn’t understand why. He was the enemy, but I couldn’t really think of him that way. He had said he didn’t want to hurt me, that he wasn’t going to hurt me, and for some reason I believed him. I trusted him, but maybe I shouldn’t have.

Rafa was a total stranger, but I still found myself attracted to him. It was so stupid and frustrating, but I kept seeing that kiss. Now he knew my real name and who I was, so all of that had to be over. Still, he had said he wouldn’t hurt me. I had to believe in that.

And I had to do what he said. No more researching the Spiders. I was done with human trafficking, done with the whole damn thing. I wanted to help the city, but I didn’t want to get myself killed. I could do more good alive than I could dead.

I left my apartment and got into my crappy, old, beat-up Nissan Altima. I headed out to the paper’s office, needing something to distract myself.

I wasn’t full time at the paper, but I could still come and go. I could use the office if I needed to, and there were always stories that needed a freelancer to write them up. They were usually really boring fluff pieces, like articles about local T-ball teams or something like that, but they paid money. I could use a little money and a little distraction.

I parked and headed into the office building. I rode the elevator up to the fifth floor, glancing over my shoulder the whole time. I was paranoid and I knew it, but I had to keep myself together. Rafa had said I needed to just lie low, so that was what I’d do.

The elevator doors opened and I walked out onto the floor. I smiled and nodded at the receptionist, who waved to me as I passed. I headed toward the bull pen in the back, my heart beating fast.

I loved newspapers and journalists. Writers were the weirdest people in the world, and journalists were the weirdest writers. They were jaded and tough people, each of them a grizzled veteran of countless stories, disappointments, fights, and threats. I wanted to be a real journalist one day, a proper journalist, not the pretender I currently was. My human trafficking story was meant to be the start of that, but now I’d have to find a new way.

The room was buzzing as I crossed the floor. I nodded at a few people I recognized, but mostly I was a stranger in here. I was just a freelancer, which meant I was the bottom of the bottom. I didn’t mind that so much, though sometimes the more established people could be assholes.

“Yo, Cass!”

I paused and smiled. “Jimmy.”

“How’s it going?”

Jimmy stood in the door of his office, his arms crossed. He was in his fifties, his hair graying, his skin taut and tanned. He was thin, probably from the constant stress of being a newspaper editor.

He was the man who had hired me. I considered him my mentor in some ways. When I first got started freelancing, he was the only person to go out of his way to try to help me learn the ropes. He was a good guy, though he could be pretty tough sometimes.

I liked that about him. I liked that he was a no-nonsense kind of guy. His newsroom was orderly, or at least as orderly as a newsroom could be.

I walked over and shrugged. “It’s going okay.”

“Haven’t seen you around in a couple weeks.”

“Been busy.”

“With what? You haven’t written me a damn thing.”

“I was working on my own story for a bit.”

“That human trafficking thing? Still on that?”

“I was,” I said, shaking my head, “but I’m not anymore.”

“What stopped you?”

I paused, not sure what to say. For a second, I wanted to tell him the truth.

But that was stupid. I couldn’t tell him the truth. Rafa had specifically told me not to tell anyone, or at least he had strongly implied that. I wasn’t about to be an idiot the very next day.

“I just got stuck,” I said. “Got sick of banging my head up against it. So now I’m taking a break.”

“Don’t take a break too long,” Jimmy said. “You’ll lose the magic. Know what I mean?”

“I don’t, no. Not really.”

He shrugged. “In any job, there’s a flow. You get into that flow, the job goes easy. In writing a story, a serious story, the flow can be long and boring, but it’s there, sitting at the edges. You can’t lose that.”