Page 3 of Shadow Strike
Not whether.She was past whether.
She had the documentation.She had the sourcing.She had the organizational chart, the financial records, the incident reports, and the name of a former Outlaw foot soldier who’d agreed to go on record under a pseudonym.The story was ready.
The question was whether “ready” was the same as “safe.”
Not for herself.For Mom.
There it was—the thing underneath the thing.
Regan could handle risk to herself with what she privately considered a reasonable level of equanimity, which her therapist had once called dissociation and which Regan had decided to take as a compliment.
She’d published stories that got her death threats before.She’d had a source’s location leaked by a DA who didn’t appreciate her coverage of his office.She had, on one memorable occasion, received a bouquet of dead flowers from a man she’d helped put in prison, which had been genuinely creative and which she’d photographed and added to a file labeled simply:Fan Mail.
And of course, there was the fact that Cold Circuit’s big breakout series had been about Sheriff Ray Briggs.She’d exposed him, and his dealings with the Outlaws, with brutal journalistic expertise.The man now sat in prison.That one had landed her more than a few death threats and harassment from members in the sheriff’s department who worshiped Ray with a dedication she found disturbing.
But her mother worked nearly every day at the bar, just like Regan.It was a family business; there were no holidays or PTO.
And Lucy insisted on walking to her car alone at eleven p.m.on the nights she left before Regan because she’d been doing it for thirty years and didn’t see why she should stop now.
Her mother had no idea that her daughter had spent the last six months building a brand new investigation that would, when published, make Ryder and the Canon Outlaws even more unhappy with the Regan than they already were.
The note lay flat on the desk beside the keyboard under the lamp.She’d done her best to ignore it.Thinking about Lucy, the mother she’d gotten her fearlessness as much as her stubbornness from, made her stare at it.
We know you’re alone most nights.
She opened the laptop.Opened the research folder.Opened the file on Clive Briggs.
His photograph looked back at her, the smile on his face, as if he were fearless, too.He must be to have walked away from the Outlaws when he was eighteen and made a life for himself in the Army.
Shadow Point Security—she had the number and address.She’d had them for three months, right there in the file, a professional justification sitting ready-made for the moment she needed it.
He’s Ray Briggs’ nephew, she reminded herself.There was no way, regardless of the fact that Clive had gotten out of the gang, that he would be interested in talking to her.Hell, he might even be back with the motorcycle gang for all she knew.
She closed the laptop.Opened it again.
She picked up her phone.Put it down.Picked it up again.
It was one in the morning, and she was not going to make decisions in the middle of the night based on an unsigned note from people who thought eight hundred dollars a month was a reasonable rate for — what, exactly?The continued absence of something bad?Protection from a threat they were also the source of?
Organized crime as a subscription service.Zero stars, would not recommend.
She set the phone face down on the desk and pulled the episode notes back up on the screen.She would deal with the extortion in the morning.
She typed three sentences about the Whitefish case and deleted two of them.
Outside, on the street below her window, a car idled for a moment and then moved on.
Regan noticed but didn’t stew about it.She was fine.Shewasalone most nights, and she was completely fine with that.She was going to finish this outline and get four hours of sleep.In the morning, she would figure out what to do about the note, the men in booth seven, and the gigabytes of material sitting in a folder on her laptop like an unexploded device waiting for someone to decide it was time.
She typed another sentence.
Deleted it.
Call him, said the part of her brain that had been carrying this longest.You already know you’re going to.
“Tomorrow,” she told it.
The cursor blinked.
