The Taken

Marin growled, and slumped again.

“Who’s Paul?” Grif asked.

“Someone Kit once carried in on her shoe.”

Grif snorted, and leaned against the wall. Kit ignored both them and the call. Paul abandoned her at the station in the wake of Nic’s death. He hadn’t been there when she’d emerged like a newborn into an uncertain world the next morning. And last night… well, she could be dead right now and he’d be none the wiser.

He could leave a message.

“I’m confused,” Grif said suddenly, half-turning in the doorway, gesturing to the room behind him. “You own all this, and yet you’re pounding the street, setting up stings?”

“I don’t own it. It’s family-run.”

“You’ll be the only one running it when I croak.”

“Marin,” Kit chided.

Her aunt merely smiled. “That’s why I forced the office on her. She’d be out in the pen with the others if she could, but there has to be some separation marking her for future greatness. For now, she doesn’t want to be in management.”

“Why?”

“She finds it intellectually numbing and a waste of her prodigious talent for pissing people off.”

“Because I believe in working my way up from the ground floor.”

“Here we go,” muttered Marin.

“I believe in free press. I believe the world is basically good, and a good journalist can make it even better. In fact, it’s our moral obligation to make a difference-”

“These days, we’re lucky to make our rent.”

Kit shook her head. “No, this place won’t close. We’re not bloggers who don’t fact- check, or paparazzi who create drama, then get sued, then throw their sources to the wind. We don’t just give our readers the easy answer, we give them the truth.”

Grif raised a brow in Marin’s direction. “She always like this?”

“You got her started.”

“Hey,” Kit said, catching her aunt’s eye. “Knowing the truth is important.”

Marin bit her lip, then nodded.

“Anyway,” Kit said, clearing her throat and her mind. “The street is where I belong. That’s where the stories are.”

“Which brings us back to you, Mr. Shaw.” Marin swiveled, her eyes again sharp. “What’s your story?”

Kit propped a hip on a sliver of cleared desk space, and waited. This man could fight off two armed men with nothing more than fists and a molten rage, but how would he stack up under the full weight of the Marin Wilson treatment?

Grif shoved his hands back into his pockets. “Everyone gotta have a story in this place?”

Not answering a direct question from Marin was as bad as screaming a lie. She leaned forward. “It’s a newspaper.”

“This an interview?”

“Prefer an interrogation?”

He dropped one shoulder. “Not bothered by either, really.”

“Then you’re either a criminal or a saint.”

Grif snorted. “I ain’t no saint.”

“Grif is a P.I.,” Kit interrupted. “He’s investigating Nic’s murder.”

Marin’s brows lifted. “How you doing so far?”

“I got you a name.”

“And saved my niece’s life?”

“Yes.”

Marin stared at Grif a moment longer, then turned back to her computer. “So let’s see where it leads us.” She picked up the notebook and flexed her fingers. “Lance Schmidt. Doesn’t ring a bell, which is why I haven’t gotten to it yet.”

Her fingers danced over keys with missing letters. Marin treated finding information like a battle to be won. Yet she froze unexpectedly, then blew out a long breath.

“What?” Kit asked.

Marin flipped the screen her way. “Please tell me you don’t know him.”

Kit rocketed to her feet, pointing at the screen. “That’s the guy who attacked me!”

Nodding, Grif straightened, too. Marin cursed, then pulled the screen back around, scrolling down. “Lance Arnold Schmidt, forty-two years old, born in L.A., moved here when he was twelve. Divorced, no kids, and…” She looked away from the computer, into Kit’s eyes. “Vice sergeant in charge of the sexual crimes division.”

Shit. Kit looked at Grif. “He’s a cop.”

He’s the cleaner,” Grif said, earning a steely, considered look from Marin, and causing Kit to stare. The image of him flying from the corner of her bedroom flashed through her mind. He’d emerged like a dark knight to beat back a murderer-a cop-and he hadn’t been scared then. Even with this new knowledge he didn’t look scared. “Dirty cop,” he muttered darkly, shaking his head.

“He could be the one organizing the prostitution ring,” Marin added, thoughts flashing so quickly across her face it was like reading a ticker tape. “But he’s not calling the shots.”

“How do you know?” Kit asked.

Marin leaned back in her chair. “The powers-that-be don’t dirty their own soft palms. Those who can afford it pay for distance from their crimes.”

“Let me see that,” Kit said, coming around to Marin’s side of the desk. Lance Schmidt’s hard face, looking into the camera lens so directly, caused an involuntary shudder to run through her. “I’m going to call Dennis.”

Marin looked up sharply. “You sure? He’s a cop, too.”

Kit reached for her purse. “He’s a friend.”

Grif was beside her so quickly she jumped. His hand was hot on her arm, his fingertips like wires. “No heat.”

Glaring, Kit jerked away. “I told you. He’s a friend, and there’s no way he’s in on something like-”

“I don’t care,” Grif said shortly. “Schmidt is getting away with this, so he ain’t working alone. It’s like a web. Something touches one corner of it, and the reverberations are felt across the entire network. So no cops.”

Kit finally nodded. No cops for now. She leaned back over the desk. “Let’s dig deeper, then. But I don’t want him to know we’re looking.”

Marin looked up at her. “You mean the family archives?”

It wouldn’t erase their e-tracks entirely, but there was nothing to be done about that. The police had resources.

But Kit had Aunt Marin, who wasn’t only the editor-in-chief of the Las Vegas Tribune, she was an information magpie. Every story by every reporter in the last thirty years had been meticulously archived, whether it ended up running in the paper or not. There were plenty of reasons the latter might happen- political sensitivity, timeliness, speculation that couldn’t be corroborated-but Marin believed knowledge should be preserved, even prized.

Reporters had learned over the years to capitalize on her insatiable appetite for information. A small bit of gossip, properly dated and vetted, could earn a free lunch or a plum assignment, in addition to a byline. A tiny fact, woven in with others, might be rewarded at bonus time. As for the undocumented tips and reports, Marin called those “potholders”-something a preschooler could cobble together and not particularly valuable, but damned handy when the kitchen got hot.

Some journalists called her a gossip, a scandal addict who hoarded secrets and held them over the heads of the powerful and wealthy in order to gain personal favor and exclusive stories. But Marin had never blackmailed anyone, and was the least political person Kit knew. Besides, she knew what others couldn’t… her aunt came by the habit honestly, learning it from her grandfather, who began the secret archives when he took over the paper. Yet no one would ever suggest the honorable Dean S. Wilson, who had a school and a street and a day named after him, was a slanderer. But Marin was a woman, and Marin was in charge. Those inclined to