I escaped gratefully from the dark cafe into the warm sun, but as my eyes adjusted to the bright light, my first sight was not a welcome one.
She was sitting on a bench, her legs crossed, one foot in the ever-present stiletto bobbing up and down. The red fingernails of one hand tapped impatiently on the seat beside her. I sighed. ‘Hello, Adelita.’
‘Miss Burrowes.’ She flashed that horrid, smug smile at me. ‘We meet again.’
I scowled. ‘Could you be any more of a cliché?’
‘I told you I would find you again. Nice outfit.’ Her eyes dropped to my bare legs.
‘How do you keep finding me, anyway? What am I, a fucking homing beacon?’
Adelita smirked. ‘Close. Once I had your bag it was a very easy matter to plant a tracking device in it. I’ve been monitoring your exact movements for the last few days.’
I stared at her in disbelief, then crouched down and upended my bag onto the ground. The contents spewed forth and scattered across the cobbles.
‘Where is it?’ I demanded.
‘Surely you don’t think I would be that sloppy? I sewed it into the lining.’
I found a neat row of fresh stitches in one corner of the bag and swore as I felt a lump beneath the lining. I used a pen from my bag to rip out the stitches one by one and drew out a small, white electronic device, around half the size of my palm. Adelita reached over and plucked it from my hand. ‘I will take that back now if you don’t mind.’
‘Guess you’ve never heard of ethics in journalism?’
‘I want to know what you have found out,’ she said. ‘What brings you to Venice?’
I piled my things back into the bag and kicked it away from me in a sudden rage. ‘Well, suck shit Adelita, because you’ve wasted your time following me all the way here. I got too close to the cartel, so they got rid of me.’
Her perfectly plucked eyebrows shot upwards. ‘Cartel?’
Shut up Sarah, you fuckwit. Every time I lost my temper, I ended up saying something stupid. I snatched up my bag again and walked away with as much dignity as I could muster in my lacy underwear and sneakers combo. Adelita caught up to me after a few seconds. ‘Have you thought any more about my proposal?’
‘I’m not interested in working with you, Adelita.’
‘I will make it worth your while.’
I wheeled around to face her. ‘You had me mugged, Adelita. Mugged. Why on earth would I ever trust you?’
‘You don’t have to trust me. But you need my help.’
‘I’m doing just fine on my own, thank you.’
She looked me up and down. ‘You don’t look like you’re doing too well. You said yourself that you are not supposed to be here.’
‘Yeah, well… I had a rough night. I’m still going to get that story, and I’m going to do it without you.’
‘You don’t understand. You can make so much more money working freelance.’
My interest piqued despite myself at the M word. ‘How much are we talking here?’
‘My salary from the television station in Barcelona is a decent living. But it was my freelance work that paid for my very large and very expensive house.’
I admit, I was tempted. I had a large and expensive house of my own to pay for. But there’s no way I could trust her after what she’d done. She’d proven what she was willing to do to steal the story from me. On the one hand, that ruthlessness could come in handy. But on the other, she could just take all my information and shaft me.
I started walking again, and from the click-clack on the cobblestones, I knew she was following me.
‘You know I have been tracking your movements. At any point, I could have come in and stolen your story. But I have not, because you are the only one who can get Ford to talk. But you need me too. I have experience with this sort of story, and I have the contacts to sell it.’
I stopped in the middle of a small, arched bridge and leant on the balustrade, gazing down at the water lapping gently against the sides of the canal. The sun caressed the ripples, creating an ever-changing and fascinating play of light and dark. Finally, I straightened and looked back at Adelita. ‘My boss wants to break this story. If I go over her head, she’ll fire me. That won’t be so good for me either.’
‘You will deliver the story to your boss first,’ Adelita said. ‘And then we will sell it to all the other publications once your edition has gone to the press. I have contacts who can translate it into many different languages. We can sell it across the world. You keep your job and we share the profits from the rest.’
‘What about my photographer? He’s got some good photos, and he’ll get more. Does he get a cut too?’
Adelita hesitated. ‘It depends how much you want to tell him about this. If they are good photos, they will take up at least half the total pages. That is a very large hit to our share.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Let him think that the story got out some other way. Then it will be up to him to pursue legal action for copyright with the other publications.’
‘You want me to lie to him? You want me to cheat him out of what rightfully belongs to him?’
She
