Blowout

many people know. Everyone likes to talk, everyone. No exceptions to that, unfortunately.”
    She felt tears sting her eyes. Her stepfather would have died in any case. But he would have had six more months to live. Perhaps he would have had a chance, with new drugs discovered every day—
    “I read up on pancreatic cancer. It’s a killer, so don’t go there, Callie. Someone brutally murdered him, that’s our only concern. Whatever fate would have dealt him we have no control over.”
    “My editor called again last night, on my cell, thank God. If he’d called the house, I would have freaked. I hate leaks, I really do, and if Jed Coombes had gotten the Kettering house number, I’d be doomed.”
    “What has he offered you to feed them information?”
    “The inside track to a Pulitzer Prize.”
    He whistled. “Hard to turn down.”
    “Don’t worry, I’ll earn one on my own. I nearly got one last year, it was that close.” She held up two fingers, nearly touching.
    “What did you do?” He was driving very carefully even though there weren’t many cars on the road, the sun was bright overhead, and the snow was melting. But the occasional pockets of slush could take a car into a ditch with no warning.
    “I have snitches, like you cops do. One of them tipped me off that a child pornography ring was operating out of the Barrington Hotel right here in Washington. I broke the story.”
    He jerked the steering wheel in his surprise and nearly sent them into a telephone pole. It was dicey for a moment until he got the car straight again. “You were the one who broke the Cadillac Ring story?”
    At her nod, he could only stare at her. “I’ll tell you, Callie, you had a lot of people pissed off at your paper about that. We already had undercover guys in there gathering evidence, then you had to move in with your battering ram. Lucky for the good guys we were nearly ready to close them down.”
    “Yeah, sure you were,” she said, eyes narrowed. “I heard about an undercover operation, but I didn’t see anything coming out of your efforts. I got all the evidence for you, Detective Raven. Oh yeah, you guys did a great job—once I cracked it.”
    Well, okay, she had done a lot and she had given them a day’s warning, he’d hand her that. And she had uncovered more evidence than they had, dammit. He decided to give the devil her due. “Well, maybe you did okay. It was federal racketeering for the bastards. The Attorney General brought them all down. There were big names among their clients, lots of money.”
    “It was the children that got to me. They were stolen from all over the world. They weren’t physically hurt, actually, they were just prisoners with anything they wanted—so long as they did exactly what they were told.”
    “They were all returned to their families.”
    “Yes, but their lives will be messed up in the short term at the very least. Poor kids.”
    “All right, so why didn’t you pull a Pulitzer?”
    “Olsen Tynes at The New York Times broke that big political scandal about Governor Welles in Louisiana. Since the Times is Northern liberal, and the governor was Southern conservative, they poured everything into nailing him.”
    “So you’re telling me you’re philosophical about that?”
    “What do you want me to do? Go blow up The New York Times ?”
    “The least you could have done was not date that moron New York Times reporter you caught in bed with another woman. Me, I’d have gotten right in this Tynes guy’s face, made sure he knew who should have carried off the prize.”
    She grinned at him. “Thank you, Detective Raven. I feel all sorts of warm and breathy getting advice from such an alpha male.”
    “Breathy?”
    “Do you know, I’m beginning to think you’re becoming resigned to me hanging around you.”
    “Not in this lifetime. Well, you’re not as bad as I thought you’d be. Look, now we’re heading into the hills of Virginia, horse country, that’s where Justice Xavier-Foxx lives. I can’t imagine how she can help us, but who knows?”
    “Did you know Justice Holmes said the nine Justices were like nine scorpions trapped in a bottle?”
    He grinned at her, shrugged. “Well, all the Justices are in the same small area for hours on end. Maybe she heard something, saw something. I will live in hope until the contrary is shoved in my face. Did Holmes really say that?”
    She nodded. “Okay, let me fill you in. As you know, she’ll go down in the