Sentinel: A Light Mage Wars Novella (The Light Mage Wars) (16 page)

"
If you love him, Caro," Mindy said gently, "then maybe you need to think about whether there's any chance he really didn't do this." Again, she hesitated. "You don't like to take risks. I know it's harder when you've been hurt before, but what's the alternative? Never trusting again? That's no way to live."

They both knew Caro had been living that way.
She'd wanted to stop being so closed in, so cautious.

Yeah, that
'd worked out well.

But Rick had been so vehement.
More than the vehemence, the hurt she'd sensed made her doubt. Had she been too hasty?

#

Rick parked behind the long, low brick building that housed MageWire.com's offices. He had to keep his temper, and that wouldn't be easy. If he gave in to temptation and blasted an energy bolt into Stan, he'd end up in the Collegium jail with his credibility about on the same level as a crack addict's.

His phone beeped, alerting him to an incoming text.
Scowling, he ignored it. Congratulations were pouring in, every one a nail in the coffin of his hopes with Caro.

A
double beep heralded a call from Jason. Someone he could be blunt with.

Rick took the call.
"I didn't write that story," he said before Jason, too, could offer kudos.

There was a long moment of silence before Jason softly said,
"So who did?"

"
Three guesses." Rick filled his friend in on the situation, concluding, "Either Stan retracts and apologizes, or I blow this wide open."

"
Good plan. The shire courts, the Collegium...got press lined up?"

"
I don't think this can go to
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
."

"
Not what I meant. Y'know, MageWire.com isn't the only mage news outlet. There's MageNews.net. They don't pay squat, and their circulation is limited, but people would go there for a juicy scandal."

"
They would." Rick grinned. "Thanks, Jason."

"
Anytime. Keep me posted."

They signed off.
Rick pushed through the glass door and stalked into the bullpen. Most reporters worked from home, but three men and four women occupied cluttered desks in the big room.

"
Hey, champ!" Petite, brunette Samantha Power grinned at him. "Here's the man of the hour."

Someone else applauded, and all the others joined in.

Stan must've heard the commotion. He stood in his office door, grinning.

Bastard.
Rick locked eyes with Stan, whose grin faded.

The applause died.
Samantha frowned at Rick.

Doug Lennox, a young, dark-haired jock said,
"You're going national, Moore. But you look like you're going to a funeral."

"
You deserve the step up," Samantha said. "You got the story no one could get. No hard feelings."

"
Yes, there are." Locking eyes with Stan, who stared blandly back at him, Rick continued, "But not toward any of you, Sam."

Stan
shook his head. "My office, Moore. Now."

Rick
strode in. Stan closed the door behind him and demanded, "What the hell's the matter with you?"

"
You used my press pass to get through the Dares' privacy screens. You spied on me and Caroline. You used what you saw–but clearly did not understand–to make her parents look pathetic and paint her brother as the Charles Manson of the mage world."

Reciting the litany spurred his temper again.
Rick paused to take a breath. "Yet you ask what's wrong with me? What the hell's wrong with you? Ethics used to matter to you."

Leaning against his desk, Stan looked unperturbed.
"Finished?"

"
Not even sort of." Rick pulled his thumb drive out of his pocket and tossed it onto the desk. "This has the retraction and apology you're going to publish immediately. It's an admission that you broke the law and violated every standard of ethical journalism as well as the codes of decency our kind have followed for millennia, that you made up the content of your story, and that I had nothing to do with it."

Stan shook his head.
"You think that, do you?"

"
If you don't do it, I will bring a world of hurt down on you." Assuming the man he had in mind to help him didn't blast first and ask questions later.

Rick
's fists ached to pound that smug little smile off Stan's mouth. Had this been his fallback all along?

Stan snorted.
"I've been in this business longer than you've been alive, and I can promise you nobody gives a flying fuck about Griffin Dare's privacy. Or feels sorry for a family who'd venerate a mass murderer. You can take your national slot or not, but I'm not retracting a word. Nor am I calling for the investigation of your dad's case, seeing as you backed out."

Rick didn
't want that vindication at the cost of Caro's pain, and knowing she'd been hurt anyway, and for nothing, just plain sucked. But Stan didn't care.

Okay, then.
War had been declared. Rick meant to win it, but first he had one question. "Why did you do this, Stan? I learned journalistic ethics from you. I looked up to you. Why would you step over the line?"

"
You had the story, Rick. You had it and walked away because some woman put stars in your eyes. You can sink your career for a piece of ass if you want, but you're not depriving this news service of its scoop or the people of the southeast of things they ought to know."

"
Your story," Rick said, clinging to his temper with both fists, "was a total fabrication."

"
Not the essentials. The room is as I described it, the books, the hallway, everything. I did you a favor by putting your name on it, but that was only fair."

"
No, you fucked me over. You knew you were doing it, too. So for the last time, why?"

"
Use the head on your shoulders, boy." Stan scowled at him. "People like us can't get starry-eyed over people like that Dare girl."

"
What's that supposed to mean?"

"
Privileged. Entitled." Stan shook his head. "You know, the kind you always said you'd never trust. You needed a wakeup call. You'll find someone who suits you better."

The callousness of that speech, the snobbery in it...
Rick hadn't been like that. Or had he?

He shook his head and focused.
"So you absolutely refuse to run the retraction and apology."

"
Damn straight." Stan shrugged. "You'll forget about her when your columns are stirring up the bigwigs. National wants one every week, you know."

Rick
looked at him for a long moment. "I don't care," he said, and was surprised to realize that was absolutely true. "I'm not writing another 'Furthermore.' I quit."

Chapter Fourteen

The law offices of Dare, Acton, Ba
rrett, and Tepper lay just ahead. Rick paused on the sidewalk to check the knot in his gray-and-blue striped tie. This was either going to help rehabilitate him in Caro's parents' eyes, and thus in hers, or sink his chances altogether. But he needed a mage lawyer to slam MageWire, and Caroline's father was the best.

Rick squared his shoulders and walked into the office.
The lobby was maybe twenty feet wide and fifteen deep. Grasscloth in muted blue covered the walls. With the English landscapes hanging at intervals and the elegant wooden furnishings and thick carpets, the place proclaimed
big bucks here
in a gracious and understated way.

A man and woman sat
a couple of chairs apart in the lobby, each reading a magazine. They were Mundanes, but the blond, fiftyish woman seated behind a dark walnut counter had a magical aura. The dark brown, paneled door behind her probably led to the offices. Rick walked up to her.

"
Good afternoon, sir," she said, smiling. "May I help you?"

"
I'd like to see Stuart Dare. My name is Rick Moore."

Her smile didn
't waver. "Do you have an appointment, Mr. Moore? Or shall I set one up for you?"

"
I don't have an appointment," Rick admitted, "but I think he'll want to see me." If only to barbecue his ass. With Stuart's magical lineage, he probably had the power and skill to destroy Rick on the spot and have everyone here believing he'd happily left.

"
I'll check, sir. Please have a seat."

Rick thanked her and chose an armchair.
Opposite it, on the front wall of the building, hung a tapestry in sunrise colors, an abstract. Silk threads gleamed in the room's artificial light.

His heart clenched.
Caroline must've woven that. It was too much like the ones in her gallery show to be anyone else's work.

The door behind the receptionist opened.
An older woman in an elegant, dark purple pantsuit, a Mundane, said, "Mr. Moore."

When Rick stood, she said,
"Please come with me."

He followed her down a corridor decorated to match the lobby.
They passed four closed doors, a big room that appeared to be a conference room and law library combined, and a small kitchen. Rick's guide stopped at the next door, which stood ajar.

"
Mr. Moore, sir." She pushed the door open and stood back for Rick to enter.

His chest tightened.
If only this weren't so important. Best not to think of that, though.

Rick stepped through the door and into Stuart Dare
's elegantly furnished office. The secretary closed the door behind him.

Stuart stood in front of his
wide, tidy desk, hands loose at his sides and his body balanced. His expression was stony, and his gray eyes, so like his daughter's, were cold steel. Rick could've sworn the temperature in the room dropped.

Stuart regarded him for an agonizing moment before speaking.
"You have thirty seconds to explain why I shouldn't incinerate you where you stand."

"
I need a lawyer." Dare likely hadn't expected that, so maybe it would gain Rick time. It was also true.

"
So you came to me." Dare raised an eyebrow. "You've got nerve, if not integrity. I'm suing your lying ass in the shire court as soon as the complaint is ready. And that's in lieu of giving you an old-fashioned horsewhipping. I can't represent you. I wouldn't if I could."

"
I want to sue MageWire.com. I also plan to dump a boatload of bad PR on them."

Stuart blinked.
Rick hurried to explain before the other man could tell him to shut up because of conflict of interest. "I didn't write that column, sir. I didn't cooperate with it. I didn't know about it until Caroline showed–"

"
You'll leave her out of this discussion," Stuart said evenly. "You expect me to believe you knew nothing about a column that won you a national slot. After you admit planning to write a story about our family." He shook his head. "I didn't fall off the turnip truck last week, Moore. Get out of my office."

"
Sir–Mr. Dare–I'll do anything you want to prove I'm telling the truth. Anything at all. The editor at MageWire.com used me."

Rick explained ab
out his dad and the story, his pulling out, Stan using the press pass to penetrate the Dares' shielding and scry Griffin's room. "He put my name on the story because he thought, in his twisted way, it was fair."

"
That doesn't change the fact that you wormed your way into our family's confidence under false pretenses."

No, and Rick feared nothing would earn him forgiveness for that.
But he had to try, and candor was as good a start as any.

"
Yes, I went to the gallery show hoping to befriend–that is, to gain an in with your family. If you'd been aiding and abetting your son, I'd have taken you all down. But otherwise, I had no intention of writing anything unless you would cooperate. Once I became involved with–once I realized how distressing this all was to your family and knew you didn't have any answers, either, just faith in your son, I knew I couldn't write the story."

Stuart said nothing, just stared at him with an assessing expression.

Assessing was better than threatening. Maybe the older man was listening.

Rick finished,
"I know you told me to leave Caroline out of this, but I can't. She's important to me, sir. I dropped the story because of her." This next should've been said to Caro first, but the need to convince her father forced Rick to go ahead. "I love her."

Raising a hand, palm out in the universal
stop
gesture, Stuart said, "That's between you and her. Now sit down. I have some questions."

For the next half hour, Stuart
hammered Rick on how his thinking about his story had evolved, his opinion of Griffin, his relationship with Stan Wells, and office procedures at MageWire.com. A thin trickle of sweat rolled down Rick's back under his jacket, but his answers never wavered. The truth had a way of staying consistent.

"
What's your PR plan?" Stuart asked.

Was he trying to see if Rick was serious?
Regardless, Rick would do anything to get Caro's dad on his side.

"
I'm writing a story for MageNews.net," Rick said. "We tend to forget them because they aren't a national operation, only regional. But they're scrappy and aren't afraid of their competition. I'm going to blow the lid off of what Stan did to write that story."

Stuart raised an eyebrow.
"You'll never write for MageWire again if you do that."

"
I won't anyway. I quit yesterday." Rick shrugged. "I'd already cut back to freelance with them. If Max Grant can't pay the bills, I still have my fallback jobs. But I can't let Stan get away with using me to violate your privacy or with putting my name on a false story. Especially this one."

"
Fair enough." Stuart paused, studying him, while a noose of fear and hope threatened to strangle Rick. There were other mage lawyers, but having Stuart on his side had to influence Caro.

"
All right," Stuart said. "I'll have my secretary bring in a standard retainer, and we'll want to record your deposition as soon as possible. I intend to dump on MageWire like a brick tornado. Be careful not to write anything your deposition will contradict."

"
That sounds great. Thank you. I appreciate it, sir."

Dare nodded.
"I'll represent you against them, but that doesn't mean I want to see you back with my daughter, if that's what you're thinking. That's for her to decide."

"
Yes, sir. Fair enough." Rick would expose MageWire fully and not spare himself. Maybe that, along with Caro's father's representation, would convince her to give Rick a chance.

If it didn
't, he had nothing else to try.

#

Caro threaded green silk through the plain threads of the warp.
Over, under, over
. Her heart wasn't in the work, but at least it occupied her mind. After her demonstration, the tapestries had sold well. She was on the verge of launching the career she'd dreamed of.

She couldn
't let a deceitful opportunist ruin that for her. She wouldn't.

If only she could forget she
owed that opportunist. Burton McCree'd been ready to sink her career. Whatever Rick's motives, he'd helped her save it.

Caro rubbed her gravelly eyes
as Mindy's comments came back to her.

W
hat if he wasn't a deceitful opportunist? He'd concealed the truth about his initial hopes, but what if he'd really given them up? Had let the opportunity go by?

But how else could that story have been written?
Yet he'd been adamant he hadn't done it. Could he have been telling the truth?

If
so, was she being fair to him?

He hadn
't been in touch since he'd walked out of here a week ago. Of course, neither had she given him any reason to contact her. Yet she missed him. Was she stupid enough to want to share little moments in the day, to talk to him...to sleep beside him...if she truly believed he was a scuzzbucket?

If she didn
't believe he was, did that come from true knowledge of him? Or from wishful thinking?

Or from love
?

She
'd been less than honest with Mindy when she claimed she hadn't quite fallen for him. She loved him. Despite everything, she loved him.

That had to be
a sign of either incredible stupidity or keen perception. If only she knew which.

Caro rubbed her aching head.

Her cellphone chimed, the default signal for a text. She picked it up and had the phone read her the text.

"
From Rick," the mechanical voice said.

Caro frowned.
She'd deleted his individual ringtone the day he left.

The phone voice added,
"If you haven't read MageNews.net today, I hope you will. There are a couple of articles I'd like to talk to you about. On the homepage and in the editorials."

Caro
's breath caught. Surely he wouldn't contact her about some run-of-the-mill article.

Heart pounding, she hurried to her computer to pull up
the site. "'MageWire.com Sued for Invasion of Privacy, Fraud, and Identity Theft,'" the computer voice announced.

"
Attorney Lucinda Tepper of the Dare, Acton, Barrett, and Tepper law firm filed suit today in the All-Shires Court of North America, Southeastern United States division, against MageWire.com and its parent corporation, The Flat Lake Group, Limited. The suit alleges..."

Caro
listened with half her attention. She'd heard this over the dinner table. Then the computer said, "Plaintiffs include Stuart, Lara, and Caroline Dare and former MageWire.com columnist B. R. Moore, who wrote under the pen name Bradley Richardson."

Dad was representing Rick?
He hadn't said anything. But he wouldn't. Ethical standards required him to keep silent until his clients' names became public record.

The computer concluded,
"No trial date has been set. For a related editorial, click here."

Caro directed the computer to the
column. "'A Betrayal of Trust,' by B. R. Moore," the machine announced.

"
A journalist must have integrity, or so I was taught by my mentor, Stan Wells, currently managing editor of MageWire.com's southeastern division. The Dare family trusted my integrity, as I trusted Stan's, and a terrible wrong has resulted."

The article went on to talk about Griffin and reasonable doubt.
About friendship and loyalty and honor.

"
Because of my misplaced trust," the computer read, "I became a vehicle for hurting people who welcomed me into their home. Once, I thought I might win their respect."

Oh, wow, just...wow
.
If Rick would do this publicly, maybe he really had told her the truth.

"
Wrongs must be set right," said the mechanical voice, "whenever possible. I hope exposing this unlawful breach of the Dares' privacy, false reporting, and fraudulent use of my name will, in some small way, make amends for the damage I unwittingly caused."

The article ended
. Caro's heart surged into her throat in a wave of joy. It burst out of her in laughter, and she grabbed her phone.

Rick answered immediately.
"Hi," he said.

Caro grinned.
"Hello, Dudley."

"
You read it," he said cautiously.

"
I read it. I believe it. I'm sorry I didn't listen when you tried to tell me."