Thirty Happens (13 page)

chapter eighteen.

“
J
ensen, get your cute ass in here.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Anderson, I swear to God and all that is holy, one of these days I am turning you into Human Resources.”

Smirk.

“You do that, it will give me a chance to turn on the full Anderson charm and break down her defenses. Just like I’ve been doing with you the past… what, four years?”

“Yeah, pretty much, a little over if you count the internship where I nearly ran you over.”

Not that I’d been counting or anything. Nope, not at all.

I’d gotten an invitation in the mail for my five year class reunion at Reece about a month or so ago. It was being held in conjunction with graduation weekend in a couple of weeks.

I was getting too old, too fast.

I couldn’t believe I was already twenty six.

But the truth was, life was exactly where I expected it to be at this point in time. I was completely on track.

A job as a reporter with one of the top papers in the country? Check.

My own apartment? Check. Well… half a check. It was more a crappy studio apartment, but I paid over eighteen hundred dollars a month for it. I told people I chose that location for its proximity to transit and amenities. The truth was, that I had dreamt of living in the trendy Beacon Hill area of Boston. I honestly had planned on someday owning a classic brownstone style rowhome in the neighborhood, but instead, I lived in a tiny footprint of square footage in a great zip code, steps from amazing shopping that I was nowhere near able to afford yet.

Someday.

I even had a really cute boyfriend. Well, maybe calling him a boyfriend was a little generous. I had started casually dating Ryan right after Lynnie and Brian got married, and three years later we’d gotten
kind
of serious. Like, not quite living together serious, but we had keys to each other’s apartment, so that was something.

Then again, I only saw him maybe once a week, so we maybe weren’t really
that
serious, after all.

I frowned as I thought of Lynnie and Brian. They had moved out to Arizona a year or so ago, for her work. Brian was totally supportive of her career, and she was fast tracking to a partnership within the largest graphic design firm in Phoenix.

When I asked him about his own career and
his
goals, he said that he could write sports anywhere, and seeing Lynnie with a smile on her beautiful face
was
his goal.

Swoon. And gag. But mostly swoon.

I really missed my friend. I mean, we talked, we Facebooked, we Skyped. But it wasn’t the same. Sometimes I really missed the two of us piling up on my bed in the dorm eating greasy Chinese takeout.

At that time, I had wanted nothing more than to hit the ground running and achieve all of my dreams with the speed of a strategic missile. But now that I was in the middle of making those dreams come true, I found myself missing the simpler times just a little bit.

Oh well.

I shook it off and held my head high as I waltzed into Anderson’s office as if prepared for battle.

And it was always a battle. A total war of wits when I had to meet with him. We had been paired together once or twice before. I’d like to say it was because my talent had earned me the privilege to work with one of the best and most senior reporters. The truth was, I was one of the few reporters who didn’t flirt with him, hadn’t slept with him and didn’t talk about wanting to sleep with him. And I’m not just talking all female reporters, either.

Even though he had the personality of a pompous ass, he was a beautiful man and I couldn’t help but feel a little warm in certain areas when near him. So, I had to put on a mental armor and go into battle.

Every.

Single.

Time.

“What’s up, Anderson?”

I managed my most disaffected voice ever. Seriously, it actually bordered on disdain. Mental high five for me.

He raised an eyebrow at me and shook his head slightly.

“What?”

“I don’t know, I just can’t quite figure you out.”

“What’s to figure out? We are co-workers, sometimes we are put on assignments together. You’ve been here a million years and have award-winning investigative reporting articles and I’ve been here for four years and have finally graduated from fluff pieces on Black Friday stampedes to covering house fires and car crashes. That’s all there is to it, nothing more.”

He sat there smirking at me.

“Someday, Jensen. Someday.”

I started whistling ‘High Hopes’.

“Moving on, what did you call me in here for?”

He sat up a bit straighter and started sorting through the piles on his desk, with a growing sense of excitement.

“Could you close the door a second?”

Man, but that seemed like a trick question. I mean, asking me to close the door could mean that he had a really juicy story, or it could mean that the rumors that would start about me being behind closed doors with this womanizer would make my life hell.

He saw me indecisive for a second and sighed.

“I’ll open up the blinds so everyone in the office can see you firmly planted on the
other
side of the desk.”

I nodded and then moved to close the door. He made good on his word, and I felt a little less like a not-quite virgin sacrifice.

I waited.

“Well?”

“Okay, so here’s the deal. I have personally requested you to assist on this one. You have a natural writing style which I think will benefit the story. You’re also pretty good at investigative journalism. I know you’re new to that part of things, but you are able to approach people without them feeling like they are under attack, which is great. Very unusual, and I really hope you don’t lose that over time.”

Wow.

“Uh, thanks. I really appreciate that. What’s the story?”

“One of my old sources with the state has gotten wind of a ring of at least five employees in City Hall who have been profiting off of city contracts. Two are in the purchasing department and have side businesses outside of city government which have not been reported officially, but apparently are well known as a poorly kept secret. Two more are in finance, and they have been allegedly covering up the trail for a piece of the action. The last one, this is the big one, a high ranking member of the City Council.”

He sat back, looking at me with anticipation of my reaction.

My reaction.

What was my reaction?

Seriously, all the words he said jumbled around in my head, bouncing off the areas of my brain before slamming back into each other.

“So, we would be breaking a story? Like, no one else knows this?”

A slow grin formed on his face.

“Exactly. This is our chance to blow this mother up.”

Holy crap. This was the big time.

This was it.

I was moving up, moving forward in my career. I could see that Pulitzer in my hand.

I swallowed past the lump of excitement and fear that was starting to form in my throat and sat on my hands to stop the shaking that was threatening to embarrass me.

“Okay. Let’s do this. When do we start?”

Anderson laughed.

“We just did.”

***

I walked through the front door of my little studio apartment and flopped backward on the bed.

Oh, my Lord, I was exhausted.

I’d thought that I’d done some investigative journalism in school, and a little bit here and there at the Beacon.

I was wrong.

In the six weeks that Anderson and I had been working on this story, I had been given a Masters level education in how to perform an investigation. I figured at this point I should apply to teach at a local college so that I could tell the future reporters of the world what it was
really
like.

My feet hurt.

My back hurt.

My head hurt.

And I was starting to worry that if I drank any more coffee during the course of a fourteen hour work day, I was going to have either a heart attack, a stroke or both by the time I was thirty.

We were so close. We had interviewed over thirty people who were either employed by the city or who were friends and associates of the five people in question.

As a result, we found that there could be as many as twenty three employees who were either directly involved in skimming from public projects or at the very least, aware of the activity.

I actually think that today was the day we got what we needed.

Our big break came in the disguise of a request for bidders for traffic signal construction. It had just opened up yesterday, and would run for the standard month before the bids were opened. This was probably our only chance to get the information we needed to finish this article.

We had found out the name of the company that the employees in the purchasing department ran.

Smith and Company Construction Advisors.

It was actually brilliant, as neither of the employees had the name ‘Smith’. And it was so bland. It could be anything.

Once the request for bid was posted, we knew we had to move and move quickly.

We dressed up Anderson so that he looked a little more construction and a lot less reporter.

I went with him, chewing gum and wearing jeans and a very low cut t-shirt.

We knew who the players were, other construction groups that had ‘won’ bids before. We knew where they hung out.

We were total stalkers, and it was about to pay off in spades.

I thought over the day, and couldn’t help but smile at the experience despite my exhaustion.

We had walked into this dive bar in Southie. I had to force myself not to shudder as it was the type of place where you questioned whether your tetanus shot was up to date upon entry. We sat at the bar, squeezing in between two groups of guys. I had to resist the urge to wipe down the spot on the bar that my arm was sticking to.

Blyeck.

Anderson nodded at me.

Showtime.

I looked down quickly to make sure that the thirty five dollar bra that I bought yesterday was working the miracles that it promised. Hot damn, I had Playmate cleavage rocking right now.

I shimmied out of the hoodie I had been wearing, and on cue, Anderson let out a wolf whistle.

I worked my Boston accent, chomping my gum as I slapped him on the arm.

“Shut the hell up, Andy. You’re a freakin’ idiot.”

I was talking loud enough to make sure that the guys on either side of us could hear.

“Whatever, Cheryl. You know you’ve got a rack that I would kill for.”

“Yeah, and your
wife
would kill me for that.”

Anderson chuckled but seemed to be enjoying the activity of leering at my boobs a little too much. I slapped his arm again. Hard.

He glared and rubbed his arm.

Good.

“Just make sure you have those girls out when we’re puttin’ in our bid. This is our chance, Cher. We’re gonna finally get our city bid and make a name for ourselves. And having your
girls
in on the meeting will just cinch the deal.”

Suddenly my body felt all sorts of flushed. And not in a fun, spanky sort of way. No. In the ‘ten construction guys just turned to stare openly at my chest’ sort of way.

Ew.

I was probably going to have nightmares about this for weeks to come.

I was starting to feel a panic attack coming on, so I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. It was a tactic my therapist had suggested when I let her know how much anxiety I had when being checked out by guys.

Anderson was looking at me with some concern.

I let out the breath and looked him in the eyes. I knew it was my line.

I leaned forward on the sticky bar, pushing down the sick that threatened to make an appearance.

I pressed my upper arms in just a hair, in a way to not be obvious but that my chest rounded out of my shirt nicely. I was maybe only a half of an inch away from a wardrobe malfunction.

“I just hope that they will consider our bid. I wish there was some way that we could be noticed.”

I put a slight pout on my face. Nothing too exaggerated, I didn’t want to be a caricature of a ditzy chick. Just enough to express how dismayed I was at the prospect of not being the winning bid.

“Hey, they’re only looking for traffic light construction. We can do that. We’ve got the guys lined up. We’ve got the know-how. We’re ready.”

I smiled up at Anderson sweetly, trying to give him the woman in love look. I swear, doing so killed my soul just a little bit.