"Why?" She set her pen down.
He pushed back from his desk and crossed to the window that looked out over the bullpen. He opened his coat and shoved his hands in his pockets. It was something she'd noticed he did when he was working through something—not pacing, just repositioning, putting a little distance between himself and whatever he was sitting with. In this moment, it was his past.
"Four years ago, we did the piece on the NHL player who was living a double life. He wasn't very happy with me after that interview, and he did threaten me, both on air and off," he said, without turning around. "Two years ago, it was the youth hockey coach scandal. That wasn't pretty. Anyone who wanted to rattle me with a hockey puck has two legitimate reasons sitting in the archives that have nothing to do with who I used to be." He turned. "But we can't ignore the note."
She already knew where he was going. She'd gotten there herself sometime around one in the morning when she'd given up on sleep entirely and sat at her kitchen table with a glass ofwater. "I've thought about that. What if we leave the note out? Just tell her that you received a hockey puck."
"We do that, and she'll dig hard into those two men. Maybe harder than they deserve and not hard enough where her attention needs to be." He pulled his hands from his pockets, took three steps to the side of his desk, and leaned against it. "And there is no version of a conversation where I can explain what that might mean without lying about it."
Ziggy sat back in her chair. "But we can't just sit on it."
“We have to. It's not just about finding out who I am. It's about the fact that we both buried the story five years ago. That you knew and said nothing." Noah stood, removed his jacket, and gently placed it over the back of his chair before sitting down. The thing about Noah was that he was meticulous. Everything had a place—an order. And Noah didn't like it when things didn't follow that pattern, which was odd since things didn't always go as planned on a live show. "I always figured that someday my secret would come out. I still expect that to happen. My problem is how it affects you." He ran a hand across his face. "I know you don't want to talk about this now, but whether we stayed together five years ago or not, or whether something happens now, I've screwed your career, and I don't know what to do with that anymore.”
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Take responsibility for my choices." She cleared her throat. “I didn't have to bury the story. I could've told you to go fuck yourself. I could've taken that story, sold it to the highest bidder, and gotten a job anywhere. But I didn't do that. And do you know why?" She really hadn't wanted to get into all this. Not now. Not tonight. Not ever, really. They brushed it under the rug five years ago, and that's where it stayed. Except for once a yearwhen things got a little weird. But outside of that, it was never mentioned.
"I understand why. And I get that I'd do the same thing for you. But could you for one second look at this from my perspective and ask yourself if you'd want me or anyone you cared about to carry this burden for you, knowing what it could cost them?"
"You're making the assumption it's going to cost me something." She held up her hand. "I don't want to argue with you. And I don't want to talk about this at work. Too many people could be listening, and I know what your privacy means to you." She picked up her pen.
"I swept the office this morning," Noah said.
"I'm sorry?" She dropped the pen on the floor.
"For bugs." His tone was unbothered, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to mention on a Friday morning. "Before you got here. I had the security team do it. I told them I'd received another weird anonymous threat and wanted it handled as soon as possible. They didn't find anything."
A year ago, that concept would have stopped her cold. This morning, with two deliveries and a four-month countdown to the worst possible day for Noah, it mostly just made her chest ache. "That was probably smart."
"That's all you got?"
“No, but if I continued, we’d be talking in circles about your paranoia.” She pulled her notes forward and squared them against the edge of the desk. “For the record, I’m nervous, too. It’s why we need to go over all these threats that haven’t been reconciled with Boots.”
“All of them but the puck. That came to the house, and it was personal.” He opened the folder and pulled the four printed messages out, setting them in a line across the desk just like helaid out research before a broadcast—oldest to most recent, left to right.
Ziggy leaned forward and stared at the threats. They were part of the job. She knew that. Accepted it. But the puck nagged at her. She glanced up. "What if you get another threat that ties to your past? What then?"
He ran his hand across his face. "I don't know. That depends on how specific it is. But we’ll cross that bridge if it happens.”
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Boots pushed open the door—the knock more warning than courtesy. For those who didn't know her, it could feel jarring. It had taken Ziggy some time to get used to it.
Boots dropped into the chair next to Ziggy and opened a folder, spreading printed pages with scribbled notes in the margins across the desk. She was a gorgeous woman—dark hair, dark eyes, dark complexion, with a bit of a dark personality to match.
"These four threats are still technically active." Boots shuffled the pages across Noah's desk. "I consider them low-level. I can tie each one to a story."
Ziggy had always liked the way Boots worked—no warm-up, no small talk, straight to it. The leather jacket, the ponytail, the boots with the heels that announced her before she spoke—all of it said the same thing. Don't waste her time, and she won't waste anyone else's.
Noah collected his own pages and pushed them aside. "I pulled the files this morning. First time I've looked at them since they happened. I remember them, but they aren't tied together. At least, not that I can tell."
"You're right," Boots said. "This one ties to the piece you ran on the community center and the organizers." She tapped the page. "Language tracks with that man you had on the show, but the IP isn't connected to anyone we can identify. We haven'tgotten anything with this kind of language in months. Low risk, but I'm watching it." Boots flipped the page. "This one is an email that came in three months ago. They referenced the three-part series you did on that cult leader hiding behind a diet and exercise program. I chased a few leads. Spoke to a few people who were insulted that you called a program that saved their lives a cult and fraudulent—even more upset that you brought the founder on a national show and embarrassed them. It appears to have been a collective effort, but I can't prove it. Low risk, but I'm monitoring those I believe are involved."
"Those followers protested for weeks," Ziggy said. Noah had made her promise to text him when she was ten minutes out, and if he wasn’t already at the station, she'd call security. She hadn’t been overly frightened, but she had a cop for a brother. She knew what could happen, and she wasn’t too stupid to live.
"Wasn't the first time." Noah swiveled in his chair. "Next."