“Can you stop that?”

Ethan looked up to his boss, the editor of Daily National. The old man’s eyes had narrowed. They narrowed even closer to the pen in Ethan’s hand, which had stopped its tapping, and now, fell flat on the most recent scribbly page of his notebook.

“One of his bad habits,” Annica said.

“What are the other ones?” the editor said.

“He’s always on,” she said. “Too perceptive. And he works too hard.”

“Those are bad habits?” the editor asked.

“Not for a journalist,” she said. “But for a partner, on the other hand . . .”

“I care less how he is as a partner,” the editor said. “Maybe you should, too.”

Annica asked “Why?”

“I’ve been hearing the rumors.”

“What rumors?”

“Unless you plan to take him away with you at the end of the month . . . ”

Ethan looked back to Annica, his partner. She’d also been his mentor for the last year, bringing him in from journalism school and helping him learn the ropes under her watchful eye. Sometimes her annoyed eye instead, but the simple annoyances of his idiosyncrasies like pen-tapping seemed to fade away now that the editor had brought up the elephant in the room.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Annica said.

“It’s just a side project, then? Something to do in your free time?”

“Are you talking about The Homeland Report?”

Ethan watched silently as the two people he’d looked up to the most took the starting shots in a battle that had been simmering just under the surface for months. Rumors that Annica, the Daily National’s star reporter, was about to jump ship and head her own news agency.

“It’s not a competing interest,” Annica said. “It’s a niche market. Super, super niche.”

“Your Tripoli DARC Ops story was niche, too, and look how that blew up. It single-handedly rescued your old paper from obscurity.” The editor laughed and said, “It pretty much saved those DARC guys, too. Where would they be? Hell, it made them.”

“So, you’re saying I’m a good reporter. I get that.”

“I’m saying I’d hate to see you go.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’ll be our competitor,” the editor said, “whether we like it or not.”

Ethan felt the editor’s eyes on him again. He looked up from his page and watched him say, “And how about you?”

“I wish you’d leave Ethan out of it,” Annica said. “It’s got nothing to do with him.”

The editor asked him, “Are you jumping ship, too?”

Ethan, very calmly, said, “No.”

“I’m not poaching him from you,” Annica said.

“I feel like you already have,” the editor said. “That damn Hawaii thing . . .”

Annica said, “That damn Hawaii thing gave you the down-payment on a house.”

“Yours, too,” he said. “And now it’s giving you an out from me.”

Annica crossed her legs and sat up straighter, shoulders firmly back. “I don’t see why we have to have this type of conversation with Ethan here. This went from an editorial meeting to a witch hunt.”

“Then let’s put an end to it,” the editor said. “Okay?”

Ethan picked up his pen again, ready to move on. Ready for anything else but bickering.

The editor held his hands up. “Okay? So that’s it, then. Witch hunt adjourned.”

Annica was first on her feet, collecting her things off the desk while standing. Ethan was about to leave his chair until his boss said, “Hold on. Why don’t you stick around?”

Annica spun around and said, “For what?”

The editor’s eyes were locked on Ethan. “Stick around?” And then to Annica he said, “Give us a moment.”

Ethan waited for Annica to slam the door behind her before he finally said, “I think you’re making a huge mistake with how you’re dealing with her.”

The editor’s face made no change, like he hadn’t heard any of it. Ethan wasn’t known for talking like that. Was he in shock? “She’s loyal to you. She’s loyal to your paper.”

“Do me a favor,” the editor said, “and tell me how to run my office one more time.”

Ethan realized he’d been tapping his pen again. He dropped it.

“Really,” the editor said. “Tell me about Annica and how I should deal with her. Because I haven’t been in the business all my life. And I haven’t been her boss for six years. And I haven’t been in a college classroom in a few decades. You, on the other hand, you’re still fresh from journalism school. You know it all, right? About how to run an office?”

“No,” Ethan said. “I don’t.”

“You know how to run your mouth.”

“Not that, either.”

“That’s right, you really don’t. You’re usually much quieter, so I’ll cut you some slack.”

Time to try to rein his editor’s temper before Ethan ended up fired. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

The editor stared at him for a moment before standing and walking over to the door. He opened it halfway and peered out around the corner. Then he shut it and returned to the long conference table. Normally that table was full of head editors of every section, full for meetings and plans and productivity. Usually Ethan didn’t see it very much. Usually there would be no room for him. But now he was alone there with the head editor. It was a little unnerving. Worse than his original job interview, which took place at the same table. The meeting was more like an interrogation.

“Ethan,” he said, taking a seat in front of him. “I need to know where your allegiances are.”

“Of course they’re with the paper. Have I—? Have I done anything to show otherwise?”

“We’re in the middle of a transition,” the editor said. “A shakeup. And I know you’re probably being pulled in a few directions.” That was putting it mildly. His editor, Annica, not to mention Jackson’s offer. It was less of an offer and really more of an order, really. But Jackson had also warned him not to make it public, not yet.

“I’m sticking with the paper,” Ethan said. “You gave me my first shot in the business.”

“I didn’t do that. Annica did.”

Ethan had to admit that was the truth. He also knew he would be forever grateful for the opportunity she’d given him, plucking him out of J school after he’d made a minor name for himself through social media and blogging. It was a series he’d made about the underfunded and understaffed VA hospital system that had gotten her attention in the end. More importantly, it was about the under-served veterans, many of whom were old friends of his. He’d heard their stories, watched their deteriorating health and morale. He, along with everyone else, had spotted signs of the system rotting and falling apart for the last decade. But only Ethan was ready to put everything on the line for it, tying his career—or what would be his career—into the story that he felt was so important for him and the country.

He’d gotten lucky, too. Very lucky. First, lucky that he’d been kicked out of the army before he could become another sad statistic. And secondly, catching the attention of another young but much more established journalist. Annica. She’d come across his work through her research into one of her stories for Veteran’s Valor. He’d fed her some info and contacts, hoping the whole time that it would put him in her good graces. She was remarkably beautiful, so those good graces could have been just about anything. But he was also just happy to settle for a more professional kind of leg up. A foot up, too, Annica helping him get it in the door of D.C.’s prestigious Daily National paper.

And then there was Hawaii . . .

“Annica did all that for you,” the editor said. “So, it wouldn’t be a shock to me that you’d want to repay her somehow.”

“I’ve already done that,” Ethan said.

“You have?”

“A few times over.”

The editor frowned and said, “Hawaii?”

“We’re friends,” Ethan said. “And we like working together. But that’s it.”

“What about Hawaii? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Whatever I owed her was paid off in Hawaii. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“I wish to God I never let you guys head out there,” the editor said. “Sure, it made a lot of money, and it made a lot of people happy . . .”

“But?”

The editor uncrossed his arms and then folded his hands atop the table. “Okay,” he said, “let’s move on to business.”

Ethan had thought they were already in the middle of it. Watching the editor bridge his fingers, he felt a little apprehensive as to what exactly he meant by business. What other business was there?

“Your next story,” the editor said.

“Oh.”

“If you choose to accept,” he said, with a slowly forming smile. And then a soft chuckle. There was something softening about the editor, as if he was suddenly relieved that Ethan had indeed proven his loyalty to him in some way. He looked at Ethan with a little more warmth, saying, “I want you to fly solo on this one.”

Ethan had been waiting to fly solo for a long time, to step out of Annica’s beautiful yet impenetrable shadow. He was ready.

“It’s a story that I had someone else working on. But his wife is expecting and he’s . . . well, he’s just not there for us, mentally. You understand?”

Ethan nodded, not quite understanding, but wanting to hear more about the story and less about “someone else” and Annica and whoever else might possibly stand in the way of his story.

“You know this country has a big problem with opiates,” the editor said.

“I do.”

“This sort of ties into your work with Hawaii and the Khan brothers and smuggling and all that. But I want you to forget about those angles for a minute. Can you do that? Can you go off in a different direction for me?”

“Of course.”

“Like I said, opiates.”

“What about them?” Ethan said. “Other than the fact that they’re a big problem in this—”

“A big problem, yes, a big problem in certain areas. Rural areas, especially, or places where people used to have jobs. You understand what I mean, right?”

“I’m from New Hampshire,” Ethan said.

“Oh, well, perfect.”

“Not really.”

The editor laughed and said, “Sorry,” with his face straightening up. And then: “Maybe you might have some personal connection to this problem? Friends or family affected, maybe.”

“Maybe,” Ethan said. “So what is it? Are you sending me out to New Hampshire?”

“No. West Virginia.”

“What’s going on?”

“We have an inside source that—”

“Who?” Ethan interrupted.

The editor frowned again and continued on: “An inside source that I’ll put you in touch with in due time. It’s about a drug-running operation. Drugs, and maybe some other stuff, but we’ll just start with the drugs. Opiates. Heroin. Fentanyl. There’s also some weird stuff going on with VA hospitals. That’s right in your wheelhouse, isn’t it?”

“That’s how Annica found me.”

“Right. Well, it seems some vets aren’t getting the right doses. Sometimes not even the right drugs. We want you to follow the drug run from Washington inland.”

“Inland to where?”

“West Virginia.”

As far as Ethan knew, there was no drug line from Washington to West Virginia. It seemed a little suspect, as did the whole thing, the whole idea of separating Ethan and Annica, of sending him out somewhere solo. But he couldn’t resist wanting to know more.

“So,” the editor said, “I just wanted to make sure I’ve got your undivided attention for this.”

Ethan nodded. “Sure.” He opened his notebook and put the pen to page, anticipating some sort of prep for his latest assignment. The editor was known for spouting off at full speed, and he’d rather be ready from the first word. But nothing else came. Ethan said, “So?”

“Your undivided attention,” he said again, “And your loyalty. I need your heart in this.”

“You got it,” Ethan said. But his heart was really somewhere else, miles away from the editorial room. He didn’t know where exactly, but just that it was no longer with Annica, or with Washington, or even the Daily National. His heart was now with Kalani, wherever she was. If his assignment in West Virginia brought him closer, all the better. Maybe he could find out where she was along the way.