“Good morning ladies and gentlemen,” I began, taking a deep breath before continuing and remembering to smile, “it’s great to be back at the Philadelphia Monitor. I never would have thought that I’d be returning to these offices in this way, but I’m looking forward to getting reacquainted with those of you I know, and meeting everyone new over the next couple of days. Obviously the last few months at the Monitor have been extremely tumultuous. Most of the senior leadership resigned or took retirement packages when GBH purchased the paper, and I know a second acquisition in as many months has sent another tremor through your ranks. I hope you will be willing to stick around though, because The Philadelphia Monitor is an important local paper, and important work is done here every day by the hardworking group of people in this room. My one goal is to see that work continue. In my role as editor, I’m committed to preserving real, local, investigative journalism. We will not become a zombie paper. I’m also committed to learning from and listening to each and every person who works here. My door is always open, and I invite all of us to be patient and generous with one another as we learn to function as a team. To that end, I have a few leadership changes to announce, as well as a number of new strategic initiatives to share…”

The rest of my remarks passed by in a whirl. Nathan had helped me with my speech until late into the night. Although there were plenty of skeptics in the crowd in front of me, nearly everyone realized that no matter how inept I proved to be, the Monitor had just been rescued from certain death. Even Phil looked halfway interested in what I had to say.

The last two weeks had been difficult, but it had been the best type of challenge. I’d moved in with Nathan, sharing his apartment, his bed, and his life. This wasn’t the difficult part at all, actually. Merging our lives together had been shockingly simple. Combining ourselves into a live-in couple had been just like pouring cream: smooth, unblemished, fluid, and pleasing. The rest of my life? Not so much.

Although instantly receiving my dream job sounded perfect, it’s incredibly challenging to run a newspaper even for the hardworking people who grow into it over decades. I had to learn everything overnight. Learning the ins and outs of The Philadelphia Monitor’s finances, operations, and management structure was still a work in progress.

Nathan was behind me one hundred percent and having him as my cheerleader and confidant made me feel like I could take on the impossible. Maybe my headstrong naïveté was exactly what the Monitor needed? We were going to find out.

Today was my first full day in the office, my office, and it felt beyond bizarre to be looking out a nice window instead of cramped up in a little desk in the bull pen. I stared at my to-do list in dismay. There were fifty-seven items on it. My schedule, which I had carefully prepared the night before, was already ruined. And it was only nine am.

“Ms. Atkinson?” A soft knock and voice at my door pulled my attention to Janice, my nineteen-year-old new assistant. “There’s a woman here to see you. She’s not on the schedule but she says that she knows you. Her name is Tara Waits.”

Tara was here to see me? I’d had no contact whatsoever with Angelica or Tara since following them into Durant Astronautics two weeks ago during the launch. In all honesty, I just wanted that chapter of my life closed. Apparently, Tara had other ideas.

“Ok Janice,” I said reluctantly, “please show her in.”

The polished young woman who entered my office a moment later looked nothing like the Tara I knew. Her smooth, red hair had been blown out into a coppery, shiny sheet that hung loose down her back, and her expertly applied makeup flattered her paper white complexion and enormous pale blue eyes. She was dressed for business in an emerald sheath dress that I instantly wanted in my own closet. Tara was a total knockout.

“Tara?” I stuttered, bewildered by the abrupt change in her appearance. She even walked differently. Her head was held high, and she wasn’t shuffling her feet.

“Yeah, it’s still me,” she said in her girlish, high pitched voice, “you didn’t think I really dressed like that did you?”

“Not really,” I admitted, fighting a smirk, “does this mean you quit working for Angelica?”

Tara nodded, frowning deeply. She perched on the edge of a chair and regarded me with a serious expression.

“Angelica screwed me over. Because of her I got arrested,” she pouted, “and she’s going to get away with everything because she’s Angelica Hunt, America’s freakin’ princess.”

I couldn’t blame Tara for being resentful. It did seem like Angelica always managed to weasel her way out of any consequences to her actions. This time, however, I had a bit more sympathy.

“She was being manipulated by a dangerous foreign agent,” I reminded Tara gently, “he was threatening and abusing her.”

No matter how much I disliked Angelica, domestic abuse was never ok.

Tara snorted. “Bullshit,” she said, shocking me to my core. I’d never seen Tara exhibit so much as a hint of real personality. I supposed she’d been playing her role as Angelica’s sad sack assistant even more purposefully than I’d realized. If she already had all her feelings beaten out of her, maybe Angelica thought there was nothing left to torment? It made a twisted kind of sense. Tara was a hell of a lot smarter than I’d realized.

“Angelica wasn’t being abused by Marcus,” Tara told me snidely, “she was being blackmailed by him. He never touched her because he never needed or wanted to. Their whole ‘relationship’ was a farce so he could keep her on a tight leash. They loathed each other. Angelica murdered her husband, and Marcus knew. And I have the proof.”

My breath caught in my throat and my jaw went slack. Angelica murdered Albert? It’s not like it was unbelievable. Plenty of people, including his own heirs thought that he’d been killed. Even though he was an old man, all the people close to him had said he was in excellent health. This was a big story. A massive story actually. Only it shouldn’t be coming across my desk.

“Tara, if that’s true, why didn’t you tell the police?” I asked. She had ample opportunity to bring this to light when she’d been arrested, let alone beforehand. Murder was usually taken seriously by the Philly PD, even if they were useless racists most of the time.

Tara shook her head. “Come on Zoey, you know better than that! Angelica’s family practically owns this town. Her father is a United States Senator. Her attorney is the scariest man I’ve ever met, including Marcus or Oleg or whatever his name is. I know money talks. You should have seen how Angelica was treated when she got arrested. They practically rolled out the red carpet for her. She spent most of her time “locked up” taking selfies with the guards. She got to eat real food, and she got to skip the messed-up strip search. Meanwhile I got shoved in with all the drunks and the prostitutes. And for doing what? Just doing my job.”

I considered what she was saying. It all checked out. I could only imagine Angelica’s family connections would have made her brief time in the clink a lot more pleasant.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked her, still not sure if I could trust Tara. She was a lot smarter and more cunning than I’d ever realized. Sometimes I wondered if everyone around me wore a mask. First Julieta, and now Tara were proving to be quite different than I initially thought. At least I’d had some inkling about Tara, I thought to myself, so my instincts aren’t totally trash.

“Because I’m sick and tired of getting pushed around,” she said earnestly, “I’ve worked for Angelica for three years. She treated me like dirt, which I expected and considered part of the job, but she treats everyone like dirt. You’ve seen her up close, but you’ve never really seen her in private. There’s something really wrong with her. She’s dangerous, unhinged. And everyone’s just protecting her because she’s pretty and rich. No one stands up to her, ever. Except you.”

My piece on Angelica had become something of a minor sensation. I’d gotten plenty of hate mail over it, and just as much fan mail. Even Julieta called to congratulate me on it, although I didn’t answer, forcing her to leave it on my voicemail. The one reason I probably hadn’t been driven out of the Monitor’s offices today at the end of a pitchfork was because someone from the New York Times praised it and commented that my piece took “courage”. The fact that it came out right after her arrest helped its popularity immensely, although it was quickly eclipsed by her story of domestic abuse.

Plenty of people—in fact, most people—seemed to be highly skeptical of Angelica’s story.

“Who else knows about this?” I asked. If Tara was shopping her story, or planning to, I needed to act quickly.

“Nobody except Angelica,” Tara said, “and she doesn’t know that I know. She always thought I was as dull and boring as I seemed. Half the time she didn’t even realize I was in the room with her. I was practically invisible to her, like I was part of the decor.”

I believed that one hundred percent. Angelica clearly viewed Tara more as an extension of herself than a distinct, whole person. It would be deliciously ironic if it proved to be her downfall.

“I can’t offer you any money,” I told Tara, “if we run with your story and publish it, you won’t get paid.”

“I don’t want or need to get paid for my story,” Tara said with a smirk, “not only will seeing Angelica go to jail be its own reward, but I’ve made almost a million dollars over the past few years working for her, not even counting all the freebies, trips, and clothes; I’ll be fine.”

That was a lot of money, but it still didn’t seem worth it to me to put up with Angelica for three years.

“Did you sign a non-disclosure agreement?” I asked, “if you did, you could get in trouble if we use your name or Angelica finds out you said anything.”

“Can you keep my identity a secret?” Tara asked, clearly surprised.

“Maybe, but it depends on what you tell me.”

“I just want to see her go down,” Tara stated, looking at me with a gleam in her eye that was impossible to misunderstand, “she shouldn’t be able to get away with what she did.”

“What kind of proof do you have?” I asked Tara.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she replied with a big grin. Out of her bag, Tara produced a large, brown teddy bear.