Katherine Garbera - Exclusive

“What was she covering?” Tory asked as Jay held open the door to the car for her. She gestured for him to climb in the backseat. He winked at her as he did so.

Dash didn’t answer. He got behind the wheel, started the car and drove toward the east side of the city.

“What was Andrea working on, Dash?” she asked again once they were on the highway leading down toward the port.

“The story of some U.S. Marines who have been missing for almost a week. The rest of the unit was rescued from the mountains on the border between Berzhaan and Afghanistan, but two men are still missing.”

“Was Andrea close to finding out if they were alive?” Tory asked. She pulled her notebook out and started making notes. She thought better on paper.

“Not the last time we spoke. She said she was stopping in a local neighborhood to check a lead, then she and the crew were headed to the foothills of the mountains to give her report from there. Her cameraman, Cobie McIntire, was with her, and a translator.”

“Did she have her Blackberry with her?” Tory asked, knowing that the network made sure to track all their foreign correspondents with a GPS unit in their phones.

“Yes, she did. We checked that first thing. The unit has been destroyed, but we have the times and coordinates of her final movements.”

Tory’s heart clenched in fear for her young friend. As an Athena graduate, Andrea knew how to handle herself in the real world. But this wasn’t an everyday situation.

Dash eased the car onto the shoulder and gestured toward the Caspian Sea. “This is one of the locations I found. There’s an outcropping that’s big enough for you and Jay to stand on and shoot.”

Tory looked at the sea. She didn’t even know what she was going to say tonight. “I need to talk to officials and get up-to-the-minute information.”

“How would you like an on-air interview with the lead investigator from the Berzhaani police?”

“I’d love it. Where are we meeting him?”

“Right here, in about ten minutes,” Jay said. “Stop teasing her, Dash, and give her the stuff we gathered today.”

Dash handed her a small sheaf of papers. She started reading them, effortlessly committing the facts to memory.

Jay leaned forward. “I’m getting out,” he said. “I want to double-check the area where we’re shooting.”

Tory got out of the car as well and leaned against the hood, reading the report that had been filed and the few clues the police had uncovered. Shortly after the kidnapping, the vehicle Andrea and her crew had been driving had been used for a suicide bombing at a military checkpoint at one of the border crossings into Afghanistan.

She prayed that Andrea was still alive, and hoped her friend hadn’t been in the trunk of the car that been used as a weapon against Berzhaan.

“Do we know if the car blew up after the tape was shot showing them alive?”

“Not yet. We obtained a copy of the tape and the guys in editing have been analyzing it to ensure its validity.”

Tory closed her eyes and searched for the story she’d tell on the news. The facts were foggy. No one knew too much. She had a number of pointed questions for the lead detective on the case. “Is anyone from the American embassy involved in the investigation?”

“Yes, but they won’t talk to us on air or off.”

“CIA?”

“I’m not sure. We’re poking around where we can, but they warned us strongly to back off.”

“I’ll see what I can come up with,” Tory said. She planned to track down Ben and find out exactly what was going on with Andrea, her crew and the two missing Marines. There was definitely more here then met the eye.

After the shoot, Tory left Jay and Dash in the hotel lobby and went to look for Joan Simpson, Andrea’s producer.

The police investigator had put a nice spin on the story, telling Tory on-camera that the investigation showed definite progress and off camera that he had men undercover following leads.

Jay had chain-smoked during the ride back and Tory felt a little sick. Since smoke had never bothered her before, she had to believe that her pregnancy was responsible. She was barely six weeks along, and already the pregnancy was affecting her life.

She really hated feeling so out of control. After she talked to Joan, she was going on the Internet to research pregnancy. She’d find a way to manage this the same way she did everything else.

She was standing against one of the columns breathing in the clean air when she saw Joan. The tall brunette was a few years older than Tory but looked as if she’d aged at least ten years since Tory had seen her nine months earlier.

Joan sat in the corner of the bar, a glass of rye whiskey on the table in front of her. No sissy girly drinks for Joan, who’d started in the sports department and proved herself to be one of the guys.

Tory pulled the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder and approached Joan.

“Can I join you?” Tory asked.

Joan glanced up. “Sure, Tory. What’s up?”

“I wanted to talk to you about Andrea and Cobie and their translator, do you mind?”

“Not at all. I keep thinking about them. Why didn’t I see the danger before I sent them out?”

“No one could have predicted this.”

“True, but that doesn’t make sleeping at night any easier.” Joan took a sip of her whiskey. “What do you want to know?”

“Where she’d been the last few days and what stories she was following.”

“Well, she did all her live reports just outside the city in the desert region. Do you have a map?”

Tory pulled one out of her bag and set it on the table. Joan took the pen from Tory and marked the spot. “The station has a few cars in the motor pool—see Stan and he’ll give you something to drive if you decide to go.”

Tory nodded. Since Andrea and her crew had frequented that spot, the hostage takers could have predicted when she’d arrive and who would be with her.

“Next I’d look for a woman named Alaleh. She works in the open-air market, right here,” Joan said, marking another spot on the map. “She’s a rug merchant’s wife. Alaleh has been very outspoken on the way women are treated here despite the American influences. She might be able to help you, but you can’t see her until tomorrow morning.”

Tory remembered that Andrea had done several stories on that topic. Because of the nature of the demands from the people holding her and the others hostage, Tory feared that America’s influence over women in this region might have instigated the kidnapers going after Andrea.

“Is that it?”

“No, there’s one more spot. Here.” Joan marked an area a distance from Suwan near the mountain range that bordered Afghanistan. “This is near the insurgent camp in the mountains where we suspect the Marines are being held.”

Tory stared at the map. “I called the press office for the Marine Corps to get some additional information from them, but they only referred to what they’d said in their press release.”

“Andrea talked to someone else, I don’t know who. The station had me box up all her notes and personal things. They’re in the news suite—do you want to see them?”

“Yes,” Tory said, and Joan finished her whiskey and led the way out of the bar.

“Do you think Andrea and Shannon Conner look similar?” Tory asked, advancing the theory that had been bothering her since Jay’s comment about the blond reporter.

Joan stopped. “You know, they do. I never really thought about it before.”

“Someone made a comment to Jay about the blond reporter, which got me thinking. Shannon and I aren’t really close enough for me to ask her what she’s been working on….”