Linda Turner - Beneath The Surface

Lost in his story, he didn’t realize he was no longer alone until Josh Garrison drawled, “Well, look who’s busy burning the midnight oil. Not that it’s midnight yet,” he added, “but you don’t strike me as a man who works overtime. I thought you left hours ago.”

Logan barely bit back a curse. What the devil was he doing there? Tomorrow’s deadline had come and gone, and the newspaper offices were practically deserted. Oh, Nick was still there—he always stayed after hours just in case a late story broke—but he was holed up in his office. Everyone else had either gone home or was out working on a piece for tomorrow’s deadline…which was why Logan often came in after the paper had been put to bed. The phones were silent, and he had the place to himself. Or at least he usually did.

Wanting to tell Garrison to take a long walk off a short pier, he growled, “I could say the same thing about you, Garrison. What do you want?”

He made no effort to be nice to the guy. He hadn’t liked him from day one, though he’d tried to be civil. Garrison, however, hadn’t made it easy. He made snide remarks whenever he thought he could get away with it, then smiled like a politician and said all the right things whenever Nick was around. As far as Logan was concerned, the man was nothing but a two-faced brownnoser, and he wanted nothing to do with him.

Garrison, however, seemed to enjoy goading him. Far from being offended by his curtness, he only smiled smugly. “I’m here for the same reason you are—to work. Or didn’t Nick tell you? He called me in to give me the Terry Saenz story. You do know who Saenz is, don’t you?”

Logan didn’t bother to answer. Of course he knew who Saenz was. The story had just broken an hour ago and was all over the airways. Saenz was an award-winning cop who’d taken a bullet for his partner last year when they’d been ambushed by a south-side gang. He’d nearly died from being shot in the chest. Once he recovered from his injury, he’d made it his mission in life to visit every school in town and warn the kids of the dangers of belonging to a gang.

The man was a bona fide hero—or at least he had been until he was arrested earlier in the evening for dealing drugs. According to the radio report, the shooting last year hadn’t been just a random act of violence, as first thought. Saenz had been dealing drugs to the gang member who’d shot him.

“Congratulations,” Logan told Josh sardonically. “It looks like you hit the jackpot.”

“It’s a hell of a story. You should have seen Nick—though I guess you know how gleeful he gets when a good story comes in. He’s already called down to production and told them to save room for the piece on tomorrow’s front page. And the story that broke today is only the tip of the iceberg. Once the police investigate Saenz further, there’s no telling what they’ll come up with. So you can expect to see my byline a hell of a lot over the next few months. Then there’ll be the trial, of course. You can bet that’s going to be heavily covered. I’m sure the news services will pick it up. Before this is over, I may be as well-known as you used to be.”

He was deliberately trying to rile him, but Logan didn’t even flinch. What did old man Porter’s granddaughter see in this jerk? Headlines and bylines weren’t always a testament of how well someone did his job. Granted, before Faith died, he was the one who’d gotten the top assignments and whose stories regularly made the front page, but he’d never once taunted other reporters about it. That wasn’t his way. Writing was personal for him—all he’d cared about was doing the best job he could. He didn’t keep track of what his co-workers were doing. He didn’t care because it had nothing to do with him.

In the world of print journalism, however, he knew he was the exception rather than the rule. Most reporters would do anything to get a front page story, and the competition was fierce. From what Logan had seen of Garrison so far, it was obvious the man would sell his own mother to get ahead. He thought he was hot stuff and it showed.

Idiot. Let him have the headlines and his fifteen minutes in the spotlight, Logan thought in disgust. He wasn’t worried about Garrison or threatened by him. Logan was well-known in the city and had connections at the police department and informants who called him on a regular basis. He had plenty of stories to write, stories that Garrison wouldn’t even know where to go to get.

So if the jackass expected him to be gnashing his teeth in jealousy over his big coup, he could think again.

“It sounds like you’re going to be damn busy,” he said dryly. “You’d better get started on tomorrow’s story or you’re going to have Nick breathing down your neck. If he gets it in his head that you can’t meet your deadlines, he won’t hesitate to assign someone else to the job.”

“I guess you would know that better than anyone, wouldn’t you?”

Disliking him more than ever, but refusing to be goaded, Logan growled, “You’re damn straight. I haven’t been as dependable as I should have been over the last year—which is why you’re here. If you don’t want to meet your replacement, I suggest you don’t miss your deadlines.”

His point made, he turned back to his computer. A few long seconds later, Garrison stalked past him to his own desk. Logan never spared him a glance. His eyes trained on his computer screen, he cleared his head of all thoughts except the facts of the bar robbery, and focused on his opening sentence. Once he had that, it was easy. His fingers again flew over the keys, and just that quickly, he was caught up in his writing.

Later, he couldn’t have said when Garrison finished his own story and left. Logan’s eyes were glued on his computer monitor. Reading over what he’d written, he was, for the most part, more than satisfied. The last paragraph needed some work, but he wasn’t worried about that. For the first time in a long time, the old edge that had been the trademark of his writing before Faith died was back. Nick would be pleased. Hell, Logan was pleased! He’d almost forgotten what it was like to write something he was proud of.

“Logan? I didn’t know you were coming back tonight.”

Glancing up from his writing, he found his sister-in-law, Samantha, walking toward him with a smile as big as Texas on her face. Amused, he had to admit that he’d always had a special place in his heart for Sam. It was through her that he’d met Faith at a high-school football game. Sam had arranged their first date without discussing it with either one of them, and when Faith died, the two of them grieved together over the woman they’d both loved. He’d helped Sam get a job in payroll at the paper several years ago, and every two weeks or so, they went out to dinner to catch up on each other’s lives. She was family and always would be.

“Hey, Sam, what are you doing here? You’re not usually around this late.”

“There was a computer glitch,” she said with a grimace. “And payroll had to go out tonight. We just finished.” Glancing at his computer, she said, “What are you working on? I thought you were done for the day.”

“I was…until I followed up on something I heard on the police scanner. I wanted to get it down on paper while the details were still fresh.”

“Are you almost done? We could go to dinner…if you don’t have any plans, of course.”

She made the suggestion casually, but there was nothing casual about the emotions churning inside her. Logan was hers—he just didn’t know it yet. She’d loved him since she was ten years old, but she was the younger sister and she’d never stood a chance once he met Faith. But Faith was dead and gone and in spite of his claims to the contrary, he wouldn’t grieve for her sister forever. There would come a time when he would decide that he didn’t want to go through the rest of his life alone.