Her Secret Service (Jane Roe 1) by Jason Letts (sites to read books for free TXT) 📗

him there are some things I could say that seem to make a little more sense.”

The agent nodded and Oliver escorted him back to the screening room. Agent Tanner pulled out a small pad of paper and a pen.

“We’re in a bit of a hurry, so this had better be good,” he said. Oliver took a deep breath.

“Well, I wish someone had asked me about Heath last week. It might’ve saved a lot of time. I never would’ve expected him to do something like this, but I can’t say it’s completely out of the blue. You see, he’s a bit of an oddball, a loner. Most of the time he doesn’t talk much, but a few times things have slipped out of his mouth that really disturbed me.”

“Uh-huh,” Tanner said, eyes down as he jotted on the pad. It saved Oliver the trouble of having to do too much facial acting.

“He seemed to have an interest in all kinds of weapons, including explosives. Sometimes he’d say things like this person had better watch out, or I bet this kind of explosive could blow that car clear above the power lines. References to mobster movies were always on the tip of his tongue. I always thought they were jokes because he said them in good humor, but it’s going to haunt me that there was something behind them.”

Agent Tanner looked up at him, a pair of blue eyes scanning Oliver that could’ve had anything going on behind them. This man could ruin everything Oliver had left with just one word.

“Anything else?”

Oliver kept himself in check, fighting off a sense of relief but suddenly feeling like he may have been too obvious.

“Just stuff like that really, odd comments a handful of times over years. Most of it seemed so subtle I never would’ve thought of it until you guys came in here.”

“Alright, thanks,” the FBI agent said, and Oliver took a deep breath once he’d fully returned to unhooking the computer.

Going to the break room, Oliver watched through a window until the agent had taken everything he needed and exited the floor via the elevator. Then he went to the windows looking down at the street to see when the van they’d come in had driven off. It was only when it had turned a corner in the distance and disappeared from sight that Oliver felt that he was left to himself again, possibly for the last time unless he took advantage of this opportunity.

He wasn’t foolish enough to think that the FBI’s pursuit of Heath would put the matter to rest. Sooner or later they’d realize that they had the wrong guy, that Heath couldn’t hurt a fly, and that he’d only been carrying an explosive in the boom mic case because Oliver had put it there. How long it would take them to figure this out was unknowable. Four hours? Twelve? Twenty-four?

No matter how long it was, Oliver needed to be long gone by then. His plans had been dashed, and the only thing left was a flight for survival to someplace where they could never find him.

Knocking against the editor’s door, he pushed it open before he got a response. The newsroom editor, Gary Cronin, was on the phone but immediately rushed to end the call once Oliver walked in. Middle-aged with glasses and a gold tooth, he looked like he’d seen a ghost.

“Good. Glad you’re here. I just got off the phone with legal. They’re going to try to figure out if we have any liability in this. I’m just blown away. Can you believe it?” Cronin said in astonishment.

Oliver widened his eyes and nodded vigorously.

“Tell me about it. You think you know people. I always knew that nice guy routine was an act. Listen, the timing is inconvenient, but I’d been planning to tell you anyway that I need to take a trip up to Maine for a couple of days. There’s a researcher there with an interesting method for detecting falsehoods in written statements that could really add some heft to dissecting the president’s social media posts,” he said.

Cronin had a sour look on his face like he’d just spotted a fly in his soup.

“Inconvenient is when your articles come in after the deadline. This isn’t inconvenient. It’s a mind-blowing abdication of duty. We’re having an all-hands-on-deck moment here. We need everyone to figure out how we’re going to respond to this,” he said.

“But that’s not going to require anything from the White House beat though, right? We’ve still got to cover the president.”

Cronin gave him a deadpan look.

“The White House holding a lot of press briefings up in Maine?”

Oliver’s frustrations startled to bubble up inside.

“Obviously not, but we don’t cover those live anyway. I’ll be able to work with the transcripts for a couple of days. This is going to pay off big time. Trust me.”

But the news editor wasn’t moved in the slightest.

“I just can’t. I don’t care if your guy has invented an X-ray machine that can read people’s thoughts. No one’s going anywhere until we’ve weathered this storm. Everyone is going to think we were involved. They’re going to be curious how we respond. Honestly, there are a lot of opportunities here to convert people into new subscribers and draw more attention to our work. That’s what the upper management on the business end is going to want to hear about.”

Oliver pursed his lips. None of this stuff mattered anymore, his job, the paper, the irritating demands of someone beneath him that he’d previously had to live by.

“You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. Having the FBI in here dragging away my tech has thrown me off. Can I ask for one tiny thing? I’ve just got to go out for a walk to clear my head, and then I’ll be back in here to tackle this. We’ll be fine, and like you said we’ll be looking better than ever by the end of it.”

Gary Cronin leaned to the